IT’S A SICK, SICK, SICK WORLD (1965) * ½

This obviously fake Mondo movie starts off in New York where it follows the exploits of rapists in Central Park, gays in Greenwich Village, the “photographer’s model” racket, judges who grade strippers, and prostitutes who turn tricks for drugs.  Then the action switches over to Germany as we pay a visit to the concentration camps.  Afterwards, we take a look at German night life including mud wrestling, the red-light district, strippers, and drug dealers.  We head off to London for the next segment as we look in on British strippers and prostitutes (one who uses personal ads to find clients), and there’s a long scene where two men fight over the same girl.  Then in Paris a tourist takes his dates to various strip clubs, and we also see the Parisian red-light district, and a belly dancing club where comic relief pot smokers look on.  Things wrap up with a segment on casting couches and an odd party where people throw trash everywhere. 

Even the most exploitative Mondo movies take on the air of a faux-documentary and show the audience the various skeevy happenings under the guise of amateur anthropology.  This one is callous, cynical, and judgmental and has no qualms telling the audience just what it thinks about its subject.  By doing so, it takes the fun right out of it. 

For example, one scene shows a couple of average gay guys walking down the street and the narrator grumpily quips, “It’s a sick… sick… SICK world!”  That shit so wouldn’t fly today.   I mean it’s one thing to reserve that kind of attitude while showing concentration camp footage, but when it’s just a couple of dudes just going about their day?  C’mon. 

I mean how authentic can the whole thing be when the people being documented are recognizable (or at least recognizable to me) B-movie players like Sammy (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) Petrillo and Doris Wishman regular Sam Stewart?  Something seems awfully fishy.  Because of that, I can’t give It’s a Sick, Sick, Sick World a clean bill of health.

AQUASLASH (2020) ***

You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but a water park is an ideal location for a horror movie.  Like lakeside summer camps and sunny beaches, it’s a perfect place for horny scantily clad teens to run around, fornicate, and get hacked up.  It’s a wonder the genre hasn’t taken full advantage of the idea sooner. 

True to form, Aquaslash has plenty of scenes of hot babes in wet bikinis sliding down water slides in slow motion.  As an added bonus, we even get an ‘80s style wet T-shirt car wash scene in there for good measure.  It also delivers on the gore, which is always something that’s appreciated in a good old-fashioned throwback genre flick. 

Thirty-five years ago, there was a murder at a water park.  Cut to present day, and a bunch of high school graduates are having their senior trip at the park.  Little do they know someone has sabotaged one of the water slides and has turned it into a slicing and dicing killing machine. 

The best aspect of Aquaslash is its short running time.  Writer/director Renaud Gauthier must’ve had a feeling that the premise was thin to begin with, so he kept things humming along at a brisk seventy-one minutes.  Because of that, he doesn’t gum up the works… or clog up the filter as the case may be.  The climactic sequence of the sabotaged slide slicing teens into freshly cut briskets is a real winner, even if that’s where most of the body count comes from.  I mean it would’ve been nice if there had been a little more invention elsewhere in the film (or at least more opportunities to turn the seniors into chop suey).   That being said, it’s hard to complain when the movie ends with dozens of severed limbs bobbing up and down around the park. 

AKA:  Aquaflush.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: PASSION IN THE SUN (1964) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on September 4th, 2009)

A stripper on her way to her latest gig gets kidnapped by some bozos at the airport.  They take her out to the desert where she escapes in her underwear.  While eluding capture, the stripper often finds time to bathe naked in a stream and daydream about taking her clothes off.  Meanwhile, the owner of the strip club is worried because she hasn’t showed up, so he puts a lot of dancing girls in her place (one of which dresses like an Indian).  Just when the kidnapper looks like he’s catching up to the ditzy dancer, an escaped sideshow geek jumps in and kills him.  The lecherous freak then pursues the chick to an amusement park where she hides in the Wild Mouse rollercoaster.  The geek chases after the gal but comes to an untimely end when he gets run over by the Wild Mouse car.

