Body Shop, The (1973)

... aka: Anitra
... aka: Doctor Gore
... aka: Shrieks in the Night

Directed by:
J.G. Patterson Jr.

After having worked on several Herschell Gordon Lewis films (as an actor, producer and makeup effects artists), J.G. "Pat" Patterson Jr. was ready to make his very own gore flick. Dr. Don Brandon (played by "America's No. 1 Magician: Don Brandon" aka Mr. Patterson) is a famous plastic surgeon and scientist whose wife Anitra, a beauty pageant winner, prominent pin-up model and "society's darling," has just died in a car accident. Brandon is desperate to uncover the secrets of life, restore his dead wife and create "the perfect mate" in the process. With help from his moaning, groaning, bearded hunchback assistant Gregory (Roy Mehaffey), the two men dig up the wife's grave and bring her body back to their home. It's wrapped in aluminum foil, has electrodes attached to it and is then given a jolt of electricity. When the experiment doesn't work, the head is removed and put on ice and the body is tossed in a vat of acid. Thankfully, some deliverymen drop off a trunk with a "nice, fresh one" inside for them to further experiment further on. Where this came from is anybody's guess.

Now with just a head, Dr. Brandon comes up with the idea of assembling an entire female body using only "perfect" parts he's able to acquire from various young ladies he kills and dismembers. He goes to the beach, drowns a young woman in a bikini, brings her back to the lab and then cuts off her arms and legs with hacksaw to give him the perfect torso. Now needing perfect hands, Brandon goes to a steakhouse to see Bill Hicks and the Reignbeaux perform a dreary country song, followed by a magic act. While he's there, he hypnotizes Ellen (Jeannine Aber), makes her throw a plate of spaghetti in her date's face, drugs her and takes her to his lab, where he removes her hands with a scalpel. When she awakens mid-surgery, he stabs her in the stomach. A blonde secretary (Candy Furr) is up next. She has her arms cut off and her eyeballs yanked out with tongs. Now with all of the necessary parts, Brandon assembles the body, sews it together and electrifies it.

The creation of Anitra (Jenny Driggers), the "perfect woman" (i.e. a dumb blonde with large hooters), is finally realized. Not wanting his blank slate ("...a beautiful newborn child with full maturity") corrupted, Dr. Brandon immediately hypnotizes her and tells her that her only happiness will derive from doing his bidding and doing things to make him happy. Dr. Brandon demands she stay in his castle away from "evil people" and tells Gregory that he doesn't want him in the house any longer because he doesn't want Antira to be around anyone other than him. Brandon teaches Anitra her ABC's, how to drink a glass of water, about perfume and vinegar and how to be affectionate with him. But he's created a monster in the process. Now Anitra thinks she has to "be loved" by every man she comes across. When she hugs Gregory ("A man!"), the mad doctor goes into a jealous rage. He throws chemicals in his face, sinks an axe into his back and then tosses him in his acid vat. Not to be held back, Anitra eventually runs off with an obese truck driver and Dr. Brandon ends up in prison.

The director (who also did the special effects) appears to have run out of money before this was completed. After Anitra runs off with a truck driver, loses him and starts hitchhiking in her bikini, Brandon suddenly ends up in jail without any establishing scene of why he's there or how he's been caught. So desperate for footage, they were even forced to use a shot with the slate (with the film's original title Anitra on it) clearly being held in frame and then pulled away!

Equipped with terrible acting and dialogue, cheap gore fx, bad editing cuts and boring attempts to pad out the time, this is far from good, but it's interesting for the unconscious and bizarre daddy issues that keep popping up. Look past the blood-smeared mannequin parts and you'll find a pervy male fantasy underneath about a dude who's turned on by the prospect of being both a father and a lover to a mindless woman who lounges around in babydoll nighties giving him adoring looks all the time. You can tell Patterson also wrote this because every young woman in the movie wants this old man's scrawny bod. He has also written tons of make-out scenes for himself and the actresses and watching him suck face with girls half his age in prolonged shots have a definite sleazy feel to them. There are also several montages set to more cheese-ball Bill Hicks songs used to eat up minutes.

