Olga’s House of Shame tells the story of a brothel matron Olga (Audrey Campbell) who gets runs out of New York City so she takes her show on the road to a deserted ore mine where she can run her criminal empire and prostitution ring in peace.
Followed up by Olga’s Dance Hall Girls
Hey how’d this poster get in here? ⇧
Here’s the scene where the girl just ‘doesn’t know!‘
Never shameful but always playfully yours-MonsterGirl
The Writer/Director who brought us the body as ‘Other.’
Conjoined brother Duane Bradley’s other half, Belial, somewhat like the mythic Blemmyae portrayed in Medieval paintings and etchings. He’s cute, he’s cuddly and fits really well in a wicker picnic basket for those special occasions.A Blemmyae and other mythic oddities- To the left a Headless creature, face in their chest yet fixed with arms and legs who inhabit the earth. Book: Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo: With 25 Illustrations from a Fourteenth-century Manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (New York: The Orion Press, 1958)Written and illuminated in Paris, ca. 1410"“12 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fols. 29v, 194v, 195v
MONSTERGIRL’S QUESTION-
Frank, this is a simple question that I’ve been very curious about for a long time, what is truly at the root of your choosing the name Belial for your most iconic monstrous personification of body horror in your classic film Basket Case from 1982. What tripped the wires in your head to name Duane Bradley’s brother in a wicker basket – Belial ?
Is it founded in the Hebrew proverb adam beli-yaal meaning ‘a worthless man’, because Belial was discarded by the doctors and his father as a non entity with no legitimatized form, also the name is based in Jewish and Christian texts referring to a demon?
Though Belial was more a product of physiological anomaly, rather than spawn from hell nor mutant. You can’t blame a guy for trying to get a little nookie"¦
He’s almost analogous to the mythic Blemmyae who’s heads were in their chests.
Or were you inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost"¦? Was he, yet a metaphor for the insatiable vice of desire?
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I
BELIAL came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for it self: To him no Temple stood
Or Altar smoak’d; yet who more oft then hee
In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest
Turns Atheist, as did ELY’S Sons, who fill’d
With lust and violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above their loftiest Towers,
And injury and outrage: And when Night
Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of BELIAL, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the Streets of SODOM, and that night
In GIBEAH, when hospitable Dores
Yielded their Matrons to prevent worse rape.
FRANK HENENLOTTER’S ANSWER-
That’s an easy one. The father, appalled by the creature and full of hatred after his wife died giving birth, named him after the devil. Or one of Satan's demons. I've heard Belial used as a synonym for Satan, and also as one of the many fallen angels. Either or, doesn't matter to me. And I didn't want something too obvious. I mean, calling him Beelzebub would've just been silly. Also, way back when, I looked up Belial in some reference book and it said the name translated as "ungodly." Which certainly fit the look of the creature. More than that, however, I like the SOUND of the name. If you didn’t know the Biblical reference, the name sounds rather friendly: “Hi, Mr. Bradley! Can Belial come out and play today?” And though grotesque, I've always thought Belial looked friendly. At least when his mouth is closed.
Writer/ Director/ Historian/ Film Preservationist Frank Henenlotter is a New Yorker like me. He spent his youth absorbing the low-budget exploitation gems that were offered for those of us who wanted something beyond the mainstream. He frequented the soiled seated grindhouse theaters on 42nd Street, now over run with the dis-associative glitz of Disney. 42nd Street used to showcase the wonderful underbelly of cinema, the cheap and psychotronic films that created a whole new landscape to wander around, while the artistic self is just beginning to emerge and the hormones are raging. So Frank Henenlotter grabbed some 8mm film and went off to find himself.
In 1972 his 16mm B&W short called Slash of the Knife played at the same 42nd Street midnight show with John Water’sPink Flamingos 1972.
It’s what make his films so unique. I discovered him in 1982 when I went to my local video store looking for something different to watch and stumbled upon a peculiar and intriguing VHS cover calledBasket Case. So I rented it and went home ready to invest myself in the emergence of the 80s horror genre. Of course I purchase my own copy and still have the original VHS treasure.
