My second-favorite, unintentionally funny, sci-fi horror western of all time is "The Beast of Hollow Mountain" (1956), starring long-time MooT fave Patricia Medina as Sarita, the sultry love-interest of an ex-pat American cowpoke, Jimmy Ryan (Guy Madison).

The story (written by Willis O'Brien, the man who designed and animated the original "King Kong") concerns Ryan's discovery that the cattle that keep goin' missing from his Mexican ranch are actually hors d'oeuvres for a local T Rex (actually, a cranky Allosaurus).

Turns out the surly dino shacks up inside a hollow mountain (aptly named Hollow Mountain), and local legend has it that the creature emerges only during times of drought to forage for water, a few tons of steak tartar, and unlucky Mexicans. Is this where the term "peasant food" comes from?

Holy Human Chalupas, Batman!

To make matters worse, the village has been set up right next to a treacherous swamp, said to be cursed and full of deadly pools of quicksand, from which no one dumb enough to enter ever returns. Someone obviously missed the real estate seminar on location, location, location!

Sound like the cinematic equivalent of a hot, steaming cow-pie?

You might think so, but I encourage all MooT followers to give "Beast" a chance, It's not that bad, but is cheesy enough to inspire the full MST3K treatment.

Hell, it was filmed in "Nassour Regiscope." So, it's got that going for it. Now, if only I knew who Nassour Regiscope was.

Regiscope was actually a fancy name for replacement animation, essentially animation created by filming multiple, rigid models instead of one super-articulated puppet.

In this case, the models were all hollow clay figurines (fired in a kiln just like the kind you may have used in elementary school, if you went to elementary school before the Eighties), sculpted in various poses and painted to match a larger version, as well as a rubber suit some actor wore if closeups were needed.

I wonder if Art Clokey saw this, and Eureka'd "Claymation!"

Nassour refers to stop-motion guru Edward Nassour, who co-directed "Beast" with live-action director Ismael Rodríguez. It was he who supervised the painstaking process of shooting some 20 different clay miniatures of the Allosaurus to create the illusion of a running and jumping monster (these apparently sold for $20,000 just last month). Many scenes in "Beast" are combos of traditional stop-action and Regiscope footage of the clay minis. The result is a monster that looks like it's doing "The Jerk" — when it's not pulling a muscle, that is. Makes me wish story writer O'Brien had had more to do with animating the beast, since he did a far better job with the creature in "The Black Scorpion" (1957).

Early on, Nassour did try to lure investors by describing Regiscope as a "computer-controlled" process whereby "actuating impulses" were fed to a mechanical figure, thus "bringing it to life for the cameras." (So that's how they coaxed a performances out of Tab Hunter!) This *was* Hollywood, remember, and that was probably the 380th lie told in that town at a particular quarter-second during the Spring of '56.

"The Beast of Hollow Mountain" is actually a quite charming and colorful example of post-Korean War kiddie matinee fodder made for undemanding eight-year olds. It packs a lot of cheesy action into just 78 minutes, along with a lot of treacly exposition to get you to care about the characters.

Yet, oddly, it's superior in a dozen ways to the recent "Land of the Lost," mostly because of its way higher cute factor and blazing retro-cool color palette — if you're lucky enough to find a version that's not washed out, that is. The costumes and locations are the stuff widescreen Technicolor was made for, but most of the versions available on the Internet are dogged by poor focus and exaggerated color shifts caused by sloppy conversions. The original had its problems in both areas as well, since the composite process used was not sophisticated, and merging live and process shots in color — in CinemaScope no less — required extra care, which its budget and schedule wouldn't allow.

"Beast" has a good-natured self-awareness at its core, under the candy coating so to speak, that reminds me of the unpretentiously lovable "Son of Godzilla."

And every so often, scene after scene sans a beast, the camera pulls back and shows ... the mountain!

Hey, maybe this thing was supposed to be called "Mountain of the Hollow Beast"?

Madison — our hero — is as charismatic a piece of man-cake as you'll find in Fifties B's. Along with the voloptuous Medina, he carries this thing as "story" — for what that's worth.

Okay, so he does look a little *too* handsome and campy-debonair in his brightly colored Roy Rogers shirts. Just how did he recruit the troupe of muscular cow-hunks that comprise his fun-lovin', ass-slappin' team of ranch-hands? There's not a Wishbone, soup-in-the-beard-type in the lot. They all look like varnished extras in a Cyd Charisse number in an Old West musical.

Amazingly, Madison's out-ponced on "Beast's" virtual cock-walk by a band of dandy Mexican Vaqueros, whose elegant charro suits, hallucinatorily bright silk neckerchiefs, and exquisitely detailed sombreros evoke regalia designed during an all-night tequila jag with Mr. Blackwell and Liberace. (Maybe they shoulda called it "Brokeback Mountain" based on all the male plumage on display.)

And the camera pans the desolation of the landscape, revealing ... the mountain!

Medina is a walking dream that mixes Jane Russell with Faith Domerogue. I do so like my English-Spanish spitfires in bullet bras. More notable, though, is the fact that her character has more resourcefulness and independence than most period monster-movie eye candy we're used to. She's resilient, sassy, brassy, and tough. When she falls and twists her ankle when running from the beast (a given occurrence), she snarls at the beast. She's no whiner! No stock screaming for her.

Plus she calls Ryan "Señor Cheemy." How cute is that?

And then the shot widens, and we see ... "The Mountain."

The rather formulaic plot furnishes a vintage red herring in the form of evil Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega), a rival rancher-racketeer who is engaged to Medina. The jealous and possessive Rios has an ... ahem, a beef ... with Ryan over the fact that his wife-to-be is in deep smit with the fancy-pantsed gringo. Ryan, whose competitive male dander is instantly up, accuses Rios of poaching his cows. The two adversaries hitch up their chaps and snarl at each other, in a bizarre dueling male camel-toe moment that never explodes into proper Western fisticuffs.

Did I mention that there's an annoying brat too? I mean really annoying. I mean he makes Short Round from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" seem like a well-behaved delight to be around.

Panchito is his name (I told you he was little). He's the son of the village drunk, Pancho, who ventures into the swamp and is never seen again. When you get a dose of the whiny Panchito, you'll chalk up his Dad's disappearance as suicide. Damn! There goes the comic relief.

