Low Budget Trilogy

 

 (imdb)

ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN-1973-Very low budget trilogy of tales involving the supernatural much of it narrated by the great Rod Serling. In the first, 3 smart ass college kids set up Johnny, a naive guy with a phony date. When he's accidentally shot and killed, his spooky mom (Fran Franklin) puts a curse on the 3. One of guys tells the story to a priest who gets upset when the curse seems to come true. In the second story, after a kid loses his dog, he and his father discover a mysterious giant hole in the ground. The father is lowered into the hole. When they bring him up, he's gone crazy. What he saw is never revealed. Annabelle Weenick (DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) is his wife and (Larry Buchanan regular) Billy Thurman is a hillbilly. The third is based on “the legend of the girl on the bridge”. After a car drives off a bridge, a dude picks up a mysterious young woman (Rosie Holotik) who says she wants to go home. In a flashback we find out that the girl Susan had a fight with her father (Gene Ross) over a guy she wanted to marry. Of course, it turns out Susan is dead and her ghost is trying to get home. Holotik and Ross had also been in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT the same year. 

 (imdb)

Another narrator sums up everything at the end with a kind of condensed version of the movie shown again. Filmed in Little Rock, Arkansas by Harry Thomason who filmed another movie SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA simultaneously with this extremely low budget anthology. Thomason (still alive at the time of this writing) was a close friend of Bill & Hilary Clinton and later worked on the TV show “Designing Woman”.

                                  Rosie Holotik on the cover of Playboy magazine in 1972!

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Serious Buchanan

HIGH YELLOW-1965-17 year old Cindy (Cynthia Hull) is the new maid for Hollywood producer Harry Langley (Bob Brown), his freaky wife (Anne MacAdams aka Annabelle Weenick), his hip flirty daughter Judy (Kay Taylor) and son George (Warren Hammack), thrown out of college for being a “queer boy”. No sooner does she get there when gardener Major Bates (Bill Thurman) kills a rabbit in front of her. Then Harry and George have a confrontation over George’s “queer-ness” and Harry's war record. The butler/chauffeur Joseph (Bill McGhee) lectures Cindy about her light skin (High Yellow is a Southern term for a light skinned black person; now considered a racial slur) because she believes she could pass for white and then he shows her how to set a table. The family seems more like some decadent out of touch Southern white trash than one living in the heart of Tinseltown. 

Judy takes Cindy to the Disc A Go-Go where everyone frugs violently. She successfully passes for white but again Joseph lectures her. Later George relates in heart wrenching detail to Cindy his run in with a transvestite that labeled a “queer boy”. They have sex. The next morning Judy is found dead. The investigating detective suspects the major and uses Cindy to help catch him. She's nearly killed though. Cindy and George declare their love but Cindy knows they can never be together. She leaves now content with herself. 

This interesting thought provoking low budget black and white drama from writer/director Larry Buchanan is well done and kind of ahead of it's time though it suffers from some preachy dialogue. It's too bad he's mostly remembered for his cheap incompetent direct to TV remakes for AIP.

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Buchanan

THE CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE-1966-More Larry Buchanan madness with John Agar as a geologist looking for oil in the swamps with a trio of crooks. They run into the crazy experiments of Dr. Trent (Tony Houston; also the screenwriter) who is trying to make a fish monster out of a man! He feeds his failures to some stock footage crocodiles. Meanwhile the locals practice voodoo (called “snake worship”). Except for Agar the acting in this is quite comical. Especially Huston, an amateur ham who would make Shatner seem like Olivier! (“My beautiful indestructible fish man”). Francine York is Mrs. Trent and Bill McGhee (Ben in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) is a dim-witted servant. Buchanan regular Bill Thurman is one of the crooks and the swamp creature.

Buchanan throws in some interesting camera angles but otherwise it's pretty boring. Agar also starred (with Houston) in Buchanan's ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS the same year!

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Before Larry Cohen's Killer Babies

IT’S ALIVE-1969-This infamous horror film was made by director Larry Buchanan right after completing a batch of direct to TV remakes of AIP '50's horror films.

Two tourists, Norman (Corveth Ousterhouse) and Leila (Shirley Bonne) from the city get lost on a back road somewhere in Texas. They wind up being held prisoner by a loony farmer (Buchanan regular Bill Thurman) who has a prehistoric monster living in a smoky cave under his house. A helpful paleontologist named Wayne (Tommy Kirk) tries to help but gets captured too. The monster (Thurman doing double duty) is goofy and rubbery with fangs and ping pong ball eyes! Thurman’s over the top acting is the real highlight of this awful film (“Perhaps you know of my creature? It’s great and powerful! My greatest discovery!”) but it also features Ann McAdams (later in DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) as Thurman’s abused servant who narrates a long flashback.(with no dialogue; just her narration and some incidental music) which explains how she became the farmer’s servant.

In one scene she tries to escape by throwing some liquid in Thurman's face but right before that happens you can see his face is already wet! The scene they used must have been take 2!

Former Disney teen star Tommy Kirk was at the nadir of his career having already starred in Buchanan’s MARS NEEDS WOMEN in 1967. A few years later he’d star in Al Adamson’s BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. I’ve read the plot seems to be based on a short story by Richard Matheson.

Buchanan (who provides some un-credited narration during the credits) made the Bergman influenced (?) STRAWBERRIES NEED RAIN next.

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Night Fright!

NIGHT FRIGHT-1967-This made in Texas atrocity seems to feature scenes with a monster as an afterthought. It’s very very talky and way too dark. A very skinny John Agar stars as a small town sheriff battling a killer mutant monster that came out of a secret government rocket crash. A lot of local teens (all very bad actors) are terrorized and Agar’s character almost loses it when one of them calls him “fuzz” (“Listen, punk. Don’t call me fuzz”).

The grumbling monster looks like a man in an ape suit except for the head, which is very shiny and plastic looking and resembles a Klingon! An elaborate plan to capture the creature is mostly characters just sitting around waiting! Though the monster is suppose to be big and noisy victims don’t really notice him until he’s right on top of them! Larry Buchanan regular Bill Thurman plays Agar’s deputy who gets killed (Agar had been in 2 Buchanan outings himself). Screenwriter Russ Marker (who also has a role) had made THE YESTERDAY MACHINE but this is 10 times worst. Nothing happens! But what can you expect from a director (James A. Sullivan) who edited MANOS –HANDS OF FATE!!

The same year Agar had a small role in Corman’s THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE. It stinks but I wonder it if Dean R. Koontz saw this before writing “Watchers"?

One of the young people is played Brenda Venus who went on to write a column for Playboy magazine and was "the muse" to author Henry Miller in the last years of his life. His letters to her were collected into a book titled "Dear, Dear Brenda". 

Final note: The script supervisor on NIGHT FRIGHT was Annabelle Weenick from DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT and Larry Buchanan movies....

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