I’ve always liked this film, it’s not great but considering it was made from almost nothing and it did manage to be distributed here in the USA, in Italy (by CineRiz no less) and in England, I think it can be considered a success. It also features contributions from two of my favorite veterans of the Roger Corman school of filmmaking, Mel Wellrs and Charles B. Griffith.

Charles B. Griffith and Mel Welles in The Little Shop Of Horrors

It was directed by Michael Reeves, who would later go on to make Witchfiner General. his masterpiece with Vincent Price. I believe it was released here as The Conqueror Worm. I remember seeing it at a screening at my Catholic Grammer school. the priestd and nuns were shocked and outraged as it features nudity and extreme violence and forced sex! I guess they didn’t screen it before projecting it to us innocent kids.

Micheal Reeves with black cat and blimped Arri IIc

Also the amazing Barbara Steele, who stars in my favorite horror film of all time, Mario Baa’s masterpiece, Black Sunday ( La Maschera del Demonio), if you haen’t seen it check it out! Such an amazing and influential film!

The Amazing Barbara Steele

Anyway there have been complaints about the slapstick elements of She Beast, but what caould you expect if Chuck Griffith and Mel Welles were involved? Griffith almost always made his scripts funny, and he had a hand in writing this film. He also directed the undercranked chase scenes at the end of the film. I think they go on too long but I believe they coul not cut them out or the film would have been too short! As it stands I think it’s like 79 minutes already on the short side. Now here’s a funny thing I noticed, this film came out a year before Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers yet the stories are very similar, they are both kind of slapstick, feature an older nutty Professor vampire hunter/ exorcist and a young helper that loves the beautiful damsel in distress and must rescue her, and when they do rescue her both end on a note that says, this is not the end, but the beginning of something worse.

Count Von Helsing- Vampire Hunter-Witch Exorciser

Nutty Professor type from Fearless Vampire Killers

Also I read that Griffith wrote a kind of low budget Dirty Dozen movie years before the Dirty Dozen came out called The Secret Invasion. He was ahead of his time.

I heard a story that the Italian stuntman who played the witch Vardella went into town in full makeup to buy some cigarettes or something causing the townspeople to freak out!

Vardella The Witch

He did look pretty horrific in that make up. I also noticed that two of the young boys in the film had the surname Welles, I assume they were both children of the great Mel Welles,

One of Mel Welles’ kids in the movie

Gravis Mushnick of Little Shop of Horrors, an actor I loved since childhood. I later learned he appeared in a film my good friend Bob Downey made called Rented Lips. I didn’t work on that one, but my other friend Bob Yeoman did and he said Mel was very funny and a nice guy.

Finally I read on Wikipedia that Quentin Tarantino dedicated Death Proof to Charles B. Griffith calling him thr “Godfather of redneck cinema. I have an early draft of DeathProof ( I worked on it) and Quentin calls Griffith ” The Poet Laureate of the Drive-In” a much better epithet for the genius of Griffith.

Misericordia

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I just watched a new film by the French writer director Alain Guiraudie. It is definitely worth watching for several reasons. It’s an amazing film, the thing that most impressed me is how well thought out it is. The script is terrific, a gem of a micro production, it all takes place in a small rural village surrounded by forests. A great location, plus if you are making a film and don’t have a hugh budget keeping locations simple is the way to go. It looks like this film was shot in this tiny village, the surrounding forests, the town church, cemetery, an apartment, a house in the woods. That’s pretty much it. But it was plotted exquisitely , you didn’t need any more locations. So step one, brilliant script, full of unexpected twists and turns, sex, murder, guilt, all dealt with in a fresh surprising, philosophic way.

Bravo! The acting is also great! Step two, hire great actors! Casting is so key! these actors are all top notch, especially the abbe! So amazing and to me the heart and soul of the film. Jacques Develay is inredible, he has a way of saying so much with just a glance, a great film actor and ballsy! There is a scene where he jumps out of bed, roused by the local policeman, with a hard on!

I mean that takes courage and commitment! My favorite scene in the film is where the Abbe asks Félix Kysyl ( the protagonist Jérémie Pastor) to hear his confession. The priest wants to confess to the other guy! How amazing, there have been many confessional scenes in films but none like this! And that’s what so great about this film, it works in a genre fashion, a thriller, a murder mystery but it turns the genre on it’s head, keeps the audience guessing, you never know what’s going to happen next.