They search high and low for Pancho (I've already signed Artie Lange for the part in the remake), which brings them to the edge of the swamp. The camera lingers on all that's left of him, his sombrero, floating atop a pool of quicksand, then tilts up to show ... the mountain!

The Jurassic rustler — who doesn't appear on screen until the film's final 20 minutes — has the longest, reddest tongue I've ever seen on film (except for footage of KISS in concert). Did it swallow a live octopus? But that's not the fakest-looking aspect of what is a pretty striking stop-motion creation (you must consider that the great Ray Harryhausen didn't have a hand in the production). That award goes to the obvious painted rubber boot feet used by an actor in an Allosaurus costume for certain shots.

Oddly, those goofy feet are the focus of numerous closeups — it's one of the few times the production values really veer into the cheesy Godzilla-Gumby end of the rubber creature scale. In those herky-jerky moments, I feel like we're watching a Groinpullasaurus with back spasms doing the Macarena.

The SFX team of Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt ("Kronos" and "Atomic Submarine") aren't close to being in Harryhausen's league, but they give us a serviceable if unsophisticated monstrosity most of the time. If you're in the 3rd grade, that is.

I do love this beast of the empty hillock regardless of all of my sarcastic comments. And I think it's a boy, actually. A young monster, just like the beast in "Cloverfield." He's just so mischievous. He's feisty. He causes a cattle stampede (actually, speeding up the camera does) — to, what, tenderize his meal? And each cow he catches is devoured with uncommon joy. He (thankfully) terrorizes little Panchito for shits and giggles. Smelling a trap, he clumsily moonwalks backwards out of a some swamp goo. He just doesn't like the feeling of mud between his toes.

When Sarita and Panchito hole up in a house, he runs around it woo-wooing like a dopey dervish before sticking his snout through the roof — just to drive them batty, I think. He slides down a dirt embankment on his prodigious butt and chases after a horse. He fights like a mental patient. Through it all he wiggles that tongue crazily and brays like a cross between a cougar and a hyena.

Turns out it's the shortest reign of terror of any movie beast ever, clocking in at around 14 minutes.

"TBoHM" certainly inspired Harryhausen's "The Valley of Gwangi" (1969), which turns out to be my favorite — and perhaps the best — Western monster movie ever made (and the full realization of O'Brien's tale). D'ya think Gila Golan, "Gwangi's" version of Sarita as I call her, has something to do with that?

Best line? When Ryan opines "You know, I've always believed that sombreros were the goofiest-looking hats ever invented."

Watch "Beast" here, in its entirety, as it resides in the public domain.

In the meantime, a few more pix of funky cool Medina might help explain my gushing ...

That hunk of man up there with Patty is Lex Barker; the still is from "Duel on the Mississippi" (1955), in which she played a man-eater named Lili Scarlet.

And where was this hot tamale born? Why, where else but Liverpool, England!

P.S. Patty turned 90 this past July.

No! Not Patrick O'Neal!

I mean Bibi Andersson!

Ignore that human 2 by 4 O'Neal. I cheered when Gary Busey shot him in "Under Seige."

I was too lazy to Photoshop him out and me in of some of these production stills. What a wanker! (Say it like David St. Hubbins.)

Time for a routine combo photo-post/movie review devoted to that lost, luminous orchid of Sixties and Seventies cinema, Mimsy Farmer.

Mimsy, if you didn't know, perpetrated one of the great Hollywood-to-Europe actress migrations of all time, second only perhaps to Jean Seberg, who maybe made the mistake of trying to come back.

She emerged from the brittle chrysalis of Ivory-soaped All-American Girldom in "Spencer's Mountain," wherein she subversively inflamed the bumpkin loins of James MacArthur. In "Riot on Sunset Strip," her elegantly stoned virgin-on-acid interpretive dance defined what happened to your brain on LSD circa '67. Finally, my early Mimsy trilogy culminates with "The Wild Racers," in which her U.S. career effectively ends, with obligatory nuzzling with rent-a-heartthrob Fabian. Truth be told, I should include "Hots Rod To Hell" as well, but I don't know if "early Mimsy quadrology" is proper to say.

Cut to 1969, when she became the "Exotic American" (a la Seberg) in a tremendous run of so-called Eurogrind films (mostly Italian giallos, including some Argentos) until 1988 or so. On the way, she shattered the myth of the Midwestern prude, teaching the established Continental vixenry a thing or two about projecting the sweet duality of knowing sexuality and seeming innocence.

The first two photos are capped from Barbet Schroeder's "More" (1969) and the rest are production stills from George Lautner's criminally rare "Road to Salina" (1970).

The opiated succubus Mimsy portrayed in "More" was career-making (yet I know that most of my readers have never even heard of her). But, in "Road to Salina," a mind-bending little French psychedelic, she really shows the fierce acting chops that make her one of my favorite "B" actresses. And on the big screen there has been few translucently gorgeous blondes who blended cooly enigmatic and warmly erotic so naturally as she does as Salina's dirty bad girl "Billie." As Roger Ebert once wrote ...

She looks a little like Jean Seberg, has a marvelously sculptured face and deserves to get some of those Mia Farrow roles ... [and she] has the best mouth since Joey Heatherton."

Author, author! I agree with Roger on every count!

The plot? Long story short, a drifter is mistaken for (and might actually be) a desert gas station/restaurant owner's long-lost son. He plays along, eventually seducing the woman's daughter (who might be his sister). Can you imagine a more doomed tale of boy meets girl? I can't.

Co-starring with Robert Walker, Jr., Mimsy raises the femme fatale stakes to an entirely new level here.

BTW, Walker, the son of RW, Sr. and the stunning Jennifer Jones, is one of my favorite mod-creeps as well, a type he played regularly in his post-"Ensign Pulver" days; he's probably best-known as the annoying adolescent fucktard "Charlie X" in "Star Trek TOS."

"Salina" is one of the most intriguingly cast psychological thrillers cum murder mysteries of the period, an anamorphically shot color opus that I cannot believe has NEVER seen a DVD release. It's available on DVD-R, however, from the usual MooT outlets. Its amped-up Sixties-in-transit vibe mixes a spaghetti western color palette, desert heat-blur, psychedelia, imagistic notions of free love, incest, insanity, and murder. The visuals (thanks to cinematographer Maurice Fellous) and plotting (Lautner, Jack Miller, Pascal Jardin — working from a novel by Maurice Curry) connive to produce something almost noirish at times, beautifully assembled in a way similar to Ivan Passer's "Cutter and Bone."

