THE DYNAMITE BROTHERS (1974) **

 

I reviewed this back in February under the title East Meets Watts.  Most of the Al Adamson films I have re-reviewed while poring through the Severin Films box set were originally reviewed as long as twelve years ago, so I have no problem reappraising them and writing a brand-new review.  However, since I watched this only seven months ago, and my thoughts haven’t really changed, I have decided to forego writing a new review for this one.  In the interest of posterity, here is a reprint of my original review:   

EAST MEETS WATTS  (1974)  **

Larry Chin (Alan Tang) travels from China to San Francisco to find the man who killed his wife.  Along the way, he crosses paths with a soul brother named Stud Brown (Timothy Brown) who’s being hassled by a racist cop (Aldo Ray) who handcuffs them together.  They give the cops (not to mention another assorted crop of racist shitkickers) the slip, get the cuffs off, and decide to work together to take down a local drug kingpin (James Hong). 

East Meets Watts is what you get when Al Adamson can’t make up his mind whether he wants to make a Kung Fu movie or a Blaxploitation actioner.  He splits the difference and tries to give both genres his own unique spin.  It’s obvious that the Kung Fu sequences are much more competent.  By “much more competent”, I mean they’re just as crummy as your typical low budget ‘70s chopsocky flick.  Still, there’s plenty of kicking, chopping, and nunchuck twirling to keep your interest.  We also get at least one memorable death when Tang rips a guy’s scalp off with his bare hands. 

The Blaxploitation elements are the weakest aspects of the movie, mostly because Adamson films the action so poorly.  Simple shootouts and chase scenes are rendered nearly incomprehensible thanks to the schizophrenic editing.  There’s also an unintentionally hilarious subplot involving a mute love interest (played by Carol Speed from The Mack) that will leave you howling. 

The scenes where our two heroes are cuffed together work well enough.  You almost wish they had spent the whole movie that way.  Think a Kung Fu version of The Defiant Ones.  (The Defiant Wongs?)  However, whenever they split up for their separate missions, the movie often spins its wheels.  Despite its shortcomings, I find it hard to completely dislike any film that features Aldo Ray AND James Hong, so it’s still worth watching not only for die-hard Kung Fu and Blaxploitation fans, but for connoisseurs of cult movie stars as well.

AKA:  Dynamite Brothers.  AKA:  Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  AKA:  Stud Brown.  AKA:  Main Street Women.  AKA:  Dynamite Brown.

THE NAUGHTY STEWARDESSES (1973) ** ½

 

I had this on DVD from the Retro-Seduction Cinema line back in the early 2000’s and enjoyed it well enough to keep it in my collection for all these years.  Now that I have the Al Adamson Collection Blu-Ray box set from Severin Films, it’s (mile) high time I upgraded.  Since I bought the disc prior to the creation of my original blog, I never got around to reviewing it.  Until now. 

Even back then I knew this was one of Adamson’s best, and that opinion hasn’t really changed all that much, even if it isn’t exactly “good”.  Although many of his films had a smattering of nudity here and there, The Naughty Stewardesses was Adamson’s first out-and-out sexploitation flick.  Once again, he and producer Sam Sherman were cashing in on the latest exploitation craze.  In this case, they were riding the coattails of the booming Stewardess genre.  It’s also one of his best-looking films, thanks to Gary Graver’s excellent cinematography.  The editing is equally remarkable as this has to be Adamson’s most coherent feature to date.

I only wish the editor was more judicious in the cutting room as this clocks in at a whopping 109 minutes.  There’s no reason for a softcore stewardess movie to be 109 minutes.  Heck, there’s no reason for an Al Adamson movie to be 109 minutes.  In the film’s defense, I will say that this is the “steamy” international cut that includes six extra spicy minutes of footage previously unseen in America.  Just one more reason why I’m glad I upgraded my disc.

The film centers around a shy and virginal stewardess named Debbie (Connie Hoffman) who rooms together with three sexy, much more experienced stews, played by Donna Desmond, Marilyn Joi, and Sydney Jordan.  Slowly, Debbie loosens up and eventually finds herself torn between the horny old rich man Brewster (Robert Livingston) and a young photographer named Cal (Richard Smedley, who played Akro in Adamson’s Blood of Ghastly Horror), who has a mysterious sexual hang-up.  When Debbie spurns Cal in favor of Brewster, he plots to get even. 

Adamson had previously shown restraint with nudity in his films.  While there is much more of it here in The Naughty Stewardesses, it’s still more tease than please.  Still, many scenes are sexy without going overboard.  For example, this movie probably features the first pussy shaving scene in a non-hardcore flick.  That sounds great and all, but Adamson’s shy handling of it makes it feel a bit tame. 

The opening scene is particularly great.  Marilyn Joi asks, “Have you girls ever tried doing it standing up?”  Then one of the stewardesses proceeds to bang the captain standing up in the back of the plane, just out of view from the passengers.  We also get a memorable birthday party scene where a stewardess receives a cake that’s just a dude with whipped cream all over his body and candles sticking out of his nether region. 

The travelogue scenes of the girls walking around Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Palm Springs, adds to the abundance of padding.  Despite that, it plays rather well, and works more often than not.  The problem is the third act.  It’s here when the film turns into a dull kidnapping drama.  The pacing was already erratic to begin with, but once this subplot takes hold, the movie hits a brick wall and never quite recovers.  If the script had just stuck to being a slice of life look into the bedroom activities of sexy stewardesses, it could’ve been a minor classic.  Too bad that last half hour moves like molasses. 