And the Third element that makes it great. Unanswered questions, it doesn’t spell things out and explain everything, there are plenty of hints about people’s pasts, but that’s it. You have to reach your own conclusions, this draws the audience in, makes them a part of the story.

Alfred Hitchcock called this phenomenon the “Cold Chicken” effect. After the people got home from watching the film, they went to the fridge, got out the cold chicken leftovers for a midnight snack and began discussing the film. And if there were anbiguous points that they could disagree on it sometimes inspired them to resee the film to clarify points of their discussion. Hitchcock said this effect added considerably to his box office returns. Anyway Cinema is Alive and Well as long as films like this continue to be made!

One thing I have always noticed about David Lynch’s films is that the performances are often amazing and yet a lot of the actors are never as good in films by other people. I’m not talking about The Elephant Man, which featured some of the finest British actors of all time, but films like Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Twin Peaks. Some incredible performances,In Mulholland Drive  Naomi Watts blows the roof off the theater, especially in the scene with Chad Everett. Amazing!

Patricia Arquette is so great in Lost Highway.

Sheryl Lee , Lara Flynn Boyle Sheilynn Fenn, so great  in Twin Peaks,

Kyle McGlaughlin, so cool in Lynch films.

I was wondering why this happens and I thought Lynch is a Buddhist, he meditates everyday. A tenet of Buddhism is to see the limitless potential in every human being and this is something Lynch did. He saw things in people that they did not see in themselves and they often say just this. His belief in them, their trust in his unshakable vision propelled them to unexpected and often unequaled heights. Rewatching the original Twin Peaks I am struck by how much thought, atmosphere, mood, character went into every single frame (of the episodes he directed). Even though the pace is kind of leisurely there is so much going on in and around the frame that its never boring and the more you know about what’s happening the more intriguing it becomes. A great recipe for something that bears rewatching again and again. Anyway a few random thoughts on the late, great David Lynch, a true Artist.

Here’s a video I made from a song Lynch did. My friend Pascal worked with him and remixed the tune adding the great harmonica part.

As we all know by now the great artist known as David Lynch passed on to the next realm a few days ago. I can’t believe it, I felt he would always be at his compound on Outpost creating word stuff. It was reassuring if he posted a weather report or a strange short film or whatever else he did. Furniture making, painting, photography. He was such a quintessential part of Los Angeles, a City that he loved so much.

It’s heartbreaking that he’s not here to enjoy the Sunshine and inspire all of us. My good friend Joe Montgomery lived for a while on Outpost. He just passed on about a year ago, he was a Camerman that grew up in Hollywood s o Lynh’s passing conjure thoughts of another brilliant point of light we just lost.

I just watched an interview with Lynch where he talked about Mullholland Drive. He originally made it as a TV pilot for ABC. But the idiot executive in charge passed on it, Pitiful. Lynch was devastated but then someone offered to raise the money to turn it into a Feature. Lynch said yes. It took about 18 months to make it happen. Lynch said when he signed the deal to make it into a Feature he had zero ideas on how to do that. But that night he meditated and said all the necessary ideas came to him “like a string of pearls.”

And he wound up making what many people believe to be his masterpiece. Now this is what I am referring to as the Triumph of David Lynch. He goes from abject failure to a masterpiece with the same project! His creativity did not bow to Hollywood convention, it overcame it and surpassed it in an incredible way. The story of Mullholland Drive has similar dynamics vis a vis the Hollywood Experience. A young woman comes here, she’s full of hopes and dreams to make it as an actress. She gets an audition, she nails it, showing tremendous talent, in what I feel is the best scene of the film. Then the unfair mechanisms of Hollywood grind away and she is passed by, This is the essential Hollywood dynamic and Lynch expresses it and explores it in such an amazing creative way.

God Bless Him! May Luis Bunuel, Jacques Tati, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Francois Truffaut, Bob Downey, Bud Smith, Pablo Ferro, Joe Montgomery all welcome him to Film Heaven.