I had been weened on Universal classic horrors, Creature Features, Fright Night on WOR Channel 9, campy sci-fi gems of the 50s with giant bugs and shrinking men, mad scientists, Boris and Bela, and then the 70s came and the cinematic sky darkened, the atmosphere closed inward with a collection of starkly creepy low budget films that left my imagination and my tender psyche altered.
But here it was the early 80s and I wanted to embrace the new horrors. So when I sat quietly in my room and witnessed something so creative, so brutally funny and honest in it’s inventiveness, that I fell in love. Call it sleazy, call it gory, splatter, scuzzy, violent, tasteless, grotesque, excessively tacky, twisted in it’s vision, genres are so inter- textually linked that labeling them at this point is futile. Ultimately Henenlotter’s work has a splendidly unsettling lacquer and spirit.
What I experienced was a modern day fairytale about two outsiders. Conjoined Siamese Twin brothers Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) and Belial Bradley who take up residence in room number 7 at a seedy 42nd Street Hotel in NYC. Like the pathos evoked from Frankenstein’s monster and his ‘otherness’ The Siamese Twins, whose at times tumultuous brotherly bond set them off on a mission to punish the hack doctors who surgically annihilated their physical bond. The film made me laugh, shiver, empathize and adore that little guy in the wicker basket named Belial. Who wasn’t a demon or devil or mutant, just a little guy with authentic separation anxiety.
The film co-starred Terri Susan Smithas Sharon, Beverly Bonneras Casey, Robert Vogel as the Hotel Manager and Diane Browne, Lloyd Pace and Bill Freeman as Doctors-Judith Kutter, Harold Needleman and Julius Lifflander. Ruth Neuman plays the boys’ aunt. Richard Pierce plays their father, their mother having died in child birth.
The low key cinematography was done by Bruce Torbet, who also worked on Brain Damage. Frank Henenlotter was responsible for the film editing himself. Editing is key. And the very special Makeup department staff was John Caglione Jr, Kevin Haney, and Ugis Nigals as special makeup effects artists, Ken Clark did hair and make up.
Brain Damage VHS cover. I still have this copy as well. image from VHS WASTELAND
Quote from Basket Case (1982)
Aunt: [Reading to young Duane and Belial] “Art thou afraid? No monster, not I. Be not afraid, for the isle is full of sights, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will humm about mine ears. And sometimes voices, that if I then had waked after long sleep would let me sleep again. And then in dreaming, the clouds we thought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked, I cried to dream again…”
It’s no wonder the film has attained such cult status. I wound up renting Brain Damage which was released in 1988. Again the premise was so unique and freaky that it made me a fan of Frank Henenlotter for life. Brain Damage I think is the more queasy, darker and provocatively satirical film with it’s skid row orientation, but I’ll always love best, the gory fable that is Basket Case.
Brain Damage, again working almost as a modern fairytale is an allegory about addiction. With it’s young protagonist who becomes the host to an arcane and shiftily phallic parasite that feeds on human brains.
Frank went on to release Frankenhooker in 1990‘A terrifying tale of sluts and bolts’, and a two sequels to Basket Case, the last being 1992’s Basket Case 3: The Progeny. This last film revolves around Belial’s romance with female freak Eve, and the Bradley boys taking a trip to Georgia in the company of other freaks and freaks rights activist Granny Ruth (jazz nightclub singer Annie Ross) to seek the help of kindly doctor Uncle Hal (Dan Biggers) who assists with Eve’s pregnancy.
In addition to his writing and directing, Henenlotter’s been a fierce advocate and film preservationist, the force behind the rescuing and re-issuing of obscure vintage 60s and 70s horror, softcore and exploitation film relics from VHS and DVD through the fabulously valuable Something Weird Video. He also has added his witty commentary to several of the releases for the company. Henenlotter was featured in the documentary film Herschell Gordon Lewis "“ The Godfather of Gore and narrated the film on the 2010 FanTasia. In issue #304 of Fangoria Magazine Frank and comic artist Joshua Emerick started a Basket Case comic strip which offers a three panel piece in each issue.