 

Passion in the Sun is a mostly dull nudie flick made up of boring striptease routines.  The “plot” stuff is nothing but stupid chase scenes that are accompanied by some of the worst incidental music I’ve ever heard.  The reason I sorta dug it was because the final Wild Mouse chase is awesome.  When I was growing up, there was a Wild Mouse ride at our local amusement park that sat dormant for what seemed like forever.  Supposedly that was because someone died on it.  Just the thought that somebody could die on something that was intended to be fun kinda fucked me up as a kid and turned me off rollercoasters for a long time.  Seeing the old Wild Mouse ride (and more importantly the ominous looking mascot) in its heyday sparked a bunch of childhood nostalgia for me that no doubt added an extra ½ * or two to my review.  (Seeing someone getting killed on said coaster was pretty cool too.)  If of course you don’t share my enthusiasm for ancient amusements of a bygone era and are watching this thing for its intended arousal purposes, you’re going to be severely disappointed.

 

AKA:  Passion of the Sun.  AKA:  The Girl and the Geek.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: GHOSTS OF HANLEY HOUSE (1968) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 24th, 2020)

Ghosts of Hanley House is the kind of obscure horror flick I enjoy stumbling upon.  It’s a regional feature with no name stars and even less of a budget.  It’s also notable for being written and directed by a woman, Louise Sherrill.  It’s a shame she didn’t direct anything else.  Although the film as a whole isn’t always successful, Sherrill shows some ingenuity when it comes to creating atmosphere with obviously very few resources at her disposal.

A guy and his friend make a friendly wager in their neighborhood bar:  If he can stay one night in the haunted Hanley House, he’ll hand over the keys to his Ferrari.  He eagerly agrees, calls up some pals, and together they have a party in the abominable abode.  Naturally, one of his friends happens to be a psychic, and during a séance, the ghosts show themselves to be very real.

Sherrill delivers a strong pre-title sequence that sets the mood nicely.  As the camera tours through Hanley House, doors slam, thunder crashes, and women scream.  The sound effects coupled with the ominous music almost make it feel like something out of an old radio show.  The stark black and white cinematography is also well done.  The shots of people standing in front of a black background are eerily effective, and some scenes are reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead.

You also have to give Sherrill credit as a screenwriter.  In most of these movies, you wonder why the people just don’t automatically leave the house at the first sign of danger.  Here, the hero has a very good reason for staying:  A Ferrari!

Ghosts of Hanley House starts off in fine fashion.  Sherrill doles out low key but effective chills throughout the first act.   I also enjoyed the great acid rock soundtrack during the early scenes.  I especially liked it when it was blaring over the dialogue to disguise the fact they didn’t have synchronized sound for the outdoor scenes. 

Unfortunately, the movie quickly takes a nosedive in quality and it never quite recovers.  The film pretty much slams on the brakes in the second half when the group decides to leave the house and wind up getting lost in the woods.  From there, the picture slowly peters out until it reaches its thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion.  (The axe murder flashback is the only highlight of the otherwise dreary finale.)  Still, it’s worth a look for the promising early scenes that play almost like a no budget remake of The Haunting. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: VIOLATED (1953) ** ½

 FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A call girl is found murdered in her apartment stabbed with a pair of scissors.  To add insult to injury, all her hair was cut off too.  While the police search for the madman, we meet a pretty, young, and naive model who gets lured into posing for a seedy photographer.  The photographer has the hots for a surly burlesque dancer who sometimes models for him.  Meanwhile, a recently released sex offender begins following her around.  Could he be the depraved killer?

Violated is an early example of a sex maniac movie.  Its chief asset is the great New York location work which gives you a nice glimpse of the city that’s not usually found in low budget potboilers of the era.  Sure, it might seem pretty tame by today’s standards, but it was likely shocking to moviegoers back in the early ‘50s.  In fact, even though the film is uneven for the most part, it does feel a little ahead of its time.  The finale that gratuitously over explains the killer’s motive is sort of a forerunner to Psycho too. 

