Possession and repossession; new this week at the buffet…

Bunny finds herself possessed by the spirit of a decidedly different take on an oft told tale of demonic possession, Abby.

While The Kommandant faces off against the occasionally erotic evil forces of Paul Naschy's version of The Exorcist, Exorcism.

Who's got what and what's got who; new this week at the buffet...

This week Bunny takes a seat in Giallo Biafra's Trattoria Of Terror and rhetorically wonders What Have You Done To Solange?

While The Kommandant travels to an island of the damned to seek the answer to a most un-PC question, Who Can Kill A Child?

A double dose of De Ossorio; new this week at the buffet...

This week we are pleased to present two films from the fertile imagination of Spain's master of slow moving menaces, Amando De Ossorio.

First join Bunny and be spellbound by the vampire vixens and vulgar voodoo of The Night Of The Sorcerers.

Then saddle up alongside the Kommandant and return to the tombs of the blind dead for it's aptly named sequel, Return Of The Blind Dead.

Riot On North Seventh Street

One other thing I was super excited to learn about from our vacation email was The Secret Cinema's upcoming showing of Riot On Sunset Strip. And by upcoming, I mean it's this Friday night. (Sorry, I swear I meant to mention this last week; on the bright side, I did manage to mention it 48 hours before the event took place - which is better than I've done with these types of things in the past.)

Anywhoo, since SC's founding father Jay Schwartz always takes the time to write up informative press releases about his events, and is no doubt more capable of detailing all of the important points about said events than I, I decided to just reprint the contents of it here. Sans the portions that are not for publication, of course.

RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP: Super Screening And Author Event, Rare Photos And Films, Plus After-Party! Exciting New Venue!

Friday, August 10th
8:00 pm
Admission: $8.00 (includes talk, film & after-party)

Philadelphia Society of Free Letts (Latvian Society)
531 N. 7th Street, Philadelphia

Earlier this year, the Secret Cinema presented a sold-out evening of music and rock history, when Lenny Kaye co-hosted a garage-rock themed event called NUGGETS. We're happy to continue that tradition on Friday, August 10, when the Secret Cinema presents another very special program called RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, celebrating an old movie and a brand new book of the same name.

The subject of each is Hollywood's famed Sunset Strip itself, the winding road that for a brief but memorable time became the epicenter of a whole new world of youth based excitement, especially including a new wave of home-grown rock music. From the moment the Byrds debuted at Ciro's on March 26th 1965 -- with Bob Dylan joining them on stage -- through the demonstrations of November 1966, Sunset Strip nightclubs introduced Love, Buffalo Springfield, the Mothers of Invention, the Doors, and so many more.

Our special guest will be rock historian Domenic Priore. His just published book, RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP: ROCK 'N' ROLL'S LAST STAND IN HOLLYWOOD (published by Jawbone Press, with foreword by the late Arthur Lee), shows how this legendary scene came together, burned briefly but brilliantly, and then fell apart after the Summer of Love.

Our August 10 event takes place in an exciting new venue for the Secret Cinema: The roomy upstairs ballroom of the venerable Philadelphia Society of Free Letts (Latvian Society), at 7th and Spring Garden. The night starts with an illustrated talk by Domenic about this fascinating moment in pop culture, accompanied by rare slides from original scene photographers like Henry Diltz, Yoram Kahana and Marc Wanamaker, as well as some relevant film clips from the Secret Cinema archives.

After some Q&A with our guest author, there will be a screening of the classic, garage rock-filled exploitation feature film RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, which obviously provided the inspiration for the book's title (as well as the scorching Standells' theme song). The film will be presented, as usual, in glorious 16mm film on a giant screen.

Then, we provide a built-in after-party, in the funky (and reasonably priced!) downstairs bar of the Latvian hall with music provided by Domenic Priore and D.J. Silvia. Domenic will bring a choice selection of Sunset Strip sounds, including records by L.A. locals (Byrds, Standells, Bobby Fuller Four) and touring bands that made the Strip scene (Them, Velvet Underground), plus some valuable vinyl rarities. D.J. Silvia will add some international flavor, to show how the new sixties teen scene reverberated around the globe.

The approximate schedule is as follows:

8:00 pm - Illustrated talk by Domenic Priore: "Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood"

9:00 pm - Film screening: RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP

10:30 pm until ? - After party with Domenic Priore and D.J. Silvia, book signing, etc.

