Grenwich Village Killer

 

 (imdb)

VIOLATED-1953-It's like Ed Wood meets Ron Ormond in this very cheap sleazy thriller. In Greenwich Village in NYC, police investigate the murders of several models/strippers. A tall police lieutenant (Mitchell Kowall) questions everyone. The suspects the cops pick up are pretty amazing looking weirdos. A photographer, Jan Verbick (William Holland in his only film role) is the culprit. He becomes obsessed with a stripper named Lili (Lili Dawn) but she rebuffs him. ("Beat it, ya jerk. I told ya to scram!") After he kills her, he runs down a fire escape in a funny scene. He gets away and the next day he tries to strangle his new young model. The police burst in and arrest him. Under sodium pentothal, Jan reveals why he kills women. The end seems to suggest another killer is around. 

There's an unusual scene (for the time) where two men have their arms around each other. Except for a short film based on “Othello” this was director William Strate's only film. It was produced and written by William Mishkin who years later produced Andy Mulligan's early movies. Lili Dawn was an “exotic dancer” who's only other film appearances are in 8mm films by Irving Klaw.

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Tiny Tim!

 

 (youtube)

STREET OF DREAMS-1988-This grainy slapped together bio/documentary features Tiny Tim attempting to break the non-stop singing record at Luna Park, a famous amusement park in Australia. It throws in all sorts of Tiny Tim clips: myriad interviews, his marriage on "The Tonight Show", talking to strippers in a hotel room, dressing up like Mickey Mouse, even an interview with his aged mother who shows off childhood photos. Actor Ross Martin occasionally appears to narrate. 

Tim pontificates on the Bible, God, life, sex, etc. It's a cacophony of Tiny Tim, a literal overload, which turns very serious toward the end when it reports on the fire that took 7 lives and closed the amusement park down. 

Director Martin Sharp, who had a keen interest in Luna Park as well as Tiny Tim, was also an artist who drew the cover of Cream's albums “Disraeli Gears” and “Wheels of Fire” as well as writing the lyrics to two of their songs, “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Anyone for Tennis?”. There is a separate feature that focuses mainly on the marathon concert itself.

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Betty Page

 

TEASERAMA-1955-Tame by today's standards this is a type of burlesque show shot on film by photographer Irving Klaw who directed and co-produced it (with his wife). The immortal Betty Page is the kind of hostess who when not dancing herself brings out the name cards introducing each act. Between strippers (including Tempest Storm), there's comedy by Joe E. Ross and another guy. Some of their jokes are funny!

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Jan's Head

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE-1962-On the operating table an old doctor (Bruce Brighton) pronounces his patient dead, but Bill (Herb “soon to be Jason” Evers), another doctor who happens to be his son takes over and revives the patient. 

While dad is proud of his arrogant son's accomplishment he still feels trepidation toward his actions (“The operating table is no place for experiments”). While debating this and Bill's ambition to do major limb transplants in the future (using his “secret compound”) their nurse Jan (Virginia Leith) enters. She also happens to be Bill's fiancee. Before they can have a romantic weekend Bill gets a mysterious urgent call from his “country place” where he does his experimenting. 

With Jan in tow Bill drives like a maniac to the place but wrecks his car. He is somehow thrown from the car and unharmed but Jan isn't so lucky. She's decapitated in the fiery crash. Fortunately Bill retrieves the head, wraps it in his jacket and runs to the country place. With the help of his German assistant Kurt (Leslie Daniel) who has a deformed arm, Jan's head is placed in a pan with a lot of tubes and wires and is brought back to life! Meanwhile something hideous is locked in another room in the lab. Bill goes out looking for Jan's new body. He goes to a gin joint and tries to pick up a dancer. He sizes her up and she seems to fit the bill but he's deterred by another weird talking dancer. The two rivals wind up fighting on the floor. Meanwhile Jan's head develops some kind of psychic link with the thing in the closet (“Together we will reek our revenge”). Kurt debates with the head while Bill still looks for the perfect body which he believes he finds in Doris (Adele Lamont), a hot but scarred model who poses for “a bunch of neurotics”. Bill really shows his deceitful side when he convinces Doris to go to the country place so her face can be healed. Jan plots with the thing and eventually Kurt's good arm is torn off. Somehow Kurt now with only a bloody stump crawls up the lab stairs to the living quarters but when he gets there he crawls back down to the lab and dies! Bill drugs Doris and plans to put Jan's head on her body but Jan makes the thing break out of the closet and attack Bill. Their fight is kind of doofy, involving a door and the ugly monster biting a chunk out of Bill's arm and then examining the bloody piece he bit off. The monster is a huge guy with a deformed face (obviously a mask). He carries Doris away (God only knows what happened when she woke up!) and Jan and Bill burn to death. 

