Film Noir ♥ Transgressions Into the Cultural Cinematic Gutter: From Shadowland to Psychotronic Playground
"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways."
"• Sigmund Freud
"Ladies and gentlemen- welcome to violence; the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains sex." "” Narrator from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965).
THE DARK PAGES NEWSLETTERÂ a condensed article was featured in The Dark Pages: You can click on the link for all back issues or to sign up for upcoming issues to this wonderful newsletter for all your noir needs!
Patricia Morán as Rita Ugalde: The Exterminating Angel 1962:“I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven’t you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.”
Ann Baxter as Teresina Vidaverri Walk on the Wild Side 1962—“When People are Kind to each other why do they have to find a dirty word for it.”
The Naked Venus 1959–"I repeat she is a gold digger! Europe's full of them, they're tramps"¦ they'll do anything to get a man. They even pose in the NUDE!!!!”
Baby Boy Franky Buono-Blast of Silence (1961)“The targets names is Troiano, you know the type, second string syndicate boss with too much ambition and a mustache to hide the facts he’s got lips like a woman… the kind of face you hate!”
Lorna (1964)-“Thy form is fair to look upon, but thy heart is filled with carcasses and dead man’s bones.”
Glen or Glenda (1953)– “Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt, or even a lounging outfit and he’s the happiest individual in the world.”
Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda 1953
Johnny Cash as Johnny Cabot in Five Minutes to Live (1961):“I like a messy bed.”
Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) Island of Lost Souls:“Do you know what it means to feel like God?”
The Snake Pit (1948): Jacqueline deWit as Celia Sommerville “And we’re so crowded already. I just don’t know where it’s all gonna end!” Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Stuart Cunningham“I’ll tell you where it’s gonna end, Miss Somerville… When there are more sick ones than well ones, the sick ones will lock the well ones up.”
Delphine Seyrig as Countess Bathoryin Daughters of Darkness (1971)– “Aren’t those crimes horrifying. And yet -so fascinating!”
Julien Gulomar as Bishop Daisy to the Barber (Michel Serrault) King of Hearts (1966)–“I was so young. I already knew that to love the world you have to get away from it.”
Susannah York (right) with Beryl Reid in The Killing of Sister George Susannah York and Beryl Reid in Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George 1960.
The Lickerish Quartet (1970)–“You can’t get blood out of an illusion.”
THE SWEET SOUND OF DEATH (1965)– Dominique-“I’m attracted” Pablo-” To Bullfights?” Dominique-” No, I meant to death. I’ve always thought it… The state of perfection for all men.”
Peter O’Toole asSir Charles Ferguson Brotherly Love (1970): “Remember the nice things. Reared in exile by a card-cheating, scandal ruined daddy. A mummy who gave us gin for milk. Ours was such a beautifully disgusting childhood.”
Euripides 425 B.C.–“Whom God wishes to destroy… he first makes mad.”
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford bring to life two of the most outrageously memorable characters in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962.
WHAT DOES PSYCHOTRONIC MEAN?
psychotronic|ˌsīkəˈtränik| adjective denoting or relating to a genre of movies, typically with a science fiction, horror, or fantasy theme, that were made on a low budget or poorly received by critics. [the 1980s: coined in this sense by Michael Weldon, who edited a weekly New York guide to the best and worst films on local television.] Source: Wikipedia
In the scope of these transitioning often radical films, where once, men and women aspired for the moon and the stars and the whole ball of wax. in the newer scheme of things they aspired for you know"¦ "kicks" Yes that word comes up in every film from the 50s and 60s"¦ I'd like to have a buck for every time a character opines that collective craving… from juvenile delinquent to smarmy jet setter!
FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NOWHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!
I just got myself this collection of goodies from Something Weird!
There’s even this dvd that points to the connection between the two genres – Here it’s labeled WEIRD. I like transgressive… They all sort of have a whiff of noir.Grayson Hall -Satan in High Heels 1962.Gerd Oswald adapts Fredrick Brown’s titillating novel — bringing to the screen the gorgeous Anita Ekberg, Phillip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Harry Townes in the sensational, obscure, and psycho-sexual thriller Screaming Mimi 1958.Victor Buono is a deranged mama’s boy in Burt Topper’s fabulous The Strangler 1964.Catherine Deneuve is extraordinary as the unhinged nymph in Roman Polanski’s psycho-sexual tale of growing madness in Repulsion 1965.
At the start of the 50s psychological noir already began to present shocking and stirring films like Losey's version of M (1951) and The Prowler (1951), Marilyn Monroe gave a spirited performance as the deranged Nell Forbes in Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Ida Lupino and Collier Young brought us psychopath Emmett Myers (William Talman) in the taut film noir thriller– The Hitch-Hiker (1953).
David Wayne reprises the role of a tortured pedophile in Joseph Losey’s version of M (1951).Henry Jones is a most unsavory character in Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed 1956 but it’s Patty McCormack’s chilling performance as the sociopathic Rhoda Penmark.Marylin Monroe stretches the dimensions of her acting ability as the unstable Nell Forbes in Roy Ward Baker’s taut psycho-thriller Don’t Bother To Knock 1952
A progression of heterogeneous films emerged that would manifest certain qualities of Noir, Suspense, and even elements of Horror relating to such themes as–the older woman/younger man, mental illness, child bride, female promiscuity, sexual anxiety & delusions, mania, the death penalty, drug addiction, abortion, rape, sadism, cannibalism and even a socio-pathic little girl named Rhoda. Female on the Beach (1955), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), Baby Doll (1956), Autumn Leaves (1956), The Killer is Loose (1956), The Bad Seed (1956), The Tattered Dress (1957), The Last Mile (1959), Night of Evil (1962), The L Shaped Room (1962), A Taste for Women (1964), Shock Treatment (1964), The Night Walker (1964).As Noir began to spread outward, many themes became hybridized, incorporating several postulations and diluted genre patterns which insinuated themselves in the cult film. Cultfilms share a distilled vision of Horror, Suspense, or Fantasy that drew inspiration from the Noircanon inserting itself into the broadening spectrum of cult cinema.
The psycho-sexual melodramas seem to lead to psycho-sexual thrillers which were more graphic and that fed the tributary to the overflow of transgressive exploitation films of the 60s –experimental and low-budget films alike.
Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler in Female on the Beach.the always provocative Carroll Baker is Baby Doll 1956 in Tennessee Williams story directed by Elia Kazan. Eli Wallach stars as Silva Vacarro -also stars Karl Malden.Bryan Forbes directs Leslie Caron in The L-Shaped Room 1962 –the story of a French woman pregnant and unmarried living in a building filled with societal misfits. Directed by Jack Garfein—Ben Gazzara plays a belligerent cadet bordering on socio-path at a Southern Military School.Robert Aldrich directed Joan Crawford in the role of an older woman in love with a very disturbed younger Cliff Robertson. in Autumn Leaves 1956.Otto Preminger’s gritty portrayal of heroin addiction starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Eleanor Parker in The Man With The Golden Arm 1955
Into its next incarnation, film noir reached for even more off-beat, deviant, endlessly risky, and taboo narratives which the subversive and exploitative cult films of those eras centered around. The Very Edge 1963, The Naked Kiss (1964)What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and Bunny Lake is Missing 1965 are some of my favorites and best examples of this conversion.
Anne Heywood is terrorized in The Very Edge 1963
Film Noir derived some of its darkest shades from human nature, ‘crime’, and the personal and collective angst of paranoia worldwide. (Pressure Point 1962, Bunny Lake is Missing 1965, Night of the Living Dead 1968, Shock Corridor 1963). As Noir explored and exposed post-war sentiments of American culture, cult films opened Pandora's Box even wider, setting loose upon the screen even more extreme social taboos (The Lonely Sex 1959, Homicidal 1961, Satan in High Heels 1962, The World, the Flesh and the Devil 1959). Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Tennessee Williams’ harrowing story of heroin addiction, cannibalism, shock therapy, lobotomy self-loathing homosexuality, and the archetypal devouring mother. Sam Fuller, places Constance Towers, a beautiful prostitute on the road to redemption in mainstream America, only to uncover a dark secret"” that the town’s beloved benefactor is a pedophile who proposes marriage to use her as a kindred spirit in Sam Fuller’sThe Naked Kiss (1964). There’s a powerful scene with Madam Candy (Virginia Grey) who gets the tar beaten out of her by Kelly (Constance Towers)… while Kelly shoves dirty money in Candy’s mouth.
Bunny Lake is Missing 1965 Carol Lynley is a panicked mother Ann Lake looking for her little girl in England after she goes missing from school. Noel Coward is her creepy landlord-Directed by Otto Preminger, perhaps one of my favorite psycho-thrillers from the 60s. Night of the Living Dead 1968 George A Romero’s disturbing watershed moment in an indie horror film… acts as social commentary that horrifically mirrors anti-consumerism and racism. Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 Tennessee Williams scathing criticism of the institution of mental health motherhood, and self-loathing homosexuality…
Sand down the edges of Noir’s shapes and shadows until they’re refined by the harsh florescent lights of modernity and combine with a movie-going audience hungering to be titillated, repulsed, and transformed. Art and style had to go through certain transformations in order to meet up with an ever-changing and new culture. Some of these re-inventive cult films drew from Noir’s deep well of infinite cultural dynamism and can be considered serious masterpieces (Night of the Hunter 1955, Sweet Smell of Success 1957, Blast of Silence 1961, Lady in a Cage 1964). Many low-budget sleepers found their way on screen falling into the niche of art-house and others are just downright delicious schlock (Violated 1953, Jail Bait 1954, The Lonely Sex 1959, The Sinister Urge 1960, Glen or Glenda 1963, Five Minutes to Live 1961, Stark Fear 1962, The Sadist 1963, Teenage Strangler 1964, Strange Compulsion 1964, Motorpsycho! 1965, The Defilers 1965, Two Girls for a Madman 1968). Even with low budgets, the cult film managed to represent our deepest fears and desires, which repulsed and released us from its brief influence as with Georges Franju's surreal Eye's Without a Face (1960) and Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique (1955). They all possess a rejuvenated boldness from a Noir sensibility.
Two Girls for a Madman 1968.Strange Compulsion 1964 Fred is a Peeping Tom!The Sadist 1963 Arch Hall as mad dog killer Charlie Tibbs. The Lonely Sex 1959.
Brute Force 1947 Jules Dassin directs Burt Lancaster and a slew of fine actors in this savage indictment of the prison system. Hume Cronyn plays a particularly sadistic guard. Women’s Prison 1955 Ida Lupino directs -a beaten down Phyllis Thaxter.
Look in Any Window 1961 Paul Anka and Ruth Roman–there’s a queasy sense of voyeurism and a Pal that hangs over suburbia and the unhappy marriages of the middle class who aren’t what they appear to be on the surface keeping up with the Jones.
While Noir has the walking wounded, cult films have the often sleazy band of human wreckage. These films gave us such themes of — desire and deviant behavior, sexual & social contradiction, mania, phobia, the subconscious id, irrational obsession, neurosis, fixation, fetish, subversion, exploitation, objectification, hostility, conflict, reactionism, the hint of soft-core pornography, and raw images of sexuality or social deviation. Many films were also psycho-sexual thrillers exploring the fractured psyche up close (The Strangler 1964, Repulsion 1965). Hitchcock took a risk with Norman Bates as the poster child for psychopathic innocence in Psycho (1960) and Vertigo (1958)with the bold swagger of transgressive themes of necrophilia, Oedipal complex, transvestism, psychosis, obsession and pathological objectification, and sublimation of the female figure. Although a horror picture, Psycho still possesses many elements of a great Noir film.
These films transfigured into the realm of exploitation, making the transition while utilizing indistinguishable elements of classical Noir. The most rudimentary aspects of noir metamorphosed into a radically altered state of complex and often graphic illustrations of sexualized characters, violent behavior, and offbeat storylines that expanded the scope of Noir's already quirky style. Instead of the camera just suggestively brushing against Phyllis Dietrichson's (Barbara Stanwyck’s) ankle bracelet in Double Indemnity (1944), Russ Meyer's cult film shows us Lorna Maitland’s full and faithful breasts in the trashy treasure Mudhoney (1965).
Russ Meyer’s Mudhoney 1965 Lorna Maitland as Clara Belle. Sin in the Suburbs-Joe Sarno.
Cult films were a contemporary Sturm und Drang that had artistic freedom like a revival of the Pre-Code imagination. Busting wide open the illusion of heteronormativity, issues of race, class, misogyny, and women’s sexual liberation (Kitten with a Whip 1964, "¦ And the Wild Wild Women 1959, starring the incredible Anna Magnani. Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! 1965, Something Wild 1961, The Killing of Sister George 1960, Lolita 1962, Sin in the Suburbs 1964). While motherhood and the American family reared their ugly head in the sensationalized Mildred Pierce (1945).
Anna Magnani and Giulietta Masina …And the Wild Wild Women.
Robert Aldrich came along and took the notion of a dysfunctional family to the level of melodramatic opera by casting two of Hollywood's most shining stars not only making them grotesque caricatures of themselves but thereby starting a trend of Grande Dame Cinema with his notoriously splendid What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962. Reaching deeper into human vulnerability and collective dis-ease, they revealed more of a change as directors populated their world with subversive, deviant, outliers of society (Victim 1961, Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964, Cul-de-sac 1966, The Honeymoon Killers 1969, Seconds 1966, The Thrill Killers 1964, Lilith 1964 Aroused 1966, The Incident 1967, The World's Greatest Sinner 1962, Never Take Candy From A Stranger 1960, The Bloody Brood 1959, Mister Buddwing 1966). No longer just crime-based stories with treacherous femme fatales and broken masculine types. The misunderstood anti-hero, the wrongly hunted man, and the woman in peril still existed, and the derivative tales still explored areas of life vs death, opportunism vs victimization, human relationships, the human psyche, temptation, seduction, blurred identity, fate, and redemption.
“Violent acts compel an aesthetic response in the beholder of awe, admiration or bafflement. If an action evokes an aesthetic response then it is logical to assume that this action–even if it is murder–must have been the work of an artist.”- (Joel Black from the aesthetics of murder 1991)
No longer allusions to a romanticized form of mental illness now lay bare the true psychosis, brutality & prison reform, homosexuality out of that stifling old closet, socio-pathic violence, cannibalism, castration complex, Oedipal and Paternal fixations, incest, rape, racism, prostitution, drug addiction, religious delusion, and zealotry- They illustrated the supposed Hysteria of women, fetishism, softcore pornography, white slavery, anti-establishmentism, fear of immigrants, abortion, unwed mothers, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency. voyeurism, pedophilia, sexual sadism, s&m–female sexuality, male impotence. swinging, folie a deux, thrill killings, murderous children, menage a trois -interracial marriage, exhibitionism, and aggressive individualism.
Tony Musante and Martin Sheen are sociopathic thrill seekers who torment a subway car filled with New Yorkers. The Incident (1967). James Garner & Angela Lansbury in Mister Buddwing 1966.A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 Brando & Leigh in Tennessee William’s volatile story.
Val Lewton seemed to understand the complexities of gender and the machinations of the human-animal struggling against conformity and taboo. His films dealt with female sexuality, arousal, and women’s sexual primacy as dangerous especially to men or impressionable girls at the crossroads. A preoccupation with death, suicide, and even clandestine & esoteric religious cults that worshiped human sacrifice and the devil. Truly transgressive themes for a small studio like RKO supposedly competing with Universal’s monster factory. But Lewton set forth a small treasure trove of masterpieces that still hold up to contemporary viewing and fed the reservoir of cult films to follow. Lewton and Fritz Lang, both infused their work with an abundance of psychology and deviance that predisposed the cinematic subject matter found in film noir as well as the psycho-sexual thrillers. There was often noticeable intersectionality between both genres.
Jean Brooks is Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim 1943 directed by Mark Robson. Simone Simon is Val Lewton’s haunted Irena in- Cat People 1942.
Directors like John Frankenheimer, Otto Preminger, Sam Fuller, Joseph Losey, and Robert Aldrich gave us expansive, experimental, reflexive, subversive, bizarre, brutal, and often shocking films. Even Todd Browning (Freaks 1932), and Val Lewton (I Walked with a Zombie 1943) envisioned taboo themes and outlier tableaus within the universe of their great bodies of work that predate later cult paragons. During the 50s and 60s, some dramatic tour-de-forces arose"” Tennessee Williams’ sympathetic portrayal of women in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Night of the Iguana (1964), and Suddenly, Last Summer, or Aldrich's contribution with his focus on a repulsive brand of narcissism and madness with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush"¦ Hush, Sweet Charlotte. They push the boundaries of conventional narratives and explore deeper veins of dark human nature, compulsions, weakness, desires, fears, and taboos. Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950)broke the mold of traditional Noir by settingGloria Swanson’sbrilliant performance as Norma Desmond in the spotlight, hinting at the atmosphere of things to come…
Gloria Swanson set the scene for years to come… when she inhabited the likes of Norma Desmond and set the screen ablaze with an all-consuming narcissism that reaches out and touches you! A growing Gothic trend of Hollywood anxiety and agism…
From The Cult Film Reader by Mathjis, Ernest, Mendik, and Xavier. Chapter Sleaze Mania, Euro-Trash and High Art–they cite S.S.Prawer’s notes–
“In a way, hybrid genres like art-horror films simply point up the problems which have historically characterized all attempts at genre definition.”
(i) Every worthwhile work modifies the genre {horror} to some extent, brings something new to it. and therefor forces us to rethink definitions and delimitations. (ii) There are borderline cases, works that belong to more than on genre-the overlap between the “fantastic terror” film and the “science-fiction” film is particularly large. (iii) Wide variations in quality are possible within a given genre. (iv) There are works which as a whole clearly do not belong to the genre in question but which embody references to that genre, or contain sequences that derive from, allude to, or influence it.
In the same way, noir seems to have been modified or rethought in ways that are harder to define falling into many realms that can be considered cult. Prawer tends to endorse my view of noir’s transitioning exhibition, narratives, and genre-overlapping.
These cinematic archetypes, phantoms, and anti-heroes existed in the liminal spaces of the narrative. Toward the end of Noir's heyday when most of the motifs and plot designs had been overused, you can find much of the dynamic sensibilities cropping up in cult, b-movie, and transgressive underground films, many with little to no budgets. Films that made great use of paying homage to odd angles and specifically lit camera work. There were even odder character studies with texturally complex psyches. A rebellion of sorts. More renegade outliers reach beyond the framework of the norm. Hollywood didn't have a stranglehold on what could be said or shown, and so pulp novels and screenplays were tapped that could express a whole different angle of storytelling, cinema’s characters, narratives, and landscapes were all to push the limits of expectation, and often what emerged was a type of noir on acid, violently at odds with the world, and telling it like it is, without the subtle and classic nuance.
Characters were more extreme forms of their former archetypes, gay characters were not as coded, the violence was shown on screen, and the transgressive dialogue spoke its mind. We went from Floradora Girls, Femme Fatales, and Floozies to Bikers Queens, Bitches, and Babes!…. From the ‘girl next door’ to ‘That Kind of Girl.’ Guys didn’t just have traces of mother complexes, they literally had their mommy’s mummified body stuffed and rotting in the basement cellar! But that didn’t stop Mommy from holding sway over Sonny boy!
In his jail cell, blanket-wrapped Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, but “Mother’s” voice supplied by Virginia Gregg) offered his final internal thoughts after being overtaken by Mother, in voice-over. The voice of “Mother” spoke in Norman’s head, and condemned her son for the crimes, while she claimed that she was harmless:
“It’s sad when a Mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son, but I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad and in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything except just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. Oh, they know I can’t even move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am.
I’m not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, ‘Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly.”
Flawed anti-heroes, the private eye, and guys down on their luck became juvenile delinquents and flagrant social outcasts and rebels in dirty undershirts.
The other thing that became transformed was the level of graphic violence. The murders and murderers themselves seemed unleashed from cinema’s Id. As if all the fear and collective repression opened Pandora's Box and the brutality that emerged on screen began to eclipse the implied narratives.
Storylines"”about con men, killers, cigarette girls, crooked cops, down-and-out boxers, and calculating, scheming, deadly broads of noir melted into the. B Movies, now a cinema of transgression.
Transformed into storylines about"”thrill killers, and addicted females. disillusioned rogue cops, and calculating, scheming hyper-violent, and deadly serious women with the same psychological complexities yet they literally found their freedom to compete with the volatile hyper-male archetypes. Less locked into the civil conformity that was imposed on women in the 40s & 50s women started to really show themselves as more than housewives, mistresses, or mysterious women in black!
During the 60s the aesthetics of a changing culture reflected itself back at us from up on the screen. The Production Code had lost its grip on the system and that Studio System… was collapsing.
What stands out for me since I've been spending months exploring the transformation of not only the subject matter, framework, narrative, and depiction of transgressive themes, is watching particular actresses and their brave performances around the time the studio system and the transfiguration of the film had also started to change for film stars as well, allowing for expressive, experimental acting. I have found that often the more obscure yet brilliant roles for women were the ones that have drawn me into their orbit… like Shirley Jones and Jean Simmons in Elmer Gantry 1960"¦
Piper Laurie in The Hustler 1961. "” All these women are phenomenal… Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth 1962,Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools 1965, Ruby Dee and Ellen Holly in Take a Giant Step 1959, Lola Albright in A Cold Wind in August 1961"” and the collective of fine actresses in Sidney Lumet’sThe Group 1966 Joanna Pettet, Joan Hackett, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter, Candice Bergen, Elizabeth Hartman, and Kathleen Widdoes.
