Day 2: NUDIE-ROUGHIES!

Okay, okay, I said 7 Days of Something Weird but.. do they have to be consecutive days? They do? Eesh :D

Anyway - hi Weirdos! Welcome back, in today's installment of 7 Days of Something Weird I'd like to talk about a REALLY niche genre of grindhouse film: The Nudie-Roughie. When we talk about what played in "Grindhouses" of the 60s, this is actually the kind of film we're usually talking about, although most people think of the much later blaxplotiation and sexploitation genres of the 70's.

Somewhere in the Venn diagram overlap between the almost quaint naughtiness of the "Nudie Cutie", the art house film, and the straight up porno, the "nudie roughie" generally had a plot, and (duh) nudity. It didn't show explicit sex, but made up for it with large helpings of disturbing and often downright violent subject matter. Fetishes, voyeurism, and sado-masochism were all fair game, usually in the context of a Freudian morality tale gone off the rails. Don't repress your urges, seems to be the main message of the nudie-roughie, or you'll end up like one of these guys:

The Sex Killer

This is one of my all time favorite SWV titles, because it's just so freaking bonkers. Tony, a frustrated voyeur, likes watching nude sunbathers on his off hours from the  mannequin "factory" (is the loud screeching in the background every time we cut to the factory location intentional, or was somebody just jackhammering the sidewalk on the day of shooting?). Since Tony can't work up the nerve to talk to an actual girl, he starts going on dates with a mannequin head. Half of the movie is him taking the mannequin head out to dinner, touching its lips, and staring lovingly into its eyes. Then, I guess he graduates to strangling women and having sex with their corpses? For some reason? This guy really needs to find a better way to relate to women.

Download the Sex Killer, $9.99, on the Something Weird Site.

The Animal

While The Sex Killer entertains mostly through demented camp appeal (seriously, it does - I'm not selling it well), the Animal - like the other films of director R. Lee Frost (The Defilers, Zero In and Scream) - is genuinely creepy and disturbing. It plays out more like a horror film or a psychological thriller than a goofy campfest. "Ted Andrews (John Alderman) is a booze-swilling, pot-smoking, mother-hating psycho who suffers from severe migraines and gets his kicks from invading the privacy of women." Alderman, in his first role, "actually manages to be both scary and strangely sympathetic at the same time."

Download the Animal, $9.99, on the Something Weird Site.

Strange Rampage

A smarmy "sex doctor" who "looks like a low rent Vincent Price" gives four personal case histories of his female patients in psychoanalysis who are victims of the "serious sociological problem" of having too many women competing for not enough men. Spoiler alert: the thin sociological pretext is an excuse to show women dancing around in their underwear,  pullling their shirts up for the TV repairman, and... making out with a mannequin? What's up with the mannequins?

I have a soft spot for this one because I did an intro to it on the VHS version of Strange Rampage, which I'm linking to because the actual trailer for Strange Rampage has too many boobies. Johnny was like "okay, give me something to come in on like do something with the whip or something, okay action." And I guess I did a... mean face? I don't know how to use a whip, really.  Enjoy!

Download Strange Rampage, $9.99, on the Something Weird Site.

Seven Days of *** SOMETHING WEIRD!! ***

If you are a true afficionado of the obscure, you may be familiar with the Something Weird Catalog. And by catalog I mean, literally, a mail order catalog.

Printed on newsprint, including the "Blue Book," which was the vintage porn section, it featured some amazing art from people like  Jimmy Zero, guitarist from the Dead Boys, Dave Stevens, and whoever drew the below:

The brainchild of Mike Vraney and partner Lisa Petrucci (whose kitch-inspired art also informed much of the distinctive Something Weird VHS package design), who lovingly found and restored a cache of obscure exploitation films that otherwise would have been bound for the dumpster, Something Weird Video was, and still is, an incredible archive of the cheap, crude, trashy and outrageous. It's as American as apple pie and as pervy as Times Square in its heyday. And it's all been uploaded to the internet for your viewing pleasure.

Well, not all. Recent crackdowns on online smut peddlers have really crippled SWV's online presence in the last couple of years, and they are hurting for sales. So I decided to dust off this old blog and come up with something people have been begging me to do for years now: give them some recommendations from the Something Weird Video catalog. It can be pretty overwhelming to try to browse on your own, so let me direct you to some true gems that you can DOWNLOAD RIGHT NOW and watch tonight. (No, I mean it. Seriously. Download these and watch them tonight. You'll be helping SWV and doing yourself a favor in the process.)

Who am I? Well, uh... I used to sell these headshots at the Something Weird Video Table back in the 90s, for $5 a pop. I'm the Jungle Girl.