If you can get past the obnoxious length and the gratuitous third act, I think you’ll enjoy The Naughty Stewardesses.  The ladies in the cast (especially Joi) are sexy, feisty, and likeable, and are equally amusing in their clothes as they are out of them.  The music (by the girl group Sparrow), is quite good too. 

Desmond gets the best line of the movie when she tells Livingston:  “Life to me is just one big orgasm!”

AKA:  Fresh Air.

MEAN MOTHER (1973) * ½

 

(Programming Note:  I know I was making August Al Adamson month, but since I still have a good chunk of movies left on Severin’s Al Adamson box set left to watch, I figured I’d extend it through September.  I'll try to watch them all before The 31 Days of Horror-Ween kicks off in October, although I kind of doubt I’ll be able to wade my way through them all by then.)

Dobie Gray (the pop singer known for such hits as “The In Crowd” and “Drift Away”) stars as Beauregard Jones, who in the pre-title sequence guns down a drug kingpin, his goons, and some dirty cops atop a tall building.  We then flashback to Vietnam where Beauregard and his buddy Joe (Dennis Safran) go AWOL and set out on separate paths.  In Spain, Beauregard gets in hot water when he helps a sexy senorita evade some hitmen from the Syndicate.  Meanwhile, in Rome, Joe comes into possession of a hot diamond and quickly gets in over his head.  Eventually, they decide to take off to Canada together, but fate has other plans. 

Mean Mother is a weird mother.  It’s one part Italian crime picture and one part Blaxploitation actioner.  Legendary schlock producer Sam Sherman got a hold of a flick called Run for Your Life directed by Leon (“Kill ‘em off ski”) Klimovsky that he couldn’t sell.  So, he gave the one and only Al Adamson a call and had him film new scenes with Gray and turn it into a black action movie so they could cash in on the Blaxploitation craze.  Despite the fact that Safran appears in both narratives, the two halves never really gel as the whole thing feels like it’s been Frankensteined together. 

Based on the evidence supplied here, Dobie is a much better singer than actor.  Safran is even worse, but the ladies in the cast are engaging.  Former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi appears in the Klimovsky portions of the film.  She looks great and gives a decent performance, although it’s hard to grasp what she sees in the bland Safran.  (I wonder if she ever realized her scenes would someday wind up in an Al Adamson Blaxploitation flick?)  The ever-sexy Marilyn Joi shows up in the Adamson sequences and makes the sluggishly paced scenes worth watching.  We also get a bit by the sultry Robyn Hilton (Mel Brooks’ secretary in Blazing Saddles) as a bombshell in a bikini who unsuccessfully tries to waylay Gray during a roadside ambush.

The Run for Your Life segments are indifferently edited into the action, which is often poorly staged.  The pre-title sequence isn’t bad though.  You can see why Adamson frontloaded it into the picture because it’s easily the best thing the movie has to offer (Joi and Hilton’s nude scenes notwithstanding).  It quickly settles down from there and becomes something of a chore to sit through, mostly on account of the constant shifting back and forth from the Klimovsky footage to the Adamson stuff. 

Another problem:  Beauregard really isn’t all that… mean?  He’s the hero and all, but he really doesn’t do anything particularly bad to justify the title.  Maybe he had a mean mother growing up and that’s why he turned out to be such a good guy.

I’m a big fan of the Blaxploitation genre.  Even lesser Blaxploitation fare can be enjoyable for the dated fashions, low production values, and the bad acting.  Mean Mother, unfortunately, is just plain bad.

AKA:  Run for Your Life.

ANGELS’ WILD WOMEN (1972) **

(ARCHIVE REVIEW:  ORIGINALLY POSTED:  APRIL 28^TH, 2010)

Angels’ Wild Women came about when director Al Adamson added new spicy footage to an unreleased biker film.  The new scenes of bosomy women kicking ass are pretty cool and play like an Adamson version of a Russ Meyer movie.  However, all the stuff involving the bikers is boring as Hell.

Speed (Ross Hagen, no stranger to biker movies after The Sidehackers and The Hellcats) is the leader of a biker gang that spends most of his time balling his old lady and riding his motorcycle.  The gang spends a weekend at a commune headed by a weirdo hippie cult leader who is secretly growing pot.  When word gets out about the operation, he sacrifices Speed’s girlfriend.  That of course sends Speed into a frenzy and he sets out to get revenge on that dirty hippie scumbag.

A lot of Angels’ Wild Women is just plain stupid, but it has a handful of memorable scenes containing highly quotable dialogue that makes it stand out from most of the titles in the Adamson filmography.  Like the scene when a couple of rednecks rape a black biker chick then her tough gal pals show up to get revenge.  One chick distracts the guy by popping her top and says, “Do you want to see some boobies?” before kneeing him in the nuts.  Then there’s a great scene where the biker broads hold down a studly farmhand and force him to fuck.  He protests, “Poontang is poontang, but these sex orgies just ain’t natural!” but eventually gives in and bangs them.  The finale is also pretty WTF.  Hagen drives his motorcycle off a cliff, and it lands on the roof of the bad guy’s car, causing an inexplicable explosion.

Although most flicks need a straightforward story to keep your attention, Angels’ Wild Women’s loose-as-a-goose plotting is one of its strong suits.  Stuff just sorta happens at random in this movie.  First the Angels are fighting, then they’re riding their hogs, then they’re fucking, then they’re battling a third-rate Manson knockoff. 

Unfortunately, the film also contains more than its fair share of dull patches.  Too many in fact to give it a wholehearted recommendation.  Still, Two Stars for an Adamson flick is like Three Stars for most directors, so if you have a high tolerance for Al’s oeuvre, then you should probably check it out.