Anne Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater, Jean Seaberg in Lilith, Barbara Barrie in One Potato Two Potato and Carol Lynley in Bunny Lake is Missing,Patricia Neal in Psyche 59 (1964), and Joanne Woodward in The Stripper.
A few more personal favorites Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind 1960 and …And the Wild Wild Women1959, and while I’m on my Anna Magnani kick-The Rose Tattoo 1955–of course Kim Stanley in Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964. Jean Simmons in Home Before Dark 1958, Eleanor Parker in Lizzie 1957
Molly Haskell used these terms to qualify the roles that actresses were now delving into the post-Hollywood glamor machine…
As Mr. Vogler (Gunner Bjornstrand) says in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966)“The important thing is the effort, not what we achieve.”
Where else did Film Noir have to go but into the cultural gutter…?
Femme Fatales didn’t use purse guns anymore, they used their bare hands…
She Devil’s on Wheels 1968 -Betty Connell as “Queen” of the Man-Eaters.Carroll Baker in Something Wild 1961 a film dealing with the trauma of rape. Gun Crazy 1950 or Deadly is the Female= John Dahl and Peggy Cummins play a dangerous game of Folie_Ã _deux.Barrie Chase in Cape Fear 1962.Ross Martin as the psychopathic asthmatic in Experiment in Terror 1962.
Robert Blake gives an astounding performance as killer Perry in Richard Brooks’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1967).Harry Wuest’s starkly real Heat of Madness (1966).
From gritty streets, smokey lounges five o’clock shadows, fedoras, and sensual starlets who were furious femme fatales showing a hint of leg and singing torchy lullabies like the mythical Lorelei luring damaged men to their lonely deaths. From shadowy alleyways where down on their luck fellas meet with fickle fate–from flashbacks, desperate dames, mistaken identity to the wrongfully accused, Film Noir had all the sharp and dark angles that twisted itself around the mantle of Hollywood’s dream factory. Film Noir with its suggestive Chiaroscuro, polished and highly stylized archetypes that at times flirted with certain cultural taboos moved in shadowy spheres and explored the internalized fears, anxieties, and desires that challenged society, yet its allusions only touched the surface. Most Film Noir hadn’t entered the arena of the profane as of yet.
Women were getting more viscerally visual power, rather than cliched femme fatales they could flex primal imagery just out of reach of the male gaze. And they didn't always get crucified by a malefic identity. She led her own narrative, owned her body, was at times the unstable hysterical psychotic and at times the central foci and as powerful if not more than their male co-stars. In as much as certain roles cast them in disparaging positions of objectification, the cult female character had the ability to break out of the traditional role as either, mother, saint, wife, woman-in-peril, girl next door, extraneous ‘nice girl’ or iconic cliche of the ‘bad girl.’ And the male characters became more conflicted, flawed, degenerate, sweaty bare-chested, psychologically complex, psychotic freaks with their own set of fixations and fetishes. There were no Cary Grants or Gregory Pecks in the cult cinema world. A different sort of male figure rose from the Noir ashes. PerhapsRobert Ryancame the closest to illuminating the complex hypermasculine psyche in noir.
Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter 1955.Max Von Sydow is the quietly vengeful father in The Virgin Spring 1960.
Men like Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell was a masterful enigma of immortal turpitude proving to be a more menacing force than even Bela Lugosi’s Dracula with his performance in –Night of the Hunter 1955, or his Max Cady in Cape Fear 1962. The bizarre Garland Humphrey ‘Red’ Lynch is played perfectly by Ross Martin in Experiment in Terror 1962. Max Von Sydow’s stoic performance as a father is filled with grief, retribution, and an icy blood lust against the men who attacked and murdered his precious daughter in Bergman’s somber and stunning The Virgin Spring 1960.
Norman Bates’ iconic persona of a gentle innocence that masked yet a deranged and twisted soul in Hitchcock’sPsycho 1960Wendell Corey’s sublime and reserved performance of a man out of control in The Killer is Loose 1956.
Wendell Corey is chilling as the detached psychopath -and has flipped his lid in Budd Boetticher’s terrific thriller- The Killer is Loose 1956.
A world of indulgence, decadence, inherent misogyny, defiled innocence, deflated paternal archetypes, not so coded gay characters, man-eaters, men with not-so-subtle castration anxiety, and sexually expressive and responsive females all could go back to being as free as they were Pre-Code Hollywood.
So can even an intoxicating formula run out of its vitality?
“In a casual, cursory portrait of the "˜other' let us tap at the door of decadence apropos of these subversive films. Culturally, decadence reflects the concept that there are epochs in art when, after magnificent achievements and innovations, a fashionable degeneration begins among artists, exposing a putrid, final stage of living for a leading nation." — Allan Havis
The reaction to this transgressive ideology was to further push the envelope and displace these key paradigms and archetypes to a new level of cinematic freedom. Playing with the already existing expressiveness of the Noir character broke the mold of the old Hollywood formula. The new wave of transgressive films that developed in the late 50s and 60s possess these Noir elements transmogrified into an entirely more volatile world, intimately or universally, through inner machination or collective consciousness. Film Noir’s ‘fall from grace to grindhouse offers a fascinating evolution from stylized elegance to sadistic escapism. For example the ‘Black paranoid vision of Edgar Ulmer’s Detour 1945, and Eli Wallach’s sociopathic performance in The Lineup 1958.
Catherine Deneuve must fend off the lewd advances from her landlord Patrick Wymark.
From Reverence to Rape- The Treatment of Women in the Movies by Molly Haskell.
"As the sixties opened, the Production Code was relaxing inch by inch. With successive revelations on the screen, the decade progressed like a stripper, though awkwardly like a novice on the stage in a hurry to get off the stage"
As Haskell puts it so aptly about women's roles in the sixties:
"But even these the great women's roles of the decade, what are they for the most part? Whores, quasi-whores, jilted mistresses, emotional cripples, drunks. Daffy ingenues, Lolitas, kooks, sex-starved spinsters, Psychotics, Icebergs, zombies and ball-breakers"
For better or worse… the 60s flipped certain roles for women on their heads revealing them in the narrative as the primary strong character, autonomous about her own or perceived gaze. Whether she still was a man-eater, femme fatale, fallen angel, hysterical mess, or downright psychotic, there were women’s roles that kicked serious some ass.! There was more room to exhale a bit and let some of the intrigue and some of the inspiration splay itself wide open.
Carroll Baker-Something Wild 1961.Sue Lyon in Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA 1962.
Ann -Margret is a Kitten with a Whip taunting John Forsyth in Douglas Heyes’ film 1964.
Cult Films Taboo and Transgression— Allan Havis–
"”"Many of these alternate-realm films explore knowingly or inadvertently powerful social taboos. We can define taboos in the context of social codes and anthropological phobias"¦ It is this very contradiction of taboos and their transgressions that thrusts this particular and irreverent study of favorite cult films""”Allan Havis
"””Cult films became branded in the late 1960s and flourished as a trendy, social activity for nearly twenty years"¦ How do we explain this odd paradoxical feeling when an excellent cult film entertains and disturbs us in the same way?"
One of the sentient points that Havis makes in his marvelous book is the idea of ‘escape and return’, where the filmgoer experiences these offbeat films going in willingly to navigate strange new territories that invert familiar or alternately comfortable themes because they trust that they are safe and reality will be restored at the end of the film.
In any epoch, we can find filmmakers who understood as Picasso once said- “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth” and “Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing. Taste is the enemy of creativity.”
Thus we see expansive, experimental, reflexive, subversive, bizarre, brutal, and often shocking films from directors like John FrankenheimerSam Fuller, Roger Corman, George Romero, Russ Meyer, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jerzy KawalerowiczRobert Aldrich, Roman Polanski, Radley Metzger, yes even… Ed Wood, Jean Luc Goddard,Hiroshi Teshigahara, Hugo Haas, Budd Botteicher, Walter Grauman, Edward L Cahn, Sam Fuller, Edgar Ulmer, Joseph Pevney, and one of my favorites Joseph Losey.
The years generally thought of for Noir’s most relevant reign were between 1945 -1955.
From the Chapter-LOUNGE TIME Postwar Crisis and the Chronotope of Film Noirby Vivian Sobchack in the book RECONFIGURING AMERICAN GENRES: HISTORY AND THEORY-edited by Nick Browne
"To locate and ground that heterogeneous and ambiguous cinematic grouping called film noir in it's contemporaneous social context"¦{"¦} attempting to relate the films to changes in American culture during the second World War and its aftermath."
Quoting Joan Copjec from Shades of Noir"”
"Film noir criticism correlates filmic elements with historical “sources": World War II, and increase in crime, mounting paranoia regarding the working woman's place in society, and so on-thinking that it has thereby located the "generative principle" of the films. But this reference to external sources in no way resolves the question of the internal logic of the films."
Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece, and perhaps one of Humphrey Bogarts finest performances as Dixon Steele a screenwriter with a volatile personality who falls for Gloria Grahame in the melo-noir gem–In A Lonely Place 1950.
Essentially Sobchack points out how heterogeneous and ambivalent the Film Noir genre started to reflect the American cultural climate in a social context showing the attitudes of the nation after the war.
But these films became hybridizations, influenced, and transfigured making the transition while utilizing indistinguishable elements of classical noir. Somehow, certain of the most rudimentary aspects of noir metamorphosed into a radically altered state of complex and often graphic illustrations of sexualized characters, violent behavior, pathologically fixated narratives, and offbeat storylines that expanded the scope of an already quirky style or genre. Film noir often derives some of its darkest shades from human nature, ‘crime’, and the personal and collective angst of paranoia in this country. The role of women was confusing, as they were returning back to take care of hearth and home after having been productive supporters on the war front as Rosy the Riveters. Where was their place in society now? Considering the two contrasting roles of women in noir, the innocent/marrying type/ nice girl on the sidelines contrasted with the dark bad girl, femme fatale, predatory dangerous, and sexually unredeemable– Heading toward the sexual revolution of the 60s, a woman’s place in film and society would go through many phases.
As I’ve already cited, men proved to be a more menacing force-Night of the Hunter, Experiment in Terror, Cape Fear, Psycho, Five Minutes to Live & The Killer is Loose.
Once again from Vivien Sobchack-
“Let us start with the context. It is now a commonplace to regard film noir during the peak years of its production as a pessimistic cinematic response to volatile social and economic conditions of the decade immediately after WWII Whether considered a genre or a style, the films circumscribed as noir are seen as playing out negative dramas of postwar masculine trauma and gender anxiety brought on by wartime destablization of the culture’s domestic economy and a consequence “deregulation” of the institutionalized and patriarchally informed relationship between men and women. The social context in which noir emerged is marked as “transitional’ and it’s overarching themes are the recovery of a lost patriarchal order and the need for the country to literally and metaphorically ‘settle down’ “
Interestingly in retrospect, certain of these obscure B cult films that were low budget, considered cheap and sophomoric, contain horrid acting and an erratic storyline, at times possess a natural art-house quality that filmmakers today try to emulate yet miss the mark by miles. What comes to mind just to give one example is Ray Dennis Steckler aka Cash Flagg’s interesting The Thrill Killers. In one scene where Steckler himself plays Mad Dog Click a psychotic freak, brutally attacks a dance hall hostess in a hotel room. The scene is framed so well that I was actually taken aback by its raw savagery and outre violent realism. While parts of the film are a bit asinine, there are a lot of interesting and quirky scenes and odd characters that I think deserve a look at.
Another aspect of many of these films which helps make them stand apart and cry out for attention is the musical scores that companion the pace and tone as the music began to mirror the mood, it became more off-beat, utilizing modern jazz and disjointed out of step beats that clashes with mainstream society. The music often underscored the sentiment of these films’ discordant nature, emphasizing chaos, rebellion, and alienation, an atmosphere of unsettling freedom. Composers added to the landscape–like Jerry Goldsmith, Mort Stevens, Gil Melle, and Lionel Newman. Walter Schumann, Paul Glass, Frank De Vol, Mischa Bakaleinikoff , Henri Mancini, Bernard Herrmann. John Barry and Elmer Bernstein, Miles Davis, Hans J, Salter. Pete Rugulo, Miklós Rózsa , Paul Dunlop, John Williams and Lalo Schifrin.
THE FILMS: the breadth of my attention seems to span from 1952-1969- with the exception of a few films that started early on exploring, brutal, psychological, and avant-garde spaces… I list these films that are uniquely irreverent & enigmatic. In other words, they possess the principles of both cult and noir styles. Here’s Joey’s Corollary Compendium!
1920
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI 1919–directed by Robert Wiene– expressionistic shadows and avante garde angles and architecture. Nightmarish, sonombulism, mind control, obsession and necrophilia. Shades of taboo & themes in a dark dreamy cinematic poem.
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI 1919.
1931
SAFE IN HELL 1931 directed by William Wellman.
Safe in Hell 1931 Dorothy Mackaill directed by William Wellman.
After Dorothy Machaillas Gilda Carlson kills the man who forces her into prostitution and rapes her, she flees to a Caribbean island, where there’s no escape from danger!
M (1931) -directed by Fritz Lang.
Peter Lorre embodies repulsion and sympathetic psychosis as child murderer Hans Beckert hunted through out the streets of the German city by the police and a mob of its criminal element seething with a blood lust for justice and revenge!
1932
FREAKS 1932 -directed by Tod Browning
Controversial at the time Tod Browning cast his masterpiece with circus folk. The story centers around Hans (Harry Earls) who is wooed by the ruthless Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) for his money. Slowly trying to poison the love -struck Hans, the family of freaks decide to exact their own revenge on this conniving vulturine.
Tod Browning’s FREAKS (1932).
ISLAND OF LOST SOULS 1932 -directed by Erle C.Kenton.
Charles Laughton is utterly chilling as Dr. Moreau who plays god with the Islanders by tampering with the genetics of man/woman & beast. Using profane experiments he lauds his power over them by threatening to take them to the ‘house of pain’… It’s a nightmarish and provocative masterpiece. Also starring Bela Lugosi as Sayer of the Law…
Kathleen Burke Island of Lost Souls -the sensual Panther Woman… brings an element of Beastiality to the already provocative theme.
One of the best pairings of Karloff and Lugosi, the story of an old friendship that has brewed revenge and immortal retribution for having turned traitor and committed genocide on so many of his own people, also having stolen Dr Werdergast’s (Bela Lugosi) wife. There are so many controversial elements to the story. Not least which is the idea of Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) dabbling in satanic worship and necrophilia.
Lugosi & Karloff in Ulmer’s outstanding atmospheric The Black Cat 1934.
1935
MAD LOVE (1935)- Directed by Karl Freund starring Peter Lorre.
“His love was pitiful…hopeless…madness…yet “The Thing” tired of pity – and demanded love!”
This creepy film falling into the sub-genre of medical nightmare horror. has Peter Lorre as Doctor Gogol, an insane surgeon who is so obsessed with the object of his desire Frances Drake as gorgeous stage actress Yvonne Orloc. Gogol performs an emergency surgery on Yvonne’s concert piansit husband, but he uses the hands of a knife wielding murderer to replace them. This film too has a subtle hint of necrophilia and fetishism…
This subtly erotic tale of a powerful woman’s sexual primacy cloaked in the fairy tale of Dracula’s Daughter, gives Gloria Holden a marvelous opportunity to wax tragically romantic. Beyond a fine classical horror story, the dark dreamy cinematography by George Robinson. A story that dares first invoke the idea of Lesbian attraction.
Gloria Holden as Contessa Marya Zeleska in Dracula’s Daughter 1936.
1937
NIGHT MUST FALL 1937 – directed byRichard Thorpe.
A most disturbing story of a hatbox killer of older women. Michael Redgrave is ideal as the impish bad boy with a fetishistic lethal Oedipal complex. When a rich but cantankerous dowager Dame May Witty on an isolated estates hires him as he acts the engaging handyman, her niece/companion Rosalind Russell becomes suspicious of his motives.
Robert Montgomery Night Must Fall 1937 with Dame May Witty.
1943
FLESH AND FANTASY 1943-directed byJulien Duvivier.
An oneric anthology of three loosely connected occult tales, with ironic and romantic twists. Stories by Oscar Wilde, Ellis St. Joseph, László Vadnay, Ernest Pascal and Samuel Hoffenstein. Starring Betty Fields, Edward G. Robinson, Charles Boyer, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Cummings, Dame May Witty and Anna Lee. The film emanates a shadowy otherworldly film noir sensibility, and also features themes of necromancy, fetish and homicidal obsession. Surreal cinematography by Stanley Cortez.
Betty Field in the hauntingly beautiful Flesh & Fantasy.
Written by Curt Siodmak, this is a tale of naive nurse Betsy Connell (Francis Dee) who travels to the West Indies to care for Jessica the wife of plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) Jessica (Christine Gordon) suffers from a kind of somnambulism cause by either a fever or a mysterious link to island Voodoo. Frances Dee and Tom Conway play out a tormented love affair in the midst of eerie circumstances. Ritualistic voodoo, necrophilia, and themes of ‘otherizing’ colonialism & racism pervade this heady gorgeous masterpiece.
Frances Dee in I Walked With a Zombie 1943 directed by the great Jacques Tourneur.
1944
PHANTOM LADY 1944–directed by Robert Siodmak—Franchot Tone and Ella Raines are superb in this unmistakable gem for it’s quirky and disturbing sense of place. A great story by Cornell Woolrich. Ella plays Carol Richman a dedicated secretary who goes on the hunt for the truth to prove that her boss is not a murderer. She must find the woman in the beautiful hat, while putting herself in real danger by the killer! Fetishism, psychosis, sexual themes and mania fill in the dark spaces of this brilliant and over-looked Film Noir gem.
Amazing yet overlooked Robert Siodmak noir gem Phantom Lady–Elisha Cook Jr. as Cliff the sex-mad drummer.
I ACCUSE MY PARENTS 1944-directed by Sam Neufeld.
Robert Lowellis James Wilson a young man abused and neglected by his alcoholic parents. He submerges himself in a world of crime, and falls in love with lounge singer Kitty Reed (Mary Beth Hughes).
I Accuse My Parents already has that whiff of exploitation even for a 1944 audience.
Perhaps one of my all time favorite Film Noirs, it’s packed with catchy dialogue great acting, quirky characters and some suggestively kinky bits. Starring Lucille Ball who’s fabulous as Kathleen Stewart who is devoted to her gumshoe boss, the underrated Mark Stevens who gives one hell of a performance as the tragically flawed noir figure trapped in a bizarre and deadly set of circumstances. Standout performances by William Bendix as Fred Foss who should know better than to wear a white linen suit after Labor Day… and has a propensity for smashing thumbs… Also memorable is Clifton Webb as the coded gay Hardy Cathcart who worships his wife in an unnatural way. It’s brutal and grimy and delivers some memorable goods… and
Features one hell of a great defenestration scene!
An old man Edward G Robinson as Pete Morgan and his sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandon farmhouse, located deep in the woods. Stars Allene Roberts, Julie London, Rory Calhoun, Lon McCallister and Ona Munson.
BRUTE FORCE 1947–directed byJules Dassin–cinematography by William H. Daniels.
Burt Lancaster plays inmate Joe Collins a prisoner at the disorderly run Westgate Penitentiary who plans a prison break under the tyrannical and sadistic rule of Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn) who wields his billy club like a homo-erotically phallic weapon.
Munsey controls the men through intimidation and brutality. Joe and his fellow cell mates construct a plan to escape through the drain pipe. Dassin directs this volatile powder keg with a savage eye on the injustices of a cruel institutionalized and flawed prison system. The ensemble cast is damn perfection in action… Featuring Vince Barnett, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Jeff Corey, and Lancaster from left to right. Also stars Charles Bickford, Jay C. Flippen, Howard Duff, Sam Levene, Ella Raines and Yvonne De Carlo.
“MEN CAGED ON THE INSIDE… driven by the thought of their women on the loose!”
Jules Dassin directs this incredible ensemble film noir set in the boiling maze of men’s prison starring Burt Lancaster in Brute Force 1947.
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR 1947-directed byFritz Lang.
The Master Fritz Lang blends a haunting nightmarish love story of horror and suspense in this psycho-noir dreamscape. Starring one of the ultimate noir goddessesJoan Bennettwho embodies the sufferance of lonely new wife Celia Lamphere who has a whirlwind marriage to Mark (Michael Redgrave who gives a chilling performance as a Bluebeardesque psychopathic fetishist. Celia meets this mysterious stranger who hides many secrets behind several unopened doors"¦ How's that for a metaphor. Engaging script bySilvia Richards (Possessed 1947).
Weaving in Freudian imagery, this is one of the best Film Noir's that utilizes psychology & depravity as it's root theme.
“He was all things to all men … but only one thing to all women!”
Edmund Goulding's Faustian Carnival Noir masterpiece starring Tyrone Power as the opportunistic mentalist Stanton Carlisle who takes a journey through hell and may or my not find redemption, Also starring Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker. Nightmare Alley, (1947) Director Edmund Goulding’s vision is one of the more moody, nightmarish and sophisticated Noir films of it's time.
An expose of the seedier aspects of carnival life, threaded with romance, both surreal and unseemly. Based on William Lindsay Gresham's book and scripted by Jules Furthman (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep), the film is a grim and somber look inside the lives of carnival folk and the demons who ride their backs with drug and alcohol abuse, which breeds inhumanity and the nadir that people are capable of reaching. This beautiful nightmare is both picturesque and polluted with angst, yet a story that is cathartic and enthralling. Standout performance by Ian Keith as Pete Krumbein a hopeless alcholic both tragic and wise. The themes that inhabit the sideshow, such as the ‘geek’ act is enough to qualify this film as an early exploitation experience! Masterful editing byBarbara McLean.