I also introduced a few of those Something Weird videos back in the day,with Johnny Legend and the Aztec Mummy, which you might remember:

As I add to these blog entries I'll link them here. Burt for now, enjoy:

Day 1: SHE DEVILS AND TEENAGE HELLCATS!

12 Days of Youtube: Santa Claus vs. The Devil (1959)

In one corner, backed by the absent-minded wizard Merlin and a legion of what would appear to be heavily sedated and confused ethnically stereotyped children, is Father Christmas. In the other, Satan’s inept right-hand man Pitch and some snot-nosed youths. While Pitch can breath fire and control the mind of man, Santa Claus can spy on you with his creepy telescope and haunt your dreams with his psychotic wind up reindeer. He also has “The Flower to Disappear” and a sidekick named Pedro. I will admit, Satan’s really slacking it in this battle. I’m sure the holidays wear him down.

It’s an epic battle to determine the fate of mankind’s soul, or at least whether or not one child in Mexico gets the doll she wants or not. Not to sure about the rest of the kids of the world, they sort of gloss over it. Either way, nothing says ‘Christmas’ like the eternal struggle between Santa Claus and Satan. NOTHING.

12 Days of Youtube: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

This inexplicable movie-within-a-movie mashup of Santa Claus, Hans Christian Andersen's "Thumbelina" and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer seems like a drug fueled fan fiction gone awry. It views a lot like that, too. In actuality, it's a prime example of a holiday cash-in gone horribly wrong.

The year was 1972 and the holidays were fast approaching. Lacking a Christmas release, the production company had a great idea. "We've got this Thumbelina film in the can, how can we make it seasonal? I know! We'll shoot some footage of Santa Claus, bookend the existing film (credit sequences and all) and put some kids in mortal danger in the process!"

Many high-fives and a bottle of scotch later, “Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny” was born.

12 Days of Youtube: The Magic Christmas Tree

You guys. I have to admit, I haven't seen this movie yet. But the trailer alone made me go, "What the mother of fuck am I watching?"



I can't say it any better than the person who wrote the introduction to the full movie on Youtube, "Jazz Pants," who writes:

"Please excuse the haters over at IMDB who called this movie "a trite and joyless experience that will leave you rummaging through the medicine cabinet", said "this weird little out-of-body experience makes no sense at all, even as a kiddie's fantasy" and "this satanic Christmas diddy should be shown in film schools as an example of how not to make a movie". These *wannabe movie critics* need to have their heads examined! If you open your heart to this film, you will be richly awarded indeed."

Indeed.

John Waters Top 10 of 2013

It's that time of year, folks: the time when John Waters lets us all know what filth we need to pick up on video in the new year!

JOHN WATERS' TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2013

"1. Spring Breakers: The best sexploitation film of the year has Disney tween starlets hilariously undulating, snorting cocaine, and going to jail in bikinis. What more could a serious filmgoer possibly want?

2. Camile Claudel 1915: Not since Freaks has there been such a harrowing pairing of a star (the sensational Juliette Binoche) with a cast of genuinely handicapped actors. Once again, the great Dumont proves he is the ultimate master of cinematic misery.

3. Abuse Of Weakness: Isabelle Huppert, my favorite actress in the world, plays a crazy director (based on Breillat) who recovers from a massive brain injury by falling for the convict swindler she casts in her film. Their nonsexual, obsessive relationship is sheer perfection to watch, especially when Huppert keeps falling down in those weirdly glamorous orthopedic shoes.

4. Hors Satan: Nature never seemed more brutal than in this love story between a mentally challenged holy man who performs miracles and a teenage bad girl from the farm who foams at the mouth.

5. After Tiller: The brave documentary that asks the question, Which of the four doctors who still perform late-term abortions in America do you like best? Me? I’d pick the more matronly one from Albuquerque."

More, so much more, in the link!

Cinefamily Video Jukebox!

 LA arthouse revivalists Cinefamily, and gonzo VHS curators Everything Is Terrible: two great tastes that go great together. So what could be better than Everything Is Festival, a self-described dreamscape of batshit craziness which includes Maria Bamford, Patton Oswalt, Tenacious D, Mike Judge, and Joey Buttafuco??

Nothing, that's what.

Except oh yeah, YOU CAN SEE IT LIVESTREAMED ON THEIR SITE!

For perfect 2AM viewing, you can tune in RIGHT THE FUCK NOW to Cinefamily TV,  a video jukebox of some primo Everything is Terrible found video, and wonder what the fuck you just saw. Then, come back tomorrow for livestreamed events with Maria Bamford and Patton Oswalt.