More like The Dulling

THE CULLING-2015-Pot smoking Louisiana slackers on their way to a concert meet a mysterious blond haired little girl (Harley Graham) who they decide to drive home. When they get to her house nobody is there but when the parents return they invite the group to hang out, do dope and drink (apparently the concert wasn't that important...??) while the parents tell the story of how their daycare center burnt down. After the father has to take the mother to the hospital, the group stay to watch the girl. Weird things happen and people are killed. It seems the father is creating an army of evil children for a demon. The lone survivor sets the father on fire and a demon appears. She escapes but the little girl is in the back of her pick up. 

Writer/director Rustam Branaman also acted in a lot of films (hopefully he will continue doing that instead of..well you know....)

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Frankenhooker

FRANKENHOOKER-1990-In NJ an overweight girl named Elizabeth (former Penthouse Playmate Patty Mullen) is killed by an electric mower. Her fiance' Jeffery (James Lorinz) who works for the electric company and dabbles in science experiments becomes obsessed with trying to recreate her. He keeps her severed head in a vat of boiling chemicals and at night puts the head on the table and has dinner with it (and reads it poetry) in his garage/lab in the house where he lives with his mother (Louise Lasser). When he gets tense he uses an electric drill on his brain. Like in THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, Jeffery needs a new body for his beloved so he hires some hookers (with a cliche pimp named Zorro) to find a bod that will fit Elizabeth. But when they ingest some crack like drug Jeffery has brought along they all explode and there are bloody body parts everywhere. Jeffery takes all the body parts back to his lab and stitches them together for a new body and brings it to life with electricity (and a serum that only works on women). What he gets is a scarred white faced hooker/zombie who escapes and hits the street. Her first customer/victim is a short bald comical white guy who explodes (and his decapitated head talks). Jeff eventually brings Elizabeth back to life but she doesn't like it. Zorro follows Jeffery home and decapitates him but the left over hooker parts kill Zorro. Somehow Elizabeth manages to save Jeffery by putting his head on a woman's body. He's not happy about that. Zacherley (the voice Aylmer in the director's BRAIN DAMAGE) appears briefly as a TV weatherman and Shirley Stoler from THE HONEYMOON KILLERS, is a bartender.

This is another bizarre unique horror outing from director Frank Henenlotter (BASKETCASE). It's gory but very clever and funny and you'll never see a better “hookers exploding while using crack” scene anywhere!

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Hustle in the Seventies

THE MONKEY HUSTLE-1976-Big Daddy Fox (Yaphet Kotto) is a hustler/con man/thief in Philly. He recruits/corrupts some street kids. All the characters talk jive and only think about money. Fox's girlfriend runs the local restaurant. Caught in the middle is Win (Randy Brooks) the older brother of one of Fox's young “students”. A side plot concerns the local community protesting the bulldozing of the neighborhood. Later Fox teams up with local con man Glitterin' Goldie (the always outrageously dressed Rudy Ray Moore) to stop the construction. 

This too hip for itself “blaxploitation” film was directed by Arthur Marks (not Groucho's son) but it's not nearly as entertaining as his previous outing J. D.'S REVENGE. 

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Simon

SIMON-1980-Some brilliant but twisted geniuses (including Max Wright, William Finley and Wallace Shawn) manipulate the USA fixing TV ratings, creating diseases, doing bizarre research on cross breeding a man with a cockroach and talking about a Nixon substitute who came back from China. They get a lot of info from a computer named Doris (the voice of Louise Lasser) and are kind of like forerunners of modern day computer hackers. They decide to create “an alien” using eccentric college professor Simon Mendolssohn (Alan Arkin) as their guinea pig. Through drugs and a sensory deprivation tank and the help of a phony female doctor (Madeline Kahn) they manage to change him. After he becomes a media sensation with his ego driven demands for making a better world, the group try to destroy him but only wind up losing their intellect to a gas that makes them dumb, dispensed by an Army general (Fred Gwynne). Dr. Becker (Austin Pendleton) the head of the institute wants to kill Simon but he winds up trapped on a rocket-ship headed into space! Simon and his wife (Judy Graubart) run away and are taken in by a religious cult that worships TV. He starts his own pirate network and delivers a crazy philosophy (He's right about many things!). 

This is a great but overlooked black comedy criticizing TV and the obsession with junk culture co-written and directed by Marshall Brickman, a former head writer of THE TONIGHT SHOW who wrote several Woody Allen films (SLEEPER, ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN) . Dick Cavett and David Susskind play themselves.