 

NEW REVIEW:  ANGELS’ WILD WOMEN  (1972)  **

My old review pretty much summed up my thoughts on Al Adamson’s Angels’ Wild Women.  My only real addition is the fact that so much of the movie was filmed at Spahn’s Movie Ranch.  Adamson had filmed several films there over the years, but this is the first time I think he started to meld his own legend into his pictures.  It was at Spahn’s Ranch where his frequent star Gary Kent (who also has a small role in this one) had his run-in with Charles Manson, which later became the genesis of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  In this one, the heroines confront a Manson-like cult leader who has taken over the ranch for his own devious purposes.  Adamson and company had exploited Manson before (most egregiously in the marketing for Satan’s Sadists), but this is the first time they put a not-so thinly veiled version of him on screen. 

As for the movie itself, it feels no less cobbled together than any other of Adamson’s films I’ve watched this month.  The stuff with the wild women tormenting men and/or using them for sex are easily the best.  The stuff with biker Ross Hagen (who is saddled with a terrible haircut) is notably less involving. 

All this kind of flows decently enough in the early going.  The aforementioned “Do you want to see some boobies?” and “Poontang is Poontang!” scenes are a hoot.  These scenes, along with healthy doses of nudity, help to keep Angels’ Wild Women in the better-than-average range as far as Adamson’s films go.  However, once the action switches over to the ranch and the Manson-like cult leader begins to take over the narrative, the fun begins to dwindle.

AKA:  Commune of Death.  AKA:  Rough Riders.  AKA:  Screaming Eagles.  AKA:  Screaming Angels.  AKA:  Wild Women.

DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971) ***

(ARCHIVE REVIEW:  ORIGINALLY POSTED:  JULY 17^th, 2007)

Dracula (Zandor Vorkov, who has an echoy voice and a disintegrating ring) digs up the Frankenstein monster and gets the good doctor (J. Carroll Naish), who runs an amusement park (complete with a house of horrors), to revive it.  Lon Chaney, Jr. is his mute assistant who decapitates girls with an axe and Angelo (The Corpse Vanishes) Rossitto is the midget ticket taker who says, “In order to see, you must open your eyes!” 

Director Al Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol plays a Vegas showgirl who teams up with philosophical hippie Anthony Eisley to find her missing sister.  When they stumble into his lab, Frankenstein tries to turn them into his next experiment.  When they escape, Rossitto falls on an axe, Chaney gets shot, and Naish gets inadvertently gets decapitated!  Dracula then kidnaps Carrol and disintegrates Eisley with his ring.  He wants to turn her into his vampire bride, but the monster has the hots for her too.  The monsters fight (of course it had to be over a woman, right?) in Drac’s backyard and The Count pulls the monster apart limb from limb, but the sun comes out and he crumbles to dust! 

This is probably Adamson’s best-known movie and it’s pretty entertaining too.  Whenever the monsters are onscreen it’s a lot of fun.  However, the hippies, stock footage of protests (“What are we protesting today?”), and slang date it unmercifully.  Co-starring Russ (West Side Story) Tamblyn as a biker rapist, future director Greydon Clark as a hippie and Famous Monsters creator Forrest J. Ackerman as a victim (he was also a consultant).  There’s also a cool credit sequence and good music by Bill Lava, but the familiar Creature from the Black Lagoon music is used for the final reel.  Not to be confused with the Paul Naschy movie Dracula vs. Frankenstein from the previous year.

 

NEW REVIEW:  DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN  (1971)  ***

After sitting through thirteen Al Adamson movies this month, I think it’s safe to say Dracula vs. Frankenstein is his masterpiece.  It has all the hallmarks of his best (and worst) stuff.  There are parallel narratives that feel like they came out of two entirely different movies, confusing editing, shoddy make-up, and a cast full of his usual stock players, including his wife, Regina Carrol.  Sure, it’s just as patched together as most of his work, but there are some downright memorably WTF passages here that will make any lover of B cinema stand up and take notice. 

The first ten minutes alone rank as some sort of minor classic.  After an awesome title sequence, Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) digs up the Frankenstein monster (John Bloom), then a carnival barker (Angelo Rossitto) leads a couple of hippies through a haunted house owned by Dr. Frankenstein (J. Carroll Naish), before Frankenstein’s mute assistant (Lon Chaney, Jr.) goes on an axe murdering spree, chopping off a woman’s head.  The showstopper though is Regina Carrol’s Vegas song and dance number about packing too many things in her suitcases, which enrages her wimpy back-up dancers who can’t carry it all.  Incredible. 

Things start to get erratic once Russ Tamblyn enters the picture.  In fact, all the biker shit in the movie feels out of place with the monster plotline.  However, this does lead up to a great scene where he doses Carrol with acid, and she has a big freak-out sequence in which she imagines herself on a giant spider web.  Even Salvador Dali himself would get a kick out of this scene.

I think I should also mention that Kenneth Strickfaden loaned the production his lab equipment from the original 1931 Frankenstein.  Everyone made a big deal when Mel Brooks used it in Young Frankenstein, but Al Adamson did it three years before him.  Adamson also used some equipment from Horror of the Blood Monsters for variety’s sake, I suppose. 

AKA:  Revenge of Dracula.  AKA:  Blood of Frankenstein.  AKA:  They’re Coming to Get You.  AKA:  Teenage Dracula.