BUD SMITH  AN APPRECIATION WITH ANECDOTES

Bud Smith started his career at Four Star Television, a company formed by Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, David Niven and Joel McRae (hence the name). Four Star proved fortuitous for Bud.  There he met Steve McQueen, star of “Wanted Dead or Alive” they were both avid motorcyclists, racing around the desert with their pal Bud Ekins.  I believe Bud’s love of speed, adrenaline and the thrill of racing informed his visceral style of editing.

In the mid 1960’s Bud met David Wolper who would take Bud to his production company and introduce him to his biggest filmmaking ally, William Friedkin.  There  they collaborated on ”  The Bold Men”, the start of a long creative relationship.

After leaving Wolper, Bud was in NYC cutting the featurette of “Goodbye Mr. Chips” when Bob Downey walked by his cutting room.  Downey looked in and liked what he saw.  “You want to edit my film?” he asked and Bud wound up cutting “Putney Swope” an underground megahit about a black advertising agency.  Bud and Bob would go on to make  “Pound,” “Greaser’s Palace” and “Sticks and Bones,” based on the David Rabe play produced by Joe Papp.  It was one the of the first anti-Vietnam War films to show on network television and thanks to their mutual friend Jack Nitzsche, it had music by the Rolling Stones.

In the early 70’s, Bud re teamed with Friedkin for “The Exorcist,” a film that caused a major sensation.  One of the scariest movies ever made – lines formed around the block everywhere.  It was a huge box office hit.  Bud told me they were under such a tight deadline and were working so many hours that the studio had a nurse come to give them B12 injections to keep going.

Friedkin and Smith’s follow up was the underappreciated (at the time) “Sorcerer,” now recognized as a masterpiece.  Bud was a producer and shot 2nd Unit as well as other footage for this film.  He proved himself a brilliant 2nd Unit Director as is evident by the counterfeiting scene in “To Live and Die in LA” and the scene where Ed Begley Jr gets his arm ripped off by the panther in “Cat People.”  Pure cinema.

Bud loved to experiment creatively with film.  He used subliminal cuts in “The Exorcist” and “Cruising,” (another Friedkin collaboration that was unfairly boycotted during production). Once again it is now considered a classic.  Recently I told Bud how much I liked that movie – how well it was made and this made him very, very happy to hear.  I think he considered it some of his best work and the bad treatment the film received (by people who hadn’t seen it) upset him.    

In “Cruising” Bud used subliminal cuts of hardcore 8mm films during the murders to unsettle the audience.  In “Sorcerer” he was inspired while looking at Cynex strips on the Kem.  A Cynex strip was an optical element created from a frame of a shot to judge exposure, each frame was half a stop lighter than the previous, from black to white.  He cut them into the film during Roy Schieder’s hallucinnatory drive through an eerie landscape.  He also scored that scene with an album he had called “The Wind Harp,” adding to the mind altering atmosphere.

In “Zoot Suit” he told me he mixed the film in Sensurround, a process that added powerful bass frequencies to emphasize the tap dancing.  He was always coming up with new techniques to make films more expressive.  The soundtrack of “The Exorcist” is another example where he used so many creative cutting edge ideas to make the film more powerful and to make it work on a subconscious, primal level.

Bud edited “Flashdance” for which he won a BAFTA award.  It was another giant hit and a big cultural influence. In the final audition dance scene in “Flashdance”, Bud seamlessly combined the moves of Jennifer Beals with three different dancers (one of which was a male breakdancer in a wig) to create the beloved dance sequence. 

A few years later Bud struck gold again with “The Karate Kid,” another mega hit.

Bud was the recipient of an ACE Career Achievement Award in 2008.

If you spent any time with Bud you were gifted with some great stories, like when some mafiosi showed up at the cutting room of Friedkin’s “The Brinks Job,” tied the crew up at gunpoint and kidnapped a few reels of dailies.  Luckily Bud was not there at the time and what they stole was the work print which could easily be reprinted at the lab.

If you look at the poster for “Sorcerer,” you’ll see a truck on a primitive rope and plank bridge leaning at an impossible angle.  This image is a frame enlargement from the film.  In the next frame the truck toppled over into a raging river below.  In the cab of that truck, in real life, was Bud Smith and his old pal Bud Ekins.