Peter GodfreydirectedHumphrey BogartandBarbara Stanwyckdeadly game of poison in the milk! and psychotic obsession.
Geoffrey Carroll: “I have a feeling this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful hatred.”
Bogie is terrific as tortured artist Geoffrey Carroll a dark soul… who must destroy the object of his desire by painting them as the angel of death first… Yet another truly suspenseful and genuinely creepy psycho-noir… Stanny is vulnerable yet fortified as ever as Sally Morton Carroll, wife number two who begins to suspect her husband might be deranged. The film contains both fetishitic mania, adultery and fine performances by the entire cast including Alexis Smith as the mistress and potential wife number 3. Plus Isobel Elsom, Nigel Bruce and Ann Carter as Geoffrey’s very sophisticated young daughter Beatrice.
1948
CRY OF THE CITY 1948-Robert Siodmak’s directs Richard Conte and Hope Emerson… you don’t want one of Rose’s neck rubs…!
A narcissistic thug & cop killer Marty Rome (Richard Conte) breaks out of a prison hospital, defies his poor Italian Mama, police Lieut. Candella (Victor Mature) long time friend of the Rome family and die hard cynic who must find Marty and get to the truth behind allegations of another murder. Shelly Winters has a small role as Brenda Martingale, but Hope Emerson steals the show as big Rose Given, neck cracker and masseuse. Siodmak’s film is layered with the essence of exploitation once Rose steps onto the screen! I love this film for all it’s little volatile bursts of high octane crime-drama fueled by the feverish chemistry in the air.
Richard Conte and Hope Emerson in Robert Siodmak’s taut Cry of the City 1948.
THE SNAKE PIT 1948–directed byAnatole Litvak.
“Married and in Love . . . with a Man She Didn’t Know or Want!”
The Snake Pit goes directly to the last resting place of insanity and reveals life within the walls of a mental institution, in this psycho-noir drama starring Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Stuart Cunningham, a woman married to Robert (Mark Stevens) who suffers a nervous breakdown.
A surreal noirish film with an occult overtone, with some of the most visually beautiful scenes since Cocteau’sLa Belle et la Bête 1946 which is pure fantasy.
Anton Walbrook is Captain Herman Suvorin who is obsessed with playing cards here’s the tale of the elderly countess who has struck a bargain with the devil and sells her soul for the sake of always winning at cards!
When he murders her trying to gain the secret to the pact, her spirit haunts him endlessly til he goes mad… The wonderful Yvonne Mitchell (Blonde Sinner) plays the beautiful Lizaveta Ivanova. Edith Evansis the old Countess Ranevskaya
CAUGHT 1949directed byMax Ophülsthis is a noir dark fairy-tale of an abusive, controlling megalomaniac as Robert Ryan turns in one hell of a nuanced performance as millionaire Smith Ohlrig who impulsively marries Leonora Eames (Barbara Belle Geddes) a naive store model and then proceeds to psychologically and mentally abuse her as an object he owns.
Robert Ryan and Barbara Belle Geddes in Max Ophüls psychological noir classic
1950
IT’S A SMALL WORLD 1950-directed byWilliam Castle–
Paul Dale is Harry Musk, a lovable little guy who will never grow to a full adult size man. Harry’s father is played by Will Geer-He gets tangled up with some unsavory folk, but manages to find his true purpose and love in life!
“Something’s Got To Give……! When the emotions and longings of a man are pent-up in the body of a child!”
IN A LONELY PLACE 1950 directed byNicholas Ray.
Humphrey Bogart is Dixon Steele a screenwriter with a very bad temper. He falls for Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame looking her sexiest!) Is he the violent murderer of that poor script girl? He’s a suspect until his sexy neighbor clears him. But even she begins to wonder once she starts spending time with his darker side..
Dixon Steele: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me”
A doctor Cling Reed (Richard Widmark) and a policeman in New Orleans have only 48 hours to locate a killer infected with pneumonic plague. It stars Paul Douglas who’s just fantastic as Capt. Tom Warren.
Lt. Cmdr. Clinton ‘Clint’ Reed M.D.:“You know, my mother always told me if you looked deep enough in anybody… you’d always find some good, but I don’t know.”
Capt. Tom Warren:“With apologies to your mother, that’s the second mistake she made.”
THE SOUND OF FURY or TRY AND GET ME 1950–directed by Cy Endfield.
Stars Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, Richard Carlson and Lloyd Bridges as a mad dog Jerry Slocum. This film has one powerful climax! Noir story of a guy down on his luck that gets mixed up with a violently unstable criminal.
A blonde with ice cold nerves and deep warm curves!
GUN CRAZY 1950 aka Deadly is the Female–directed byJoseph H Lewis.
Stars Peggy Cummins and John Dall as a couple who go on a murderous spree! Superb noir with the Folie à Deux theme. Cummins is electric as Annie Laurie Starr who has a taste for danger…!
The penultimate film noir fabulous freak show starring the iconic Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond a star of the silver screen who’s light has not gone out. William Holden plays the cocky gigolo she falls in love with, while hoping for that great come back!
Joe Gillis: [voice-over] “The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis – out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion.”
Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Hope Emerson, Jan Sterling Jane Darwell and Betty Garde! A naive nineteen year old widow becomes coarsened and cynical when she is sent to a woman’s prison and is exposed to hardened criminals and sadistic guards.
You don’t know women until you know them without men!
Two con artists join forces and pose as brother and sister. He then meets rich widows through the “personals” sections of newspapers, marries them, and both kill the widows for their money.
NO WAY OUT 1950–directed byJoseph L. Mankiewicz.
A black doctor is assigned to treat two racist White, robbery suspects who are brothers, and when one dies, it causes tension that could start a race riot.
One of the most intense films dealing with the issue of race. With outstanding performances by the entire cast. Sidney Poitier plays Dr Luther Brooks who struggles to get respect as a black doctor who must treat two racist patients in the midst of a volatile climate of hatred and paranoia. Linda Darnell is amazing as the conflicted Edie Johnson the wife of one of the racists. Also stars Stephen McNally as Dr Dan Wharton.
A PLACE IN THE SUN 1951–directed byGeorge Stevens.
Based on a story by Theodore Dreiser ‘An American Tragedy’ Montgomery Clift plays a poor boy George Eastman who gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up with two women. Shelley Winters as Alice Tripp the girl he gets pregnant and Elizabeth Taylor as the wealthy Angela Vickers the one he falls madly in love with. It doesn’t fair well for George when he feels trapped by Alice, and he takes her on a row boat ride…
I’m in trouble, George… bad trouble -Love that paid the severest of all penalties!
THE PROWLER 1951–directed byJoseph Losey.
When Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) reports a prowler outside her house police officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) investigates and becomes fixated on her.
She had to keep THE PROWLER from telling…
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE 1951–directed byElia Kazan.
Based on the story by Tennessee Williams A sadly delusional Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) moves in with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski who sees her as a threat. Blanche is a sympathetic character who loses touch with reality. Karl Malden plays Mitch, a guy who doesn’t realize how old she is until he gets away from the Chinese lanterns and puts Blanche under a light bulb- So what if she was older? Tragic Tennessee Williams at it’s best!
a Lonely Girl…of Emotions Gone Savage! …Blanche, who wanted so much to stay a lady…
M (LOSEY) 1951-directed byJoseph Losey.
This is Losey’s very edgy remake of the Fritz Lang 1931 classic about a child murderer and the mob mentality who hunts him down. David Wayne does an excellent job of being ultra creepy Martin Harrow.
Inspector Carney:Ordinarily you look for a dame or a bankbook, get a victim with known enemies, what do we got? Some missing shoes. What’re we looking for? A man with a twisted mind. Could be anybody.
1952
WITHOUT WARNING! 1952 directed by Arnold Laven.
Adam Williams plays Carl, a gardener with a disturbed chip on his shoulder toward his estranged wife –he takes his shears on the road to clip as many blondes as he can!
Hildegard Knef in Alraune 1952 does she have a soul?
A scientist Jacob ten Brinken (Erich von Stroheim) creates the ultimate woman Hildegarde Knef as Alraune. But as beautiful as she may be, she has no soul and draws people to ruin.
“Born outside the laws of God and man.”
STRANGE FASCINATION 1952–directed by Hugo Haas.
Hugo Haas is a concert pianist Paul Marvan who finds a patron in the wealthy American Diana Fowler (Mona Barrie) but falls for the flirty night club dancer Cleo Moore (Haas’ favorite blonde) Marvan is obsessed with keeping his trampy wife happy and sabotages his career, Diana Fowler cuts him off, so he purposefully mangles his hand in a printing press so he can collect on the insurance. It’s a tragic story about a man obsessed, yet again only to find himself playing one handed piano at a Salvation Army shelter.
He couldn’t let her alone … Wait till you feel her.
Marilyn Monroe does an amazing job of playing the very unstable Nell Forbes. Deluded about her fiance that died in a plane crash, she recovers from a break down, only to come to NYC to work with her cousin Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr.) She tempts Richard Widmark for a bit, until he realizes just how unhinged the poor girl is… Excellent psycho-noir.
…a wicked sensation as the lonely girl in room 809!
1953
THE SLASHER 1953–directed byLewis Gilbert.
James Kenney plays Londoner Roy Walsh a street kid with his gang of delinquents who cause mayhem after the war. Roy heads into much darker territory and serious crimes.
“WILD… WAYWARD… HELL-BENT!”
THE HITCH-HIKER 1953 – directed by Ida Lupino.
When was the last time you invited death into your car?
Edmond O’Brien & Frank Lovejoy go on a fishing trip and catch a hitch-hiker (William Tallman) who’s really a pyschotic killer who torments them for a long ride. Ida Lupino offers one of THE best psycho-noirs… the claustrophobic cinematography by Nicholas Musuracais superb!
VIOLATED 1953–directed byWalter Strate.
Psycho Killer stalks the streets of Greenwich Village, killing the women and has a particular fetish for scalping his victims!
GLEN OR GLENDA 1953– directed byEd Wood Jr.
Satan makes an appearance in Glen’s nightmare. All he wants to do is wear Barbara’s angora sweater!!!
A psychiatrist tells two stories: one of a transvestite (Glen or Glenda), the other of a pseudo-hermaphrodite (Alan or Anne).
The other story shows us Tommy Haynes as Alan, a pseudohermaphrodite who undergoes a painful operation to become a woman. Timothy Farrell narrates with an earnest sincerity. Bela Lugosi makes an appearance as the Scientist who philosophizes incoherently about the whole taboo shaboo… Features surreal dream sequences and quirky flashbacks within a flashback. It’s a sympathetic tragedy & triumph as it covers everything from fetish to suicide, broken marriages and angora sweaters…. Gotta love Ed Wood’s cross-dressing gender bending cult film.
A sleazy gangster has a gang of young girls commit robberies and prostitution for him by getting them hooked on drugs.
PLAYGIRL (1954) —directed byJoseph Pevney…
“You call her a ‘Playgirl’…but this girl plays for keeps!”
Shelley Winters is nightclub singer Fran Davis. She’s mistress to Mike Marsh (Barry Sullivan) who’s miserable in his marriage, and winds up falling in love with Fran’s friend Phyllis (Colleen Miller). A cat fight ensues and Marsh winds up shot. It’s pulp-it’s melodrama- it’s Pevney!
BAIT 1954– directed byHugo Haas.
You just gotta love Cleo Moore and Hugo Haas’ collaboration -here is Bait 1954.
A beautiful blonde Peggy (Cleo Moore) leads a man down the road to ruin. John Agar as Ray Brighton and Hugo Haas as Marko.
“MEN GO FOR HER… The Door’s Open … Come On In ! “
JAIL BAIT 1954–directed byEd Wood.
Vic Brady draws young Don Gregor into a life of crime. He then blackmails Gregor’s plastic surgeon father into fixing up his face so he can evade the cops.
Stay Away From Them… They’re Jail Bait!
THEY WERE SO YOUNG 1954-directed by Kurt Neumann
A model agency in Rio de Janeiro is actually a front for a white-slavery ring that kidnaps European women and sells them on the South American sex market.
“Too innocent! Too willing! and far, far Too Eager!… and so Beautiful!”
1955
ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL aka TEENAGE DEVIL DOLLS 1955 directed byBamlet L. Price
“One Touch of the Needle — A Lifetime of Torture!”
KILLER’S KISS 1955–directed bySam Fuller.
Jamie Smith is Prize-fighter Davy Gordon who comes to the rescue of dancer Gloria Price (Irene Kane) who is being beaten up by her lover Vincent Raphello (Frank Silvera) The two fall in love and Raphello seeks revenge…
“Her Soft Mouth Was the Road to Sin-Smeared Violence.”
THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR 1955–directed byAndrew L Stone.
A group of escaped convicts Vince Edwards and John Cassavetes take a family hostage while the police are out looking for them. Tensions build as time goes on… An American nightmare.
“Three young, empty-eyed killers, without mercy or morals, turn a private home into a house of horror!…With a gasp in your throat… and a gun at your back.”
MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM 1955–directed byOtto Preminger.
Strung-out junkie Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine battles his demons of drug addiction while his wife Zosch (Eleanor Parker) who is in a wheelchair and low lifes beat him down even further. Also stars Kim Novak and Darren McGavin as Louie.
“The monkey is never dead, Dealer. The monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner, waiting his turn”-Louie
SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955)–directed by Edward Dein.
Lee Marvin plays Slob who runs a greasy spoon diner in Georgia and Terry Moore is Kotty the waitress. A story of spys, nuclear secrets and lust amongst a collection of quirky characters Keenan Wynn as George, Frank Lovejoy as Prof. Sam Bastion, and Whit Bissell as Eddie.
Four men and a girl!
THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE 1955 -directed by Richard Brooks.
Glen Ford plays Richard Dadier the new English teacher at a tough inner-city school where both teachers and students have an us vs them mentality. Dadier has a vision to bridge the generation gap & the rampant juvenile deliquency and tries to engage his kids which kicks up a violent storm! The film showcases a superb cast-Ann Francis, Louis Calhern, Sidney Poitier Margaret Hayes, John Hoyt, Richard Kiley, Vic Morrow, Raphael Campos, and Horace McMahon.
I’m a teacher. My pupils are the kind you don’t turn your back on, even in class!
Supposedly based on writer Evan Hunter’s own experience as a teacher in NYC.
FEMALE JUNGLE 1955–directed by Bruno VeSota.
Lawrence Tierney plays Det. Sgt. Jack Stevens an alcoholic cop who isn’t sure whether he might have murdered a blonde actress since he was last seen leaving the bar with her. Also stars Jayne Mansfield and John Carradine.
As the night grows dark, the women turn deadly.
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER 1955— directed by Charles Laughton.
One of the best motion pictures ever made. A cinematic journey through the eyes of young John and Pearl Harper. Robert Mitchum is chilling as the religious fanatical boogeyman of LOVE & HATE who menaces them after he marries and murders their naive mother, played by Shelley Winters. The evil Harry Powell is after the $10,000 their real father stashed after a robbery. Laughton’s masterpiece plays out like a visual nightmarish fable. And features the incredible presence of Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper. Wonderful characters with names like Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden, and Birdie Steptoe ( James Gleason).
The wedding night, the anticipation, the kiss, the knife, BUT ABOVE ALL… THE SUSPENSE!
Wow, what a cast, including director/actress Ida Lupino as a vindictive Amelia van Zandt -matron of a women’s prison. Also stars- Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Vivien Marshall, Mae Clarke, Juanita Moore, Howard Duff, and Warren Stevens.
Sensational scandal rocks women’s prison!
DAUGHTER OF HORROR aka DEMENTIA 1955 directed John Parker.
This horror/film noir oddity, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman’s nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night. Stars Adrienne Barrett and Bruno VeSota.
BLOOD on her hands…DOOM in her eyes..
Narrator: Come with me into the tormented, haunted, half-lit night of the insane. This is my world. Let me lead you into it. Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad. You may not recognize some things in this world, and the faces will look strange to you. For this is a place where there is no love, no hope…in the pulsing, throbbing world of the insane mind, where only nightmares are real, nightmares of the Daughter of Horror!
KISS ME DEADLY 1955–directed byRobert Aldrich.
A doomed female hitchhiker pulls Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious “great whatsit.” And opens up a Pandora’s Box!
Blood red kisses! White hot thrills! Mickey Spillane’s latest H-bomb!
FEMALE ON THE BEACH 1955– directed byJoseph Pevney.
Jeff Chandler seduces Joan Crawford on and off the beach- but his motives are questionable. Also stars Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway, Judith Evelyn and Natalie Schafer.
He was the kind of man that her kind of woman CAN’T LEAVE ALONE!
CAST A DARK SHADOW 1955–directed byLewis Gilbert.
A socio-pathic lady killer Edward ‘Teddy’ Bare (Dirk Bogarde) woos and then murders his elderly, rich, wife (Mona Washbourne) An inquiry results in accidental death. Only for him to learn that his late wife han no fortune to speak of. He then moves onto wife number two Margaret Lockwood who isn’t as naive as his the fist Mrs Teddy Bare… Will he be driven to commit murder again!
Poor Mona Washbourne falls prey to the psychopathic gold digger -Dirk Bogarde as Edward Bare or Teddy Bear….
1956
BLONDE SINNER 1956 Directed by J. Lee Thompson.
Diana Dors who never looked better as the belligerent yet vulnerable Mary Price Hilton in this British noir about a young woman who falls for a moody piano player (Michael Craig) whom she’s willing to leave her dull husband Fred for, but then she finds out he’s been cheating on her, with a wealthy woman he refuses to quit–so she coldly murders his mistress and winds up on death row… Co-stars Yvonne Mitchell.
HERE SHE IS! That Eye-Filling Gasp-Provoking BLONDE BOMBSHELL!
TEENAGE BAD GIRLS 1956 directed by Herbert Wilcox.
A gang of teenage girls, looking for kicks and ignoring their probation officers’ warnings, embark on a crime spree of robberies and burglaries.
THE VIOLENT YEARS 1956–directed byWilliam Morgan editor of great films like Portrait of Jennie 1948, There’s Always Tomorrow 1956 Tarantula 1955) and written by Ed Wood.
Jean Moorhead is Paula Parkins the teenage daughter of wealthy parents whom don’t seem to make time for her, so she looks for thrills as the leader of her all girl gang who steal, rob, and assault young men.
Teenage Killers Taking Their Thrills Unashamed!
THE KILLER IS LOOSE 1956–directed byBudd Boetticher.
An unhinged, deceptively mild-mannered bank robber Leon ‘Foggy’ Poole (Wendell Corey) escapes prison, seeking revenge on the cop Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotton) who accidentally killed his wife during a gun battle. Also stars Rhonda Fleming and Michael Pate.
The Story of a Cop Who Used His Wife as Bait for a Killer!
THE FLESH MERCHANT 1956–directed by W. Merle Connell.
A girl visiting her sister in Hollywood hopes for a modeling career, but is tricked by pimps into working at a brothel.
Blasts the lid off an infamous Hollywood vice racket!
THE WILD PARTY 1956 Directed by Harry Horner (Red Planet Mars 1952, Beware, My Lovely 1952, VICKI 1953).
From a story and screenplay by John McPartland (No Time to Be Young 1957, Johnny Cool 1963)
This is one tense psycho-sexual film noir with a flashback narrative and dialogue that is immersed in the beat culture of the late 50s. The anti-conformity culture that sat in smoky bars and vibed on kicks and hating regular society life. I read one reviewer consider it a very sociology packed film. Elia Kazan’s films strike me more as Socio-noir and while I can see the tendency to view it’s rant against classism, the film is so dark that it plays out more like a modern jazz nightmarish stint when four very anti-social people led by Anthony Quinn kidnap a couple, each for different reasons. There’s an element of brutality that hints at films to come like Lady in a Cage 1964. Quinn plays Big Tom Kupfen a violent sexual sadist egomaniac with no impulse control who is the strong man for a pack of Grifters who float around rolling people at night for their money. Jay Robinson is superb as a coded gay psychopath who has no problem watching Big Tom beat the tar out of people as long as he gets his money. He watches a lot of movies so he can learn how the rich and sophisticated talk and act. His eyes twinkle like a little boy who’s just about to get off pulling the wings off flies. The foursome target the couple and proceed to terrorize them for a night…
The most complex character is Nehemiah Persoff (who I love) who plays ‘kicks’ a jazz pianist who isn’t quite like the others, but goes along because he’s got the ‘tight belly blues’ He’s not in for the entire ride of torturing Arthur Franz and Carol Ohmart though. Ohmart was chosen by the studio as a blonde who might be able to compete with Marilyn Monroe, but never quite made it big. Unfortunately I think it’s a big mistake to underestimate Ohmart. She’s strikingly beautiful in a unique way and could have truly showed a talent to act if given a role where she could stretch more than sexy figure. Kathryn Gran (The Phenix City Story 1955, Anatomy of a Murder 1959) plays honey, a strange nihilistic girl who’s pathologically attached to Big Tom, though he only uses her to make him feel good about himself. She blacks out her memories, hints that she might come from sad beginnings, explaining why she’s so maudlin, complacent and at times somnambulistic.
When Big Tom sets his sights on the beautiful and classy Erica London (Ohmart) he’s convinced she wants him too. He wants to claim her like a hunted animal, he ravages her and turns clean cut Arthur Franz as Lt. Arthur Mitchell into a beaten up rag doll.
The film is quite dark and unusual, the casting works well, though Quinn as a mindless bull elephant is my least favorite aspect of the film.
