Violated! (1974)

... aka: Hollywood Ripper, The

... aka: Rapist, The

Directed by:

Albert Zugsmith

Say whatever you want about him, but not many exploitation directors could boast the credentials Zugsmith had. After becoming independently wealthy working "straight" jobs in marketing, publishing and sales, Zugsmith (by then in middle age) set out to fulfill his dream of becoming a filmmaker in the early 1950s. He co-founded his own production company, landed a contract with RKO and directed three low budget films for them. The surprise box office success of his Invasion U.S.A. (1952) led to major studio interest and contracts for MGM, Allied Artists and Universal. During his time working for the latter, he had his hand in quite a few now-classic films. He produced the well-regarded Douglas Sirk melodramas Written on the Wind (1956), which was a big hit, and The Tarnished Angels (1957), as well as the classic The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), which would go on to become one of the highest grossing genre films of the entire decade. Most notably, however, he was instrumental in bringing Orson Welles' film noir classic Touch of Evil (1958) to the screen. Though it was initially a disappointment at the box office, Touch is now considered a masterpiece and frequently pops up on all-time best lists. It was also deemed culturally and artistically significant enough to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in just their fifth year.

The "respectable" portion of Zugsmith's career virtually disappeared during his MGM years, namely because of his continued work with platinum blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren, one of a gazillion Marilyn Monroe wannabes who were never able to compete with the real thing. Going from Welles and Sirk to flops like The Private Lives of Adam and Eve and Sex Kittens Go to College in just a few short years was quite the fall from grace. By the end of the 60s, Zugsmith was making straight-up soft-core porn (Sappho Darling; Two Roses & a Golden Rod) and heading down to Mexico to make the barely-released psychedelic horror flick The Chinese Room (1968) and the failed western-comedy The Phantom Gunslinger (1970). After trying to capitalize on the Manson Family murders with the sleazy The Cult (1971, aka The Manson Massacre), he finally bowed out for good with this nasty little rape-revenge film starring a bunch of hardcore porn performers.

Britt-Mari Nilsson, the Swedish-born wife of producer Roger Gentry, opens the film as the latest unfortunate victim of a victim-mutilating rapist who's recently been terrorizing Tinseltown and dons a different rubber Halloween mask for each attack. After stalking her around Hollywood Boulevard for a bit, the psycho turns up at her home later that night and attacks her after a swim. She's pulled into a gazebo, has her bikini ripped off, is raped (the assaulter doesn't bother to remove his pants) and then gets her face sliced up with a switchblade. Hilariously, a later radio broadcast will describe the thirty-something Nilsson as a "12 year old girl" (!) and also claims that the psycho's hallmark is carving a swastika on his victims' bodies.

We then meet Terry Murphy, who's played by prolific sex film star Rene Bond. Because of her hectic dating life, Terry brushes off potential suitor Quentin Judson ("Billy Buzby" / Jay Scott), then returns to her apartment where she strips out of her red vinyl mini-skirt and go-go boots and hops into the shower. The masked psycho (now wearing a devil mask), cuts through her shower curtain, pulls her to the ground, rapes her, knocks her out and then carves up her chest. The following day, asshole detective Sgt. Purvis (!) (uncredited Wes Bishop) shows up and chastises her about not reporting the crime sooner. He suggests she's making it all up and informs her that no one will take her claims seriously because she makes money selling ads in a sex paper and is an attractive young woman that juries would find hard to sympathize with. (Sadly, some of these observations are quite true to life.).

It's revealed that just fifteen minutes after she was attacked, Quentin was pulled over by cops half a block from Terry's house for speeding and had a knife in his possession. Terry refuses to believe it could have been him. Even though he's a 'Nam vet, he's a "gentle soul" who loves small animals, reads poetry out loud and "practically lives on strawberry yogurt and sunflower seeds" (?) Angry that she's now "damaged goods on the marriage market," Terry vows to apprehend the killer herself if the stupid cops can't do it. And apparently they can't since an Asian secretary is attacked about two minutes later, bringing the victim total to over 30.

When she isn't merrily bouncing around hippie coffee house trying to sell books, Midge Lewis is a college student who has been busy "studying psychopaths in my psych class." But that does nothing to prepare her for her encounter with the real-life psycho, who chloroforms her, pulls her into a van, shackles her by the wrists and ankles and does his usual carve job on her thigh. Midge is played by the attractive but apparently one-and-done Susanne Suzan. Whoever Ms. Suzan is, she was also the associate producer, takes top billing, refuses to do any nudity (unlike her co-stars), seems European in origin (maybe she was real-life friends with Britt-Mari) and delivers all of her dialogue in a monotone with a very thick accent.