BRAIN OF BLOOD (1971) ** ½

 

(ARCHIVE REVIEW:  ORIGINALLY POSTED  JAN. 14^th, 2008)

Eddie Romero’s shot-in-the-Philippines “Blood Island” trilogy made a buck for somebody back in the USA during the late ‘60s, so the producers wanted another film for the franchise.  They were too cheap to go back to the Philippines to film it, so instead they hired director Al (Blood of Dracula’s Castle) Adamson to helm it in his own backyard for $12.  The results are somewhat of a mess, but it’s still one of Adamson’s best movies. 

A dictator of a fictional country (Reed Hadley) dies and his sons (The Incredible Shrinking Man’s Grant Williams and Zandor Vorkov) hire a mad scientist (Kent Taylor from The Mighty Gorga) to perform an illicit brain transplant to save his life.  The first step is naturally to wrap his corpse head to toe in aluminum foil like a baked potato; then Taylor sends out his hideously deformed assistant Gor (John Bloom) to get a (unwilling) donor body.  After Gor drops his potential patient from a fire escape and fractures his neck, Taylor decides to put the dictator’s brain into Gor’s body, which complicates things with his fiancée (Regina Carrol, the director’s wife).  There’s also a subplot involving Taylor’s midget assistant (played by who else, Angelo Rossitto) who keeps women chained up in the basement, a great flashback where a bunch of rednecks pour battery acid on Gor’s face, and some pretty memorable and messy brain surgery scenes. 

Taylor is pretty great as the demented doctor (he was in SIX Adamson movies altogether), but the rest of the cast (most of whom appeared in Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein) is uneven to say the least.  I guess that’s to be expected when you cast your wife and friends in your movie instead of experienced actors.  The goofy premise and funky performances will keep you snickering, but it’s Gor’s get-up that receives the most laughs.  The make-up is positively awful and he resembles a close cousin of the monster from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die; and just like that monster, you can see the actor’s hair showing through the bald cap. 

Brain of Blood loses points for its slapdash storytelling and erratic editing, but ironically, it’s one of Adamson’s more coherent efforts.  It moves along at a steady pace, and if you have a high tolerance for Adamson’s ineptitude, you’ll probably find yourself in Bad Movie Heaven. 

AKA:  Brain Damage.  AKA:  The Brain.  AKA:  The Creature’s Revenge.  AKA:  The Oozing Skull.  AKA:  The Undying Brain.

 

NEW REVIEW:

BRAIN OF BLOOD  (1971)  ** ½

After re-watching Brain of Blood, I reread this old review and realized it pretty much already summed up my thoughts on this one.  Because of that, I don’t really have a whole lot to add.  One thing I did notice this time around is that I liked the brain surgery scenes even more.  They’re gory, gooey, and ludicrously drawn out.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is drawn out too, just not in a good way.  On this viewing, the assorted subplots, including the stuff with the chained women in the dungeon, Gor’s backstory, and the political maneuverings associated with the surgery went over like a lead balloon.  Things eventually pick up in the third act, just not enough to put it over into *** territory.  Still, the heights are just high enough to rank this as the best movie on the box set so far. 

Also, the performances are among the best found in any Al Adamson film.  Williams makes for an appealing lead, Rossitto is a lot of fun to watch, and Carrol shows she’s a little more than just “the director’s girlfriend” (as I callously referred to her twelve years ago).  The movie really belongs to Kent Taylor as the demented doctor.  No matter the film’s flaws, whenever he’s on screen chewing the scenery, Brain of Blood is a ghoulish delight.

Another note worth mentioning is that the transfers on the box set have been gorgeous from top to bottom.  Sure, many of the elements for some of the movies were damaged beyond repair, but the care in which Severin was able to pick up the pieces and put them back together (especially on The Female Bunch) has been nothing less than stellar.  They really outdid themselves on Brain of Blood as the picture has never looked better.  Even though it’s nearly fifty years old, there are some scenes that look like they could’ve been filmed yesterday.  The gory operation scenes particularly pop, with every drizzle of blood and pulsating brain tissue looking as fresh as the day they were created.

THE FEMALE BUNCH (1971) **

Sandy (Nesa Renet) is a cocktail waitress who falls head over heels for a Las Vegas entertainer (Don Epperson, who also sings a couple of OK tunes).  When he breaks things off with Sandy, her gal pal Libby (Regina Carrol) invites her to join her all-girl gang.  Together, the wild women live on a ranch where farmhand Monti (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is the only man allowed on the premises.  Their leader, Grace (Jennifer Bishop) is a man-hating badass who occasionally makes runs across the border to Mexico to buy smack.  It doesn’t take long before a man (Russ Tamblyn) sneaks onto the ranch for a little action and gets a taste of Grace’s fury.

While the premise seems sturdy enough, The Female Bunch is mostly a mess.  The title makes it seem like it’s going to be sort of like an all-female version of The Wild Bunch, but’s it’s more like a western variation on a biker gang movie in that the girl gang rides around on horses instead of motorcycles.  Parts are dull, and yet, some scenes have a bit of a kick to them.  I liked the gang initiation scene where the new girls are buried alive in a coffin.  I also dug the part where Tamblyn gets busted by Bishop, which leads to a not-bad branding sequence.  There’s also a death scene involving a pitchfork that’s surprisingly well done. 

Most of the scenes though go on far too long and suffer from erratic editing.  Even worse, just about every scene transition is awkward at best, or downright amateurish at worst.  None of it flows together very well, which makes for a frustrating experience.  The film also contains some of the worst ADR I have ever heard, with some dialogue being spoken while the actors’ mouths are completely closed (and sometimes spoken by an entirely different person).  I guess you can attribute that to the fact that director Al Adamson was fired during production and replaced by John “Bud” Cardos (who also has a small role as a Mexican farmer who is terrorized by the girl gang), but the editing is pretty rough, even by both men’s standards.