It was primarily shot at the Overlook Castle in North Carolina. Future directors Worth Keeter (credited as the "special horror consultant") and William Girdler (credited with music, music editor and sound effects) also worked on this one. The original VHS release from United featured a 5-minute intro - filmed sometime in the 80s - featuring Herschell Gordon Lewis talking about himself, Patterson and the movie (which at one point was apparently considered a lost film). Lewis awkwardly fumbles through the scene, mocking the "artificial and mechanical contrivances" and "prosthetic devices" of high-budget Hollywood special effects as being "phony." He also warns us "Don't look for highly sophisticated filmmaking here." and "You may not like the acting. You may not like the storyline. For all I know, you may not like the gore. But I think you'll agree that after you see this picture, you're not about to forget it very soon." A ringing endorsement if I've ever heard one.

The DVD release from Something Weird also includes Lewis' HOW TO MAKE A DOLL (1968), which Patterson also worked on.

★1/2

Monster a Go-Go (1965)

... aka: Terror at Halfday

Directed by:
Bill Rebane
Herschell Gordon Lewis (uncredited)

What you are about to see might not even be possible... "Sheldon S. Seymour" (Herschell Gordon Lewis) needed a co-feature for his hillbilly exploitation flick MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN (1964), so he bought an unfinished film from Bill Rebane (shot in 1961 under the title Terror at Halfday), shot some new footage, added narration to tie the loose ends together and then released this mega-bomb onto unsuspecting audiences. It has since gone on to be renowned as one of the worst movies of all time, so grab your "radiation repellent" and enjoy... if possible. Somewhere in the woods near Chicago, an unidentified object has crash landed. Cops following up on eyewitness reports of the crash and led by Col. Steve Conners, go to investigate. There, they find a crashed space capsule but the astronaut inside - Frank Douglas - is nowhere to be found. Nearby is a helicopter and a dead pilot "horribly mangled in a way no one had ever seen before." They take the body ("...shriveled up like a prune!") back to the lab where it's discovers the victim has been cooked from the inside out by a powerful jolt of radiation. A doctor and a military man are called in to aid the investigation.

Meanwhile, at a party, a man gets jealous his girl is jitterbugging with another guy and forces her to leave. The two go into the woods to kiss and make up but are attacked by the mutant astronaut (who's played by Henry Hite, at the time the Guiness Book record holder of "World's Tallest Man"). The guy is killed and the woman is found delirious and in a state of shock the following day. Some female sunbathers are scared off by the creature and a lab tech is killed when he ventures into the woods on his own to investigate. Authorities describe the killer as "... a radioactive something or other. 10 feet tall. 400 pounds." The film then cuts to what I assume are the scenes Lewis shot, which are a mix of boring / awkward / talky and utterly senseless. They're sat at a lab and involve the doctor brother of one of the victims, his female lab assistant and a few others. The doctor has been harboring the mutant astronaut and has managed to keep him docile for a week using an antidote. It's explained that Douglas was given an overdose of an experimental formula to help one withstand more radiation but it backfired. The creature trashes the lab, steals the antidote and escapes yet again. Since they didn't have Henry Hite for the new footage, all of this is basically discussed and not shown. Other scenes (such as a woman running out of gas and a truck driver helping her) are absolutely pointless.

Is this as terrible as it's reputed to be? Yes. Yes. A resounding YES. The dialogue, acting, editing and everything else are all terrible. Characters who seem to be a major part of the first half completely disappear from the rest of the film. I couldn't even tell some of these people apart and I stopped trying to even follow the "plot" after the first half. Though Hite looks pretty cool and menacing in his make-up, there is next to no monster action and he's only seen a couple of times and barely even does anything. In the Lewis shot footage, he was reduced to filming a few close-ups of feet walking or a shadow to represent the creature. And though there are a few laughs here (who can forget "The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically small!") it's so incredibly boring and confusing most of the time that it doesn't even qualify for so-bad-its-good status. The big finale (which might be the least exciting ever committed to film) is basically little more than fire engines and police cars driving around at night and a few uniformed men running around. The best part is probably the title theme song performed by The Other Three.

I have a feeling if Rebane (who also provides the voice of the radio announcer) had been able to finish his original film it would have been a hell of lot more fun than this coma-inducing cult favorite. All of his scenes are more fun than the ones Lewis (that's him narrating the film) added. Released numerous times on numerous labels and also ridiculed in an episode of MST3K, the DVD I viewed was from Something Weird. They've paired it with PSYCHED BY THE 4D WITCH (1972).