Admission to all of the above is $8.00

More info follows about both the guest speaker and feature film...

Domenic Priore is a writer and television producer specializing in pop culture and music. He is the author of BEATSVILLE (with Martin McIntosh) and SMILE: THE STORY OF BRIAN WILSON'S LOST MASTERPIECE (with forewords by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks), and was the main writer on the AMC documentaries HOLLYWOOD ROCKS THE MOVIES. His great and long running, if infrequently published (four issues spanning three decades!) zine, THE DUMB ANGEL GAZETTE, explores his various obsessions; its 1989 book-sized special edition LOOK! LISTEN! VIBRATE! SMILE! kick-started a revival of interest in Brian Wilson's unreleased SMILE project that ultimately led to Wilson
recording a new album of this music. A native of Los Angeles, Priore met Secret Cinema programmer Jay Schwartz when both served as contributing editors to Marshall Crenshaw's book HOLLYWOOD ROCK: A GUIDE TO ROCK 'N' ROLL IN THE MOVIES (1994, Harper Collins).

Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) Dir: Arthur Dreifuss

One of the best loved of American International's late-60s drive-in fodder movies, "the most shocking film of our generation" purported to blow the lid off the wild goings on in the Hollywood discotheques of the day. Producer Sam Katzman, ever watchful of trends, based the film on the real-life violent riots that erupted on the Sunset Strip after police harassment of the mobs of teenagers there.

Mimsy Farmer (who also starred in HOT RODS TO HELL before moving to Europe) plays a troubled girl who gets in with a bad crowd at the local rock club. She then goes off to a wild party where she is slipped LSD in her diet coke and is taken advantage of by five boys. Her absent father happens to be the chief of police, and the previously-tolerant man's violent reaction triggers a massive demonstration (the father is played by the late Aldo Ray, who began his career in mainstream movies and by the '70s had fallen to accepting a non-sexual role in a hardcore porno film).

As fun as all of this acid-crazed wild youth business is, the best reason to see RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP is the great footage of the garage rock heroes who appear in the nightclub scenes. The Standells (of "Dirty Water" near-fame) play the great title track and "Get Away From Here." The amazing Chocolate Watch Band, featuring genius Mick Jagger-imitator Dave Aguilar (now an astronomy professor) dish up two scorching punk anthems. Aguilar's snarling performance of "Don't Need Your Lovin" (a canny rewrite of "Milkcow Blues") stands as the cinematic definition of punk rock, past, present and future. The underrated Enemies (who left behind a few 45s on MGM before singer Cory Wells reunited with founding member Danny Hutton to form Three Dog Night) also perform.

Need a second opinion? Visit the BMB's own The B Hive to read Rob Smentek's astute summation of the film's finer points.

More information on this event and all other things Secret Cinema can be found at www.thesecretcinema.com

A quadrangle of quirky movie madness; new this week at the buffet…

The Kommandant gets a Winnebago seat education from a promiscuous pair of '70s sleaze flicks, Pick Up & The Teacher.

While Bunny commits to a double dose of '60s sexploitation sinema, Unholy Matrimony & My Third Wife George.

B Movies invade Indiana

One other thing I learned about from our post vacation email is The B Movie Celebration. Here's a description of the event copied from said email:

What do you get when you show over 60 classics B movies, then add seminars by the greatest practitioners of the B Cinema artform working today: Well, you get The B Movie Celebration. A celebration of all cinematic B things being held August 17th thru 19th in Franklin, Indiana, the garden spot of the Mid West.

The B Movie Celebration is an event unlike any other. Part film festival, part educational symposium and part circus. Over sixty classic B feature film films will be shown, including 'Forbidden Planet", "Night of The Living Dead" and "Death Race 2000". Appearing at The Celebration, will be Troma Studio founder Lloyd Kaufman, B Film Legend Jim Wynorski, Effects Guru Tom Savini and numerous other practitioners of the B movie art form.

Now, I can't vouch for the garden spot-y-ness of Franklin, Indiana - or, really the event itself, as I'd never heard of it prior to reading the email - but I did look at their schedule and we have reviewed at least three out of the sixty classic B feature films that will be shown on the Buffet (namely The Devil Rides Out, The Fall Of The House Of Usher & Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) which seems like a good enough reason to mention it here. Plus, they actually emailed me via my official c14 editrix address but by the time the next issue comes out, in October, it won't be news anymore.