It’s also sad to see Chaney floundering around in his final filmed performance.  His voice is hoarse, his face is flushed, and his eyes are watery.  I have a feeling that the bottle of booze he swigs from wasn’t a prop. 

The women in the cast are easy on the eyes, which helps somewhat.  Bishop has a commanding screen presence, and Lesley McCrea, Sharon Wynters, and Carol are fun to watch… whenever the editing allows for such things.  There’s also just enough nudity (some of which comes courtesy of body doubles) to act as an olive branch to keep you from hating it too much. 

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970) * ½

 

Here’s another archival review of an Al Adamson movie from my old site, originally posted on April 15, 2010.  (Tax Day.  Bummer.)

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS  (1970)  * ½

A bunch of vampires attack a mess of people then the plot begins.  A team of astronauts travel to a prehistoric planet complete with different colored atmosphere and stock footage from other movies.  On their journey, the team finds feuding clans of cavemen; some of which happen to be vampires.  One hot cavegirl eventually makes friends with the astronauts and leads them to a pit of petroleum so they can gas up their rocket and go home.

So basically, it’s Dracula Meets Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

If Horror of the Blood Monsters doesn’t make one lick of sense, it’s because it was directed by Al (The Possession of Nurse Sherri) Adamson.  Actually, it was only partially directed by him since he just added new footage to a cheap-o Filipino caveman flick and tried to pass it off as the world’s first Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie. 

If you haven’t already guessed, most of Horror of the Blood Monsters is just plain awful.  It does however have a couple moments that are so bad that they make you chuckle.  For example, one of the cavemen’s names is “Dookie”.  How funny is that?  You can also have fun spotting just how many movies get ripped off during the course of the film.  The color changing planet is kinda like the one from The Angry Red Planet; except there are more colors.  There’s also a couple who fuck with the help of a glowing machine that’s similar to the one in Barbarella.  What they have to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. 

The flick also has a couple of marginally well-done monsters too.  There are some big bug men that aren’t too shabby and the way they made the Bat People appear to fly was sorta clever.  The gore is pretty much non-existent but there are a couple of fairly decent arrow shots, including one to the head.  (All of this comes from the Filipino movie-within-a-movie by the way.)

Yeah, Horror of the Blood Monsters has some neat stuff sprinkled throughout.  The problem is that you have to sit through a LOT of boring shit to get to it.  On top of that, everyone in the cast is terrible.  The lone exception is an especially cranky looking John Carradine.  I wonder why he looks so pissed off in this movie.  Oh yeah, that’s right, he read the script.  Say what you will about Horror of the Blood Monsters though, it’s the best Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie I’ve ever seen; so, it’s got that going for it.

AKA:  Blood Creatures from the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Red Planet.  AKA:  Space Mission to the Lost Planet.  AKA:  Vampire Men of the Lost Planet.

How could I possibly follow up that fine bit of decade-old film criticism?  Okay, well, I guess I have to write SOMETHING.  So, here goes:

This was the tenth film on the Al Adamson box set.  It is the FIFTH one that has the word “Blood” or “Bloody” in the title, after Blood of Ghastly Horror, Blood of Dracula’s Castle, Hell’s Bloody Devils, and Five Bloody Graves.  The man obviously had a limited word bank when it came to titles, but that’s just one of the reasons why old Al is such an icon around these parts:  The man knew what the audience wanted to see, and they wanted BLOOD.  In fact, this won’t be the last Adamson movie with the word “Blood” in the title on this box set.  That distinction belongs to Brain of Blood, which I should be watching very soon.

I like the random opening with vampires sporting phony fangs (including Adamson himself) stalking unsuspecting victims.  The narration tries to tie it together with the space exploration plot and does it so poorly that it almost feels like you’re watching an anthology.  The spaceship scenes are slightly worse, but still sort of watchable in a “I can’t believe they’re making a ‘50s Sci-Fi movie in the ‘70s” way.  The longest part is the middle section where the astronauts walk along the planet’s surface and watch a bunch of tinted footage from a Filipino caveman flick.  

I’m not much of the fan of the space-set scenes, although I kind of love seeing an extremely crotchety John Carradine barking orders, acting annoyed, and generally being a big whiny ass grouch.  You take what you can get when you’ve sat through ten bad Al Adamson movies in two weeks. 

Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone’s noticed the way I compliment Adamson’s cut-and-paste directorial style of taking old material and incorporating new material to make a new product by cutting and pasting together new reviews from the scraps of my old ones?  Probably not.  Then again, what better way to honor a director who made a career off repackaged movies than with a bunch of repackaged reviews?

FIVE BLOODY GRAVES (1969) ½ *

 

I accidentally skipped over Five Bloody Graves while working my way through the Al Adamson box set from Severin.  I’d like to think it was because I was all-too eager to get to the one-two punch of Smashing the Crime Syndicate and Hell’s Bloody Devils.  I mean, Colonel Sanders only made so many film appearances, and you have to savor each and every one.  (Even if it is the same footage of him awkwardly delivering two lines in both movies.)  It probably had more to do with the fact that I savaged it in my previous review of the flick.  (Which appeared on my old site back on February 8^th, 2008.)  Here’s what I had to say then: 

 

FIVE BLOODY GRAVES  (1969)  ½ *

Director Al Adamson has done some pretty awful movies in nearly every genre, so it’s no surprise that a western directed by him would be equally as shitty.  As Adamson flicks go, it’s no Dracula vs. Frankenstein, but at least it’s better than Blood of Ghastly Horror. 