THE BAD SEED 1956–directed by Mervyn LeRoy.
A housewife Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly) to her heart ache begins to suspect that her too perfect 8-year-old daughter Rhoda (Patty McCormack)is a socio-path who has murdered one of her little classmates.
Henry Jones plays a creepy pedophilic handyman who threatens to expose Rhoda’s secret nature and Eileen Heckert gives one heck of a performance as the destraught Hortense Daigle the mother of the murdered boy.
What would you do if you were cursed with “The Bad Seed”? A WOMAN’S SHAME…Out in the Open!
WICKED AS THEY COME 1956–directed by Ken Hughs.
Arlene Dahl ambitious girl from wrong side of the tracks works her way through man after man. Co-stars Phillip Carey and Herbert Marshall.
The story of a girl…and the men who made her wicked!
BABY DOLL 1956–directed byElia Kazan.
Carroll Baker is Baby Doll married to Karl Malden -Archie Lee who is desperately weighting for his virgin bride to turn 20. With a screenplay by Tennessee Williams. Also stars Eli Wallach as the swarthy Silva Vacaro.
Steamy tale of two Southern rivals and a sensuous 19-year-old virgin… Stars Carroll Baker as Baby Doll, Karl Malden as Archie Lee and Eli Wallach as Vacaro. The film also co-stars Mildred Dunnock as Aunt Rose Comfort.
She’s nineteen. She’s married two years — quite a girl — and not quite a woman…
AUTUMN LEAVES 1956 — directed by Robert Aldrich.
Vera Miles plays ex-wife Virgina who is now dating his father and trying to get Burt committed so they can have all the money from his trust fun.
Joan Crawford is the shy and loveless Millicent Wetherby a middle-aged woman who has gone without affection as she lives a solitary life.. Then she meets the charismatic Burt Hansen (Cliff Robertson) a very young man who at first sweeps her off her feet, then begins to exhibit signs of being mentally deranged. When he becomes violent with her she must decide whether to have him committed. Vera Miles plays ex wife Virginia who’s sleeping with Burt’s dad (Lorne Green) while they conspire to have the boy committed so they can gain full access to his trust fund.
FRIGHT 1956–directed byW. Lee Wilder.
Nancy Malone and Eric Fleming in Fright 1956.
A woman Nancy Malone believes herself to be the reincarnated spirit of an ancient prince’s lover. Meanwhile, a murderer turns out to be the reincarnated spirit of the prince himself.
Get out of her life if you want to stay alive!
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT 1956-directed byFritz Lang.
A novelist Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) aided by his future father-in-law conspires to frame himself in the murder of a stripper as part of an effort to ban capital punishment. Co-stars Joan Fontaie and Sidney Blackmer.
What kind of man would frame himself for MURDER?
A CRY IN THE NIGHT 1956–directed byFrank Tuttle.
A Cry in the Night 1956 Natalie Wood and Raymond Burr.
A deranged man with the mind of a child Harold Loftus (Raymond Burr) kidnaps the daughter of a police captain. Natalie Wood, Brian Donlevy, Richard Anderson and Irene Hervey.
GIRL-STEALER IN LOVER’S LANE!
1957
REFORM SCHOOL GIRL 1957 directed by Edward Bernds.
Â
A white hot story of a good girl in a bad world!
A young man steals a car and ends up involved in a pedestrian fatality. The only witness is a girl he had just met. He threatens her life if she talks, so when she refuses to tell what she knows she is sent to reform school. Great A.I.P juvenile delinquent schlocker starring Gloria Castillo who just can’t get a break from men pawing her and putting her in harms way. Also co-stars Yvette Vickers, Luana Anders and a very young Sally Kellerman.
When a 16-year-old, neglected by his movie producer father, gets in trouble, his father doesn’t believe his claim of self-defense.
Stars James MacArthur, Kim Hunter and James Daly.
Teen: “You know, they arrested me for car theft. My dad’s car! Gee if I’d known I was gonna get caught, I’d have done pretty much better for myself. My dad’s car—what a heap!”
THE NIGHT RUNNER 1957 directed by Abner Biberman.
Ray Danton plays Roy Turner a violently disturbed mental patient released too soon from the institution. When he moves to a small town, the pressure starts to get to him, and the girl he’s got his eye on piques the suspicion of her father… Also stars Colleen Miller and Merry Anders.
THE CARELESS YEARS 1957- Directed by Arthur Hiller.
High school girl from a wealthy family falls for a fellow student from a poor family. Both families disapprove, and, unable to stand the pressure, the couple quit school and flee to Mexico. Starring Dean Stockwell , Natalie Trundy and John Larch.
Girls From the “Right” Kind of Home…Stumbling Into the “Wrong” Kind of Love!
LIZZIE 1957 directed by Hugo Haas.
Eleanor Parker stars as Lizzie a troubled women who suffers from multiple personality disorder. Director by Hugo Haas.
Based on Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Birds Nest.’ Eleanor Parker plays three seperate personalities as she seeks help from Dr. Wright (Richard Boone) Also co-stars Joan Blondell.
She led 3 strange lives! Which was her real self?
THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO 1957 –directed by David Miller.
Odd and at times ferocious in it’s exploitative narrative of Margaret Landi (Joan Crawford in her last performance on screen in the 50s until Aldrich put her back on top in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1962) as an abandoned wife who returns to the small Irish village where she was born and discovers a wild child living with an drunken old crone. The girl Esther (Heather Sears) is blind and deaf, and in the fashion of The Miracle Worker, Margaret takes her back to America to help the child. When her snake oil lothario husband Rossano Brazzi comes back into the picture, it’s more than just a fortune he is chasing. Shocking ending!
ROAD DEVILS 1957 aka HOT ROD RUMBLE- directed byLeslie H. Martinson.
The slick chicks who fire up the big wheels!
THE TWILIGHT GIRLS 1957- directed by Radley Metzger.
Gaby Morlay is placed in a strict all girls boarding school after her father commits suicide. Now everyone lusts after her… the film features a very young Catherine Deneuve.
Sexy… Secretive… Seductive…
THE YOUNG DON’T CRY 1957–directed byAlfred L Werker.
Sal Mineo plays Leslie Henderson once again plays the ‘tragic teen’ archetype who must prove his masculinity and self-respect while in the brutal confines of an Orphanage. He’s faced with sadism and torture until he hooks up with an escaped convict. Their friendship gives him the courage to face those abusers. Co-stars James Whitmore.
BORN AT 17… (He’ll be lucky to make twenty!)
NO TIME TO BE YOUNG 1957–directed byDavid Lowell Rich.
The story of today’s “get lost” generation!
THE DELINQUENTS 1957–directed by Robert Altman
“The first baby faces taking their first stumbling steps down sin street USA.”
THREE FACES OF EVE 1957– directed by Nunnally Johnson.
Joanne Woodward plays Eve White (Eve Black & Jane) a woman struggling with multiple personality disorder while married to a stuffed shirt (David Wayne).
“THE STRANGEST TRUE EXPERIENCE A YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE EVER LIVED!”
THE STRANGE ONE 1957–directed byJack Garfein.
Ben Gazzara is Jocko de Paris a sociopath at military school who manipulates everyone around him.
You’ll never forget BEN GAZZARA as the louse, “Jocko”
POOR WHITE TRASH AKA BAYOU 1957– directed by Harold Daniels.
“Somewhere, a 15-year old girl may be a teenager… in the Cajun country, she’s a woman full-grown! …and every Bayou man knows it!” Especially Timothy Carey who claims Lita Milan as his own. Peter Graves is a yankee architech who interlopes on Ulysses(Carey)’ fish fry!
.
SAINT JOAN 1957 –directed by Otto Preminger.
Turner Classic Movies (Clip) Can They Unburn Me?
King Charles (Richard Widmark) gets a night time visitation by the ghost of Joan of Arc (Jean Seberg), in Saint Joan 1957 Preminger directs from Graham Greene’s script based on the play by George Bernard Shaw.
A FACE IN THE CROWD 1957–directed by Elia Kazan.
Andy Griffith turns out one chilling performance as Lonesome Rhodes, a miscreant from Arkansas with wit and grit –discovered by Walter Matthau and Patricia Neal. As a television celebrity his success is medioric but he becomes drunk with this new power leading Rhodes to become a megolomaniac & a fraud.
“POWER! He loved it! He took it raw in big gulpfuls…he liked the taste, the way it mixed with the bourbon and the sin in his blood!”
“She’s every inch a teasing, taunting “Come-on” Blonde.”
Starring Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, Marie Windsor John Dehner Ron Randell and Diana Van der Vlis-There’s a sexual-sadist on the loose!
THE WAYWARD GIRL 1957 Directed by Lesley Selander.
Judy Wingate (Marcia Henderson) plays a young girl who is at the mercy of her wicked alcholic stepmother Frances Wingate (Katherine Barrett) Judy is wrongly accused of a murder that Frances has committed and is thus thrown into jail.
SHE FOUGHT For the Right to Love…In a City of Violence and Terror!
EDGE OF THE CITY 1957–directed byMartin Ritt.
Two New York City longshoremen (John Cassavetes) Axel Nordmann, an Army deserter & Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier) a freight car dock worker’s friendship is threatened by a very menacing Jack Warden as Charles Malik the local thug. Also stars Ruby Dee, Val Avery and Ruth White.
When top lawyer James Blane gets an acquittal for a man who killed another man for sexually roughing up his trophy wife, the murderous town sheriff frames him for bribing a juror in the case. Stars Jeanne Crain, Jeff Chandler, Jack Carson, Gail Russell, George Tobias and Edward Andrews.
“A WOMAN and a tattered dress… that exposed a town’s hidden evil!”
Susan Harrison and Burt Lancaster in a very uneasy brother sister relationship: Lancaster as the god complex narcissist J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success 1957.
Once again Burt Lancaster turns in a superb performance as the ruthless J.J. Hunsecker the head of a newpaper dynasty who’s too fond of his sister Susan. Add the seedy agent Tony Curtis sells his soul to the devil to climb to the top like J.J. Striking cinematography by James Wong Howe…
A self-assured business man murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events. With an incredible slick atmospheric soundtrack by the legendary Miles Davis.
Commissaire de police: ‘Anything’s good for an alibi. Wives, girlfriends, bartenders, childhood friends, deceived husbands – but not an elevator. That’s ridiculous. It’s totally harebrained.’
NIGHT IS NOT FOR SLEEP (1958) aka BLONDE IN A WHITE CAR or NUDE IN A WHITE CAR re-released in 1959 directed byRobert Hossein.
Pierre Menda (Robert Hossein) is seduced by a blonde who loves him and leaves him at gun point for dead after she tries to run him down with her car.
Cabdriver Eddie Constantine falls for French girl mixed up with white slave ring, eventually helps to liberate her. Stars Diana Dors, Herbert Lom and Odile Versois.
IT’S ALL HERE! NOTHING HIDDEN…NEITHER THE SIN…NOR THE SHAME! ACTUALLY TORN FROM THE PAGES OF THE NATION’S LEADING NEWSPAPERS!
UNWED MOTHER 1958 directed byWalter Doniger.
Young girl gets mixed up with a no good two timing louse, helps him rob a bank and then gets pregnant even after she’s been warned he’s no good! Stars Robert Vaughn, Norma Moore and yes even Timothy Carey!
Over twenty thousand girls every year live this bitter story!
LONELYHEARTS 1958 directed by Vincent J. Donehue.
Maureen Stapleton a lonely woman longing for affection seeks out love lorn columnist Monty Clift in Lonely Hearts (1958).
Monty Clift is the altruistic Adam White who goes to work for the abusive William Shrike (Robert Ryan) as an advice columnist and finds all kinds of human wreckage and morality along the way. Also stars Myrna Loy and Maureen Stapleton.
“SOME WIVES CHEAT BECAUSE THEIR HUSBANDS DO…AND SOME BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST NO GOOD!”
I BURY THE LIVING 1958- directed byAlbert Band.
Strange blend of horror and film noir starring Richard Boone as the grounds keeper of a decrepit old cemetery when he soon believes he has the power to choose who will die merely by sticking a pin in a map. Co-stars the marvelous Theodore Bikel as the creepy stone cutter.
Out of a time-rotted tomb crawls an unspeakable horror!
THE DEFIANT ONES 1958–directed by Stanley Kramer.
Two escaped convicts Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are chained together and regardless of their hatred of each other, they must depend on each other to avoid being captured.
Law officier:How come they chained a white man to a black?
“Barbara Graham’s Last Scream From the Gas Chamber…”
COP HATER 1958–directed byWilliam Berke.
The hardworking detectives of the 87th Precinct in an unnamed city during a massive heat wave investigate the seemingly random murders of policemen.
Cop Bait! She winks… she loves… she kills… and it’s always a guy with a badge!
THE SNORKEL 1958–directed by Guy Green (The Mark 1961, The Angry Silence 1960. A Light in the Piazza 1962, A Patch of Blue 1965, Once is Not Enough 1975).
Although the police have termed her mother’s death a suicide, a teenage girl believes her step-father murdered her. Stars Betta St.John and Peter van Eyke.
THE CRY BABY KILLER 1958–directed byJus Addiss.
Jack Nicholson makes his film debut as a juvenile delinquent, who panics when he thinks he’s committed murder. Co-Stars Brett Halsey and Ed Nelson.
YESTERDAY a Teenage Rebel… TODAY a mad-dog slayer!
HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL 1958– directed byJack Arnold.
A little Russ, a little Jan and a lot a Mamie!
Take a cast with Jan Sterling, Russ Tamblyn, Mamie Van Doren and John Drew Barrymore and kapow you got a juvenile delinquent cult classic about drugs, fast cars, crime and sex!
Behind these “nice” school walls… A TEACHERS’ NIGHTMARE!…A TEEN-AGE JUNGLE!
THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST 1958–directed byGordon Douglas.
This is a western remake of Kiss of Death (1947) starring Hugh O’Brian, with Robert Evans as a certifiable psychopath
ANYONE HE CAN’T SCARE IS A LIAR!
HOME BEFORE DARK 1958–directed byMervyn LeRoy.
Mervyn LeRoy directs Jean Simmons in this dark psychological examination of a woman’s struggle to rise above a loveless marriage being labeled a depressed hysteric….
Jean Simmons is nothing short of captivating as Charlotte Bronn- a woman recently released from a mental institution back into an austere living environment with Dan O’Herlihy & a loveless marriage. Rhonda Fleming as her perfect sister… Enter Efrem Zimbalist Jr. the kindly outsider..
A pretty girl and the stunning shock that marriage brings her!
A psychopathic young beachcomber pretends to befriend a mother and two daughters living at their summer home. This is one of my particular obscure cult favorites!
A night of tension… a moment of madness… and now he is at the edge of fury. The screen is stunned by its strangest story of violence!
Kent Smith and Nan Martin star in this interesting psycho-noir thriller about a serial slasher who’s got a fetish for their hand bags and cuts their cheeks.
"They all had one thing in common"¦ The terrifying night they met!"
A stripper the late Anita Ekberg is the object of a mad killer, but is it her own sexual psychosis that is literally tearing women apart. A provocative tale of obsession, fetish and an exotic dancer who holds the key. Co-stars Phillip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee as a lesbian exotic dance club owner and Harry Townes as the psychiatrist who is obsessed with her.
IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT 1958–directed byLadislao Vajda.
Having doubts about the guilt of the obvious suspect in the murder of an eight year old girl, a police detective decides to investigate the case on his own, by using his lover’s daughter as bait.
1959
RIOT IN JUVENILE PRISON 1959directed by Ed L. Cahn.
When the shootings of two juvenile inmates bring public protest, a psychologist Jerome Thor is brought in to see if he can do anything to control the problems peacefully. Gotta love co-ed prisons and anything Mr Cahn does. Stars Scott Marlowe, John Hoyt, Virginia Aldridge, Dorothy Provine and Ann Doran.
The EXPLOSIVE Story of a CO-ED PRISON! Boy and Girl Inmates Together Under One Roof!!!
THE SCAVENGERS 1959-directed by John Cromwell.
Carol Ohmart… smuggling, missing wife,Vince Edwards Carol Ohmart enuf said…
The Scavengers 1959 Carol Ohmart.
TIGER BAY 1959 directed by J. Lee Thompson.
A 12 year old tomboy Hayley Mills witnesses the murder of a woman by her Polish merchant marine boyfriend Horst Buchholz but bonds with him and thwarts the police in their investigation.
MURDER…enacted before the eyes of a little girl. She alone has the proof the police are searching for.
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 1959 directed byMichel Gast.
Joe Grant, a light-skinned African-African, heads to a small Southern town to investigate the lynching death of his brother. He draws the attention of a gorgeous heiress whom he learns may have been involved in the killing.
Black Man… Don’t Let The Sun Set On You in This Town.
NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON aka FLESH & FLAME 1959- directed byHugo Haas.
John Drew Barrymore falls in love with Julie London who is a quarter black. He takes her home to mother (Agnes Moorehead) who kicks up a fuss. Bigotry and inter-racial relationship. and a scandalizing court room trial, threaten to tear the couple apart.
“I don’t care WHAT she is…she’s MINE!”
COVER GIRL KILLER! 1959 directed byTerry Bishop.
A mad killer is targeting pin up girls…
THE LONELY SEX 1959–directed byRichard Hilliard.
This is a very odd yet compelling film with more than a few nice moments including one sequence in front of the mirror as the killer listens to a creepy radio show and tries to sketch the outline primitively of his face in the mirror. As if he is trying to “paint” over his face–
the scene with his nailing Annabelle’s photo to the creepy cabin wall and listening to a sultry lipstick commercial is very effective. Director Hilliard also did Violent Midnight another effective low budget thriller–There’s another great scene where he dismantles a mannequin and takes the blouse off. Close up on the face, and his reflection in the store window. Very atmospheric and chilling. The score is phenomenal. Discordant images are disturbing. Predates, many of the psycho sexual thrillers. Also it struck me that many of the frames and the film’s pacing appear reminiscent of a silent film era piece. Sparse simplistic yet powerful. A particular favorite of mine.
The Lonely Sex 1959.
“Help! His desperate cry tears through the night!”
CITY OF FEAR 1959 directed byIrving Lerner.
Vince Edwards in 1959 City of Fear directed by Irving Lerner.
A vicious killer escapes from San Quentin with a cannister of what he believes to be heroin but is actually a radioactive substance that threatens all Los Angeles. Stars Vince Edwards.
A half crazed man in a terror crazed town!
IVY LEAGUE KILLERS 1959 aka THE FAST ONES directed byWilliam Davidson.
Bunch of ruthless rich kids frame a gang of bikers for their crimes.
GIRLS TOWN 1959- with Mamie Van Doren directed by Charles F. Haas– who did some Leave it to Beaver, and The Outer Limits!
Mamie Van Doren and Gloria Talbott Girl’s Town.
Mamie Van Doren is Silver who is blamed for the murder of a punk who tried to rape another girl. She is sent to Girls Prison. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUTHFUL REBELS GO BAD? Last Stop On The Road To Nowhere!
THE MAN IN THE NET 1959–directed byMichael Curtiz.
Alan Ladd is on the run and must rely on the local kids to keep him hidden away til he can prove that he didn’t kill his wife. Co-stars Carolyn Jones, Charles McGraw and Tom Helmore.
Alan Ladd in The Man in the Net 1959.
LABYRINTH 1959 directed byRolf Thiele.
Using many surreal dream sequences, a slew of odd characters inhabit a special kind of sanitarium.
Harry Belafonte plays Ralph Burton a miner in NYC who is trapped by a cave-in when he comes up to the surface only to find he’s the only living man on the planet. Enter Inger Stevens whom he forms a bond with. Only problem is, Mel Ferrer as Benson Thacker a wealthy white man of privilege comes along and complicates the triangle.
A prison break is attempted the same night an execution occurs on death row.
Unbelievable performances by Mickey Rooney, Frank Overton, Michael Constantine, Johnny Seven and Don “Red” Barry.
THE BLOODY BROOD 1959 – directed by Julian Roffman (The Mask 1961).
Two beatniks get their kicks by dealing drugs and violence–they even serve a kid a hamburger filled with broken glass. And the head psychopath is… Peter Falk as Nico.
Ed Begley is looking for a few men to pull off an easy caper. Harry Belafonte as Johnny Ingram a jazz musician with a gambling problem and Robert Ryan as Earl Slater a racist ex-con with a chip on his shoulder. The deal is doomed from the start. Also stars Gloria Grahame and Shelley Winters.
Earl Slater: There’s only one thing wrong with it. Dave Burke: What? Earl Slater:You didn’t say nothin about the third man being a nigger!
ROOM AT THE TOP 1959– – directed by Jack Clayton.
An ambitious young accountant Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner’s daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman Simone Signoret.
A Savage Story of lust and ambition
HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT 1959–directed byJoel Rapp—B-movie, tramps, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, heroine and composer Gerald Fried’s arousing musical score. (The Killing 1956, I Bury The Living 1958)
ANATOMY OF A MURDER 1959–directed byOtto Preminger
In a murder trial, the defendant Ben Gazzara says he suffered temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. What is the truth, and will he win his case? James Stewart is the dedicated attorney who tries to get him off. Lee Remick plays Gazzara’s sensuously flirtatious wife.
No search of human emotions has ever probed so deeply, so truthfully as … Anatomy of a Murder.