Anywhoo, more info. on the event can be found at www.bmoviecelebration.com.

The BMB is back in town...

With our summer vacation now in the past tense, we will soon be returning to our regularly scheduled schedule of weekly updates - as soon as we climb out from under the pile of email, regular mail, laundry and work that accumulated while we were gone. (I'm thinking I'll post the update on Monday of next week but it could just as well wind up being Tuesday or Wednesday.)

In the meantime I thought I'd mention a couple things I learned from reading through my post-vacation email. (Technically these emails came in during our vacation but I didn't read them until today; i.e.: post vacation.) I think I'm gonna have to space these news nuggets out in increments over the next few days though, for the reason mentioned earlier.

Anywhoo, when faced with the question of "what do you want first, the good news or the bad news" I always choose to get the latter straight away. (For one thing when it comes to bad news I don't like to fuck around. I prefer to find out what the problem is asap so I can start figuring out how I'm going to deal with it. Plus I have a theory that the good news, when delivered after the bad news, helps to soften the blow of the former.) With that in mind, we'll start with the bad news.

While we were on vacation Lazlo Kovacs died. For those not familiar with his name (as I wasn't at first; although as soon as I looked at his IMDB page I realized I should know his name based on how many of the listed films I've seen), Kovacs was a cinematographer who was probably most famous for his work on such Hollywood classics as Five Easy Pieces & Easy Rider.

Of course we here at the BMB will always remember him for such non-Hollywood classics as Hells Angels on Wheels, Hell's Bloody Devils, Psych-Out, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies and A Smell Of Honey, A Swallow Of Brine.

Surprisingly, the Kommandant and I have seen all of the films mentioned in the previous paragraph but only reviewed two of them on the site. (Interested parties can read reviews of Hell's Bloody Devils & The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies here and here.) I promise to work towards remedying that situation in the future.

Black candles and evil eyes; new this week at the buffet...

This week the BMB is welcomed to the grindhouse by two tales bloody horror.

First, the Kommandant is illuminated by the sacrilegious Satanic sleaze of Black Candles.

Then Bunny sets her sights on some disjointed dream-y Eurotrash and winds up getting the Evil Eye.

And on that note the buffet is closed for summer vacation! We will return to our regularly scheduled schedule of regular weekly updates the first week of August. See you then!

Nudists and 'Nam vets; new this week at the buffet…

I completely forgot to plan ahead and whip up some sort of Fourth Of July themed menu offerings for this week's buffet but, conveniently enough, all three of these titles feature themes near and dear to those this great nation of ours was founded on - the freedom to roam around roadside attractions in the nude and the freedom to seek bloody revenge on those who have wronged us; respectively.

First up, join Bunny as she goes Walking In A Wishman Wonderland to take a peek at Doris' nudie cutie classic, Nude On The Moon. (This is the one featuring a roadside attraction by the way, namely South Florida's own Coral Castle.)

Then join the Kommandant as he buckles up for a drive-in double feature of '70s revenge-sploitation featuring Search And Destroy (starring Class Of 1984's Perry King) and The Glove (starring Black Christmas' John Saxon).

Too much monkey business; new this week at the buffet...

This week we have pair of special menu offerings at the buffet, each featuring an extra large helping of an extra large monkey man. Why? Why the hell not.

First join Bunny and get swept up in the mechanical hand of AIP's offering to the giant ape genre, Konga.

Then join The Kommandant and go ape (like a big gorilla) over the Shaw Brothers' The Mighty Peking Man.

Movie monsters and monstrous movies; new this week at the buffet…

This week Bunny is less than horrified by the beasts, the machines & the dead (oh my) of the Creature Features Collection.

While The Kommandant gives the business to indie horror documentary Horror Business.

Black gloved killers and sloppily dressed zombies; new this week at the buffet…

This week Giallo Biafra returns to his Trattoria Of Terror to serve up a somewhat satisfying slice of Giallo, The Fifth Cord. (Featuring a kicky soundtrack by BMB fave Ennio Morricone.)

While Bunny visits The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue & learns why it's often best to Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

The wild west meets naughty nurses; new this week at the buffet…

This week the buffet serves up a double dose of fiendish and frightening ghastly horrors that could only come from the twisted mind of Al Adamson.