Robert Dix stars as a cowboy who is on a quest for vengeance to find the Apache Indian named Satago (future director John “Bud” Cardos), the man responsible for his wife’s death.  Dix saves one woman from being turned into an Apache love slave and warns her and her husband to skedaddle because even more Indians are on their way.  Of course, they don’t listen, and they end up getting their wigs torn off.  (I would say “scalped”, but clearly the Indians just pull the wigs off the tops of their heads.) 

Then Satago finds a squaw who’s been shacked up with a white man.  He doesn’t like it much, so he beats the guy within an inch of his life and leaves the squaw out for the vultures.  Two cowpokes find her tied up in the middle of the desert and one of them decides to rape her.

Let’s talk about rape in movies for a second, folks.  We’ve had some brutal rape scenes in the movies before.  Anyone who’s seen I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left or Ms. 45 can attest to that.  But let me tell you something, you’ve not seen anything like the rape scene in Five Bloody Graves.  I am not stretching my imagination when I tell you that it lasts .012678 of a second.  Seriously, the guy leans over the squaw, doesn’t even thrust ONCE and is DONE.  Incredible.  He rewards her generosity by shooting her in the face.  Honestly, I think it takes her longer to die than it did for him to finish. 

After that bit of business, Dix comes to the aid of Scott Brady and his band of whores to fend off some more Apaches.  The duo of rapists also joins the caravan and when the husband of the rapee finds the man who did it, he gets revenge by giving him a Bowie knife to the gizzard.  Satago finally puts an arrow through the entire cast except for Dix.  Unfortunately, he runs out of arrows and Dix throws him off a waterfall. 

I LIKE westerns, but they aren’t my bread and butter.  I only watched this flick primarily because of Adamson’s involvement and to see John Carradine play yet another priest, but this flick is one of his all-time worst.  The film is loaded with stupefying narration that’s spoken by “Death”, but anyone could plainly see that “Death” is clearly the editor’s way of holding the slipshod plot together.  Dix (who also wrote this inexorable excrement) makes for a pretty pathetic hero and at one point gets out-acted by his horse. 

The music in this sucker is equally atrocious.  (It was obviously taken from other movies and haphazardly edited in.)  At one point, Brady clutches his beloved dead whore and striptease music inexplicably plays.  

What’s worse, it that there are only TWO graves in the entire movie and not one of them are bloody.  (At least a movie like Three on a Meathook has the balls to actually give you what the title implies.)  Even if you count the two people who are tied up and left for the vultures as being in a “grave”, that still only makes FOUR.  We DO get to see a little bit of blood every now and then, like when somebody gets an arrow into their abdomen, but it’s about enough to fill a medicine dropper. 

AKA:  Five Bloody Days to Tombstone.  AKA:  Gun Riders.  AKA:  The Lonely Man.

My second go-around watching it was even more painful.  I don’t really have much to add to what I already said twelve years ago.  I will say that I no longer think Blood of Ghastly Horror is worse than this one.  At least that flick has a cheesy looking zombie in it.  Anyway, here are a few new thoughts: 

You know you’re in trouble when the narrator (this this case, “Death” himself”) keeps referring to “Five Bloody Days” when the movie is called “Five Bloody Graves”. 

I fell asleep on this TWICE.  (I can safely say I didn’t fall asleep on Blood of Ghastly Horror when I re-watched that.)  If it wasn’t for the gratuitous nude scene that opens the picture, it probably would’ve been three times. 

The horror-tinged opening credits are pretty cool, as is the Psycho Goes West theme music, but it’s all downhill after that. 

Remember when I saw Satan’s Sadists, and stated my theory that Adamson was at his best when he was making a single movie and not cutting and pasting one together out of two movies?  Five Bloody Graves shoots a hole into that theory.  Big time.

HELL’S BLOODY DEVILS (1970) *

Hell’s Bloody Devils is basically Smashing the Crime Syndicate with the addition of a biker subplot.  These new biker scenes were the only way director Al Adamson could get the picture released as Hollywood was still in the midst of its post-Easy Rider biker boom.  They don’t add or detract much from the overall film, but they certainly stick out like a sore thumb.  Vicki Volante is the lone holdover from the original cast to link these new scenes together, although it nevertheless feels quite incongruous. 

The plot is essentially the same as Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  Only this time, there are a few scenes where the depraved biker gang The Bloody Devils (led by Adamson regular Robert Dix) receive payoffs from the Neo-Nazi group for allegedly helping their cause.  Mostly though, The Bloody Devils just ride down the highway to pad out the running time.  There’s also a scene where they pick up some cute hitchhikers, get stoned, and have an orgy, but it’s nowhere near as good as the Lolita scene from the original version of the movie (which is fortunately still intact).

If you’ve been following along with me for Al Adamson August, you’ll know that his cut-and-paste features are often a chore to sit through.  The secret agent shit is just as insufferable as it was in Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  At least there isn’t as much of it this time around.  Adamson was also wise not to remove the Colonel Sanders scene, which is probably the only reason the movie is even remembered fifty years later. 

AKA:  The Fakers.  AKA:  Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  AKA:  Nightmare in Blood.  AKA:  Swastika Savages. 

 

I reviewed Hell’s Bloody Devils way back when on my old site as well.  2007 to be exact.  Here’s another review from the vaults.  As you can see, my opinion on the film hasn’t changed much since then:

HELL’S BLOODY DEVILS  (1970)  *

From director Al (Black Samurai) Adamson and producers Rex (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) Carlton and Fred (The Phantom Planet) Gebhardt comes this lethargic “biker” movie. 