Personal Quote:
[on being labeled a horror film director] –
“I never felt that I made “horror films.” I always felt that I made exploitation films. Exploitation films have an attitude more than anything else — an attitude that you don’t find with mainstream Hollywood productions. They’re a little ruder, a little raunchier, they deal with material people don’t usually touch on, whether it’s sex or drugs or rock and roll.” – Frank Henenlotter
“I think eccentrically and I’m a strange little person.” –Frank Henenlotter
From VideoHounds Cult Flicks and Trash Picks -edited by Carol Schwartz on Page 234The Hound Salutes Frank Henenlotter-
“Since then, Frank Henenlotter has come to be know mainly as a film historian and curator of sorts- but as you may expect, he’s done it in a rather odd fashion. Henenlotter was an expert on cult flicks and trash pick long before books were being written about them. He was rightfully chosen as the premiere interview presented in the landmark volume Incredibly Strange Films, despite the fact that he’d only made one official feature at the time, base solely on the depth of his knowledge. During the 1990s he began helping Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video unearth and release dozens of mind -bending exploitation films-many of them thought long lost-for a series that became known as “Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers from the Vault” Thanks to preservationists Frank and Mike generations to come will be able to enjoy vintage sleaze like Monster of Camp Sunshine, Bloody Pit of Horror, The Curious Dr. Hump and Olga’s House of Shame. In addition, Henenlotter has brought some interesting new films by young directors to the label”. – Brian Thomas
Frank Henenlotter is beloved by his fans, gracious, accessible, funny, engaged, playful and thought provokingly outrageous. And thanks to his preservation of these lost cult films, I’ve gotten to see Aroused 1966, and Rent A Girl, Satan in High Heels (1962) and so much more!
I still wish he should commission Think Geek to make a Belial plushy. If they don’t I’m just going have to run myself over to Michael’s craft store and design my own friggin puppet already… I think Belial is cute as hell. So many people agree it would be a great iconic novelty.
In closing, special thanks to you Frank. You’re a lovely, eccentrically personable guy-It’s been so wonderful to hear your thoughts on Belial’s inception. I’m with you. I never thought he looked like a monster, even with his mouth open. That’s the point right… the way we ‘otherize’ those who are different. Grotesque is in the eye of the beholder. Look how pin heads are all the rage again since American Horror StoryAsylum so successfully paid it’s endearing and intensely nuanced homage to Schlitze from Tod Browning’sFreaks(1932)
A Special Happy Valentine’s Day To Frank Henenlotter, to Belial, to brother & sisterhood and to all of you genre fans, freaks and all of us ‘others’- Love Joey (Your MonsterGirl)
Produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Jules Dassin, the film is a strikingly potent Prison Noir Masterpiece. Brute Force (1947) is one of my all time favorite films that transcends genre labeling. The entire cast performs the piece like a well oiled Tanker filled with nitro glycerine speeding out of control. With a collection of characters pushed to the brink of fury, dominated by a sadist who reigns over the social institution and the beautiful women who wait for the men who are never coming home.
Richard Brooks wrote the screenplay and William H Daniel’s was responsible for the explosive cinematography that grips you by the throat. With an equally compelling score by the master composer Miklós Rózsa.
Starring Burt Lancaster is Joe Collins, Hume Cronyn is the savage and psychopathic Captain Munsey, Charles Bickford is Gallagher, Yvonne De Carlo is Gina Ferrara, Ann Blyth plays Ruth, Ella Raines is Cora Lister, Anita Colby is Flossie, Sam Levene is Louie Miller #7033, Jeff Corey plays the rat ‘Freshman’ Stack, John Hoyt plays Spencer, Jack Overman is Kid Coy, Sir Lancelot is Calypso and Jay C Flippen is Hodges the guard.
I couldn’t resist mashing up in the mixing bowl, this brutal bit of noir with my tough as satin nails ‘The Simple Truth’ somehow the confluence of visual collective upheaval and raw honesty of my song… a track off my debut album ‘Island’
for the international label Kalinkaland Records, just seemed to feel right to me… I hope you enjoy this little homage. Here’s MonsterGirl asJo Gabriel lending her music to a fire storming montage of images from Brute Force–
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” — Edgar Allan Poe
‘Leave Your Faith, Fear, and Sanity at the Water’s Edge – Jo Gabriel
As quoted in W. Scott Poole professor of history at Charleston South Carolina University’s remarkable book Monsters In America he opens his chapter MONSTROUS BEGINNINGS with “There are terrible creatures, ghosts, in the very air of America.” -D.H. Lawrence
Taken from his chapter The Bloody Chords of Memory, which I think is very appropriate for this discussion, Poole states that, “it would be too simplistic to view monster tales as simple narratives in service of American violence. The monster is a many-headed creature, and narratives about it in America are highly complex. Richard Kearney describes the appearance of a monster in a narrative, in a dream, or in sensory experience ‘as a signal of borderline experiences and unattainable excess.’