Lee Remick and Jimmy Stewart in Otto Preminger’s taught melo-noir Anatomy of a Murder 1959
The dynamic Anna Magnaniportrays an Italian street walker co-starring with Giulietta Masina who prefers her prison life to the outside world, but she’s still hostile and frustrated. Her sexuality drips at times bordering on manipulative and predatory. You would never hear Jan Sterling saying “I just need to wash my armpits a little” in Women’s Prison 1955— this dialogue that even Ida Lupino couldn’t have slipped in. this illustrates how these films allowed for the female body to become more conversationally intimate and less provincial held back by a film system of codes, dont’s and fear of the woman’s body.
A harsh study about the grim realities of life in a non-coed, totally female prison environment. Story concerns a young girl who comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture
Based on the story by Tennessee Williams -Starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn.
“Madness, homosexuality, prostitution, incest, disease and cannibalism enough imagery to sustain an American lit seminar for months”-Time Out (London)
Monty Clift and Liz Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer 1959
COMPULSION 1959–directed byRichard Fleischer
Based on the kidnapping and brutal murder of a little jewish boy– the true crime of the century story of Leopold & Loeb. The film showcases intense performances by both Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. It also questions the death penalty
Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play a murderous pair of Elitist based on the famous Leopold & Loeb
“The shocking story of two teenagers out for kicks…looking for thrills…and finding them.”
THE NAKED ROAD 1959 directed by William Martin.
Jeanne Rainer plays Gay Andrews a fashion model who makes the mistake of going out with her married advertising executive Bob Walker. When Gay refuses to go to a hotel with Bob, they are pulled over by a small town trap of hustlers who force girls into white slavery.
Ronald Long plays the smarmy Wayne Jackson who first puts knock out drops in her coffee then holds Gay prisoner and hooks her on drugs until she agrees to work for him.
THE NAKED VENUS- 1959– Directed by Edgar Ulmer.
A Beautiful and Extraordinary Loves Story About A French Girl Who Joins an American Nudist COLONY!
1960
THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE-1960 directed byHarald Reini
Karin Dor, Joachim Fuchsberger, Elizabeth Flickenschildt. A creepy German-made Wallace thriller about the ghost of a hanged man who returns to fulfill his promise. All of his accusers must die!
MA BARKER’S KILLER BROOD 1960 –directed byBill Karn.
Lurene Tuttle god bless her can really play it off as Ma Barker! She’s got gumption.
Katherine Clark ‘Ma’ Barker: Oh sweet child! You say that again and I’ll rattle your tonsils till that mink turns into the rabbit it is! I’ve got no time for cheats or… phony blondes!
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions. Stars Bernie Hamilton, Zachary Scott and Key Meersman as Evalyn.
THE BEATNIKS 1960-directed by Paul Frees-(usually voice work, acting & Writing).
A young singer’s chance at fame is threatened by his hoodlum pals who kill a bartender.
THIS REBEL BREED 1960 aka LOLA’S MISTAKE directed byRichard L Bare & William Rowland (The Psycho Lover 1970)
Starring Rita Moreno, Mark Damon and Gerald Mohr. Clash between blacks, hispanics and whites. Damon is passing for white. and it’s a teenage gang war….
With Blazing Impact The Screen Looks Squarely Into The Face Of Today’s Wild Teenage Emotions Caught In The Cross-Fire Of Love And Hate!
A woman disappears during a Mediterranean boating trip. But during the search, her lover and her best friend become attracted to each other. Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massara.
Two drifters Brett Halsey and Lowell Broan contend with love and murder in a small town.
Too Young to Know… Too Reckless to Care…
Brooding Brett Halsey in The Girl in Lover’s Lane 1960.
NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER 1960 –directed by Cyril Frankel
Peter Carter meets official resistance when he finds his 9 year old daughter has been the victim of the pedophile patriarch a sinewy 70 year of fossil Clarence Olderberry Sr. (Felix Aylmer)who watches the girls from his window and invites them in for candy if they will undress for him. he is one of the town’s most powerful family. Very disturbing and realistic treatment of entrenched hierarchy that trumps the safety of young children.
The film also stars Niall MacGinnis as the defense cousil.
Six Words That Sound A Fateful Warning…. and then he made us play that silly game…
VIOLENT WOMEN 1960–directed byBarry Mahon.
“Women Barred From The Men They Hungered For!”
THE PUSHER 1960- directed by Gene Milford -film editor one time directors seat. StarsRobert Lansing. Screenplay by Evan Hunter novel by Harold Robbins.
A detective investigating the murder of a heroin addict discovers that there is a connection between the junkie and his fiance, who is his boss’ daughter.
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. Stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg are Breathless.
The film that was banned for 4 years. Why..?
EYES WITHOUT A FACE 1960(Les Yeux Sans Visage) directed by Georges Franju.
With a guitar and a snakeskin jacket he drifted out of the rain…into the lives of these two women… Older woman, infidelity, pregnant- Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward and Anna Magnani
SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY HE LOOKED AT A WOMAN… SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY HE HANDLED A GUITAR.
Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward in The Fugitive Kind 1960.
THE VIRGIN SPRING 1960–directed by Ingmar Bergman.
A kind but pampered beautiful young virgin Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) and her family’s pregnant and jealous older sister set out to deliver candles to church. Along the way she is met by two men and a young boy who rape and murder her. Seeking lodgings they unwittingly stop at the girls parents house. This is the film Wes Craven based his Last House on the Left. The parents seek revenge. Max von Sydow plays the father filled with rage.
THE SINISTER URGE 1960 directed by Ed Wood.
“Shocked by this sensational revelation of the ‘smut’ picture menace!”
A flunky for a porno movie ring starts murdering the smut films’ lead actresses. Features-Pornography, sex maniacs, stabbing as penetration it’s a taboo happy meal.
PSYCHO 1960–directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock got the bug to do something very shocking. Aside from wanting to compete with Henri"‘Georges Clouzot,Les diaboliques (1955) He not only decides to kill the films heroine off in the first 20 mintues of the picutre, he takes Robert Bloch’s story loosely a composite of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein and takes horror to a whole new level of Schadenfreude with transvestitism, necrophilia, the Devouring Mother archetype, Oedipal rage, Voyeurism, and just general psycho behavior!
Janet Leigh is marvelous as Marion Crane the secretary who steals $40,000 from her bank while she’s weaing black lingerie and having an afternoon triste with a married man (John Gavin). But when she decides to stop off the rainy road to the Bates Motel, cinema is transformed forever and we are introduced to a new kind of boogeyman Norman Bates manifested by the incredible Anthony Perkins. The film also stars Vera Miles and Martin Balsam as good old Detective Arbogast. Watch out for those old staircases, their murder…
Exploring the blackness of the subconscious man!
PLAYGIRL AFTER DARK aka TOO HOT TO HANDLE 1960 directed by Terence Young.
starring Jayne Mansfield,Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Karl BÇ’hm,
Leo Genn is Johnny Solo who runs the Pink Flamingo Club in Soho. He starts to get threats by Diamonds Dielli (Sheldon Lawrence) but he’s not taking it lying down. Midnight Franklin (Mansfield) is Johnny’s girl and the main ogle at the club and she wants her boyfriend out of the business. There’s sadism, underage girls, and a lot of rough stuff going on…!
The sizzler you read about in Playboy magazine! It strips the secrets from the intimate key clubs.
1961
FEAR NO MORE 1961 directed by Bernard Wiesen
1961 –seems to be one of the penultimate years for psycho-sexual thrillers with a noir bent. From the opening brutally stark and eerie graphics, you know you’re in for one hell of a psychological roller-coaster ride. Ernest Haller is behind the camera, so you know to expect severe and odd angular frames that fit the noir style and bleed nicely into the realm of suspense, all shadow and female protagonist on the run, blamed for a murder she didn’t commit. Fear No More stars Mala Powers, Jacques Bergerac, John Harding, and Helena Nash. Sharon Carlin is accused of stabbing a woman in the heart with a nail file on a train, where she’s met by a gun toting stranger who knocks her out with the dead body and leaves her to be picked up by the police.
Music by Paul Glass (Lady in a Cage) adds some strident string work and experimental modern deconstructed jazz.
It’ just goes to show you that even if you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you!
THE 7th COMMANDMENT 1961 directed by Irvin Berwik
Jonathon Kidd is Ted Mathews just graduated with a B.A. and takes his blonde floozy for a joy ride. The little toad decides he can’t wait to plant one on her so he kisses her as the oncoming lights hit them head on. Believing that both his date Lyn Statten as Terry James and the driver of the other car are killed, he wanders away and falls asleep under a comfy tree like Siddhartha. Except this schnook supposedly has amnesia and doesn’t remember the night before. What to do? Hook up with Noah’s Ark and become an evangelical bible banger and healer collecting all that green that ‘sounds like green leaves’ better than coins.
Seven years later, after Terry has been in the slammer for 3 years driving drunk and causing the other car injury, no that passenger did not die as well. Terry’s hitting the bottle pretty bad. In fact it’s her favorite past time with boyfriend Pete who rolls bums to get the doe. Pete has about as much endearing charm and sex appeal as a drunken Fred Mirtz. Pete also enjoys smacking Terry around But he’s Terry’s fella so…. She decides to blackmail Ted, who is now Reverend Tad Morgan. Things just get worse from there. Terry certainly gets judged and even comes back after two murder attempts while the good reverend still has God’s loving ear… go figure who ever heard of a double standard in an exploitation film from the 50s where no one gets to walk away unscathed except maybe the man holding the bible. The very pious Noah even advises Tad not to go to the police because he’s done his repenting by taking on the lord’s work. Trailer for the film completely blames everything on Terry as it refers to her as one for they psychiatrists. Well, no not so much, perhaps a stint in women’s prison, but Reverend Amnesia Pants, is the complex psycho who murders when he feels the urge and then justifies it by apologizing to the lord…
I suppose clearing Terry’s name, even if she is a loose woman with the morals of a rat, is the right thing to do. He left her there to die, so 7 years worth of anger might get to a person. Not to mention the man whom he still thinks is dead. What about the family he left behind? None of these challenges enter Tad’s mind. As long as he sticks with his plan of reciting bible verse and collecting those green leaves from the flock of sheep, his sins are covered…. Lesson for the day in exploitation land… DO NOT TRY MAKING OUT WITH YOUR DATE WHILE GOING REALLY FAST DOWN A ONE LANE HIGHWAY!!!!!
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 1961 directed by Ingmar Bergman
A young woman, Karin,(Harriet Andersson) is recently released from a mental hospital and goes to an island to spend time with her brother, husband (Max von Sydow) and father (Gunnar Björnstrand) Karin’s grasp on reality begins to shift as time goes on and relationships begin to unravel.
Harriet Anderson in Through a Glass Darkly
A COLD WIND IN AUGUST 1961- directed byAlexander Singer
SANCTUARY 1961– directed by Tony Richardson adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel.
William Faulkner’s steamy tale set in the South in the 1920s. Governer’s daughter (Lee Remick) is seduces and raped by a Cagin (Yves Montand) who returns after she’s married to (Bradford Dillman) just to cause her further trouble. The film deals with rape, racism and a woman’s sexual freedom. Also stars Harry Townes, Rita Shaw and Odetta as Nancy Mannigoe
THIS IS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEGRADED TEMPLE DRAKE whose silence CONDEMNED a woman to the GALLOWS!
Stars Lee Remick as Temple Drake… Seen here is Odetta as Nancy Mannigoe
ORDERED TO LOVE 1961 -directed by Werner Klingler–
“Suppressed until now! Teen-age girls forced to submit in secret nazi mating camps”.
TOWN WITHOUT PITY 1961 directed byGottfried Reinhardt
Four American soldiers stationed near a German village face death in the rape of a local girl and are defended by outside counsel Major Steve Garrett. Stars Kirk Douglas, Barbara Rutting, Christine Kaufmann, E.G. Marshall, Robert Blake and Richard Jaekel.
The Story of What Four Men Did To a Girl… And What the Town Did To Them!
Viridiana (Sylvia Pinal), a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior. Her uncle tries to seduce her as she resembles his first wife. After a tragedy Viridiana tries offer the estate as a safe haven for the destitute, with unfortunate results.
THE MASK 1961- directed byJulian Roffman
Stars Paul Stevens and Claudet Nevins in this super surreal nightmare horror/noir journey through different dimensions of the mind and our primal compulsions that wait to be aroused, all due to a tribal mask that causes the wearer to commit murder. Very atmospheric… Was shown in glorious 3D.
Look through the mask…if you can’t take it…take it off!
Based on Lillian Hellman’s play the film showcases incredible performances by Shirley MacLaine, Audrey Hepburn, James Garner, Miriam Hopkins and Fay Bainter. This 1961 version goes farther into the subject of Lesbian love which was only alluded to in the 1936 film These Threewhich place Miriam Hopkins in the role of Martha and Merle Oberon as Karen.
When a vicious rumor is started by one of the boarding schools trouble-making brats, it soon grows wings and ruins the reputation of the women running the school, and also forces Martha to come to terms with the truth about her own sexuality.
Martha: There’s always been something wrong. Always, just as long as I can remember. But I never knew what it was until all this happened. Karen:Stop it Martha! Stop this crazy talk! Martha:You’re afraid of hearing it, but I’m more afraid that you. Karen:I won’t listen to you! Martha:No! You’ve got to know. I’ve got to tell you. I can’t keep it to myself any longer. I’m guilty! Karen: You’re guilty of nothing!
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD 1961–directed byAlain Resnais
Takes place in a chateau, an ambiguous story of a man and a woman who may or may not have met last year at Marienbad. Stars Delphine Seyrig Visually surrea cinematography by the incredible Sacha ViernyHiroshima Mon Amour 1959, Belle de Jour 1967, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover 1989)
THE HUSTLER 1961--directed byRobert Rossen
Paul Newman plays fast Eddie Felson a cocky new kid on the block that challenges Minnesita Fats ( Jackie Gleason) to a single game of high stakes pool. Piper Laurie is remarkable as the world-weary Sarah who falls for Eddie. Also co-stars George C. Scott and Murray Hamilton. “…depths of a woman’s heart . . . and a man’s desires! probes the stranger… the pick-up… why a man hustles for a buck or a place in the sun! They called him “Fast Eddie”… He was a winner… He was a loser… He was a hustler. Only the angel who falls knows the depths of hell.”
Piper Laurie earned an Oscar Nomination for her role as Sarah Packard in Robert Rosson’s The Hustler (1961)
VICTIM 1961–directed byBasil Dearden
A prominent lawyer Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) goes after a blackmailer who threatens gay men with exposure (homosexual acts still being illegal). But he’s gay himself… Dearden shows the seemier side of being in the closet in London in the 60s. Very taught noirish examination of homosexuality and the risks people took at being exposed. Homophobia, blackmail public shame. Also stars Sylvia Syms and Dennis Price.
A Daring Picture About the World’s Most Un-talked About Subject.
THE NAKED EDGE 1961–directed byMichael Anderson
Written by Joe Stefano who gave us Psycho- Five years after George Radcliffe (Gary Cooper) was the chief witness in a high profile murder case, his wife (Deborah Kerr) receives a blackmailing letter accusing him of the crime. Intriguing and taut noir thriller, filmed brilliantly by Erwin Hiller. (Chase a Crooked Shadow 1958, Eye of the Devil 1966)
Gary Cooper and Deborah Kerr are on The Naked Edge
THE INNOCENTS 1961–directed byJack Clayton
a young Pamela Franklin eyes Deborah Kerr as she sleeps in The Innocents
Based on Henry James’The Turn of the Screw, Clayton directs Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens a governess who manifests an astounding energy of paranoia, repressed sexual desire, desperation and fear. Visually stunning and haunting, is it madness or the supernatural that plagues Gidden’s fragile mind. Peter Wyngarde plays the grizzly Quint the caretaker, is he a phantom. Megs Jenkins is wonderful as Mrs. Grose. Michael Redgrave is the children’s uncle who hires Miss Giddens to look after his two charges, Miles and Flora. Masterfully played by the very sophisticated Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens.Clytie Jessop is Miss Jessel, or I should say the ghost or hallucination of… One of the finest gothic ghost stories infiltrated with very taboo subject matter. Apparitions? Evils? Corruptions? A strange new experience in shock.
A priest is sent to a small parish in the Polish countryside which is believed to be under demonic possession and there he finds his own temptations awaiting. Stars Lucyna Winnicka and Mieczyslaw Voit as Father Jozef Suryn.
Father Jozef Suryn: “All redemption is in love. Love is as strong as death.”
SOMETHING WILD 1961 —directed byJack Garfein—
A young rape victim (Carroll Baker) tries desperately to pick up the pieces of her life, only to find herself at the mercy of a would-be rescuer (Ralph Meeker)
Also co-stars Mildred Dunnock, Jean Stapleton, Martin Kosleck
The story of a brutal assault — and the very strange love it bred!
Salome Jens is Angel Baby a type of Aimee Semple McPherson evangelist spreading the word of God and healing the sick. But she is a woman with desires that cannot be burned out even by the fires of hell itself. Not when Burt Reynolds is wrapping himself around you!
In the rural South-Salome Jens is Angel Baby who is led to believe she’s on a mission from God to heal people and save their souls. She becomes exploited by the people who want to benefit from the notority and the fortune to be made. Co-stars Joan Blondell, Henry Jones, Mercedes McCambridge, George Hamilton and Burt Reynolds.
THE SINNER who became a DEVIL SMASHER!!!
FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE 1961–directed by Bill Karn
A gang of bank robbers terrorize a small town by knocking on doors and then killing whoever answers. If Johnny Cash were standing at my door…. I’d open it! Hell….
When the door bell rings… Don’t answer! It could be the Door-to-Door Maniac!
HOMICIDAL 1961--the gender bending horror film directed byWilliam Castle.
The brutal stabbing murder of a justice-of-the-peace sparks an investigation of dark family secrets in a sleepy small town in Southern California. Patricia Breslin is Miriam Webster who is to inherit part of an estate, shared with her mysterious half brother Warren. Warren still lives at the estate with his childhood nanny Helga (Eugenie Leontovich) who is mute and bound to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke. She communicates by banging a brass door knob. Helga is cared for by nurse Emily (Joan Marshall/Jean Arless. This is a story of madness, rage, gender identity and childhood trauma.
A WORD OF WARNING! Please don’t reveal the ending of this picture or your friends will kill you – IF THEY DON’T, I WILL! – William Castle
ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO 1961–directed byBoris Petroff
The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother’s execution.
A Psychotic Killer prowls the night! … Will he be stopped before he kills again?
ACCATTONE 1961 directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiraling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
BLAST OF SILENCE 1961–directed by Allen Baron- fantastic jazz score by Meyer Kupferman (Black Like Me 1964, Trumon Capote’s Trilogy 1969)
Allen Baron plays hit man Frank Bono a paranoid, existential man-child who is back in NYC tasked with killing a mobster.This film goes beyond just the mere gangster film, it is a journey of an isolated man who go through trials of survival and self acknowledgment.
But he is recognized by his pal from the orphanage who is living a good life, married and successful. Frank begins to get a little existential about life, but he still has to pull off this last job and there’s no getting out. The friend with the rat adds a quirky edge to this brilliantly gritty and realistic gem. First the obnoxious gun supplier wants more money, so Franky rubs him out. Then he knocks off his target only to be hunted by the men who hired him. All told through voice over narration. The Voice frequently reinforces Frank’s need to be alone, and eventually becomes an even louder source of his identity.
Narrator: Remembering out of the black silence, you were born in pain. You’re alone. But you don’t mind that. You’re a loner. That’s the way it should be. You’ve always been alone. By now it’s your trademark. You like it that way.
DARK ODYSSEY 1961–directed by William Kyriakis, Radley MetzgerA young Greek immigrant confronts New York City while searching for the man who raped his sister. Radley Metzger.
THE MARK 1961–directed byGuy Green
Starring Stewart Whitman as a man who served prison time for intent to molest a child. He tries to build a new life with the help of a sympathetic psychiatrist Rod Steiger. Co-stars Maria Schell.
A film which doesn’t protect you from the truth!
HONEYMOON OF TERROR 1961 directed by Peter Perry
A couple honeymoons on a deserted isle called Thunder Island somewhere near Niagara Falls . When the husband leaves the island to go for supplies, the wife is stalked by a psychotic and horny lumberjack… Stars Dwan Marlow, Anton Van Stralen and Doug Leith.
A night of ecstasy then a nightmare never to be forgotten!
It’s creepy to see teen idol Paul Anka play a voyeur and potential rapist. As Craig Fowler he is surrounded by dysfunctional parents Ruth Roman and Alex Nicol. And his swinging neighbors who are all in heat. Jack Cassidy is smarmy as ever and he’s married to Gigi Perreau. There’s even a little hint of Oedipal goings on, as Jackie Fowler (Ruth Roman) ogles her practically naked son who’s oiled up from the tanny lotion and ready for a rub down. Daddy’s a drunk and mommy’s schtuping Jack Cassidy right out by the pool. No wonder the poor kid is so twisted up and leering into windows trying to catch sight of a brassiere of two!
Look At These Adult Delinquents… They’re The Reason Kids Like Us Do The Things We Do
THE YOUNG SAVAGES 1961–directed byJohn Frankenheimer
A district attorney Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster) who grew up on these same mean streets investigates the racially charged case of three teenagers accused of the murder of a blind Puerto Rican boy. But in this story nothing is as it seems. The film co-stars Dina Merrill, Edward Andrews, Shelley Winters, Telly Savalas.
The Young and the Damned…Who Grow in the Cracks of the Concrete Jungle!