It stars some pretty capable talent like Broderick (Highway Patrol) Crawford, Scott (Gremlins) Brady, Kent (The Mighty Gorga) Taylor, John (The Howling) Carradine, Jack (The Born Losers) Starrett, and Leslie (The Girl in Gold Boots) McRae, but the REAL star of the movie is none other than Colonel Sanders!  That’s right the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken himself has a small cameo (playing himself) and is the only thing memorable about this mess.  (The reason for his appearance:  He was offered a role in exchange for free chicken for the cast and crew!) 

If the plot involving bikers, FBI agents, Mafia hitmen, and Neo-Nazi counterfeiters doesn’t make a lick of sense it’s because Adamson patched this movie together (much like he did with Blood of Ghastly Horror) with an unreleased spy movie and added some new bikers scenes to cash in on the post Easy Rider biker movie craze.  The non-existent action scenes, shoddy car chases (they actually stop at traffic lights!) and static dialogue scenes will be sleep-inducing for most viewers, but since Colonel Sanders is in it, you should at least watch it for him.  Maybe if he added his “11 herbs and spices” to the movie, it would have helped. 

There’s also James Bond opening credits (complete with fake Shirley Bassey music) and some brief nudity.  (“I turn 17 next month!”)  John “Bud” Cardos was the production manager and Greydon Clark was an assistant director.  They also appear in small roles. 

The ads promised: “The frightening story of the attempt to take over the USA by a mad political group using the meanest motorcycle riders they can find to rape and pillage their way into power!”  

Don’t bet on it. 

AKA:  Operation M.  AKA:  Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  AKA:  Swastika Savages.  AKA:  The Fakers.

SMASHING THE CRIME SYNDICATE (1970) *

 

FBI agent Mark Adams (John Gabriel) goes undercover to stop a ring of counterfeiters.  Their leader (Kent Taylor) is using the profits from the funny money to fund his Neo-Nazi organization.  Adams teams up with a sexy agent (Vicki Volante) to infiltrate the hate group and bring them down.

The opening credits sequence is done in the James Bond rip-off tradition and features a not-bad faux-Bond tune, as well as some Schoolhouse Rock-style animation.  There’s also a great bit where a jailbait Lolita wannabe (Anne Randall) tries to hop in the sack with Gabriel.  After this surprising bit of risqué tomfoolery, the film quickly turns into the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry.

When you get bored (and trust me, you will), you can stave off sleep by keeping tabs on the stock company of Al Adamson players as they pop in and out of the narrative.  There’s Scott Brady, Kent Taylor, John Carradine, John “Bud” Cardos, and Greydon Clark, just to name a few.  I also enjoyed seeing The Girl in Gold Boots herself, Leslie McCrea, looking quite fetching as Gabriel’s boss’s eye candy. 

The best part though is the WTF cameo by none other than Colonel Sanders.  It’s easily the most memorable thing about this boring ass movie.  The funniest thing about it is that it occurs during a romantic montage sequence where our hero takes his date to Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I mean Bond at least sprung for some caviar and champagne to get the chicks into bed.  This guy can barely afford an eight-piece original recipe meal. 

As most of Adamson’s early work proves, his crime pictures were easily the weakest of his output.  Smashing the Crime Syndicate is no exception.  Even though it kicks off in the Bond tradition, it quickly pivots into what feels like a very long and cheap TV pilot.  Like a lot of Adamson’s features from this time, it sat on the shelf for a while until the footage could be reworked into another movie.  It was only when Adamson, spurned by the success of his Satan’s Sadists, added a biker subplot, would the film see release, under the title, Hell’s Bloody Devils.

AKA:  Operation M.  AKA:  The Fakers.  AKA:  Nightmare in Blood.  AKA:  Swastika Savages.  AKA:  Hell’s Bloody Devils.

SATAN’S SADISTS (1969) ** ½

Satan’s Sadists is director Al Adamson’s first biker picture, and it’s the first film of his where we really get to see his cinematic obsessions on full display.  It’s full of unpleasant characters, sleazy women, sadistic violence, and an overall anything-goes type of vibe.  As part of the biker subgenre, it’s really no better or worse than your average motorcycle movie.  As part of Adamson’s oeuvre, it’s a rather important milestone. 

Gary Kent (the stuntman/actor who partially inspired Brad Pitt’s character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) stars as a Marine hitchhiking through the desert.  Scott Brady and his wife (Evelyn Frank) pick him up and give him a lift to Kent Taylor’s diner where a rowdy biker gang led by Russ Tamblyn show up and begin acting out of control.  After the gang kills Brady, his wife, and Taylor, Kent and waitress Jacquline (Angels Revenge) Cole escape on foot into the desert.  Tamblyn and company follow in hot pursuit, seeking to silence the couple for good.

It’s fun seeing Adamson’s stable of actors beginning to grow and branch out.  We have Russ Tamblyn, John “Bud” Cardos, Kent Taylor, Scott Brady, and of course, Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol (who gets a gratuitous dance scene just because she’s the director’s wife).  As a fan of Adamson’s work, I enjoy seeing all these familiar faces, even if the movie itself kind of twiddled its thumbs in places.

It’s interesting that the gang, despite their murderous ways are quite inclusive.  One biker (Robert Dix) only has one eye, another wears a hearing aid (Greydon Clark, who also wrote the script), and there’s also a Native American (Cardos in redface) in the group.  Naturally, he’s the only one with something approaching a conscience. 