 This exploitation sickie was directed and co-written by Joseph Green who owned his own small film distribution company. It's too bad he waited 24 years to make his next and last film (THE PERILS OF P.K.). He seemed to know how to pack a lot of sleaze, gore and fun into one movie! 

Jason Evers' egotistic oily doctor though supposedly only concerned with science by his semi-sinister grin when ogling a woman's body seems like he can't wait to bring her home and cut her up. While Virginia Leith's severed head role of Jan is pretty intense it's been said she was so disgusted by the role she gave up acting altogether (she's made her screen debut in Kubrick's first film FEAR AND DESIRE) though she made sporadic TV appearances later on (and is still with us at the time of this writing). Co-producer Rex Carlston later produced a couple of Al Adamson movies but committed suicide in 1968. For some reason Sammy Petrillo (who with Duke Mitchell met a Brooklyn gorilla some years before) appears as a photographer in one scene. 

BRAIN was filmed (around Tarrytown, NY) in 1959 but due to financial troubles wasn't released until 1962. 

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"That's All Ya Got? Ain't Ya Got No Geek or Nothin'?"

SHE FREAK-1967- After a rather lengthy intro showing scenes from a country carnival (with some dizzying shots from a Ferris wheel) a barker explains "There are only two kinds of freaks . Those created by God and those made by man" when touting their unseen big freak attraction.

The story then goes flashback to Jade (Claire Brennen) an unhappy waitress in a greasy spoon run by Greasy (Claude Earl Jones). When a carnival agent (Ben Moore from HG Lewis' 2000 MANIACS) passes through, Jade decides to join up with the troupe where she becomes....a waitress!

She's befriended by a stripper named Moon (Lynn Courtney) and seems to get along ok until she sees the freaks (all we see is a woman who kisses a python and a sword shallower) and gets upset. Later on she's romanced by the "freak show" owner Mr. St John (Bill McKinney in his film debut) but also has an affair with a roustabout named Blackie (Lee Raymond who later directed THE ADULT VERSION OF DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE). Meanwhile Shorty, (future cousin Itt Felix Silla) hangs around ominously. She and St. John get married but her animosity towards the freaks continues. She also continues her affair with Blacky and when St. John catches them Blacky kills him. Jade takes over the show and her first order of business is to fire Shorty. Finally the unseen "freaks" take their revenge (a fire eater, strange looking old lady, a skinny guy and a wild man) and turn her into "one of them". Greasy has the last laugh in the finale which ends with a Bible quote!

SHE FREAK is obviously an un-credited remake of the Tod Browning classic FREAKS and you know right away once the star freak isn't show at the beginning. The best part is really the actual footage of the carnivals being erected and packed up plus many of the rides and attractions in action. There's some bad acting and dialogue but much of it is long non-dialogue scenes with musical background. The weirdest part is that no "real" freaks are seen till the very end which may have disappointed movie goers.

A lot of exploitation hands were in on SHE FREAK. It was written and produced by exploitation vet David Friedman and Byron Mabe directed and edited it. Don Sonney was a co-producer and Ed Wood associate Harry Thomas did the make-up. Billy Allen did the cool guitar/percussion soundtrack. Director of photography Bill Troiano worked other weird stuff like THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS. William Bagdad (from TV Mikels movies) has a funny role as a tough guy who gets stabbed with a screwdriver.