CLAUDELLE INGLISH 1961 directed by Gordon Douglas
She liked boys looking at her…and thinking…and then she’d take her delicious kind of revenge on them all!… he child-woman called Claudelle Inglish
Before Diane McBain led the Mini Skirt Mob Diane McBain was Claudelle Inglish a naive farm girl who’s only dream was to marry Linn Varener (Chad Everett) one he was let out of the army. He asks her to wait, not to let any other man pursue her. When she gets a Dear Joan letter telling her that he’s fallen in love and marrying someone else, Claudelle is devastated. It doesn’t help that her unhappy mother (Constance Ford) who is dying inside of emptiness, 20 years wed to the steady hard working and kind Arthur Kennedy. Claudelle’s mother only wants her to marry the rich old creepy S T Crawford (Claude Akins) The entire male population of the town begins to bring her gifts which is code for yes, I’ll get into the back seat with you up near where the willows blow. But things come to a head when there are too many male suitors and Claudelle has successfully destroyed her self worth…. Excellent performance by McBain, would have liked to see her do more interesting roles.
She practices a few musical numbers with composer Michel Legrand ( which was wonderful for me ) but irritated by the lyrics and the sad content of the music and her anxiouness about the test results –she storms out of her house onto the streets.
THE SHAME OF PATTY SMITH 1962 directed byLeo H. Handel
Merry Anders is Mary a girl who is gang raped, gets pregnant and seeks out an abortion. A dark and dismal story. Co-stars Bruno VeSoto.
The Doctors real good at it -he oughta be… ya gotta pay me now deary
A Daring Expose of America’s Fastest Growing Racket – ILLEGAL ABORTION!
CARNIVAL OF SOULS 1962-Directed by Herk Harvey
After walking away from a traumatic car accident, a woman Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival, and is visited by the haunting and frightening spirits from an eerie otherworldly realm. This is one of THE best classical horror films. A visually stunning experience, and one of the more unique uncanny journeys that will imprint on your brain like a nightmare that your mind always takes with it. Incredible that it was Herk Harvey’s only film.
HOUSE OF WOMEN 1962 directed by Walter Doniger and Crane Wilbur–Shirley Knight, Constance Ford, Andrew Duggan, Barbara Nichols, Jean Cooper
Drama about a young woman, Erica, who is wrongly implicated in a crime and sent to prison for five years, where she faces deplorable conditions. With the aid of the warden, she sets out to prove her innocence.
The story of a prostitute murdered in a park, and the police investigating the suspects who were in the park that night. They must get answers as to who and why this happened. Several men are questioned, who’s versions are skewed from the truth. Neo-realism and flashbacks make this a haunting start to Bertolucci’s film career.
TRAUMA 1962-directed byRobert M. Young
Emmaline Garrison, (Lorrie Richards) finds her aunt Helen’s (Lynn Bari) drowned body in the pond and is sent away from the family estate until she is over her traumatizing experience. When she returns to the mansion she has married the very controlling Warren Clyner (John Conte). Slowly pieces of her past come back bit by bit as she begins to remember who the real murderer is….
She couldn’t remember–to save her life!
EVA 1962–directed byJoseph Losey
A raw Welsh novelist in Venice is humiliated by a money-loving Frenchwoman who erotically ensnares him. Co-stars Stanley Baker and Virna Lisi.
The beautiful Jeanne Moreau as Eva Olivier in Joseph Losey’s Eva 1962
Female prisoners are shipped to Devil’s Island penal colony. They are indoctrinated into the prison life from abusive guards and then a new prison governor arrives with planned reforms.
The story of a young girl who goes from being a high school cheerleader to a stripper who commits an armed robbery.
EXTERMINATING ANGEL 1962–directed by Luis Bunuel
The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. Stars Sylvia Pinal.
Bunuel’s oft used commentary on classism is demonstrated with irony and outlandish scenery when all the guests inextribcably try to leave but are trapped after they attend an extravagant dinner party. As nerves wear thin, and the social graces collapse the guests become metaphores for animalistic instincts that betray human evolvement & consciousness.
Rita Ugalde:I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven’t you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.
the excesses of bourgeois society
CAPE FEAR 1962–directed byJ. Lee Thompson.
A lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) puts his family at risk when he inadvertently invokes the ire of a sadist killer Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is stalked by a man he once helped put in jail.
Co-stars Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, and Telly Savalas.
Their ordeal of terror triggers the screen’s most savage war of nerves!
EXPERIMENT IN TERROR 1962–directed byBlake Edwards.
Lee Remick is Kelly Sherwood a woman who is terrorized by a man with the creepiest asthmatic voice. Garland Humphrey ‘Red’ Lynch played masterfully by Ross Martin.
His plan is to use her job at the bank to steal $100,000. He abducts her younger sister Toby (Stephanie Powers) then threatens to kill her if she goes to the police. But Glenn Ford as John Ripley gets involved…
Terror … Tension … Almost More Than The Heart Can Bear !
THE WORLD’S GREATEST SINNER 1962–directed byTimothy Carey
The outrageous Timothy Carey directs and stars as Clarence Hilliard a disillusioned insurance salesman who quits his job and starts preaching like a Nietzschean UberMan.
He creates a group called “The Eternal Man” party. He begins to be referred to as “God” Then the being and nothingness of Sartre’s angst & existentialism sets in… Wild…
THE L SHAPED ROOM 1962–directed byBryan Forbes.
A young french woman Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron) pregnant and unmarried moves into a seedy boarding house inhabited by societies misfits. She contemplates getting an abortion.
“Sex is not a forbidden word!”
A TASTE OF HONEY 1962 directed byTony Richardson.
The moving story of a plain young girl Jo who becomes pregnant by a black sailor, befriends a homosexual, and gradually becomes a woman. Starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Byron, Robert Stephens and Murray Melvin as Geoffrey.
.
THE INTRUDER 1962–directed byRoger Corman.
Written by Charles Beaumont, William Shatner plays Adam Cramer a man who comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble–trouble he soon finds he can’t control.
He Fed Their Fears And Turned Neighbor Against Neighbor!
Lately I have become an even bigger fan of Beverly Garland. Back when women were twisting ankles, screaming for the men to save them or wearing high heels in the jungle, She’s played fearless doctors, gun toting not afraid to fire at alien cucumber monsters and she wore damn sturdy boots that make me proud to be a boot wearin’ lesbian. Garland kicks some serious ass. Excuse my language but I just watched in Curucu Beast of the Amazon and was so impressed with her courageous performance and lack of ‘girlie’ necessities or denouments. AND… When it came time for her boyfriend to knife fight on a raft that floated on a river filled with piranha. she didn’t just sit there holding her mouth waiting with baited breath to see if he was a match for the squirly ‘native’ She did something about it and bashed him over the head. POW… again Beverly Garland Kicks some serious ass. Always has even in Decoy-Police Womana great tv series that showcases our gal as a real gritty cop!
Okay, so here in Stark Fear she plays Ellen Winslow who is married to Gerald (Skip Homeier) Gerald has a hobby. He likes to torture his wife both physically and mentally. His rage culminates in his desire to finally annihilate her completely. Ellen is still no dope, but she is loyal as hell and tries to find him when he takes off in a jealous fit… It’s a bizarre mystery a psycho-noir exploitation film that will keep you on the edge praying Ellen gets to stay alive and untouched…
A burlesque dancer Stacy Kane ( Meg Myles) robs her junkie ex-husband and flees to NYC She then gets a job at classy club where she becomes the mistress of the wealthy owner. Marvelous to see Grayson Hall as Pepe in this wildly quirky and peppered with slick dialogue exploitation gem.
They all went where the heat was hottest!
KNIFE IN THE WATER 1962–directed byRoman Polanski.
On their way to a sailing trip, an aging husband and wife invite along an emphatic young hitchhiker out of sheer patronization. A battle of masculinity ensues as the antagonism between the two men escalates.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE 1962-directed byJohn Frankenheimer
A former Korean War POW Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is brainwashed by Communists into becoming a political assassin. But another former prisoner may know how to save him. Co-stars Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury as Raymond’s sinister mother.
Dr. Yen Lo:His brain has not only been washed, as they say… It has been dry cleaned.
ADVISE AND CONSENT 1962–directed byOtto Preminger
Just an incredible ensemble cast featuring Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Henry Fonda, Walter Pidgeon, George Grizzard, Don Murray, Gene Tierney and Burgess Meredith.
Senate investigation into the President’s newly nominated Secretary of State, gives light to a secret from the past, which may not only ruin the candidate, but the President’s character as well. Character assassination, Paranoia, Political witch hunting, and dangerous moralizing are key to the narrative.
George Grizzard as Fred Van Ackerman:What I did was for the good of the country.
Bob Munson:Fortunately, our country always manages to survive patriots like you.
The story takes place in 1930s New Orleans at The Doll House, a high class cat house run by Jo (Barbara Stanwyck) with an iron hand. Her lugubrious yet gorgeous lover Hallie Gerard (Capucine) languishes around the place until one day an old love comes looking for her.
Jo isn’t about to give Hallie up for any man nor anything in the world…
Laurence Harvey plays Dove Linkhorn a farm boy who has a burning love for Hallie and won’t stop until he makes her his. Everyone wants Hallie, Hallie just wants to find herself free. Dark moralizing tale about the sins of being a whore, but no admonishing for being a controling man who objectifies and abuses them. Co-stars Jane Fonda as an feral tart Kitty Twist, Ann Baxter with a really bad spanish accent, and Joanna Moore who gives a poignant role as a simple minded girl, an innocent who is continusouly beaten by Oliver (Richard Rust).
THIS IS AN ADULT PICTURE! Parents should exercise discretion in permitting the immature to see it.
THE COUCH 1962–directed byOwen Crump &co-scripted with Robert Bloch.
While undergoing therapy for his problem Grant Williams is a grown size man as Charles Campbell, a serial killer continues his murderous sprees. Shades of an incestuous fixation on his sister. A father complex and some brutal psychological themes makes this a really interesting obscure psycho-noir thriller. Also stars Shirley Knight and Onslow Stevens. The most astonishing venture into the mind of murder any motion picture has ever dared! So startling it had to be made in secret with the doors bolted — with the public kept out!
Grant Williams has stopped shrinking and now needs a shrink because he’s one truly psychopathic guy on the couch.
Blanche:You wouldn’t be able to do these awful things to me if I weren’t still in this chair.
Jane:But you *are*, Blanche! You *are* in that chair!
PRESSURE POINT 1962-directed byStanley Kramer & Hubert Cornfield.
A black prison psychiatrist Sidney Poitier is assigned the distasteful task of helping a paranoid American Nazi Bobby Darin charged with sedition, and racism.
Pressure Point 1962 directed by Stanley Kramer with Conrad Hall and Ernest Haller at the helm of the camera, creates a combustible formula on the screen.
For me, one of the scenes that illuminated Darin’s trajectory as an alienated abused child, a volatile drunken father and mother who was a whore, while it doesn’t lay the groundwork for sympathy for his character, it does suggest the origins of such vile hatred and anger.
The scene with Darin’s misogyny and sado-masochism drives him to demean the woman in the bar by marking up her face and annihilating her identity using a ‘feminine symbol’ like lipstick is vivid and disturbing to me.. Aside from him covering up the space-every inch of the bar with tic tac toe marks with her lipstick, once he writes on her face, it becomes sexually sadistic and the vision devolves into a subversive orgy or sick self-gratification. By using her lipstick he’s turning a tool of womanhood which represents a way to seduce, he uses it now against her.
Poitier’s character himself uses the word ‘subversive’ – when referring to Darin’s character.
Pressure Point while still within the realm of film noir, pushes the boundaries of our "˜spectatorship’ and what we experience through some very harsh, brutal signals from the depths of human nature. Sidney Poitier's character even says that what Bobby Darin relates to him goes far beyond repulsing him but actually frightens him. This refers of course to the vital scenes that unmask his sadism. The use of flashback and surreal dream sequences are stunning. Kramer’s film is a masterpiece.
Of course, what Poitier's doctor becomes scared of is the "˜truth' buttons that he pushes for him A black man in a white man’s world doing their dirty work but still being oppressed. Poitier must fight the internal struggle to find his identity as a rightful citizen with dignity who commands the same respect and refuses to fall to his level of blind, vile, and psychotic hatred.
The set design, art design, and cinematography present a world that is full of contradictions, struggle, and CULTURAL TABOO in a very black-and-white setting. What makes this film dip its toes in the culty transgressive lake just beyond the horizon of noir is how certain scenes utilize the noir mechanism of flashback, the narrative tells a very subversive story of alcoholism, child abuse racism self-hatred, that has blossomed into a dangerous and influential psychosis. One that Poitier is repulsed by but dedicated to trying and helping because of his profession. The scenes use very extreme images that are unsettling.
Another very potent scene in the film is how Darin has invented another self that is weaker than he is. It utilizes the splitting off so that he can brutalize and take out his rage himself. Thus his tortured dreams he is being treated by Poitier. It’s a classically used theme in the noir cannon of the broken ego, the split personality, and the conflicted personality disorder. Here we watch as Darin’s vision of himself as a little boy brutalizes another little boy (his other, weaker self) is really disturbing and visually disturbing with a post-modern set and evocative musical score by the brilliant Ernest Gold.
FILMED IN BLACK, IN WHITE, IN RAGE!… a motion picture without a safety valve!
LOLITA 1962 directed byStanley Kubrick.
A middle-aged college professor James Mason becomes infatuated with Sue Lyon-a fourteen-year-old nymphet. Based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Co-stars Shelley Winters.
1963
HOTHEAD 1963 directed by Edward Mann
Teenage punk gets mixed up with hooker and runaway husband. Complications ensue when he meets up with an alcoholic vagrant who he sees as the father figure who abandoned him and his dying mother.
Society Branded Him Hothead – Was He Now Ready To Be Branded Killer?
SIN YOU SINNERS 1963-directed by Joseph Sarno.
A stripper/fortune teller uses a magical Haitian amulet to keep young, and in so doing forces others to kill for her.
Killer mobsters meet murderous strippers!
THE STRIPPER 1963- directed by Franklin Schaffner (Papillon 1973, Planet of the Apes 1968, The Boys From Brazil 1978) and screenplay by William Inge and starring Joanne Woodward
Joanne Woodward is Lila Green an aging showgirl who works for Madame Olga (Gypsy Rose Lee) Her boyfriend Rick (Robert Webber) runs off with the club’s money, and Olga fires Lila. She goes to stay with Helen (Claire Trevor) and tries to live an ordinary life. Until sparks fly between Lila and Helen’s teenage son (Richard Beymer –West Side Story).
The story of a girl…And the Men who led her to become “The Stripper”
THE VERY EDGE 1963 directed by Cyril Frankel
No woman should see this film without a man!
Anne Haywood and Richard Todd star in this film about a woman traumatized by a stalker Jeremy Brett who rapes her. A very somber yet startling film with an eerie presence of alienation.
THE FAT BLACK PUSSYCAT 1963 directed byHarold Lea.
There’s an insane killer on the loose and he has a fetish for high heels. Set in the untenable world of Beatnik culture.
This is the Tale of Five Wanton Women Whose Desires Were Satisfied and More by… the Fat, Black Pussycat!
FIVE MINUTES TO LOVE 1963 –directed by John Hayes.
(Rue McClanahan) Meet Poochie the girl who lives in the junkyard shack
Some people call it a profession, but she calls it pleasure!
THAT KIND OF GIRL 1963- directed byGerry O’Hara
London is in full ’60s swing in THAT KIND OF GIRL, a shamelessly entertaining exploitation film that revels in sexual titillation while moralizing about the dangers of STDs. A German Nanny sleeps around a bit, gets raped by a slimeball, and catches the clap, and NOT the applause kind… Oh, those rascally Europeans…
THE LEATHER BOYS 1963 directed bySidney J. Furie.
PARANOIAC 1963- directed byFreddie Francis.
Loosely based on Josephine Tey’s “Brat Farrar;” a man long believed dead returns to the family estate to claim his inheritance. The imposing Oliver Reed as Simon Ashby
VIOLENT MIDNIGHT 1963–directed byRichard Hillard.
An axe murderer is loose in a small New England town. Lee Phillips is the mysterious Elliot Freeman an artist living on his father’s estate. co-stars Jean Hale, Sheppard Strudwick, Dick Van Patten, James Farentino is greasy and sweaty and boy oh boy can he strut and then there’s always Sylvia Miles.
Earthy, wicked shocker!
SCUM OF THE EARTH 1963–directed byHerschell Gordon Lewis.
“YOU’RE DAMAGED GOODS AND THIS IS A FIRE SALE!”
TERRIFIED 1963–directed byLew Landers
A masked lunatic kills off people in a haunted house.
Buried alive! How much Shock can the human brain endure before it CRACKS?
LORD OF THE FLIES 1963–directed byPeter Brook
Based on William Golding’s intense shocker about human nature. A band of boys shipwrecked on an island, castaway desperate to survive eventually revert to savagery despite the few rational kids’ attempts to prevent that.
Evil is inherent in the human mind, whatever innocence may cloak it…
I loved this film just for the quirkiness of it all. Plus it truly has some fascinating imagery and atmosphere, for a low budget it was a surprisingly engaging little cult flick.
An architect and his wife move into an old castle when they begin to see strange things. Stars Merry Anders, Ron Foster, and Richard Crane.
13 keys to unleash the living dead!
THE SADIST 1963–directed byJames Landis.
Three people driving into Los Angeles for a Dodgers game have car trouble and pull off into an old wrecking yard where they are held at bay by a bloodthirsty psycho and his crazy girlfriend.
Hey, Sweet Baby, what makes you so sweet… The blood on your hands… or the snake at your feet? What Fiendish Passion Twisted His Mind–Made Him Torment, Torture, Kill?
SHOCK CORRIDOR 1963–Sam Fuller
Bent on winning a Pulitzer Prize, a journalist commits himself to a mental institution to solve a strange and unclear murder. Starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, and Gene Evans.
The Medical Jungle Doctors Don’t Talk About!
THE CARETAKERS 1963 directed by Hal Bartlett.
Another film cashing in on the mental hospital themes popping up in the 60s. A sobering accounting of the mentally ill and the people who are there to oversee their care. Robert Stack plays a sympathetic Dr. MacLeod who wants to revamp the way women mental patients are treated, hoping to implement an outpatient program. But MacLeod must clash with Lucretia Terry played by the inimitable Joan Crawford who filmed this role before What’s Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 was released. In The Caretakers, Crawford plays a punishing head nurse with sadistic notions of how to treat these tormented women in an over-crowded institution. Polly Bergen gives one hell of a performance as a woman in the midst of a nervous breakdown!
Now the screen tells what makes a woman – and what breaks her!
1964
ROOM 13 (1964) directed by Harald Reinl.
A serial killer is murdering the ladies of a nightclub. Detective Gray is seeking for the killer but can only find a lot of gangsters. And the killer is about to act again… Based on a novel by Edgar Wallace.
The remake of the 1937 version directed by Richard Thorpe, this time stars Albert Finney who plays the deranged Danny who insinuates himself into the lives of an upper-class family, in particular, he gains the trust and affection of Mrs. Bramson (Mona Washbourne) She doesn’t realize that he’s an unstable boy, homicidal maniac — The Hat Box Killer.
Shugfoot Rainy is a rich old coot who’s done with his longtime mistress and tosses her out! Next, his young niece returns home after being a stripper in New Orleans…
You don’t have to say “I do” to be married…
WHITE SLAVES OF CHINATOWN 1964–directed by Joseph P. Mawra.
.OLGA’S HOUSE OF SHAME 1964- produced by George Weiss
OLGA’S DANCE HALL GIRLS 1964- produced by George Weiss.
The wicked Olga and her sleazy partner Nick recruit suburban housewives for a dance hall that turns out to be a front for a group of decadent swingers who are harboring a dark and deadly secret.
DEVIL DOLL 1964–directed by Lindsey Shonteff.
An evil hypnotist/ventriloquist plots to gain an heiress’ millions. A creepy bit of horror/noir.
What Is The Strange, Terrifying Evil Secret Of The Dummy…and why is it locked in a cage every night?
THE NIGHT WALKER 1964–directed by William Castle
Barbara Stanwyck plays Irene Trent a woman who is haunted by recurring nightmares. Her late husband (Hayden Rorke) a blind inventor was recently killed in a fire and she sees visions of him, with his cold glaring white eyes. She also is visited by a dream lover, Lloyd Bochner. Castle really creates an eerie atmosphere with this horror/noir classic. The film also stars Stanny’s ex-hubby Robert Taylor as private investigator Barry Morland. Vic Mizzy’s score is just macabre joy!
Will It Dare You To Dream of Things You’re Ashamed to Admit?
SHOCK TREATMENT 1964–directed byDenis Sanders– music byJerry Goldsmithstock music used in several Thrillerepisodes the diabolical strings marvelous!
An actor Stuart Whitman is hired to locate $1 million in stolen cash. Roddy McDowall is Martin the wealthy dead woman’s garden who knows where the loot is. But he’s a raving psychopath who lopped off her hair with a large pair of sheers. And he loves roses. Lauren Bacall is Dr. Edwina Beighly who runs the place like a high-class Madame’s whore house brooding over her stable with hubris for what’s in it for her. It’s all about her research funding… Carol Lynley plays a nymphomaniac who hates being touched. Ossie Davis is a doctor who is now a patient! Quirky and fun with a great cast of characters.
Whitman has to endure shock treatment and far worse before he can get out of bedlam.
The remarkable Kim Stanley plays Myra Savage a sadly deranged woman who believes she has the power of second sight. But in order to gain notoriety she cooks up a scheme to have her husband, the weak and weary Richard Attenborough abduct a little girl just for a while, so she can pretend to provide details, find the girl for the police and wind up the hero. Of course, it doesn’t go as planned.