Most of the sounds accompanying such divine sights are from a band called Clinic, who must have had a love affair with the Hammond organ since the sound of a B3 pounded Jon Lordishly pervades the score. Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson also provides a song, as does French crooner Christophe, who sings over an eerie female choir's warbling on the haunting Morriconesque prog-rock nugget "Sunny Road to Salina."

Interestingly, this off-beat tale is set in Mexico, but Frenchman Lautner shot the thing in the Canary Islands. A beautiful spot to be sure, where desert, mountains, and ocean closely coexist with a sense of splendid desolation that Lautner's camera positively celebrates. The scenery harkens back to the Morocco of "More," a wonderful canvas for Mimsy.

So ... what did I mean about that cast? Well, for starters Forties Love Goddess Rita Hayworth plays the crazy old roadhouse matron (Mara), in her second-to-last role on the cusp of her real-life descent into Alzheimer's. She comes off as an amazingly sexy crone at age 52. Ghost-ventroloquizing Gilda from somewhere within that strange ole harridan's Spanish chassis gave me cause for pause and a few double-takes. I'm considering voting her a Seminal Cinema Cougar Award. Mara, Mara, off the wall. Indeed.

Proto-misfit Walker plays the spindly hipster-doofus Jonas, a filthy, rain-drenched wanderer that Hayworth mistakes for her son Rocky, who left home four years before. She welcomes him back with open arms. He goes along with it because he's hungry, dirty, broke, and, well, a sympathetic sort.

Jonas quickly gets used to three squares and slowly assumes Rocky’s role, and slowly, his identity. All he has to do is pump some gas and pitch in around the place.

At first, he writes off Mara's belief that he's Rocky as pure delusion, but when Warren, Mara’s old friend (Ed Begley, Sr., in his last role) arrives for a visit, he too acts as if Jonas were Rocky. Creepy, man. Not the film. I mean the fact that this thing features both Ed Begley, Sr. (not Jr.) and Robert Walker, Jr. (not Sr.) Weird.

All kidding aside, Jonas starts getting creeped out. And note that we're learning all of this through constant voice-overs by Walker, who is recalling the events after they happened.

Did I mention that Walker's incredibly angular features and impossibly blue eyes as photographed here make it difficult to imagine any other actor looking more intense.

Next, Mara's blonde spitfire daughter Billie (Mims) turns up. Jonas figures that the jig is up, but, again to his surprise even Billie greets him as her brother. And then we find out she's not only a nymphomaniac, but she's up for a little incest too. Walker, needless to say, is stunned, but not stupid, so he opts in on the sisterly offer of clockwork mufky-fufky. Cue the glorious zoom-happy camera-work that follows the curvature of desert sand dunes and wild-eyed Mimsy's undulating curvature with equal intensity. The sex-on-the-beach scenes are, in a word, chemical.

Walker, who at the time seemed like a frail, hollow-cheeked Poe-haired replica of his Dad (Bruno in "Strangers on A Train"), tells the story as a series of flashbacks (too many perhaps) in which outdoor showering, skinny-dipping, flashing of Seventies superbushes (both male and female), and drug-fueled love-making mix (yes, my opposable thumbs are up) — all drenched in a fuzzy existential sense of nothing you can quite put your finger on going on — until Jonas decides to find out what happened to the real Rocky. Major spoilage available here.

If I must spoil one thing, it's one of the many flashbacks ... we actually get to see Mimsy in one of Jonas' flashbacks having a flashback in which she remembers a previous flashback. Just now, about two million of my brain cells popped like flash bulbs.

The creepiness factor — heightened by the usual devices ... rain beating on roofs and against glass, strange expressions, creaking-door noises — meshes well with Jonas' attempts to unravel the mystery. And comic relief comes in one massive dose, the scene where Mara and Warren smoke some pot and cut a rug (I think it's the frug they're doing). The sequence is as compellingly watchable as a car accident happening in real time. I defy your eyes to avert. And it came before this li'l nugget.

Oh, the pix!


Mimsy hasn't worked in 20 years to my knowledge, and according to various blogs is reportedly retired and living in France. I do know her daughter, Aisha Cerami, is a well-known model and actress in Italy. If anyone has more information, please comment.

I'll close with a few clips. BTW, Lautner's "Sunny Road to Salina" (the second clip), which was the movie soundtrack's main theme, was also used by Quentin Tarantino in "Kill Bill, Vol. 2."

And so begins another Halloween Week at Man Out of Time ... this year, we begin with a small photo-spotlight on one of my favorite Euroshockers ... and one of the most beautifully lucid and fiercely erotic black-and-white B-ish horror films of the Sixties that, as usual, you might never have heard of.



Here's a little taste of Miss Death's stage show ... she really puts the rack in arachnid!



If you haven't seen DDZ, you're really missing something. And if the MooT's opinion means anything, this might just be my Fave Franco, nudging out "Venus in Furs" and "Vampyros Lesbos" by the length of one poison-drenched killer fingernail.

The movie is a kinkily cut gem that stands up to repeat viewings.

It features a fluid, well-constructed plot (well, mostly), which is one of the knocks on many of Franco's efforts, especially his post-Sixties stuff. Considering he's made almost 200 films, and was an envelope-pusher on a few levels, straying from conventional narrative from time to time is bound to happen. The strong script here is by Jean-Claude Carriere, co-writer on some of Luis Buñuel's later efforts ("Belle De Jour," "Diary of a Chambermaid," "That Obscure Object of Desire").

And the cinematography is to die for (literally). There's a reason that Orson "What's A Gonk" Welles was a Francophile, and it's Franco's gift for compelling imagery. Just the year before, he served as second unit director on Welles' "Chimes at Midnight."
I see a few PlotCorn kernels have fallen into my lap ... let's pop 'em!

• The opening shot ... Night. A decaying mansion. A cat having a needle inserted into its head, on a tabletop decorated with human skulls. Need I say more? Shot in such way that we just know we're in store for a few slices of Velveeta (that would be the American 50's horror-movie cheese at the center of this thing) served on a slab of fresh barra bread (providing the arty Spanish-French Eurosleaze wrapper).
  