Besides his great accomplishments as an editor and 2nd Unit Director, Bud directed the film “Johnny Be Goode,” starring Anthony Michael Hall, his friend Robert Downey’s son, Robert Downey Jr. and Uma Thurman in her first film.  I wish he had directed more films, but soon thereafter he took a job at Universal as their “film doctor,” recutting films as needed to improve their chances at the box office.

Bud was a very generous person.  He gave a lot of people a leg up or a big break.  He helped me as well.  I was assisting him on a Downey film called Moonbeam.  Bud agreed to edit it as long as he was free but then he had to leave to edit Flashdance.  Downey asked who should take over and Bud replied “Joe can do it.” Bud Smith gave me my first editing job.

Renowned Director of Photography Bob Yeoman was shooting 2nd Unit for Bud on “To Live and Die in L.A.” when Robbie Muller the 1st Unit D.P. “got sick.”  Bud proposed to Friedkin that Bob take over and Bob will tell you that it made his career.

Bud was blessed with a 33-year relationship with his lovely wife Lucy, a former dialog editor.  They loved each other dearly and Lucy took amazing care of him in his last years.  She is an angel.  

Bud Smith is survived by three children from a previous marriage sons Scott, Steven,daughter, Jill as well as a granddaughter, __________

Farewell dear friend.  You will be deeply missed by the people who know and love you and all of those who were thrilled and moved by your brilliant work.  

James Searl Dawley

Here is an amazing early film produced by the Edison Company , directed by James Searl Dawley and starring future iconic director D.W. Griffith!

DW Griffith

What a chockfull package of early film history! Oh and I almost forgot, photographed by Edwin S. Porter, the man who would go on to make the classic, The Great Train Robbery! Wow!

           Edwin S. Porter

Still From The Great Train Robbery

Dawley was an incredibly prolific filmmaker, writer, actor, genius, who made over 399 short films and 50 features, including the first filmed version of Frankenstein, which he also adapted for the screen from Mary Shelly’s novel.

Dawley’s Frankenstein

The thing I immediately noticed about Rescued From An Eagle’s Nest though is the resemblance to the scene in King Kong where Fay Wray, in Kong’s mountain top lair, is grabbed by a Pterodactyl and recued by Kong.

 The King!

I can imagine Ernest Schoedsack or Merrian C. Cooper or maybe Willis O’Brien having seen this film as a young impressionable person and repeating the scene or paying homage if you will. But watch the film , it is very cool and see if it reminds you of Kong. Also I thought of the scene where Jack Driscoll climbs down a vine into a ravine to escape Kong as the other sailors are shaken from a log bridge, so the Kong connection is strong.

My dear friend, the super talented Joe Montgomery has passed on to the next dimension. I met him back in 1996. We were introduced by Bob Downey and we worked on a crazy project called Inventors Friend. Then we did Hugo Pool for Bob. Joe was the DP and I was the Editor. Joe loved to quote Bob, ” All I need is two Joes and a million bucks to make a film.” Joe was also a Jazz trumpeter, mountain climber, adventurer. He found a mummy on a mountaintop for National Geographic. His amazing accomplishments and stories could fill several books. He shot my film One Night With You and I couldn’t have done it without him. Here is a short film showing Joe setting up our Poor Mans Process shot so you can see him in action.

This is a super creative wacky film. I really enjoyed it. Sot on 16mm and dubbed just like the Spaghetti Westerns of yesteryear. I love films that don’t have a big budget and are creativity to overcome any limitations. A lot of this film looks like Stop Motion but I’m not sure if it is, I think it is but…

The Stop Mption parts have a kind of jittery movement that is very cool. It could be Stop Motion and green screen? Anyway super creative filmmaking. I recommend it. I saw another of Miguel Llanso’s films  that I liked a lot as well, it’s called CRUMBS. It features the same great lead actor, Daniel Tadesse.

      Daniel Tadesse

I am reading a great book by Roberto Curti called Italian Gothic Horror Films 1970-1979. A wonderful thorough examination of Italian Horror from that period, full of insights and anecdotes. If you are a fan of that genre I highly recommend it.