After a parade of other victims, including porn star Sandra Dempsey (SEX AND THE SINGLE VAMPIRE) getting punched in the face and her top ripped open, and a black woman who offends the rapist by getting turned on by his attack, leading to her being beaten unconscious (!), this finally starts to settle into something resembling a plot. Terry, with assist from Quentin (who's out to prove his innocence to her) and an apprehensive Midge (who frowns upon torture since her father was a Jewish concentration camp survivor), decides she's going to lure the chief suspects to her home and then try to use "psychological torment" to force a confession out of one of them. The two chief suspects are sleazy, skirt-chasing television repairman John Murphy (Jerry Delony) and child-like, mother-obsessed linoleum installer Stan Driscoll (Ric Lutze).

With lots of nudity (though perhaps less than one would expect given the plot and cast), scenes that alternate between dull (most of the cop / interrogation scenes), amusing and disturbing, enthusiastic yet highly variable performances and a crazed finale that includes kidnapping, necrophilia, torture with pliers, a knife, a blowtorch and a homemade electric chair (!), this is a very entertaining piece of grindhouse trash.

Fans of Bond will definitely want to check this out. I've seen her in other things before but not anything where she had the lead role and was actually asked to act. In addition to providing the expected full frontal nudity here, she actually chips in a surprisingly fun performance, especially the more unhinged her character gets. You don't exactly have to be Meryl Streep to carry a movie like this, you just need to be into what you're doing, and Bond clearly is. Only four other actors are credited, but much of the supporting cast comes from the Lee Frost cinematic universe. There are small parts for Gentry, Marland Proctor (also the production manager), Phil Hoover and Vincent Barbi. Most of the actresses playing victims remain unknown.

Though this is currently listed as a 1975 release on IMDb, the copyright date is 1973 and the film was playing as early as October 1974 in Chicago. It was almost always on some kind of double bill and newspaper ads show it was paired with a wide variety of other films, including the Italian crime drama Execution Squad (1972), the Exorcist copy BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) and the Russ Meyer-directed sexploitation film Common Law Cabin (1967). It was later reissued to theaters under the new title The Hollywood Ripper.

Long thought lost, this finally turned up on the ten film Vinegar Syndrome box set "Lost Picture Show," which, for once, really did include a bunch of absolute rarities. The other titles of interest to horror fans in the set include Red Midnight (1966), Beware the Black Widow (1968), Las Vegas Strangler (1968; originally called No Tears for the Damned) and The Sex Serum of Dr. Blake (1973; aka Voodoo Heartbeat).

★★1/2

Witchcraft (1961) [short]

... aka: Witchcraft: The Doll in Brambles

Directed by:

Harold Young

Though no one seems to know the first thing about this particular production, it was a TV pilot (running just short of 26 minutes) for a proposed series to be titled Witchcraft that was never picked up. The only available print (culled from a Sinister Cinema release) seems to have been taken from a VHS source, which suggests this may have been shown on television (or at least re-run) at some point much later than the 1961 production date. This first episode, “The Doll in Brambles,” was going to be one of many adaptations of the works of William Buehler Seabrook, who was apparently better known back then than he is today.

Born in 1884, Seabrook was a war vet, journalist, newspaper editor, advertising executive, novelist and extensive world traveler. He gained fame not only through his books but also through his interest in occultism and his admittance to consuming human flesh (!!), which he described as being "a little stringy" yet "mild, good meat," comparing it to "good, fully-developed veal." Did I mention this guy was also a painfully-insecure alcoholic, a sexual sadist into kinky photography (he commissioned an S&M-themed photo series that would later be dubbed "The Fantasies of Mr. Seabrook" at one point), conducted bondage "experiments" in a barn and spent some time locked away in a mental institution, plus wrote a book about that, too?

It's amazing that hardly anyone, perhaps most especially horror fans, even know who Seabrook is. His 1929 book The Magic Island is usually credited for introducing the Western world to the term "zombie" (back then, a voodoo-entranced 'living corpse,' not the post-Romero ones). It became a best-seller that led to a stage play called Zombie in 1932 and was the inspiration behind the Bela Lugosi film White Zombie from the same year. Seabrook's fascination with the supernatural led him to numerous countries to investigate their spiritual beliefs and customs, which he recapped in his 1940 book Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today. He ultimately drew the conclusion that there wasn't anything that couldn't be somehow explained through either psychology or science. The fact that a TV series could have existed about this guy's work but never happened feels like a missed opportunity if there ever was one.

There are a couple of names attached to provide some additional interest. Director Young had prior experience in the genre having made a trio of horror films as a contract director for Universal: The Mummy's Tomb (1942) and The Frozen Ghost (1945), both starring Lon Chaney Jr., and The Jungle Captive (1945), the third and final entry in their oft-ignored Ape Woman series. This appears to have been the last thing he ever worked on after leaving the studio system well over a decade prior.