Most of the time in these kinds of things, the police investigation sequences bring the pace to a crashing halt.  That’s not the case with Violated as some of the detective scenes work rather well, especially when they bring in the usual suspects of perverts and creeps and work them over.  Sadly, the exploitation bits feel rushed and/or glossed over.  The burlesque numbers, bubble baths, and catfights also seem to end before they can really begin.  I know this is 1953 we’re talking about, but I’m sure they could’ve tried to be a little more down n’ dirty.  Fortunately, the film does have a nice sense of atmosphere. which somewhat makes up for the lack of skin.  The proto-surf rock guitar score is also pretty good. 

Screenwriter William Mishkin later went on to produce many Andy Milligan movies. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE NAKED WITCH (1961) *

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A young college student (Robert Short) in Texas runs out of gas on his way to a singing festival in a small town where everyone speaks German and dresses like they did a hundred years ago.  He’s preparing a thesis on witches and quickly learns the locals are very superstitious, especially on the subject of witches.  The only one eager to help him is a young blond named Kriska (Jo Maryman).  When he stupidly digs up the witch’s grave, he accidentally revives her, and the nude witch (Libby Hall) sets out to get revenge on the descendants of the man who accused her. 

The Naked Witch starts with an unnecessarily long (and mostly inaccurate) history of witches accompanied by long lingering shots of paintings.  The only thing that makes it memorable is the fact that it’s narrated by Laugh-In’s Gary Owens.  This is followed by a long stretch of boring narration from our hero.  Once he arrives at the village, it becomes obvious the production didn’t use synch sound for many scenes (or it was considered unusable) as the dialogue is often poorly dubbed.  Other times, the narration is dropped over conversations to let the audience know what is being said by the characters, which gets annoying fast.  It’s almost enough to make Manos, the Hands of Fate look quasi-professional. 

Co-directed by schlockmeister extraordinaire Larry Buchanan, The Naked Witch is rough going for the most part.  It also takes a long time to get to the “naked witch” shit.  To make matters worse, there are scenes of the witch walking around naked, but for some stupid reason, all the naughty bits have been obscured!  What the hell.  Fortunately, whenever she’s skinny dipping, we finally get to see a little skin.  It just seemed odd to me that whenever she’s on dry land her body is blurred out.  I’m not sure what kind of witchcraft that is, but it sucks.  At least the close-ups of the witch’s face are marginally effective.  Sadly, that’s the only part of her that gets a good close-up. 

AKA:  Witches.

A SHEAR DELIGHT (1995) ****

The legendary Up All Night hostess Rhonda Shear stars in her own hour-long special.  It sort of plays like a tamer version of a Playboy Video Centerfold.  Rhonda is interviewed about her history in show business, competing in beauty pageants, and even her brief time in local politics.  Peppered throughout the interviews are cheesecake modeling scenes of Rhonda lounging around in (what else?) sheer lingerie.

Rhonda’s bubbly personality and winning charm comes across during the interview segments.  Naturally, her beauty is on full display in the softcore segments.  While she doesn’t exactly appear nude or anything, her outfits leave very little to the imagination.  The fun segments include Rhonda modeling a lacy white number, sporting a black catsuit, performing a dance with a white feather boa while wearing a short skirt, and donning a cowgirl outfit (while riding in a saddle, no less).  

The highlight is when she seductively eats a popsicle… and let me tell you… this scene is enough to keep you… UP All Night… if you know what I mean.  While the other segments are great and all, this one is pure cinema.  For foot fetish fans there’s a rather incredible scene where she smooshes a banana and jelly donuts with her toes.  The scene where the filling symbolically shoots out is something else.  Again.  Cinema.  At its finest.  Eat your heart out, Scorsese.

Rhonda naturally plugs Up All Night a lot (and her merchandise catalogue).  In fact, much of this sort of feels like you’re watching Up All night without the movie segments.  That is to say, it’s A-OK with me. 

The behind-the-scenes talent is pretty impressive too.  Scream Queen Monique Gabrielle also served as producer and Penthouse Pet and Andy Sidaris muse Julie K. Smith was the set designer.  Julie also starred in the immortal The Strap-On Adventure, which was also directed by this film’s director, Tony Angove.