Myra Savage: What we are doing is a means to an end. Now you agree with the end, don’t you? Well, then you must agree with the means! You can’t have one without the other.
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA 1964–directed byJohn Huston.
Based on Tennessee Williams’s story, the film stars Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk who runs a little hotel on the Mexican coast. Richard Burton plays the defrocked Episcopal clergyman struggling with his self-worth and his faith who gets stuck driving a bus filled with middle-aged women, devout Baptists who need a tour guide. Hanna Jelkes (Deborah Kerr is marvelous as ever) is passing through and is a lost soul. Sue Lyon is on the bus and is just bursting with a desire for the good father. Grayson Hall is the leader of Judith Fellowes who is hinted at in a not-so-subtle way that she’s a repressed lesbian. This ensemble of outcasts on a journey makes for a dreamlike stopover… One of my favorite William’s stories.
Man And Woman – Love And Lust – Ruin And Redemption – One Night They All Meet.
Set mostly at an exclusive sanitarium it tells the story of the beguiling Lilith (Jean Seberg with a bad mullet) who is an innocent yet intoxicating temptress living in her own secret world, with a made-up language. She draws everyone into her orbit. Along comes Warren Beatty as Vincent Bruce who seemingly wants to help people and is hired by Kim Hunter to learn how to be an occupational therapist. But Vincent becomes fixated and possessive of Lilith’s love, and Peter Fonda who plays the very shy and awestruck Stephen follows Lilith like a neophyte only to come to a tragic end. Lilith even tempts Anne Meacham into having a lesbian triste with her. The film looks subjectively into the lives of damaged people at the same time delivers a potent narrative about the negative powers of women’s sexuality.
Before Eve there was Evil… and her name was Lilith!
STRAIT-JACKET 1964– directed byWilliam Castle.
Joan Crawford is released from an asylum after a twenty-year stay for axe murdering her husband and his mistress. She comes to live with her daughter Diane Baker, and the axe killings start up again!
THE THRILL KILLERS 1964-directed by and starring –Ray Dennis Steckler
Three psychotic murderers escape from a mental institution and stalk women in Los Angeles. Gary Kent plays Gary Barcroft one of the sickos. And my favorite. I love his performance in Come Play With Us 1973 a truly under-studied psycho film. The Thrill Killers is a really interesting and at times shocking momentum that’s just too hard not to watch! The relationship between the three escaped men is a story by itself…
LORNA 1964–directed byRuss Meyers and screenplay by actor James Griffith
Lorna (Lorna Maitland) has been married to Jim for a while but is not sexually satisfied. An ex-con (Mark Bradley) stumbles into her life, rapes her and she winds up falling in love with him. Griffith plays The Man of God… Really effective exploitation film…
Lorna Maitland – a wanton of unparalleled emotion… unrestrained earthiness…destined to set a new standard of voluptuous beauty.
The working-class twin sister of a callous wealthy woman impulsively murders her out of revenge and assumes the identity of the dead woman. But impersonating her dead twin is more complicated and risky than she anticipated. Bette Davis gives a superb performance! Co-stars Karl Malden, Peter Lawford Jean Hagen, George Macready, Estelle Windwood, and the always expressive old chap Cyril Delevanti as Henry the faithful Butler. A top-notch suspense thriller that is a perfect vehicle for Davis’ indomitable style.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, now who’s the fairest twin of all?
A secret sect of cannibals owns a vegetarian restaurant, which they use as a cover so they can find a beautiful young woman to serve as the main course at their full-moon sacrifice.
A Taste for Women (1964) “Aimez-vous les femmes” –sophie daumier…
TERROR IN THE CITY 1964 directed byAllen Baron.
Lee Grant plays a prostitute who befriends a small boy who has traveled to NYC after leaving the impoverished rural home, his parents couldn’t afford to feed him. He meets many characters along his journey… Co-stars Sylvia Miles, Robert Earl Jones, Ruth Attaway, and Roscoe Lee Browne.
Lee Grant Terror in the City 1964.
TEENAGE STRANGLER 1964 directed by Ben Parker.
This is a really creepy well-done B movie about a sex maniac on the loose near a high school. A troubled teen with an undeserved criminal past is the suspect when young women start turning up around town dead and marked up with lipstick.
Budding Young Teeny-Boppers Were the Bluebeard’s Prey! See Dismemberment and Death!
SIN IN THE SUBURBS 1964–Joe Sarno
A teenager finds out that her mother is cheating, she seeks out a trusting neighbor, and their relationship blossoms into something more. Meanwhile, there is a secret society–sex cult of swingers in mainstream America and Mom discovers to her shock that her daughter is also now a member! The sensation clubs! Partners in pleasure! Wild bottle parties! The whole scandalous story…shock by shock!
Olivia de Havilland is Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard an upper-class snob who is trapped in her gilded home elevator and then terrorized by varying home invaders, from a skid row bum (Jeff Corey) to a floosie who likes shiny things (Ann Sothern), to three psychotic thugs (James Caan, Jennifer Billingsly, and Rafael Campos) with a taste for giving pain. A scathing commentary on modernity and humanity. With an element that touches on Hilyard’s suicidal son who is a closet homosexual. Grauman creates a claustrophobic space with no exit… darkly nihilistic and brutal.
Victor Buono as Mama’s Boy Leo Kroll is a lab technician with a lot of serious hangups. Self-loathing, an overbearing mother Ellen Corby, and a hatred of women–bring out the serial killer of female nurses in Leo. His use of Coopie dolls as fetish and stockings to strangle them is ultra creepy, as Buono is so good at being intellectually & smarmy while playing a homicidal maniac. The film is an incredibly low-key yet disturbing psycho-sexual thriller…
THE GLASS CAGE 1964 written by actor John Hoyt, starring Elisha Cook and Arlene Martel.
Ann Margaret is a teenage delinquent –who escapes from reform school -stabs the matron, attempts to burn down the building, and is generally a borderline sociopathic. Embroils Forsythe an important political figure in a tumultuous 48 hours, of blackmail, home invasion, cock teasery, violence, and any other scandalous venture you can dig up for *kicks* when you’re a kitten with a whip!
Every man who sees her digs her… but she digs kicks of a very special kind!
STRANGE COMPULSION 1964–directed byIrvin Berwick.
Fred is a medical student with a secret compulsion to watch women getting undressed. It’s the act of taking off the layers of clothes that gets him excited. He is so tortured and driven by this that he seeks the help of a psychiatrist. It’s a fun voyeuristic journey veiled in a psychological training film/morality tale. Still, it’s somehow oddly compelling and has some interesting scenes. Peeping Fred is played by Preston Sturges Jr.
Constance Towers is Kelly… and prostitute of not… she’s always a woman to me! Fuller’s masterpiece The Naked Kiss
A classy renegade (Constance Towers)-a prostitute named Kelly decides to become self-sufficient and find her own brand of redemption –not from the patriarchy–but from herself- only to fall into the trap of small-town hypocrisy & moralizing. She’s wooed by a salacious pedophile who has the squeaky-clean legacy of his last name. Sam Fuller shows us a world that is much more seamier, decadent, and filled with perversion. From the opening scene Constance Towers’ bald head and high heels are beating the pulp out of her pimp. This is one of my favorite films. It’s literally a masterpiece in framing human nature and I wonder why it hasn’t become more of a cult sensation. Anthony Eisley is the critical cop Griff who doesn’t mind taking Kelly to bed, but his hands are clean while she’s still a whore. Great cast of character actors including Patsy Kelly, Michael Dante as the sinister J L Grant, and Virginia Grey as Candy. Stanley Cortez is responsible for the haunting and dark realism. Brilliant considering he worked on Night of the Hunter (1955), Shock Corridor (1963), and The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Candy’s Place–where all kinds of men find all kinds of sweets! Shock and Shame Story of a Night Girl!
Alain Delon is Marc a petty criminal on the run who takes up lodgings at a flophouse with two interesting women doting on him. Lola Albright as Barbara and Jane Fonda as Melinda. The wiley women move him into their Gothic mansion owned by Barbara. Melinda is crazy about the boy and tries constantly to get him into bed. While his enemies are close on his trail, someone is also trying to poison him. Wicked little romp with a decadent air of sensual inebriation.
He loved as if his life depended on it… and it did!
THE NAKED FLAME aka DEADLINE FOR MURDER 1964 directed byLarry Matanski.
A Doukhobor sect in Northern Alberta tries to prevent the wedding of a Russian girl to a Canadian. A film of forbidden love, rape, and murder.
Doukhobors..! Nude Protests Erupt In Flaming Violence!
1965
MY BLOOD RUNS COLD 1965 directed byWilliam Conrad.
Troy Donahue is a disturbed drifter who meets Joey Heatherton and believes her to be a long-dead ancestor, his long-lost love. Creepy and psychotic at times. Also stars Barry Sullivan and Jeannette Nolan. Is It Possible That The Dead Can Be Reborn? Strange Things Are Happening!
RETURN FROM THE ASHES 1965 directed byJ. Lee Thompson.
Stanislaus Pilgrin,(Maximilian Schell) is a suave gigolo who’s masterful at playing chess. First, he marries a wealthy Jewish widow, Dr. Mischa Wolf, (Ingrid Thulin). Soon after he begins playing around with her step-daughter Fabienne played by the ever-seductress Samantha Eggar. But philandering isn’t what’s on Stanislaus’s mind. He is plotting to do away with both women so he can inherit their money and the estate.
The water is warm… the champagne chilled… the music soft… then the daydream ends… and the nightmare begins!
TORTURED FEMALES 1965 directed by Arch Hudson. Shock film of the century Incredible scenes of unbridled passions.
.
THE FOOL KILLER 1965 Directed by Servando González.
Eddie Albert plays young George Mellish who decides to run away after he can’t take the beatings and abuse by his foster parents. He hops a freight train east of the Mississippi River. On his journey, he meets several odd characters. First, he meets Henry Hull as Dirty Jim Jelliman who lives in a ramshackle hovel and tells George the story of the legendary boogeyman of them parts called The Fool Killer.
Then he meets Milo Bogardus, (Anthony Perkins) a young Civil War veteran who has lost his memory. The pair wind up at a campfire meeting by a fanatical Reverend Spotts (Arnold Moss)During the feverish frenzy of the revival meeting George blacks out and when he wakes up he can’t find Milo and doesn’t realize that the Reverend is dead, murdered by an axe.
The climax is so atmospheric American Gothic as George lies in bed when a shadowy figure manifests itself by the window. A tall and looming figure with an axe. Is this The Fool Killer coming to get him?
All the secret joys, the sudden terrors of being young and free and far from home
“The story of Grace Caldwell Tate really began in the back seat of a car… …and went from man…to man…to man…”
Suzanne Pleshette is Grace, a woman who just can not resist having sexual pleasure with a man. She’s called a slut, a whore, and her reputation is known all over town. It’s even suggested by her brother that she see a psychiatrist. I love Grauman’s work (Lady in a Cage 1964, and fabulously made for tv films like Daughter of the Mindand a few Naked City, this film was based on the novel by John O’Hara which I haven’t read. But it was all I could stomach from the moralizing about Grace’s sexual desires being deviant after she slept with the prowling males who were not ostracized or judged at all I love a good trashy bit of 60s melodrama but. I just can’t turn off the inherent misogyny, double standards, and demonization of women’s sexuality in film…
Grace is trying to define herself and what love truly is. She happens to enjoy sexual encounters with men, she doesn’t need electroshock therapy, an exorcist raising the bible to her forehead, or the locals thinking she’s ‘that kind of girl’ when men have the luxury of pursuing their desire, but once they’ve actually touched the women, that woman is spoiled goods. Grace is a really sympathetic character and Pleshette does a smashing job of appearing truly disturbed by her compulsion. Once Ben Gazzarra playing a sweaty contractor walks into the picture, all brutish, obsessive, and primal, Grace cannot resist the pheromones this beast is giving off. Bradford Dillman is her husband whom she tells the truth to from the very beginning but at some point, he just can’t take the reality of his wife’s nature.
Though Dillman’s character Sidney is in love with Grace and knows from the beginning that she’s been ‘that kind of girl’ And Grace truly loves him in all ways- but she just can’t resist the temptation of the male sex. Does she need a stint in a sanitarium? Should she be run out of town or stoned alive…
Well… the film condemns her by having her husband Sidney (Dillman) finally do a Rhett Butler and walk away finally not giving a damn. Ironically, he thinks she slept with Peter Graves’s character Jack Hollister because his paranoid wife Bethel Leslie comes over trashed and basically accuses Grace in front of everyone. Cue- Sidney’s had enough… and Grace is left… a marked woman…. in 1965.
CHAINED GIRLS 1965 -directed by Joseph P. Mawrer.
Unnatural love of women for women! A daring film about lesbianism today!
BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL 1965– Directed by Doris Wishman.
After her husband Ted (Alan Feinstein) goes to work, Ellen Green (Gigi Darlene) starts to tidy up the place in her nightgown
But while taking the trash out the janitor (Harold Key) forces her into his apartment and rapes her. When he tries again, she kills him and goes on the fun. She has a series of adventures in the Big City, getting used to and mistreated until she meets a nice woman who lets her rant a room. Using the name Meg Kelton. Will she be able to keep her new identity without running into trouble with the landlady’s son who just happens to be a detective?
Possessed with sex, they know no shame!
THE DIRTY GIRLS 1965– directed by Radley Metzger
In Paris, the City of Love, Garance can be found each night on the Champs-Elysees, or in a small bistro. This evening, Garance will entertain a shy young student, a hot-headed sadist, and an older gentleman.
From the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes … They Were Made for Love!!
RENT-A-GIRL 1965 directed byWilliam Rose.
A young girl goes to work for a modeling agency only to discover that it’s actually a call-girl ring. Stars Barbara Wood, Frank Spencer, Inga Christopher.
HYSTERIA- 1965Freddie Francis directs.
An American (Robert Webber) wakes up in an English hospital with amnesia after a very bad car crash. He now has to uncover the mystery of who his benefactor is, who he is, AND his possible involvement in a murder! Co-stars Maurice Denham and Sue Loyd.
TERRIFYING SUSPENSE …it will shock you out of your seat!
ONE SHOCKING MOMENT 1965 directed byTed V. Mikels.
Strip Teases, a lesbian dominatrix, bondage, and whipping! Wild city life lures a husband Cliff (Gary Kent) into its grip. Meanwhile, his wife Mindy is trying to keep up, since Cliff starts schtuping the secretary Mindy begins a relationship with the lesbian club owner who’s a dominatrix….! As much plot as there is nudity!
The most sensuous picture ever made…period! (well not so much, but it’s a cute tagline!-JG).
GIRL ON A CHAIN GANG 1965 directed byJerry Gross.
Three young people are framed, arrested, and thrown in prison by corrupt Southern police.
Poor White Trash! Stay Clear -This Town Got Ways of Teaching You a Lesson!
SIMON OF THE DESERT 1965 directed by Luis Bunuel.
Simon (Claudio Brook), a deeply religious man living in the 4th century, wants to be nearer to God so he climbs a column. Silvia Pinal plays The Devil who is trying to seduce him so that he will come down to Earth.
Simon: “What’s this dance called?” The Devil: “Radioactive Flesh.” It’s the latest – and the last!”
MOTORPSYCHO! 1965– directed by Russ Meyer–
Three violent motorcyclists get off on raping women. When they assault Alex Rocco’s wife, he goes on a rampage to avenge her with the help of Hajiwhose husband they killed.
Cyclemaniacs assaulting and killing for thrills! Bike-riding Hoodlums Flat-Out on their Murder Cycles.
ALPHAVILLE 1965 directed by Jean Luc Goddard
A U.S. secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical ruler. Co-stars Anna Karina and Akim Tamiroff. The French New Wav keepin’ Noir alive!
THE NANNY 1965 was directed bySeth Holt with a script by Jimmy Sangster.
Bette Davis is Nanny. She’s been with the Fane family for years. The impish William Dix is 10-year-old Joey. The little darling has just been released from a home for emotionally disturbed children, having drowned his little sister in the bathtub. But from the beginning of Joey’s arrival home, he acts very suspiciously of dear old Nanny. And strange things are happening like his mum Virginia (Wendy Craig) being poisoned. No one will believe Joey that Nanny is behind it all, except for his neighbor Bobbie (Pamela Franklin) who befriends him. This thriller is an excruciating journey through dark corners and oft times Nanny is quite sympathetic albeit potentially very daft in the head. As the flashbacks explain some of the background stories, once again Davis’ character while dangerous elicits both shivers and pathos.
BRAINSTORM 1965 directed byWilliam Conrad.
Directed by William Conrad this is a tautly slick noir-thriller starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jim Grayam a young scientist who happens to be in the wrong spot and at the right time and saves Anne Francis an unhappily married woman from committing suicide by train.
The two becomes romantically involved and they plot to have him shoot and kill her husband (Dana Andrews), and then use an insanity plea to escape a murder rap. But it doesn’t always go the way you want it to…
I SAW WHAT YOU DID 1965 directed by William Castle.
a group of school girls get bored one night and make phony calls to random people, except they happen to say “I know who you are, and I saw what you did” to John Ireland who’s just murdered his wife, and has Joan Crawford sniffing around to become his next romance. But you can’t put the screws too tight to a psycho.
Don’t laugh little girl, better run for your life. The man you were talking to, has just murdered his wife!
THE SLENDER THREAD 1965-directed bySydney Pollack.
A college volunteer Sidney Poitier working at the crisis phone gets a call from a suicide caller, Anne Bancroft has taken a load of pills and now he has to find out who she is and why she wants to die before it’s too late.
THE SIN SYNDICATE 1965 directed by Michael Findlay.
Two young thugs kidnap a young girl and keep her in the basement of an old warehouse where they forcibly make her their sex slave. The film has a disturbing realism albeit a low budget. A shattering study of the sick set for shockproof adults Wantons could not satisfy their depraved cravings! Everything they touch is stained!
SHIP OF FOOLS 1965–directed by Stanley Kramer.
An incredible ensemble of performers who truly show their acting styles. It’s the 1930s and an Ocean Liner set from Mexico to Germany has aboard a collection of characters, all of who have a story to tell.
EXPLORER, MISTRESS, VAGRANT, LOAFER, ARTIST, TRAMP … THEY ARE ALL AT THE CAPTAIN’S TABLE!
FLESH AND LACE 1965 directed by Joe Sarno.
Joe Santos plays the toy shop owner, Heather Hall is Bev-the Blonde.
“The sin of Bev’s NYMPHOMANIA!
Story of strippers, dice shooters, sex friends… gone wild!
Girls looking for wild KICKS, fast MONEY… and a way out!
The ORGY in the toy shop basement! – The violent fight of LUST… for MAN!”
SYLVIA 1965–directed by Gordon Douglas.
Carroll Bakerbecame a brand of her own in the 60s over lapping genres-psycho-melodrama, thriller, giallo, and exploitation. Sylvia is an interesting landscape for her to act out in, as Sylvia West, a poetess who is about to marry a very wealthy Frederick Summers (Peter Lawford.)
Summers fears that all women want him for is his millions so he hires a private detective to look into Sylvia’s past. In walks, Alan Maklin (George Maharis) to uncover the truth about Sylvia. What lends to the intrigue of the story is Joseph Ruttenberg’s ( Random Harvest 1942, Gaslight 1944, Somebody Up There Likes Me 1956 & Butterfield 8 (1960), sharp cinematography.
Carroll Baker is the Fury. George Maharis is the Force. Sylvia is the Explosion!
Catherine Deneuve is Carol who is left alone when her sister goes on vacation. Carol slowly loses touch with reality. Co-stars Ian Hendry, Yvonne Furneaux and Patrick Wymark.
The nightmare world of a virgin’s dreams becomes the screen’s shocking reality!
MUDHONEY 1965–directed by Russ Meyer.
It’s 1933, in the midst of the Depression and Prohibition. Calif, a stranger with a past walks into Spooner, Missouri on his way from Michigan to California. He hires on with Lute Wade to earn some travelling money, but gets entangled in a bad family situation: Lute’s daughter is married to Sidney, a good-for-nothing drunk that frequents the rural equivalent of a whorehouse and beats his wife and is just waiting for Lute to kick the bucket to get his money. When Sidney and a local wacko preacher begin orchestrating a smear campaign against Calif, he finds it difficult to conceal his past and his growing affection for Sidney’s wife.
fabulously infelicitous filthy focus on backwoods rural folk, the whore house, the deaf and dumb blonde bombshell, her alcholic abusive husband and the ex con who comes into her life. Sparse elements of noir in a bucolic setting. The wanderer who is an ex con, in love with a married woman. the temptresses.
MONDO KEYHOLE 1966 directed by Jack Hill & John Lamb.
Nick Moriarity plays Howard Thorne a rapist in Los Angeles:
Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) an American girl recently moved to London reports her little girl Bunny missing from her grammer school when she goes to pick her up in the afternoon. No one remembers even seeing the child. There’s no evidence that Bunny even exists. Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) investigates quite skeptically as to the whereabouts of the little girl. Keir Dullea is Ann’s brother whom she is living with in London, he is clean cut and well bred but there’s something a little off about Steven. So does Bunny truly exist, is she a made up idea in Ann’s head, a pathology since ann’s own childhood for making up playmates? Or is there something even more sinister about the whole disappearance.Perhaps one of my favorite Preminger mysteries.