Perhaps an even bigger draw for genre fans is Frank De Felitta, who adapted a portion of the first chapter in Seabrook's Witchcraft book titled "Sawdust Doll in Brambles." De Felitta was a horror / suspense novelist, screenwriter and eventual filmmaker known for his best-selling novels Audrey Rose and The Entity, both of which sold millions of copies and were adapted for the screen as major studio films by the author himself. He also stepped into the director's chair to make the made-for-TV killer dog movie Doberman Patrol aka Trapped (1973), which he also wrote, and the still-popular DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981), which he did not write. He closed out his Hollywood career directing and writing Scissors (1991), which was a flop in theaters but did well on home video because its lead - Sharon Stone - would became a huge star (for two other films) shortly after filming it.

Former Oscar nominee Franchot Tone's (Mutiny on the Bounty) long career was winding down when he accepted the bookmarking gig on this low budget proposed series. Though billed as "Your Host," Tone never introduces himself by name and instead claims he was a friend of the late William Seabrook, who passed away in 1945. The general premise here is that Seabrook's study and many of his findings have been kept sealed until recently as outlined in his will, and are only now going to be revealed to the general public for the first time.

Tone picks up a copy of the Witchcraft book and notes that, through his decades of research, Seabrook came to the conclusion that belief in the supernatural can be chalked up to what he calls "induced autosuggestion," which our host elaborates is "...a recurring thought in the mind placed there by some outside agent through some outside force." He then turns to the camera and assures us that what we're about to see "is not a fantasy," that it "actually happened" and is based on "a true story."

"The Doll in Brambles" takes place near the rocky coasts of Brittany, France. It's a dark and stormy night when visiting American Fred Hunter (Darren McGavin, of Kolchak: The Night Stalker fame) arrives at an inn to visit his French buddy, Louis Bausset (John Baragrey), whom be met and befriending during World War II. The original plan was for Fred to meet his beautiful fiancée, Marie (Annemarie Roussel), and serve as best man in his upcoming wedding, but things have been put on hold for the time being. Not that Louis and Marie aren't in love and don't want to be married, it's just that Marie's evil, abusive step-grandmother, Madame Tirelou (Blanche Yurka), hates Louis and has forbidden the two to see one another. While you may be thinking, "Well, who the hell cares what granny wants?," Mme. Tirelou is rumored to be a witch and has threatened to place a curse upon Louis if he disobeys her orders.

Skeptical Fred laughs off the witchcraft claims and sets out to help, informing his friend, "I just came halfway around the world to see you get married and, by golly I'm not going home until you are!" He visits the cliffside home shared by Marie and her grand-mère, manages to secretly slip Marie a note from Louis and is then kicked out once the hostile Madame finds out who he's friends with. She claims she'd rather be dead than let them marry, vows to outlive Louis one way or another and has made a voodoo doll in his likeness that can be wrapped in thorny branches (the "brambles" of the title) at any time...

I read the story immediately after viewing (found here on Internet Archive) and this is a near pinpoint accurate retelling, laying out the events almost identically to how they're described and even carrying over identical passages of dialogue. The only major changes are the "Fred Hunter" character is actually Seabrook himself, he and Louis weren't war buddies, there's some bat torture and the grandmother gets punished for what she does. Not only pretty faithful to the events of the text, this also honors Seabrook's viewpoint by grounding the supernatural in realty. It neither confirms nor discounts witchcraft per se, though it certainly leans in the latter direction in this case. A doctor shows up at one point claiming a sudden paralysis we're led to believe was brought on by the voodoo doll isn't a physical malady at all, but a mental / psychosomatic one (called "compulsion neurosis" in the story).

What's truly surprising is that this 1961 production also includes a "witch's cradle" that granny uses to restrain her granddaughter so she can be tortured! It's described in the book as "an obscure sadistic-masochistic" piece of equipment with chains and leather straps that's "as perverse a device as twisted human ingenuity ever invented." The granddaughter tries to keep Seabrook from even seeing this contraption, and feels deep shame when does, in the book, which heavily implies it was used for, a-hem, other purposes, though that's obviously downplayed here. Naturally, this is also something that would have greatly appealed to the source author given his sexual proclivities, so him just randomly happening upon an elderly witch living in the remote French countryside with a bondage table in her cellar is quite the coincidence, ain't it?

To be perfectly honest, had I not researched all of this or read the story itself, I probably wouldn't have walked away from this too horribly impressed. It's clearly cheap, set-bound, talky and not exactly scary, action-packed or exciting. The acting is mostly OK (with veteran stage actress Yurka fairing the best and McGavin his usual likable self) and the few scenes actually filmed outdoors do cut down on the staginess a little bit, but it's really the stuff surrounding the production that makes it fascinating. That, and the care taken trying to capture the essence of Seabrook; at least as much as they reasonably could in a mainstream production intended for mass consumption in the early 60s.

★★1/2