In 1971 two films were released with a sort of queasy verisimilitude, using a monochromatic color scheme and protracted themes of insanity, fanaticism and self-annihilation. One drawing more of its flicker from the time of cult murders by religious fanatics, and an anti-establishment repudiation reflected in the cult fringe film. The Night God Screamed utilizes as its anti-hero the motorcycle gang who hates ‘citizenship’ and phony institutionalized prophets. These outliers are dirty, rebelliously dangerous hippies, who are hyped up and deluded into following a charismatic cult leader, a Neanderthal named Billy Joe Harlan performed with a Shakespearean griminess by Michael Sugich.
Michael Sugich as the maniacal Mansoneseque cult leader Billy Joe.
He’s quite a Mansonesque figure with his malefic unibrow. This offering aptly called The Night God Screamed, even boasts a scene where the cult actually crucifies the clean-cut minister Willis, a man of the tradition gospel played by Alex Nicol. They essentially nail him to his own pridefully giant wooden phallic cross. Leaving his wife Fanny (Jeanne Crain) to scramble in the darkened halls, conflicted as to whether to try and help her husband or save herself from the cult’s ferocious blood lust, driving her into a numb moral and cognitive stasis of unresponsiveness, reason, and human connection. I will talk about this film in Part II.
the beautiful Jeanne Crain.
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) is a film that hints at a post-modern Americana Gothicism permeated by a rustic folksy style of vampirism, with its small town coteries, paranoia, and the archetypal hysterical woman in a sustained level of distress and adrift on a sea of inner monologues and miasma of fear. I’ll begin in Part I with my much-loved classic horror…
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death 1971, is not only the far better film but probably unintentionally the more iconic 70s trope for what was so extraordinary about the special clutch of horror films that were birthed in the 70s epoch.
JOEL METZGERÂ is the writer behind television’s The Dead Zone 2002, offering several of his works to Xena: Warrior Princess and contributions to the re-visioned TheOuter Limits series (1996) and Sliders 1999. He’s a writer, director, producer, actor, cinematographer,editor as well as work in animation.
Now Metzger introduces his new Futuristic Neo-Noir story available for download: Inhabited by riveting characters and the fantastic actors who lend their voices to the project.
CLONES, ROTARY PARTICLE CANNONS AND BINARY DISEASE!
In Metzger’s own words, ” This audio journey of the imagination uses state of the art design to submerge the listener in the strange world of ‘The Hothouse’- a glass -walled quaratine that seals in all of downtown L.A.Inside this urban bubble, with the normal world peering in, is a gritty, violent hyper-capitalist techno jungle-equal parts George Orwell’s 1984 and Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City’ The listener follows ‘Bruiser’ (voice of Paul Nobrega) as he digs up the city’s underbelly in classic Film Noir detective style. Life is cheap in the Houthouse… but dull it ain’t.”
Chapter One opens with Miss Power Tools giving a drilling lap dance to Bruiser who is duct taped inside a warehouse called the Hothouse.
The music is trypnotic psychedelic surf guitars. ‘Hothouse Bruiser‘ is a tribute to the golden age of radio crime serials.
The sounds of water dripping slowing on a cold stone warehouse floor or perhaps the ticking from a clock. The mood is dark and dank. It’s got the feel of Sci-Fi Noir. Let’s not invoke Blade Runner just yet, let Metzger’s new project evolve on it’s own.
BRUISER-“If you’re hearing my voice right now I’m already dead. What year it is for you I don’t know"¦you ah, you just happened to be the one, the unlucky one who found a shoe box shoved way in the back of a shit hole basement. there was a little voice recorder and you decided to hit play.”