First join The Kommandant have a non-Mexican stand-off with Adamson's Five Bloody Graves; then join Bunny & check in with Al's horny hospital of terror, Nurse Sherri.

In real world news: last week we were thrilled to hear that Exploitation Retrospect & Hungover Gourmet head honcho / longtime c14 contributor / close personal friend of the B-Movie Buffet, Dan "Dante" Taylor and his lovely wife Christine gave birth to a beautiful, bouncing baby girl. (Do babies actually bounce? I've never had one.)

At any rate, we pretty much expected the giving birth part after we learned of the pregnancy part - that's what the pamphlet at the gynecologists' office told us would happen - but it was still totally exciting. Here's the post-baby arrival post via Dan's blog(s):

Our daughter Ryan was born on Friday night, June 1st at 7:02 PM. She clocked in at 20.5" long and 7 lbs. 2 oz. Mom and Ryan came home from the hospital on Sunday and everybody is doing as well as can be expected. Still getting used to the topsy-turvy schedule (I've watched more TV at 3 AM over the last couple days than I have since college) and trying to stay as normal as possible. Which isn't easy.

Congratulations to all!

It's a psycho-delic freakout; new this week at the buffet…

This week Bunny tunes in, turns on and drops out with the lysergic emanations of The Acid Eaters & Weed; while the Kommandant takes a seat in his Corman Corner and finally takes in The Trip.

PS: Today's title is an homage to the Reverend Horton Heat circa the early '90s. He had a song called "Psychobilly Freakout," which was actually an instrumental; but every so often he would yell out "It's a psychobilly freakout!" Thus the title. By the way, did you know the relationship between the Kommandant & I dates back to a Reverend Horton Heat show circa the early '90s? It's true. Anyway, I just thought I would point that out to anyone who didn't catch that reference; which I'm thinking is probably, like, 95% of people reading this.

It's a night-y night; new this week at the buffet…

This week the Kommandant returns to The Decade That Dripped Blood and spends the night with sub-par teen slasher flick Night Of The Demons.

Then Bunny bites into a vampiric, gothic tale of lust and lycanthropy, Paul Naschy's The Night Of The Werewolf; featuring box cover illustration by c14 #16 interviewee / cover artist Wes Benscoter and the funkiest theme song of any werewolf movie we've seen to date!

Wanton wives and scandalous schoolgirls; new this week at the buffet…

This week Bunny gets tangled up in a web of steamy suburban sin courtesy genre staple Joe Sarno, Moonlighting Wives.

And The Kommandant learns what parents don't think is possible from the soft-core shenanigans of Schoolgirl Report Volume #1.

Dangerous kisses and diabolical kills; new this week at the buffet…

This week, join us as we travel to the sunny, sexy shores of Italy and come face to face with the diabolical danger of Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik.

Then we'll head to Germany to pucker up and hunker down with sassy, silly spy flick Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill.

Possession and vengeance, Spanish style; new this week at the buffet…

This week we are pleased to feature two films from everyone's favorite lycanthropic lothario, Paul Naschy. Although he doesn't play a werewolf in either of these films; but that doesn't make them any less watchable.

First up, join the Kommandant and be bedeviled and possessed by The Devil's Possessed.

Then join Bunny and meet the mystics, madmen and man-beasts (oh my!) of Vengeance Of The Zombies.

Pitt, no pendulum; new this week at the buffet…

This week we have two horror-ific horror films starring the one and only Ingrid Pitt.

First, The Kommandant's ears are alive with the sound of Sound Of Horror; also starring Spanish beauty Soledad Miranda.

Then Bunny returns to the tombs of Hammer horror to be seduced by the sexy, sapphic sirens of The Vampire Lovers.

Brainiacs, kidnappers and pianists; new this week at the buffet…

New to our menu this week we have a trio of films that, essentially, have nothing in common. But that won't stop us from posting them in the same update!

First up, alphabetically speaking, join Bunny as she takes in the brain sucking terror of the most bizarre horror movie… ever… Brainiac.

Then join the Kommandant and be taken hostage by Mario Bava's curiously non-horrific lost masterpiece Kidnapped.

Finally, join Stately Wayne Manor as he discusses his thoughts on pianist enhancement in the latest installment of Manor On Movies, Sincerely Yours.