  
• Cut to a close up of serial killer Hans Bergen (Guy Mairesse), who ends up roaming the grounds of the same creepy estate after breaking out of prison. You might be able to guess that he ends up in the same predicament as the cat, on his way to becoming the Igor of the piece — thanks to some ultra-precise tickling of his pituitary by one of the Doc's robot-controlled knitting needles.
  
  
• A more apt title for this movie might be "The Homicidal Daughter of the Diabolical Doctor Z" — hence the Spanish title, "Miss Death." I say that because the doctor himself (Dr. Zimmer, played by Antonio Jiménez Escribano) is killed within the first 15 minutes. It's Z's daughter (Irma Zimmer, played by Mabel Karr, a/k/a Mrs. Fernando Rey) who creates Miss Death (and thereby becomes her as well), consumed with avenging her Dad's demise. As I mentioned, he dies in the first reel — from abject humiliation. Actually, he suffers some sort of seizure during mid-ridicule by a group of "sensible" scientists who assert that his brain-piercing mind-control experiments are the work of a madman.
  
  
• Think Universal Classic Horror meets Nouvelle Vague in terms of visual atmosphere. Marvelous Langian camerawork courtesy of renowned DP Alejandro Ulloa dominates throughout, including some giant-vertiginous-eye shots of spiral staircases from the bottom up that almost induced vertigo as I watched — though I was quite strongly anchored to my Castro Convertible, a worthy boat for sailing such surreal seas. The lensmanship is crowned by a "Lady from Shanghai"-like hall-of-mirrors chase sequence in a deserted theater. Flashes of Feuillade, Whale, and Welles conjoined with bits of Bresson and Franju (and, dare I say it, Fulci) abound.
  
  
  "What death-list of men that shamed my father are you talking about?"
  
  
  
• After Irma fakes her own death (and botches it, resulting in her face being disfigured, which she attempts to correct with a little self-directed surgery that turns her into a poster-child for Botox abuse), she kidnaps sultry go-go dancer Nadja (Blain), tames her with whip and chair, and programs her to seduce and kill each scientist who mocked her dear ole Dad to death. The Teasarama Tempest-vs-Bettie overtones in the taming scene are D-lish. Irma ain't so bad-lookin' herself — if the Mentally Unstable Spanish Rose is your type. She's a Mimsy Farmer blonde complete with cleft chin, a great complement to the icy-beautiful Nadja.
  
  
• Dr. Zed's spider-like (and HUGE) mind-control device, with its whole-body robo-clamps and long head-penetrating needles ... yikes! It's the stuff that little kids the world over imagined what might be behind every dentist's door before that first visit. Of course, all those spidery articulated steel arms that hold "patients" in place for Z's therapeutic brain-skewering requires that it be worked by an appropriately zombified hench-torturer (Bergen). There's a Dr. Who meets Dr. Phibes vibe about the machinery as well.
  
  
  "Dr. Z, Ph.D. in Mad Science and Illegal Psycho-Surgery, at your service."
  
  
  
• Speaking of Dad, even though he exits stage left very quickly, he's great. Escribano resembles Adolfo Celi after a few minutes in a wind tunnel, and wears what look like glacier goggles. Perfect! Makes even Franco's Dr. Orloff look like a piker when it comes to telegraphing menacing dementia at a glance. Orloff was merely *awful* — Dr. Z is whacked outta his skull!
  
  
  
  
  
• Nadja's costumes! Where does she shop and what's the address? Catsuits R Us? The skin-tight one with the strategically placed spider is one thing (does the concept of a giant tarantula purring on her crotch make you sqeamish?), but that mesh body stocking with the neckline that just doesn't stop plunging across and down makes me forget a half-century of marveling at the classic work of Edith Head. How does it stay on?
  
  
• The nightclub where Miss Death does her thing, Club Samovar ... why hasn't anyone actually opened this joint? In the land of fictional night-spots, after Jefty's closes (that would be Dick Widmark's place in "Roadhouse"), I'm gonna wanna hit the Samovar for a night-cap, dance-in-my-lap, knee-slap with a Venus fly-trap from the East (thanks, Boss). Goth-stripping, death's-head-on-a-stick face-masks, making mock-love to androgynous mannequins (that look that kid from last season's "Make Me A Super Model") — it all makes any Swingersian utterance of "This place is dead" an even better in-joke than as-delivered at The Dresden in Favreau's movie. Some might call the entrancing but lethal Nadja's stage show performance art, but I call it just another noirish Saturday night in my fantasy Bierstube where "todt-bei-ecstasy" is an inviting possibility. Can anyone say "Eight Legs to Love You With" — or is that "Eight Arms to Kill You"? Call such slay-happy bitch-goddesses what you will ... Spider Women, Femme Fatales, Succubi, Monstrous Feminines. They are the pure weapon of Franco's direct attack on the male psyche's "What a Way to Go!" and not-so-deeply encoded wish to die at the hand of a beautiful woman, "in the act" as it were.
  
  
• The train-in-the-tunnel stalk-and-kill sequence can be watched in standalone mode for the sheer joy of students of gothic shadow-play everywhere. Just watch the bands of light slicing Blain's face. Don't worry, the visuals culminate with a victim's head smashed through a window and his body thrown from the train.
  
  
• Blain, who reminds me of Swedish sexport Janet Agren (same facial bone structure), but with a sleeker undercarriage reminiscent of a young Hildegard Knef, is simply gorgeous. That she turns in a performance that ranks way up there on the list of the best hypnotized seductress-killers ever is a bonus. Nadja surely must be one of the first sexy-pretty unwilling-but-good-at-it executioners a la "La Femme Nikita" seen on celluloid. So good that she makes me wonder what curare licked offa her French manicure tastes like — instant death by respiratory paralysis be damned!
  
  
• Watch for Franco's cameo as an amusing police inspector.
  
  
• The long shot of Nadja's fine, firm body-stockinged butt as she lays splayed on her giant spider web. That's a finishing nail Franco hammers squarely into the sweet spot of my cerebral crown molding. She's the best "spider babe" I've watched creepy-crawl 40 times in a row since Joi Lansing in the infamous "Web of Love" Scopitone. And she pins the sexy meter at 11 without the benefit of one stinkin' nude scene. We don' need no stinkin' nude scenes! (Ummm ... unless you think they're integral to the story, that is.)