The book has been turning me onto to some obscure gems of the genre, stuff I had never heard of let alone seen. The Night Of The Damned is one of them. Not really a true gem but it does have some good moments. Also it is just about impossible to see. It only had a limited VHS release never on DVD. But thanks to a nice person who posted a version on YouTube (With Greek Subtitles no less) you can see it by clicking the link below. It won’t allow me to plug it directly into the page due to some Erotic sequences. ( and they are pretty good) The movie is kind of an Erotic Italian Sherlock Holmes Mystery with a bit of Edgar Allan Poes Fall of The House of Usher thrown in, to good effect I may add, The tortured character Dio plays an eerie violin like something Roderick Usher might do. There are some interesting dream sequences and the women are very sexy, nude or clothed.

There is some Lesbianism, murder, Witchcraft etc. But the thing that gets me is how pretty good sequence, like a weird foggy witch Coven and sacrifice can be followed by a really bad banal sequence, as if two different people directed the film. Maybe it was recut by a Producer?

There are dumb shots , ECUs of Dead Dio just kind of randomly cut in. And when Jean Duprey’s wife,(Danielle) tells him she is afraid and wants to leave, it just cuts to her walking around the Castle at Night and he’s outside wandering in the woods. Really makes No Sense.

But in spite of that I think its good to watch flawed films, you can learn a lot about what does and doesn’t work. So Click the kink below and check it out. I used the Italian Closed Captioning to help me understand the dialog. There may be other languages available.

Toniono Cervi’s Queens of Evil starring Ray Lovelock is a crazy cool take on a  Fairy Tale .

Kind of like a hippie Hansel and Gretel setup with sex instead of gingerbread and early 70’s  Italian set design. Great camera work by Enrico Lucidi (OK maybe a few zooms too many but it was 1970!) and an incredible score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino! Super cool, demonic chanting, jazz harpsichords and I think Edda del Orso doing her demented child voice, ala Morricone’s scores for Argento. A terrific score! Ray Lovelock sings the title song which he wrote as well.  The acting is all good. Ida Galli, Slvia Monti, and Haydee Politoff are the three witches of the title and they deliver a combination of weirdness, sexiness, evil, violence, and Italian style,  check out the wigs these three evil chicks wear if you want to have your mind blown. It has so many artistic touches, including a proliferation of red flowers on a grave, for what reason? Who can say.

A surreal dream sequence, a house in the middle of the woods, a spooky castle. It’s like Rosemary’s Baby on Acid. Just check it out for yourself, Go to You tube and look up Ray Lovelock films and you’ll find it. I can’t post it here for some reason. Unfortunately it’s dubbed in English I would have preferred it in Italian but what can you do it’s free.

I went with my friend Duke Haney to the New Beverly the other night. They were screening two Horror/Blacksploitation films. Sugar Hill and J.D.’s Revenge. A fun double bill, the kind of films you want to see with an audience. Sugar Hill featured a beautiful black female protagonist ( Marki Bey) who wants revenge after her man is brutally beaten to death.

She gets help from the King of the Undead. But he wants something in return. The head of the criminal organization is played by Count Yorga himself( Robert Quarry). Also featured is Don Pedro as the horny and funny Baron Samedi.

The other film, J.D.’s Revenge starred an excellent Glynn Turman as a cab driver being possessed bu a razor wielding stud who was unjustly murdered 30 years prior. He is very convincing as the revenge crazed J.D. Walker.

Lou Gossett Jr. is a preacher and does a fine job. He is a wonderful actor and can play anything! Check out Enemy Mine. The great thing about this evening was seeing these obscure films projected in 35mm with an audience. It makes a huge difference to see a film that is being projected on film! It’s a Spiritual thing, you can feel it! That’s why I am so grateful to Quentin Tarantino for having this theater. It is an enormous gift to the City of Los Angeles.

Meanwhile the Cinema Dome sits shuttered! What a disgrace to Hollywood. Some superrich person that made his fortune in the Movie business should buy it, restore it and open it up! Spielberg or Geffen or any of the billionaires out there should save that Landmark of Film Presentation and become a Cinema Hero.

QT is rich but not as rich as these other people, he spent his cash on what he loves, Cinema! And Bravo to him for doing that! Let him be an inspiration to these others, Invest in the cultural future of your City, your Industry. Protect the Heritage of Film. Do something with your mountains of cash instead of just sitting on them.

https://archive.org/details/JDSREVENGE1976FullMovie