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Hammer Werewolf

THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF-1961-In Spain in the 1700's a beggar (Richard Wordsworth) is mocked and imprisoned by the local marquis (Anthony Dawson). He languishes for years in a dungeon with his only human contact being the jailer's mute daughter (Yvonne Romaine) who grows up before his eyes. When she rejects the now decrepit zombie look marquis he has her thrown in the same dungeon as the old beggar. He rapes her and later she kills the marquis (quite viciously). She runs away and is taken in my a kindly aristocrat Alfredo (Clifford Evans) and his maid. The girl gives birth to a baby boy but dies. Unfortunately the baby was born on Christmas and according to the maid an unwanted child born on the 25^th is an insult to God. When the boy named Leon is baptized thunder sounds and the holy water swirls. A few years later Leon has nightmares and fangs and seems to kill sheep at night although a wild dog is blamed. He grows into a man (Oliver Reed) and leaves home. He gets a job bottling wine and meets Christina (Catherine Feller). They fall in love but while out partying with a co-worker Leon turns into a scary werewolf (slightly reminiscent of THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON) and kills the co-worker and a hooker. He's arrested and put in jail where his cellmate becomes a future victim. As a wolf he breaks out, kills some more and the townsfolk go after him. He takes refuge in a church where “dad” shoots a silver bullet through his heart. 

 This Technicolor Hammer production released in the US though Universal International was directed by the great Terence Fisher and written by Anthony Hinds who teamed several times for Hammer. It's based on a novel by Guy Endore  

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Phillippines

BLACK MAMA WHITE MAMA-1973-In a Philippines jail “black mama” Lee Daniels (Pam Grier), a hooker and “white mama” Karen Brent (Margaret Markov), a revolutionary fight for survival and try to avoid the lesbian guards. When they are chained together and transferred to a maximum security prison Karen's guerrilla boyfriend and his pals try to rescue her. That fails but the women escape. Chained together they argue and fight. Karen wants to go back to her revolution while Lee wants to catch a boat and get away. They mug two nuns and put on their habits. They get a ride from a friendly drunken truck driver and steal his truck. A drug dealer (Vic Diaz) is also looking for Lee and some money she stole from him. A local police captain (Eddie Garcia) hires a local pool shooting pimp (Sid Haig) to find the girls too. Meanwhile the “female defiant ones” kill the blacksmith who could have unchained them and beat up an innocent guy and steal his boat. They are rescued by Karen's boyfriend (until then it seems like they are in two separate movies). An all out battle between the revolutionaries and the drug dealer's gang caps the finale where Karen is killed and Daniels escapes on a boat with the drug dealer's money (he's killed in the battle). 

AIP released this Philippines shot adventure movie in the US during the big boom period for this kind of production. It was directed by Eddie Romero who had previously made several notorious horror movies with John Ashley (including MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND) and THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (also with Pam Grier). A few years after this was made co-star Margaret Markov retired from acting and married producer/actor Mark Damon.  

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Carry On

CARRY ON SCREAMING-1966-A boisterous but dumb detective Sgt. Bung (Harry Corbett) investigates the disappearance of a young woman (actually abducted by a monster). The woman's naive boyfriend Potter (Jim Dale; a "Carry On" regular who was in several recent "Harry Potter" movies) and Bung's stupid assistant Slobotham ("Carry On" regular Peter Butterworth) help out. They find the severed finger of the monster which eventually leads them to a castle where a “Vampira” looking woman Valeria Watt (Fanella Fielding) resides with her foppish brother Orlando (Kenneth Williams; a "Carry On" regular) turning women into mannequins. Their monster servant is Oddbod (Tom Clegg), a square headed hairy dude with fangs (fairly scary for the juvenile story line). When an old scientist (Jon Pertwee) conducts an experiment with the finger it creates another Oddbod. Valeria seduces Bung and turns him into a werewolf but when he goes to terrorize his dumpy wife (Joan Sims) she gets the better of him. In typical English fashion Sobotham later disguises himself as a woman which leads Bung's wife into thinking he's having an affair. They all wind up in the castle being chased by the two Oddbods until Potter is turned into a werewolf and thrashes both monsters (obviously dummies when he throws them out a window). Orlando is killed by a mummy he accidentally revives. 

This horror-comedy by the “Carry On” troupe (number 12 in the series and the last for their long time studio Anglo-Amalgamated) is pretty dated and childish. Apparently they didn't know much about horror films. If it's suppose to be a take-off on a Hammer production then it's a real failure! 

PmoʻDirector Gerald Thomas did most of the series.Vampire actress Fanella Fielding was a loudspeaker voice on the TV show "The Prisoner" the next year. Top billed Corbett later co-starred in the BBC series "Steptoe and Son" the basis for America's "Sanford and Son".

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