Martita Hunt has a wonderful cameo as the headmistress of the school- co-stars Megs Jenkins, Clive Reville Adrienne Corri, Anna Massey and Noel Coward as the odd landlord who might be a lecherous old coot….
Doll-maker:This doll had almost been loved to death. You know, love inflicts the most terrible injuries on my small patients.
The opening sequence begins with a subtle form of masterbation as Sal Mineo touches himself in tight white undies, smoking a cigarette it begins an erotic journey as we only see his hand caressing his bare torso and hip reclining. The shot is framed like a classic film noir yet it is infused with an erotic pornographic suggestion of claustrophobic compulsion and deviance.
Lt. Dave Madden (Jan Murray) talks to Norah about the combinations of sexual deviants. Sado-Macchists, Pedaphiles Necropheliacs, Voyeurs. Mineo plays Lawrence Sherman a sexually frustrated young man who starts out obscene calling Norah Dain. He has a younger sister who is emotional development is arrested, she is like a small child.
As he listens to the tape recorded conversations with victims of obscene callers, his litle girl lyes in bed listening to the tapes it is an uncomfortable moment. The phone calls become more explicit. A moldy teddy bear is left with it’s throat slit at her apartment. We see books about Sado Masochism, tawdry magazines and books with titillating titles and covers. LIKE Screaming Mimi— the club owner Mariane Freeman (Elaine Stritch) is a lesbian. ” I did soft things” then she holds Nola in her arms and tells her to let it all out and cry. Put her arms around her, calling her baby. Nora rejects her as she is told to leave, Lawrence (Mineo) thinking she’s Nora runs after her. Chasing her down a dark alley, the camera reveals a brutal attack scene. Explicit in what it shows as he assaults and then strangles her with her own stockings. Her lifeless body in the alley–is shocking.
Why with everybody else – why with every slob … and not with me?
Three strippers holding a young girl hostage come across a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert. After learning he’s hiding a sum of cash around, the strippers start scheming on him.
One of the most memorable exploitation films not just because of Russ Meyer’s style and vision but because of the iconic goddess power involved in the cast.Tura Satana as Varla, Haji(Motorpsycho! (1965 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie 1976) as Rosie and Lorie Williams as Billie.
Superwomen! Belted, buckled and booted!
1966
A SMELL OF HONEY, A SWALLOW OF BRINE 1966– directed by Byron Mabe.
“I may be a bitch, but I’ll never be a butch!”
A young woman teases, seduces, and emotionaly destroys young men for her own twisted enjoyment. Stacey Walker is Sharon Winters an officer worker who torments guys by bringing them to the brink of having sex and then crying rape.
There is an expression for girls like her —— You see it scrawled on walls.
SINGLE ROOM FURNISHED 1966 directed by Matteo Ottaviano.
“The torture chamber of a woman who lived too full… too fast”
Sadly Jayne Mansfield died before the movie was completed. She is a woman who’s husband leaves her when she becomes pregnant. Get’s a job as a waitress, gets dumped again and … Eventually she becomes a prostitute..
Men who can’t control themselves! Women who don’t care! They get their kicks in strange ways…
DEATHWATCH 1966 –directed by Vic Morrow.
Based on a play by Jean Genet, a small-time thief battles with his gay cellmate over a third illiterate, muscular convict. This aint your Leonard Nemoy Spock, although I’ve always had my suspicions about his and Kirk’s true relationship. Michael Forest stars as Greeneyes.
Homosexual outlaws on a rampage! Genet’s perverse world of homosexual outlaws!
Hakuchu no Torima” is the story of a violent rapist Eisuke Oyamada (Kei Sato) seen through the flashbacks and perspectives of his wife and one of his victims.
THE SWAP AND HOW THEY MAKE IT 1966– directed by Joe Sarno.
Two bored suburban housewives, neglected by their workaholic husbands, take on a couple of college kids for kicks, then decide to join a wife-swapping club. Complications arise when love, jealousy and resentment arise.
A realistic and shocking approach to adultery
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN 1966 directed by Doris Wishman
When a husband gets ill with a mysterious sickness, his wife turns to a seedy pimp who puts her onto prostitution to make ends meet.
PERSONA 1966–directed by Ingmar Bergman
A nurse is put in charge of an actress who can’t talk and finds that the actresses’ persona is melding with hers. Stars Liv Ulman & Bibi Anderson
Sister Alma: (Bibi Anderson)Elisabet? Can I read you something from my book? Or am I disturbing you? It says here:”All the anxiety we bear with us, all our thwarted dreams, the incomprehensible cruelty, our fear of extinction, the painful insight into our earthly condition, have slowly eroded our hope of an other-wordly salvation. The howl of our faith and doubt against the darkness and silence, is one of the most awful proofs of our abandonment and our terrified, unuttered knowledge.” Do you think it’s like that?
AGONY OF LOVE 1966 directed byWilliam Rotsler.
A bored housewife rents an apartment where she indulges in all of her sexual fantasies.
“She Was a Lady But Wanted to Be Treated Like a Tramp”
THE ALLEY CATS 1966–directed by Radley Metzger
Metzger has always seized upon the allure and mystique of lesbian sexualty. Here he actually tinges it with a bit of a sado-masochistic, stalking predatory kind of lesbian She’s a woman eater. A married couple having issues both have flings. Set amongst a very high society of free-thinking libertines, mod parties and unabashed orgies, the film swings and is slick but the undertone is dark.
A daring adventure in the erotic world of motion picture stimulation!
SECONDS 1966–directed by John Frankenheimer.
Who are SECONDS? The answer is almost too terrifying for words. From the bold, bizarre best-seller. The story of a man who buys for himself a totally new life. A man who lives the age-old dream — If only I could live my life all over again.
David Niven is the marquis Philippe de Montfaucon who is the French Lord and ancestor of a historic Vineyard. When a dry season hits the harvest he is summoned to the castle Bellenac. Deborah Kerr plays his wife-Catherine de Montfaucon who is told to remain in Paris with the children, but she follows him anyway. Once at the castle her husband seems distant as if he is following a mysterious cult that worships ancient pagan rituals, that include his sacrificing his own life in order to save the next season’s crop. Both the luminous Sharon Tate and impish David Hemmings play two beautiful yet sinister figures lurking about with bow & arrows and doves. Co-stars Donald Pleasance as the mysterious cleric, Flora Robson as Auntie and Emlyn Williams.
Once again absolutely stunning visual frames from cinematographer Erwin Hillier.
Look at her long enough and she may be the last thing you’ll ever see!
Sharon Tate on the set with J. Lee Thompson.
I CROSSED THE COLOR LINE 1966–aka The Black Klansman directed by Ted V Mikels.
After a black man’s daughter is killed by the KKK, he seeks revenge by becoming a Klansman.
This Is Jerry … He Passed For White … to pierce the innermost secrets of the white man … and his women!
.
James Garner winds up wandering Central Park in New York City with amnesia. With only a few pills wrapped in crumpled paper with a telephone number on it., he goes in search of who he is. He has a memory of a young woman named Grace.
He spends time with several different women hoping they are Grace.
Is he the escaped mental patient the newspapers are headlining? Slowly he puts the pieces together and remembers who he is and where he’s been. Co-stars Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette, Katherine Ross, Angela Lansbury, George Voskovec.
George is a fumbling milk-toast and his wife is an aggressive French vamp. As time progresses the relationship between the three become quite bizarre… that beg questions of masculinity, brutality, repressed homosexuality and conformity.
The cinematic openness photographed by Gilbert Taylor (Dr Strangelove 1964).Â
Christoph Komeda’s post modern jazz score is exhilarating
MY BROTHER’S WIFE 1966 directed by Doris Wishman
A man’s wife starts having an affair with her brother-in-law, who is temporarily staying at their apartment.
Sex was her master! Lust was her destiny!
1967
MY BODY HUNGERS (CRIES) 1967 directed by Joe Sarno.
Gretchen Rudolph plays Marcia, a sensuous rural orphan who decided to hitch-hike the the city in order to see her sister who works at a popular roadhouse.
When Marcia gets to town she learns that her sister has been strangled to death with her own garter belt. So, she decides to take a job as a hostess to uncover all the seedy details of her sister’s life and in order to track down the man who murdered her!
John Aristedes plays Det. John Loring. Bella Donna as Mavis Harvey and Joe Santos is a truck driver. Tammy Latour is Joan Reynolds.
A Lace Garterbelt Becomes An Instrument For Murder!
THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH 1867 directed by Michael Findlay.
After catching his stripper wife in bed with another man he goes on a killing spree murdering strippers!
THE LUSTING HOURS 1967 directed by John Amerostars Roberta & Michael Findley.
Presented as an inquiry into the ways of lust, this film is staged as a documentary. It moves from rural prostitution (the roadhouse) to pornographers, then on to streetwalkers, male hustlers, and high-class call girls. The madam runs the bordello, she depends on the photographer to supply her with pornography; he’s in the city, using his camera to lead him into depravity. The streetwalkers risk arrest from the cops and abuse from the johns. Even the call girls have a tough time: from their expenses to their lack of self-reflection. Their motto: “Live fast, die young, and make a beautiful corpse.”-source IMDb jhaily@hotmail.com
A seductive woman pushes three men to the limits toying with their sexual desires and male pride. Where the principle idea is to turn hetero-normative indulgences and morals on hit’s head and Carroll Baker is the perfect actress to delve into this deviant view of female to male power.
ANYTHING FOR MONEY 1967 directed by Joe Sarno.
Sarno loves to put suburbia in the spotlight and then rip off the lid of it’s quaint and refined illusion. Joanna Mills plays Judy and Judson Tod is Jack. She has a plot to ingratiate herself into her Aunt Edna’s (Patti Paget) life in hopes of acquiring her wealth and status. They move in with her much to the displeasure of Edna’s business partner Louise (Peggy Steffans) She encourages Jack to Seduce Louise who is very influential with Aunt Edna and so rampant are Seductions, roadhouses, lesbianism and the corrupting of morals!
They found love delicious!
SPRING NIGHT, SUMMER NIGHT aka MISS JESSICA IS PREGNANT 1967.
Jessica, the eldest daughter of a coal miner-turned-farmer, has a fling with her half-brother Carl, which complicates things more when she becomes pregnant.
VENUS IN FURS 1967- Directed by Joseph Marzano.
“Venus… goddess of pleasure in a citadel of sin.”
THE DEADLY ORGAN 1967 aka Feast of Flesh Directed by Emilio Vieyra.
A masked killer prowls the beaches of Argentina, injecting beautiful girls with heroin, and then using weird organ music to make them his sex slaves.
WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR 1967-directed by Martin Scorsese.
A young man Harvey Keitel struggles with the fact that his girlfriend was once raped. co-stars Zine Bethune.
SHE MAN: A STORY OF FIXATION 1967-directed by Bob Clark!
A soldier is forced to take estrogen and wear lingerie when he’s blackmailed by a violent transvestite.
Now… The Movie That Dares Tell All About Today’s Turned-On Generation!
MR. MARI’S GIRLS 1967 directed byWilliam K. Hennigar.
A rich philanthropist uses his wealth to solve young women’s problems. I wonder if this Mr. Mari isn’t really The Devil in a different incarnation?
A swinger’s tour of the far-out unnatural and forbidden ways to love!
Features the lives of three swingers couples whose debauched lifestyle of drugs, swapping mates, and abuse begins to catch up to all six of them.
THE INCIDENT 1967 — directed byLarry Peerce (Goodbye Columbus 1969, Ash Wednesday 1973 guilty pleasure of mine because of Liz Taylor, The Bell Jar 1979).
Late one night, two young cretons hold hostage the average New York passengers in one car of a New York subway train. Martin Sheen plays the virulent little vermin Martie Connors and Tony Musante is the greasy & wide eyed psychopath Joe Ferrone. Both men have no problem beating a bum to death for a dollar. or terrorizing an entire subway car filled with people whom they perceive to be the insiders to their outsiders mentality. Some brutal stuff… incredibly comes together because of the contribution by the marvelous cast. Co-stars Beau Bridges, Ruby Dee, Brock Peters, Jack Gilford, Gary Merrill, Thelma Ritter, Donna Mills, Mike Kellin, Robert Bannard and Victor Arnold.
I’ll watch anything with Jan Sterling in it… This underrated film is such a nerve wracking film by Larry Peerce.
IN COLD BLOOD 1967–directed byRichard Brooks.
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of the Klutter family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity. Robert Blake as Perry and Scott Wilson as Dick is an astounding chemistry on screen. There is an undercurrent of homosexual relationship between the two thrill killers. Blake gives a very layered examination of the mind of a child who’s trajectory had no where else to go but to the crime and then the gallows.
Both give powerful performances with a story that is both brutal and distasteful on both sides of the hangman’s noose. Co-starring John Forsyth, Paul Stewart, Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Jeff Corey and Charles McGraw.
Cinematography by Conrad Hall adds the gritty realism and music by Quincy Jones.
Reporter: I see, the hangman’s ready. What’s his name?
Lon Chaney Jr. is the caretaker Bruno, who devotes his entire life to watching over the Merrye family. And a strange group of youngins are they. Beverly Washburn is Elizabeth and Jill Banner is Virginia. Sid Haig is adorable as Ralph who’s so feral his performance is a delight when thinking what was to come with women in chains exploitation films of the 70s and even later his cameos for Rob Zombie…
Anyhoo, the Merrye family history has been cursed with a type of insanity. Partly due to all the inbreeding they Merrye’s regress just as their deteriorating mansion crumbles on the outskirts of town. Trouble comes in the form of Cousin Emily played by the luscious Carol Ohmart who wants to take over and inherit the family fortune. This is such a whimsically horrific adult fairytale that is as unique as it is endearing and captivating. One special cult film that never gets old.
“The seductive innocence of Lolita with the savage hunger of a black widow.”
THE CURSE OF HER FLESH 1968 directed by Michael Findlay.
A weapons dealer who murdered his unfaithful stripper wife goes on a killing spree, bumping off exotic dancers and hookers while plotting revenge on his wife’s lover. Stars Eve Bork and Michael Findlay…. and a nice pussy.
StarsEssy Persson star of Theresa and Isabelle 1968 and Cry of the Banshee 1970.
Mauritz, a handsome but frustrated writer, journeys to an island idyll of the coast of Sweden to enjoy the fleeting summer sun. Soon he becomes romantically involved with Barbro, a sexy young temptress.
MURDER Ã LA MOD 1968 Directed byBrian de Palma.
HER PRIVATE HELL 1968 directed byNorman J. Warren.
This story is based on facts taken from authenticated newspaper files. What truly motivated Ted Andrews is not clearly known although a childhood filled with depression, hate for his mother, and a lonely adult life seeded with migraine headaches was a possible start. Through the use of his telephone and a high powered telescope he terrorized his neighborhood. He peered into the private lives of people who never dreamed he was watching and what he saw only heightened his desire for perversion. Finally he became obsessed with one woman, a woman of dignity and station, of wealth and security. His plan – step by step was to degrade her, to bring her down to his level of existence, and to make her an animal. He convinces her that he will kill her ten year old son if she doesn’t cooperate with him. As a result she agrees to perform for him before his telescope. He later forces her to meet him at a motel where he completes his act of degradation. The ending is as shocking as the opening. IMDb-Source-Pressbook Synopsis.
“I am watching you through a telescope you must do anything and everything I say or I will kill your son” True Crime, Voyeur, Rape, kidnapping, sadist.
WALK THE ANGRY BEACH aka HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK 1968 directed by John Hayes stars Rue McClanahan.
A young girl comes to Hollywood to try to break into the movies, but winds up being taken advantage of by sleazy producers, and is forced to become a stripper.
THE ALLEY TRAMP 1968 directed by Hershell Gordon Lewis.
A teenage girl sets out on a sexual odyssey of having affairs with various men including her mother’s secret boyfriend.
SHE MOB 1968 directed byHarry Huest.
A gang of four lesbian inmates escapes from prison and kidnaps the boyfriend of a wealthy woman. She hires a tough private eye to find her boyfriend and rescue him.
Erotic Sex Practices of the Butches and Dykes of the Weird World!
Men … You Are Doomed!
FANDO AND LIS 1968 directed byAlexandro Jodorowsky
Having just watched El Topo (1970) and still love Santa Sangre (1989) it is clear that much of Jodorowsky’s mythos incorporate not only multi-intersectional religious icons, but his fixation on the body being disarticulated is something I need to explore at some point and do a feature on this brilliant visionary or I should say lucid dreamers works.
Fando and his partially paralyzed lover Lis search for the mythical city of Tar. Based on Jodorowsky’s memories of a play by surrealist Fernando Arrabal.
Fando’s Father: I will become a cloud and take on any shape.
Young Fando: And if the cloud dissolves, what then?
Fando’s Father: I will become rain and produce a harvest of wars!
Young Fando: You win. I’m going to miss you when you’re gone.
Fando’s Father: If you ever feel too lonely… search for the magical city of Tar.
SEEDS OF SIN 1968 directed byAndy Milligan.
An alcoholic matriarch terrorizes her spoiled, grown-up children during a family get-together where one of them flips out and begins killing all of them to get back at years of neglect and abuse. It’s a creepy, crazy decadnet hoot of Milliganology.
CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT 1968-directed byHerb Stanley
A deranged, wealthy woman Eileen Lord offers $100,000 to three men if they can stay alive for 24 hours in Manhattan, and then hunts them down. It’s The Most Dangerous Game set in NYC and it flips the anti-heroine to be a woman! Look for Jake LaMotta as Rocco….
THE BOSTON STRANGLER 1968 directed byRichard Fleischer.
A series of brutal murders in Boston sparks a seemingly endless and increasingly complex manhunt. stars Henry Fonda and Tony Curtis as Albert deSalvo.
Why did 13 women willingly open their doors to the Boston Strangler?
IN HOT BLOOD 1968 directed by Leo J. Rhewdnal (Michael Findley alias?).
Doris Porro is Rita who is dead set on becoming a New York City model. Through the use of voice-over we follow her journey for 6 months as she becomes seduced by the wild parties and drugs,
Two young girls in New York City studying to be ballet dancers are chosen by a crazed sex fiend to be his next victims. He rapes one of them at gunpoint and then proceeds to stalk and terrorize both of them.
HOUR OF THE WOLF 1968– directed byIngmar Bergman.
While vacationing on a remote Scandanavian island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has a emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires. Stars Max von Sydow and Liv Ulman.
“The Hour of the Wolf” is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful.
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE 1968–directed byRobert Aldrich.
Beryl Reid is June Buckridge who plays Sister George on the telly. She lives with her younger lesbian lover, Childie (Suzanna York) Her role on the popular BBC soap opera has George the jovial distric nurse. Once she learns that she is being killed off on the show, everything goes downhill. She can either play the voice of a cow on a childrens show or not work at all. Plus the impressionable Childie has fallen prey to a predatory lesbian tv producer (Coral Browne brilliant as Mercy Croft )who had been secrectly fascinated with George’s secret life. It’s just not easy for an aging old dyke to play the part of a cow.
The story of three consenting adults in the privacy of their own home.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968–directed byGeorge Romero
A group of random people baracade themselves in an old farmhouse when they are inextricably seiged upon by corpses that are coming back to life and eating people. Romero’s films are all sociological perspectives and not just gore fests.
They keep coming back in a bloodthirsty lust for HUMAN FLESH!.
1969
PASSION IN HOT HOLLOWS 1969 directed by Joe Sarno.
Cherie Winters is the scheming Norma Sue who goes back home to the backwoods in order to raise some hell with the locals especially her uptight sister. Includes all sorts of kinky seductions.
THE ULTIMATE DEGENERATE 1969directed by Michael Findley.
Michael Findley as a kind of Anton LaVey in The Ultimate Degenerate 1969.
Uta Erickson plays Maria a nymphomaniac who is bored with her current sex life. She answers an ad in the paper and winds up traveling by invite up to a house in Vermont owned by the odd Spencer who is a voyeur. Maria begins a very volatile journey meeting both women and men. They put on elaborate performances for Spencer. He serves them aphrodisiacs which make the women more amiable for anything. Spencer and Boris his assistant, film the women who are seeking thrills at any cost.
Great NYC location of the late 60s gives it a gritty exciting realism. Especially the shots in Times Square… before Disney came and ate up all the seedy goodness…
SISTERS IN LEATHER 1969- directed by Zoltan G. Spencer.
3 lesbian bikers blackmail a guy when they catch him cheater with another woman. So they grab his wife and take her out for some nude motorcyle riding. Then he goes and finds some male bikers and tries to rescue his wife before she becomes a lesbian biker.
“No man (or woman) was safe from these love hungry hell-cats.”
Psychiatrist Rip Torn installs a concealed movie camera in his apartment to record the screwed-up lives of the women who visit him. stars Sally Kirkland and Viveca Lindfors.
Joe: You stink, you smell! You screw everybody! You fuck everybody! Don’t You ever bathe?
Shirly Stoler is Martha Beck an obese, embittered nurse who gets off when her toupee-wearing boyfriend Tony Lo Bianco woos and then steals other women’s money, as long as he takes her along on his con jobs. It leads to murder. Based on a true story.
One of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of American Crime.
MUNDO DEPRAVADOS 1969–directed byHerb Jeffries
Two police detectives are assigned to investigate the murders of several young women at a health club. The film has a dead pan humor and is actually a riot to watch.
A doctor who kidnaps couples having sex and holds them prisoner so he can experiment on them trying to heighten their sexual experiences. He then forces them to have sex so he can drain the fluid that he needs to prevent himself from becoming an awful mess.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Â
♡ Psychotronically Yours… Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl!
.