Regarding the music, the fractured avant garde score — by Daniel White — in which vintage "Carny of Souls" organ shares the soundtrack with cracked jazz and pianny disturbo-flourishes courtesy of someone who could bill himself as Scary Manilow — ain't half-bad either ... if dissonance is your thing. Check out samples here and there ...

And now a few more shots of Estella are in order. The first two are from the film; the third is a fan postcard from the 1960s.

P.S. Franco partially remade this film as "She Killed in Ecstasy" (1971). The remake contained more violence, nudity, and sex — with Soledad Miranda in the role of Miss Death.

P.P.S. Estella died in 1982, at age 52; she shot herself in the head on a beach in the South of France.

I always felt Joan needed regular lubrication. Poor (?) Anthony Newley.

Nadine Tallier, the future Baroness Rothschild, at the Cannes Film Festival, May 9, 1958.

The sign 'Vedettes' marks the row as reserved for movie stars. (Photo by RDA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)

How else to promote a gritty World War II action flick with anti-war overtones than by putting two of the stars in a Playboy shoot featuring a bevy of beauties? Those stars would be Michael Caine and Denholm Elliott.

Even if the flick actually features no women in the cast, and only a few local femmes as extras in the background?

That's what was cooked up for the October 1969 issue of the skin mag to promote Robert Aldrich's "Too Late the Hero" (1970).

The pictorial was entitled "War Games," and the teaser featured "Michael Caine, as a battle-weary British soldier, showing that stiff-upper-lip letters home can be pure tommy-rot." War is Hell, indeed.

False pseudo-advertising aside (I think male moviegoers may have expected to see something like the pictorial depicted), real orgies with the locals were reportedly commonplace during the shoot in the swingin' Philippines.

According to a story about Elliott in London's The Telegraph,

Nearly 10 years into her marriage, [second wife] Susan [Robinson] knew Denholm was bisexual when he returned from shooting "Too Late The Hero" (1970) and confessed to having participated in various orgies on location with men as well as women, and suggesting she attend a clap clinic for a protective shot ... "just to be on the safe side."

Hardly surprising that, as the film was shot mostly in around Subic Bay, the center of the PI sex trade owing to the proximity of several major U.S. naval installations.

BTW, Elliott is perhaps best known to Younglings as Indiana Jones' friend Marcus Brody in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

( Since the pix are NSFW, you'll have to dive under this cut to see 'em ... )

The least-well-known of the three great performances Julie gave in 1965 ... the other two are "Doctor Zhivago" and "Darling."

And what's with ole dingo-breath gettin' all the chickies? Just a few days ago, he was all over Yvette Mimieux.

(But not method acting it would seem ...)

This month's subject is the 1968 mod-sexy artifact "The Touchables", an enjoyably aimless tale of "girl power" rising (and more) that comes to us from the minds of Beatles album cover artist Brian "Rubber Soul" Freeman (director) and provocative auteur Donald Cammell (co-writer). Ian La Frenais shares script credit with Cammell, since he apparently heavily reworked the original screenplay, which was written by Donald and brother David.

Cammell is best known for writing or lensing other kinky ambients from the period, like Robert Parrish's "Duffy" with Susannah York (1968) and the seminal "Performance" (1970), his directorial debut, starring Mick Jagger, James Fox, and Anita Pallenberg.

Cammell was enthralled by collisions between the worlds of English mobsters and rock stars and hippies, and "The Touchables" is no exception. Through a series of filmically contrived setups, the fashionable and criminal combine, with pop becoming intrinsically tied to dandyism, the rock n' roll lifestyle, and — ultimately — rampant consumerism and organized corruption. Men acting like women and women acting like men is just gravy. High life intersecting low life.

A satire of late Sixties excess — seemingly cued by "The Collector" (1965) and "Three in the Attic" (1968) and perhaps a touchstone for "The Beguiled" (1971), "The King of Comedy" (1982), and "Misery" (1990) — "The Touchables" concerns four groovy but exquisitely bored rich girls who kidnap an arrogant, pain-in-the-ass pop star named Christian (pretty young thing David Anthony, also known as David McBride).

Their motive? Keep him as a pet in an inflatable 80-foot-high PVC pleasure-dome in a remote part of the English countryside (actually, Frencham Pond, Surrey). In this case, pet means sex-slave ... or so we're inclined to think based on the soft-corish posters and promo stills.

The bird-brained idea to snatch a star gets hatched after the nubile quartet is busted for stealing a Michael Caine wax figure that they bring home to dance with, from a cool party at a London wax museum. If things are beginning to sound like a little bit "Casino Royale," "Danger:Diabolik," "The Avengers," and "The Prisoner," then you're receiving the signal clearly.

A friend of the four, Ricki Starr, a butch American wrestler who has incorporated ballet moves into his ass-kicking repertoire, reams out the wispy quartet for this whimsical but utterly pointless exercise in larceny. His reprimand serves only to inspire them, however.

Stealing wax effigies of the famous would seem to be a gateway crime of sorts, since the chicks summarily decide to dress up as nuns to poach an actual human celebrity, the aforementioned Christian — who has a reputation as a love-'em-and-leave-'em womanizer.

Where the concept of lashing him naked to a circular bed cum merry-go-round in the center of a virtual Bell Jar, so they can have their way with him as comeuppance for his insensitive treatment of the fairer sex comes from, I have no clue. But thanks to all the short skirts and cotton unmentionables, I don't seem to care. And neither does the victim.

The girls are actually surprised by the fact that Christian sorta-kinda digs his predicament.

What? I mean ... Wot?

Yes, a veritable rotisserie of experimental sex with four beautiful girls is horrible.

I can't think of any worse punishment than being tied spread-eagle to a rotating bed and having four — count 'em, four — young girls have their highly individual, but all equally exciting, ways with me.

Does the concept of sexual harrassment even cross my mind? (No.)

More honest is my retort: "Ummm ... thanks very much girls, for ... ahem, having me."

But tire of it, Christian does, so he decides to escape the clutches of these liberated libertines by crossing a nearby lake in a rubber dinghy, whereupon one of the girls sinks it with a well-aimed rifle shot. He nearly drowns, but is pulled to safety by another of the girls, who plants "the kiss of life" on him. Notable in this scene is the use of The Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" as fleeing-in-a-dinghy music.