A real carnival magician, The Great Vanteen has a small role too (according to his website he also played "the wild man" who attacks Jade in the climax). This is just about the only movie star Claire Brennan made (she did some TV later on). According to IMDB she and co-star Felix Silla had a child together. She died of cancer in 1977 at the age of 43. Roadshow legend Donn Davidson created an alternate version called ASYLUM OF THE INSANE which featured one or two added scenes.

Thanks to my pal Tony for getting me this and thanks for reading!

HG Lewis

Blood Feast is arugably the first gore film ever. I say arguably because when I say "it is the first gore film" some egghead usually knows of some other movie made in someplace like Japan which is "really the first" and we get into a big argument and I wonder why I am having a fight over a low budget gore movie when I could be watching it instead of fighting over it and I get depressed and my day is ruined.....

Anyway, Blood Feast is director Herschell Gordon Lewis' first gore film (Ha! Can't disagree with me there!). It's crazy, very funny (mostly unintentional but I'm sure Lewis had his tongue in his cheek for many of the scenes) and very very bloody. Some of the SFX are bad but at least Lewis delivers what the ads promised! It's one of my favorite movies of all time but it's not for everyone....It's usually called part one of his "Blood Trilogy" which continued with 2000 MANIACS and COLOR ME BLOOD RED.

Oh yeah...and then there's this:

THE BLOOD TRILOGY- Something Weird-1996-WARNING: The video you are about to see is for BLOOD FEAST completists only! If you are a fan of H.G. Lewis' first gore film (I am; it’s one of my favorites!), then you may find this little oddity interesting. It’s made up almost entirely of outtakes and unused footage from FEAST as well as COLOR ME BLOOD RED and TWO THOUSAND MANIACS. It begins with the well-known BLOOD FEAST trailer. Then segues into the all silent and not as entertaining as it sounds scenes although there are some highlights. You get to see BF star Thomas Wood/William Kerwin working as one of the crew and lots of lingering close-ups of Mal Arnold/Fuhad Ramses’ handiwork. The girl in the bubble bath who has her eye gouged out is more revealing in her outtakes than in the actual finished scene! And there’s really no rhyme or reason to the whole thing. It’s just a big ball of raw footage that sometimes plays like a bad nightmare!

Added to this at the end of the main footage is a bizarre short called "The Art Of Carving" starring Wood/Kerwin and Harvey Korman (who had been in Lewis’ LUCKY PIERRE) in an educational lesson on the proper way to carve a turkey and other meat! I’m not sure if Lewis had anything to do with this but it certainly is a mind boggler coming right after all those gory outtakes!

The tape ends with a Kerwin trailer warning (in b/w) for THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, followed by the original trailer and Mal Arnold’s weird warning for THE WIZARD OF GORE, also followed by the trailer. It’s an interesting artifact but as I said before this is definitely for completists only.



THE GORE GORE GIRLS-For his last movie Herschel Gordon Lewis returned to the gore genre (after making two “hillbilly” movies). It’s his most brutal and sick and features Henny Youngman as a strip club owner who’s dancers are murdered in various horrible (but of course phony looking) ways. The killer plucks out eyes, mutilates a face, shoves a head into boiling oil and pounds one stripper’s buttocks with a tenderizing mallet!

A cocky private detective (Frank Kress who looks like Alan Arbus) investigates and occasionally talks to the camera. He’s assisted by a female reporter(Amy Farrell)who gets drunk several times and winds up winning a strip contest. One suspect sits at a bar and mashes melons with a hammer. Most of the jokes fall flat but there are some good unintentional laughs. The story is interspersed with some tame strip teases but some of the victims die topless. Ray Sager, the star of Lewis’ previous gore film THE WIZARD OF GORE is in there someplace too. Screenwriter Alan Dactman never seemed to work again! Producer/director Lewis (who also composed the jazz score) stopped making movies after this and got into other businesses. However in 2002 he directed a sequel to BLOOD FEAST entitled BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT!! Thanks H.G.!!!!

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