And now you might be as dead as me"¦”
We still hear the ticking, dripping sound and distant police sirens in the background then lock unlatching from a heavy iron door or the release of the safety catch on a gun, a sultry femme fatale named Miss Power Tools starts to coax Bruiser.
MISS POWER TOOLS-“Wake up gorgeous you’re a tall drink of something aren’t you, I almost ran out of duct tape"¦ now come on, don’t be mad"¦ give you a little lap dance. Now let’s play a game. You tell me what you were doing in my warehouse and if I like the answer I won’t perform any amateur lobotomies.”
We hear a power drill become engaged as the gears whir, spin and grind waiting to bore a hole in Bruiser’s skull.
BRUISER-“Everything I’m gonna tell you, happened to me inside The Hothouse. That’s what they used to call the Quarantine. Now How I managed to get myself duct taped to a chair for a lap dance and a root canal, let’s just say I’m a snoop"¦.”
She’s got the sass of noir’s Marie WindsorHe’s got the ghoulish charm of Richard Widmark in Kiss of DeathHe’s got the stoic good looks of Howard Duff
He’s got the serpentine smile of Timothy Carey
There’s always a Man Upstairs in Noir
You can hear the entire series on the free phone app or the iPhone and Android platforms. It’s also available on CD sets through the website. I can’t wait to hear what’s in store for Bruiser and the rest of the characters in this gripping new series by Joel Metzger. Stay tuned….
Written by Gary Crutcher who gave us Stanley (1972) the man loves snakes, and Featuring the song-“Shadows”
Performed by The Electric Prunes
Experimental psychedelic group of the late 60s. The Electric Prunes had a hit in 1966 “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” also recognized for the song “Kyrie Eleison,” featured on the soundtrack of Easy Rider.
I keep coming across these great obscure creepy shockers from the 1960s. Often starring actors like Tab Hunter and Susan Strasberg. This bizarre theatre of lunacy was directed by Gunnar HellströmÂ
The Name of the Game is Kill! is a nice contribution to the psychotronic -cult-cinema genre, just because of the hostility, the great casting and the psychedelic music alone.
I love Collin Wilcox, I think she is one of the most underrated character actresses, so it’s nice to see her here with Tisha Sterling and Ms Strasberg doing what she does best, playing a quiet, deeply composed box of kindling with layers and layers of mood and intuitive style.
Jack Lordof Hawaii Five -O fame plays a stranger, a Hungarian traveler named Symcha Lipa (Sim) who is passing through an isolated town and hooks up with the peculiar Terry family run by matriarch and patriarch Father and Mother Terry, the androgynous T.C Jones (you remember Nurse Betty in AlfredHitchcock Hour’s An Unlocked Window she/he was also in 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt 1964 as Henry.)
The girls invite Sim to their home for some hospitality. Mother Terry lives with her three beautiful daughters and a menagerie of poisonous snakes and tarantulas.Mickey is friendly and welcoming but the other two sisters exude a malicious venom themselves. When Sim almost dies, he winds up in the hospital being warned by local Sheriff Fred Kendall played by Mort Mills not to get involved with the Terry family. Of course Sim doesn’t listen…
The Name of the Game is MonsterGirl finding you delicious goodies to feast your eyes on.
Directed by Kurt Neumann (The Fly 1958)and starring Johanna Matz as Eve Ullmann a young girl who answers an advertisement for international models, whose fashion shows are just fronts for men to buy what they ‘like.’
What unfolds is the dark underbelly of international white slave trafficking. The film was shot on location in Hollywood but created as the playground of Rio De Janeiro.
Scott Brady is Richard Lanning, a guy who works for Jaime Coltos a rich Brazilian mine owner (Raymond Burr) Jaime invites Richard to his country estate for a little romp, but one of the new ‘models’ Eve isn’t playing the game, and breaks a bottle over his head when he tries to get ‘friendly.’ Once Eve finds out the real operation she works for, she begins to make trouble. Also starring Ingrid Stenn ( Bewildered Youth 1957) as Connie Voorhees.
Also co-starring Gisela Fackeldey as Mme. Lansowa, Katharina Mayberg as Felicia, Erica Beer as Elise LeFevre, Hanita Hallan as Lena, Gert Fröbe as Lobos.