So much of "The Touchables" is in the visuals for visuals sake category of lysergic filmmaking circa late Beatles Time, and I won't deny it captivates as pure, retina-searing collage. Freeman's own web site features uncaptioned film frames from the production, which he describes as a "pop art action comedy." It certainly is viscerally ooglable, but any story is subjugated by the fact that it plays rather like 12 psychedelic vignettes thrashing in search of a point. Does Freeman have something to say about stars and star-fucking? Is the film funny? Is it offensive? Is it sexy? Is it sexist? Is it sexploitation?

In his "blinkered pursuit of the merely photogenic," as another writer has said, Freeman ignores the symbiotic psychology of the caged idol and his idle worshipper-torturers, thereby missing the potential sexual and celebrity-fan politics. Ultimately, the real hiss and pop in this mod odyssey is sacrificed in favor of slick imagery.

As critic David Cairns wrote ...

... genuine Cammellian themes can be discerned amid the rolling panoply of counter-culture references and self-indulgence. ... The Touchables mingles pop art and crime, attempting to capture the essence of the age of Aquarius by pasting together randomly selected images of the day, aiming for surreal juxtaposition rather than coherence. Like Peter Blake, whose masked wrestlers seem to have found their way into this film, Freeman is adept at assembling startling combos, but he has no clue how to weave narrative. The Cammells actually had something to say about the era they were in, about the meeting of art and violence, and the connection between creativity and crime, things which would eventually be said, rather forcefully, in Performance (1970). The La Frenais script, as filmed, is just a succession of quips, quotes, non sequiturs and nonsense, running out of momentum as soon as the kidnapping is performed.

Most people seem to despise the film, pointing to its mod-vacuous sensibilities and superficial "sex as a sixty second commercial for soullessness" point of view. I've never read anything really good about it in film books, reviews, or in blogs, the latter being the place you're more likely to find someone who likes something-anything about even the worst piece of dreck — like me.

Anyway, things go from weird to worse for the bevy of shagadelic beauties when a masked Black wrestler named Black Hood (Paul Baird), compelled to possess the pretty pop star for himself, enters the picture with full-on, latent homosexual freak-flag flying. He is secretly a London gangster called Lilywhite.

If you didn't already realize it by the names dropped so far, this is not the cream of English acting talent we're talking about, right? Nope, not a RADA grad in the lot.

The so-called actors in this celluloid game of Lite-Brite provide little beyond what the shape-shifting, shiny globules in a lava lamp do, floating about rather colorfully and quite randomly. They are little more than distractions that we stare at simply to see what they will do next. Director Freeman does get compelling visual results when he turns them loose and lets them traipse or flit through the Magical Mystery Tour countryside, with its impossibly lemony sun and marmalade skies, or zooms on them blowing bubbles or jumping on trampolines.

However, whenever he has to make a plot point or a character has to deliver a line to advance the narrative (such as it is), the bright blobs lose their luster and become as expressive as a pair of wax lips.

The delicious dollybirds, however, are all worthy of note, and are the reason "The Touchables" is such a guilty pleasure:

• Judy Huxtable ("Sadie") — a ubiquitous Carnaby Street model type who later married British comic icon Peter Cook; she's like a dirtier, sexier version of Jane Asher.
  
• Moon-eyed Kathy Simmonds ("Samson") — the most photogenic, and a serial super-groupie, a girlfriend of Rod Stewart's who later became romantically linked with Harry Nilsson around the time of his "A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night" LP, where she is pictured on the gatefold sleeve.
  
• Monika Ringwald/Marilyn Rickard ("Busbee") — a German glamour gal on her way down the nude modeling ladder, destined to end up as window-dressing on "The Benny Hill Show." She reminds me of a down-and-out Suzy Kendall on smack. Her only lead role was in something called "The Sexplorer."
  
• Esther (Ester) Anderson ("Melanie") — the token exotic (Jamaican) and target for off-color remarks about her color; a former model and photographer in her own right. An Island Records employee, she helped promote the careers of Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley (with whom she had a relationship).

Not suprisingly, Freeman is a former fashion photographer, and all of the shots of the girls are stunning and memorable.

"The Touchables" at its base is another Swingin' London, über-hip sex comedy with no real sex — on camera, anyway.

It's a whimsical "happening" of a film, a celluloid Calder mobile that never stops moving. It's pure pop for then people, a time capsule that captures much of the 1967-70 zeitgeist of the Summer of Love, Swingin' London, and The Sixties at large. I can drum up a few rationalizations that it attacks the commoditization of the very culture that begat it, but why would I want to? That it does what it does, the way it does, and with a surfeit of British nudge-nudge/wink-wink, is good enough for me.

As to production design, the accent is on eye candy. Images spun from pinball machine art, faux fetishism, mod fashions, a Peter Max color palette, plasticine furniture, cellophane and mirrors, Pepperland (some presaging Wonderwall), and other shards of Beatles/Aquarian Age imagery. Cinematographer Alan Pudney manages to render all of it with the high gloss of a Coloroto supplement to the greasy Sunday papers.

Not a bad way to spend 97 minutes of one's life, but as with most happenings, a question invariably crosses one's mind: Why did this particular happening need to, well, happen? And, what's more, what happened?

Well, to answer a question with a question ... with body-snatchers with bodies like these, is the lack of compelling narrative and thematic underpinning dogging this chaotic romp really a problem?

How does it end, you ask? Everyone is so hung up on the "completion thing." Crikey!

Well, the mostly straight white wrestler's gang and the black gay wrestler's gang fight it out.

Christian's manager joins in the fray.

The girls end up empty-handed, and their dome, which was a phallic symbol all along, is deflated by Christian, who runs off to Hollywood. But one of the girls calmly reminds her friends that it can be inflated again, and smiles return to their faces.

That it all goes down to a Traffic meets Procol Harum score, with a theme courtesy of a band named Nirvana (now known as Nirvana U.K.), is a real bonus, since the tune is actually quite good, if a bit heavy on the Hammond (organ). The song, "All of Us," was reputed to have been composed by Steve Winwood, and is a nugget worthy of repeat playings. Hey! Andrew Loog Oldham? Do you hear me? I fully expect to hear it on an upcoming installment of your Underground Garage show on Sirius Satellite Radio. It's that good.









( Go under this cut for more lobby cards and stills ... )

And Martin Klasch comes along and makes our urge to see it even more urgent with these four WTF? GIF animations from the flick.

Got trailers and clips? You bet!