Satan’s Sadists is easily the best film Adamson made up to this point in his career.  It helps that it’s its own thing, and not one of his cut-and-paste efforts.  It’s a wonder what Adamson can do when he’s not trying to cram an entirely different narrative into a completely different movie.  Also, it has a concise beginning, middle, and end, which certainly doesn’t hurt. 

Even though the bikers initiate a gang rape in the opening minutes of the movie, Adamson handles the carnage in a surprisingly tasteful manner.  The glimpses of nudity are fleeting and the shot of the woman’s hand waving wildly in front of the camera is effective.  Adamson does the same for the other assaults in the picture, which makes it feel less exploitative than it could’ve been.

The big problem is that the film pretty much runs out of steam before the climactic showdown between Kent and the bikers.  It also doesn’t help that Tamblyn is a bit miscast as the heavy.  With his cherub face and rose-tinted shades, he resembles Paul Williams’ slightly more statuesque brother.  He’s not really threatening and kind of makes for a weak villain.

Satan’s Sadists was partially filmed at the Spahn Ranch, which adds to the OUATIH connection.  In fact, the ads tastelessly exploited the Tate murders in their advertising, stating, “SEE:  Wild hippies on a mad murder spree!  (It’s frightening as the Sharon Tate killing.)  Filmed on the actual locations where the Tate murder suspects lived their wild experiences!  So true-to-life it’s almost as if the real killers were cast in the motion picture!” 

While it’s hard to fault anyone for taking umbrage with the way the picture was marketed, one thing’s for sure, the final product itself isn’t bad.  It has enough scrappy charm to scrape by with a marginal recommendation.  If anything, it’s worth a look for cinema’s first death-by-toilet scene.

AKA:  Nightmare Bloodbath.  AKA:  Satan’s Cycles.

BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE (1969) **

 

 

Blood of Dracula’s Castle marks the first out-and-out horror film directed by Al Adamson.  While it leaves a lot to be desired, it’s certainly his best movie up to that point in his career.  He was still finding his voice as an auteur, but even though there are some slow and sluggish passages, a few Adamson flourishes manage to eke out of the tedium.

The film was a collaboration between Adamson and writer/producer Rex Carlton.  I had high hopes for this one seeing as Carlton was the man responsible for one of my favorite ‘60s horror flicks, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.  However, the movie is rather tame compared to that one and the pokey pacing doesn’t do it any favors either.

A photographer (Gene O’Shane) receives a telegram that he’s just inherited a castle.  He and his girlfriend (Barbara Bishop) go to check it out and learn that an older couple (Paula Raymond and Horrors of Spider Island’s Alex D’Arcy) are living on the grounds.  Turns out, they are a couple of vampires who keep young women chained in their basement and use their blood to keep them eternal. 

There’s a kernel of a solid story somewhere around here.  It’s a shame that the overabundance of padding more or less prevents it from really taking off.  The opening credits sequence, in which a woman is stalked by the hunchback, goes on seemingly forever.  (I did like the toe-tapping ditty, “The Next Train Out” that plays over this scene though.)  This is almost immediately followed up by a long scene where O’Shane takes lots of pictures of his fiancée at the Marineland amusement park which is padded with footage of dolphins and walruses and shit. 

The plot is also a bit overstuffed.  If it was nothing but the couple investigating their new home and discovering monsters a la Scooby-Doo, it wouldn’t have been so bad.  When you tack on shit like cults, deranged hunchbacks, and human sacrifices, it kind of clutters up the narrative.  The most egregious subplot involves the vampires’ familiar.  The long scene of his escape from prison and subsequent crime spree stops the movie on a dime and could’ve easily been excised without anyone really missing it.  This sequence is further proof that crime pictures really aren’t Adamson’s forte.

It’s funny that the film feels so padded when there’s another version (titled Dracula's Castle) that includes even more material to beef up the running time for TV showings and video releases (it adds about seven minutes of new material in all).  This one features a subplot in which one of the characters becomes a werewolf (it looks like a Don Post mask) that doesn’t really do much for the overall story, but it does add at least one more monster into the mix.  There’s also a repetitive synthesizer score that plays during these scenes.  Throughout his career, Adamson would add new footage to other films (including his own) so they could be repackaged under another title.  This is the first time though another director (in this case, David Huelette) added new footage to one of Adamson’s films.  (Theatrically, it was released by Crown International who put it on a double bill with Nightmare in Wax.)

Despite the sluggish pace and jumbled narrative, there are some bright spots.  The finale is strong and it contains at least one impressive fire stunt.  I also enjoyed the rapport between D’Arcy and his wife.  Their scenes have a half-assed Addams Family vibe to them, and while they don’t get a lot to work with, they make the most of their screen time.  I only wish the FX budget was bigger to make their crumbling-to-dust death scenes worth a damn. 

AKA:  Dracula’s Caste.  AKA:  Castle of Dracula.

 

I reviewed this back in the day (about 2005 or thereabouts) for my old fanzine, The Video Vacuum, which eventually grew into this website.  In those days, due to space constraints, I wrote capsule reviews.  Even though the review was short and sweet, it looks like I didn’t have much to say about it back then.

BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE  (1967)  **

When the director of Dracula vs. Frankenstein and the producer of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die get together to make a movie, this is what you get.  A photographer and his model fiancée inherit an old castle that happens to be inhabited by Dracula, his wife, a butler, and a disfigured hunchback.  They chain up virgins in the cellar, drain their blood and sacrifice them to the moon god Luna.  With John Carradine as the butler and Alex (Horrors of Spider Island) D’Arcy as Dracula.  The excellent cinematography by Lazlo Kovacs can’t save this tame and slow flick.