NO STARS!

Thrill Killer (1965)

... aka: Follow That Skirt

Directed by:
Richard W. Bomont

Herschell Gordon Lewis began his film career making silly, harmless nudie movies before hitting upon another profitable idea - the gore film. The result was Blood Feast (1963), which (despite being awful) raked in a ton of money at drive-ins and had audiences clamoring for more gross-out flicks. Many of Lewis' films (both the nudies and his earlier gore films) were produced by a man named David A. Friedman, who also worked in other capacities (he has credits for writing and sound) on these. Though I originally had this film incorrectly credited to Lewis and Friedman because it is similar in many ways to films both were involved in around this same time, it's recently been pointed out to me that neither had a hand in the creation of this one (thanks to Casey for pointing this out!). Unlike the Lewis / Friedman films of the early 60s, which were either gore OR nudie films, this one went a step further by blending the bloodshed with the gratuitous nudity; something the initial "gore trilogy" didn't do, though Lewis would eventually mix sex 'n' violence in later films like THE GORE GORE GIRLS (1972). Either way, this title doesn't appear to have been finished. It runs just under half-an-hour and there is no sound. There were probably plans of dubbing it all in later but, as is, there's a non-stop lounge music soundtrack that isn't very appropriate for the material plus some highly ridiculous and schizophrenic narration told from the point of view of the killer.

Opening with brief flashes of the killings we're about to see, plus some news headlines ("Thrill Killer!"), we meet a suit-and-sunglasses-wearing voyeuristic psycho named Dale (Dale West), who gets off on stalking and murdering attractive large-breasted women. Red-head Helen Rogers picks up her dry-cleaning, Dale sneaks a peak at her address from the receipt slip and then decides to pay poor Helen a visit. After she changes out of her clothes, she's stabbed to death. Next up is a nameless brunette, who sunbathes and is strangled after stripping down to her granny panties and changing bras. After her is a blonde. The narrator adds: "This is Betty Watson, model. She will change her clothes and lay in the sun as she's always done. Only today she will have company; a man who hates woman. Because he wants to be one himself." Yes, she does change clothes. Three different times. Finally, she gets stabbed to death in her bathtub.

Dale then returns home, where we learn he's a catty schizophrenic cross-dresser who kills women because he's jealous of how pretty they are ("Now I'll show them they're not the only ones with beauty!"). He puts on make-up, panties, a bra, stockings, a dress, a wig and wraps his head in a scarf and gets ready to head out ("There, who can tell the difference? Now I'll leave and show the world!"). As he opens the door, a cop is there waiting for him. The end. While there's the germ of a fun movie here, nudity from three decent-looking ladies and a couple of amusing moments, it's not nearly as much fun as it sounds and somehow manages to seriously drag at just 30 minutes. I couldn't imagine how grueling it would be as a full-length feature!

It's available as one of four short subjects on Something Weird's compilation DVD The Weird World of Weird. One of the other shorts is a hilariously awful 60s sitcom pilot called Rosie, which features a talking dog entering the lives of a Leave It to Beaver-style family. So why didn't it catch on? Probably because "Rosie" is played by a human (Phil Leeds) dressed in a dog costume and the costume looks like... a horrifying werewolf! Seeing a man in a shaggy suit looking through peep holes and crawling around on all fours is actually pretty damn creepy, so it's a shame this one didn't catch on. We also get a look at The Weird World of Weird, a pilot for series exploring psychic phenomena, astrology, witchcraft and the occult. It's hosted by Ralph Story and featuring special appearances by Linda Kaye Henning, Pamela Mason, Terry Moore, Criswell, Ann Francis, author Jean Rejaunier, Tige Andrews and Anton LaVey. The DVD concludes with twenty-minutes worth of footage from The Smut Peddler, a film which gained some notoriety for its trailer but is missing in its entirety.

And no, that above isn't an official poster. I just threw it together because there are no promotional materials for this one. I've read claims that the film played in only one theater in San Francisco before being stuck on a shelf somewhere. The credits also add a bit of confusion. The opening title card calls it Follow That Skirt but the closing credits call it Thrill Killer. Since Follow That Skirt reminds me too much of the Sesame Street Movie Follow That Bird, I decided to go ahead and used the other option.

★