I know, I know. I shoulda cropped Inger Stevens out of it.

This time it's Constance Dowling ...

And the mechanical masher is "GOG" ... or is it "MAGOG?" I dunno ... all horny robots look alike to me. And with those Biblical names, fruitfulness and multiplication are sure to be involved.

The tagline of the celluloid curiousity in which Dowling finds herself the object of robot lust promises so much: "Built to serve man ... It could think a thousand times faster! Move a thousand times faster! Kill a thousand times faster ... Then suddenly it became a Frankenstein of Steel!" They apparently left out "Paw a thousand times more insensitively!"

Owing to a talky script, the only riveting things about this Herbert L. Strock 15-day stock-footage special are the rivets holding the tinplate "rowbuts" together. And so too the rivets that embellish the retro-nifty Gog Font used in the title credits.

"Gog" (1954) is an Ivan "Magnetic Monster" Tors production that concerns the goings-on at a secret desert base during the Cold War. Let's call it Area 50 and a half.

Aside from the subtle-as-an-incoming-ICBM sub-themes of Cold War tension and techno-paranoia, we get to see what a film shot in 3D looks like in 2D.

The producers opted out of releasing the picture in "Gog-o-Vision" when they realized the extra-D gimmick was all but over in the minds of the movie-going public.

Truth be told, the thing might be missing more than just one dimension. I mean it's just a little flat. And, I suppose, that's where Dowling comes in, at least on paper (ah, that would be the script).

But don't get your hopes up that you're gonna get hopped up on some vintage Fifties bullet-bra cheesecake — "Gog" might be set during the prime time of "The Space Race" between the U.S. and Russia, but that's as racy as things get. Dowling is too prim and wooden to muster any real sexual tension, especially gusseted in a jumpsuit that appears to have a pair of adult underpants sewn into it. Into which, I might add, she may have made a deposit during filming, or so it appears. She just looks so damned uncomfortable walking away from the camera. Even more oddly, they have in her cha-cha heels with white socks to boot! I won't mention the yellow armbands if you won't.

The former Goldwyn Girl was about to become Mrs. Tors at the time, so I assume that nailing Ivan played into her nailing the part.

This thing might have fared better with the likes of a Mara Corday or a Barbara Rush in the role, someone with a little oomph personality-wise and a tad more pneumatic. A gal who could put more sass in her sashaying to the far-out Harry Sükman score. And, yes, that is Harry's real name; that umlaut commands you to pronounce it "Sook-man." (More about the music is here.)

Oddest sequence? An overlong Mengele-grade freezing and thawing experiment performed on a cute li'l chimp, which segues into the death-scene of a bigger chimp, Dr. Hubertus (Michael Fox), who finds himself trapped in the freezing chamber by an unknown person ... or force. Wooooooooooooo. The chamber even has windshield wipers on the windows, inspiring some vintage Crow T. Robotisms ... "Hey, who's driving this secret underground base anyway?"

Best line of lofty dialogue: "Every punched hole is a thought" — a reference to the computer punch cards used in the base's supercomputer. Hey, that's deep. Now, let's get back to torturing that helpless monkey!

Set design is as expected for Eisenhower-era sci-fi. There are a lot of beakers and flasks full of colored liquid, bunsen burners burning, banks of lights blinking, dials flicking, and meters measuring. All labeled with Batcavian subtlety and in 48-point Poster Bodoni.

Back then all of those visuals meant science and math was going on. But make no mistake, this was American science and math, and we'd be damned if we'd let those damn dirty Commies steal it!

Excuse me. I got a little worked up there.

The scientists are all caricatures. Officious Operation Paper Clip Nazis with Van Dykes, pipes, and slide rules whose accents are so thick that we are treated to fractured Dutch-sounding outbursts like "Time bext zoim in demzoim down ze hallweg ... harry oop!"

They do occasionally speak clearly enough for some gems to get out. Like "science is never frightening." Tell that to the lab workers who have all their blood forcibly rushed to their heads in the base's giant centrifuge!

The staff seem to be working on a project best described as "Space Stations with Death Rays for Dummies" that has caught the attention of an unnamed "European" power — but you can be double-damn sure the power the moviemakers wanted you to think of was the USSR. Enemy numero uno since 1945.

The fun begins when two eggheads at the installation are killed, and the Feds summon undercover government man David Sheppard to investigate. Shep is played by the likeable, but underwhelming Richard Egan, an actor who always seemed on the brink of bigger things but never broke through.

The wily, practical Sheppard is up to the task, though he's a little too easily distracted by the presence of one Joanne Merritt (Dowling), and consistently arrives too late to save anyone.

Miss Merritt is project director Dr. Van Ness's (Herbert Marshall) assistant, but turns out to be a plant. And I don't mean as in turnip, which I equate her acting chops to, but an undercover agent working for the government, assigned to keep an eye on things.

Sheppard and Merritt are as puzzled as the rest of the staff by a series of seemingly inexplicable events: equipment suddenly malfunctioning with lethal results ... a mysterious flying wing endlessly circling the base ... the dialogue so relentlessly rehearsed just minutes before not ringing true at all when the rented cameras start rolling.

Not until he enlists the help of NOVAC (no, not James Franciscus; I mean a Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex, does Sheppard start to put two and two together. There's that arithmetic again.

It seems that the omnipotent NOVAC was offline during one of the "accidents," during which time the computer's operators can't account for the whereabouts of robots GOG and MAGOG, always under the computer's infallible control. (Insider's Note: they were really under the control of two SAG-card-carrying midgets, a la R2D2.)

Piece of paranoid dreck?

Pseudo-scientific stink piece?

Prescient inspiration for HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Wildfire in "The Andromeda Strain"?

Hollywood's first techno-thriller?

It's all that and strangely less.

But you decide.

You can go ga-ga over "Gog" at Guba right here; a short clip follows, just for a taste ...

A pre-"All in the Family" Sally was imminently watchable as a sexy but cretinous nubile who gets caught up in the violence and blood-letting of the awesome McQueen-MacGraw vehicle that is still one of the most compelling gangster-and-gun-moll tales ever.

Sexy but cretinous?

Yeah, I typed it, and it's as hot a notion now as it was then.

It confirmed Peckinpah's rep with the feminists as a sexist clod, but when it's all said and done you can't beat an idiot-nympho when you haven't gotten any strange in a while — or never.

Bimbo, slut, ditz, floozy, poster-dolt for Peck's misogynistic tendencies — call it what you will — but, in the movies, a hot seventies bad girl with a low IQ and a fright-wig pussy trumps a bald-twat twit in sensible shoes with solid SATs every time. Especially one in black panties and a pink top with heapin', heavin' helpings of side cleavage, cleavage with cleavage, all kindsa cleavage.

A video tribute using screen caps and stills is here, and makes all of my points for me ... but none makes those points better than a snippet from the film's pockets-tightening dance scene in which the concepts of dead-sexy and downright stupid cross so wonderfully in my head, as if in some sort of misfiring-neuron light show cum streaking phosphene dream where I see what the olfactory collision of Lemon Up shampoo, Charlie, Virginia Slim breath, dime-store lipstick, a masticated mawful of malted milk balls, beer-mouth, and batter-dipped chicken being fried looks like. Obviously, I've watched this clip through my completely unlazy third eye.



Yep, the tied-up, annoyed-looking guy is Jack Dodson, who played Howard Sprague on "The Andy Griffith Show." In "The Getaway," he plays Harold Clinton, Fran's milquetoast husband. Howard, Harold ... what's the difference?

As you can see, our Gal Sal's more than susceptible to "The Stockholm Syndrome" (I learned that from "Die Hard") as she dances very, very provocatively for the violent sadist that's kidnapped them (played by Al Lettieri) — stage one of her transformation from frustrated-bored hausfrau into ha-ha-ha-hot hostage/lover (or is that hostage-taker lover?).

She looks so goddamned dumb in those cereal bowl headphones and dances like she's got back spasms, but I don't care ... I'm there as they say. I'd eat my way through a 10-pound corn dog or chicken finger or whatever the Hell it is just to end up with my tongue in her mouth (watch the clip, ass!).

It wouldn't be a Peckinpah film without going on to show Lettieri turning Fran into his eager sex slave while making Dodson watch. ("Chicks dig jerks," as Bill Hicks used to sing.)

And then showing Dodson driven to hang himself over his wife's uncommon example of adultery.

And then capping it all off with Steve McQueen punching Sally right in the pout.

The walls have ears ... and arms!

I never missed this guilty pleasure on Channel 9 (WOR-TV, Secaucus, NJ) back in the days before cable and channel niching and balkanization.

British starlets Janet Munro and Jennifer Jayne more than compensate for steel-jawed, spinach-haired Forrest Tucker, whose gruff performance stinks up the Alps. Sgt. O'Rourke in the Land of Ricola indeed!

Click to view larger ...

One of my favorite old movies is Josef von Sternberg's "The Shanghai Gesture" (1941), starring one of my favorite actresses, Gene Tierney, in the role of Victoria Charteris. Every few days for as long as it takes, check out some really big stills (click the image above to enlarge it) from the production.

One of the most beautifully photographed films ever ... and Gene, one of the most beautifully photographed actresses ever. I'm sad to say I don't yet know who shot these exquisite stills.

The constantly simmering pair would marry in June 1954, and divorce six years later. The union produced a son, in 1958 — four years would seem to be the correct baking time for Norwegian-Argentine beefcake, namely Lorenzo "Renegade" Lamas.

Austrian strudel Babs gained my attention as one of "Las Tigresas" in the Mexican spy-fi thriller "Con licencia para matar" (1968) ("Permission to Kill"). (Todd over at Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! says everything there is to say about "Con licencia," so be sure to check his superfine review out.)

Along with fellow Euro-hotties Emily Cranz (as Emily, Agent T001) and Maura Monti (as Diana, Agent T009), Barbara (as Barbara, Agent T002) plays a high-kickin' secret agent a la Emma Peel or Tara King.

Of course, the "Tigresses" all live together, under cover, in a bachelorette pad sorta like Charlie's Angels did some eight years later. As with those Angels, lounging around in sexy little outfits is their No. 1 pastime.

One Tigress is a high-fashion model, one a go-go dancer, and the third a "society woman." But beneath the lip gloss and control-top pantyhose, they're professional killers, expert in the use of a variety of weapons, including swords, bows and arrows, and guns.

A milfy, joke-making housekeeper (Leonorilda Ochoa) watches out for them, and launders their stretchy black cat-suits after each mission. It's a job I would gladly take.

With a beatnik mad scientist named Dr. Klux and a midget go-to henchman leading the villain parade, "Con licencia" is an entertaining by-product of mid-Sixties spy-movie mania (an attempt to cash in on the James Bond craze), but it has enough kinks and quirks to make it memorable. Like a trio of green, scuba-suited Mandroids that prove to be no match for the slinky threesome's karate chops. Not only do they resemble the Martians in "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," they're about as intimidating (read: NOT!). They each have a large "K" (for "Klux") emblazoned (actually rubber-cemented) on their chests — in case they get lost I suppose. "If found, please drop in nearest post-box. No questions asked. Love, Dr. Klux."

Here's a dance sequence from the thing, featuring the iconic Mexican rock outfit Los Rockin' Devils "sampling" Ben E. King's (and Leiber-Stoller's) "Stand By Me" ... I didn't think it was possible to go-go-dance that slowly.

In which the "Norwegian Garbo" serves as a morsel of exotic Swedish eye candy tip-toeing in and out of danger in the Egyptian capital — one of only two reasons to watch this third-rate Universal "Silver Age" mystery if it rolls, popping and hissing, across your unforgiving Plasma HD at 2:40 am on a Unisomless Wednesday.

The other? The dependably diabolical performance of George "The Flying Serpent" Zucco, a devious criminal antiquities dealer who makes Rene Belloq seem merely ill-tempered.

Movie magnate Sam Goldwyn "discovered" Gurie in 1936 (while fluffing the pillows on his couch?), immediately dubbing her "The Siren of the Fjords" (no need to dub her voice, as she was born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, and sounded like it).

What part would Goldwyn's new Norwegian-American beauty play in her Hollywood debut?

Beautiful-deadly Scandinavian spy caught up in Nazi scheming?

Nope.

Luminously blonde ice-skating songbird in cheesy winter musical?

Nope.

I give up!

Gurie's first star-turn was as Kukachin, Chinese princess and daughter of Kubla Khan, in the 1938 production of "The Adventures of Marco Polo."

That Goldwyn! What a zany!