Jack H. Harris Presents Some Nudie Cuties!

I rather doubt that many people have gone bankrupt betting on whether men like looking at naked dames. Hugh Hefner got so rich doing it, that he only ever had to wear pajamas the rest of his life. Hefner's success was the envy of many a young hustler in the 60's and I have no doubt that Jack H. Harris was among them. He made his stab at filling that niche with 1962's Paradisio, the first of his "Nudie Cuties". 

Nudie Cuties were films featuring looks at naked flesh minus the offbeat and strained rationale of the practice of Nudism or Nudist Colonies. Russ Meyer's The Immortal Mr. Teas from 1959 is considered the first installment of this kind of movie. Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead is also a later addition. Jack Harris entered the arena in 1962 with Paradisio, a movie about a professor chap who gets hold of some x-ray glasses and then gets swept up in a spy plot. When he's looking through his glasses it generates a 3-D quality to the nudity, and we are to use our own glasses for full effect. For more details check out this TCM link. To watch the movie, follow this link. At two hours it's pretty slow.

A later installment in the form was Playmates which as you can see from the poster above was presented in something suggesting "Deep Vision 3-D". 
 

With the movie Without a Stitch Harris movie into full-blown soft pornography. There was clearly money to be made in those days with this kind of faire. This one features a young girl who seeks sexual gratification and ends up in hands of a sadist. Now Harris had no creative hand in this one, he just arranged its distribution. 

Harris found product from overseas. France was a supplier for a few of the movies he distributed. The two titles I've found at the forefront of that are Les Biches and Erotique. 

Harris scored a real coup when he got his mitts on a softer core movie title The Oldest Profession. One of the stars of this bit of cinema was Raquel Welch herself, which came the after her breakout performances in Fantastic Voyage and One Million B.C. It's a weird movie with six directors each telling a separate tale of prostitution through the ages. Welch shows up in the section about the Gay Nineties. She was the sole American actress in the film.

Raquel was a stunning beauty, that's for certain. Now for a couple of movies of a different kind. 

Bone is a movie written and directed by Larry Cohen (the creator of The Invaders and Branded for TV and many other movies). For some reason Harris got involved with the distribution of his movie starring Yaphet Kotto. It's a pretty stunning movie for its time about a loveless couple who are set upon by a cruel drifter. Here's the trailer under a different name. 

In his book Harris indicated he was involved with the American distribution of My Son the Vampire, an English movie featuring Bela Lugosi originally titled Mother Riley Meets The Vampire. Allen Sherman created a daffy song to help promote this offbeat horror-comedy in the weird tradition of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 

To listen to Allen Sherman's kooky song and get a glimpse of the movie check out this YouTube link. 

These are the kinds of films which Harris used to make his living through the 60's but things were about to change when even weirder monsters come to call. Next time we visit the Equinox. 

Rip Off

Grave Robbers From Outer Space!

Edward D. Wood Jr. is arguably responsible for the most famous flying saucer movie ever made. That movie is Plan 9 from Outer Space (originally titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space -- a more accurate title). The movie was once deemed the worst ever made, but of course that was not true then and is certainly not true now.  Plan 9 from Outer Space is not even the worst movie that Ed Wood ever made. (Night of the Ghouls - the sequel of sorts is way worse for instance.) The movie is filled with outlandish acting, amateurish set design, wooden dialogue, and a plot that makes little sense most of the time. But despite all of that, the movie has a great charm. 

(Possible inspiration for Plan 9 from Outer Space?)

For the very few who might not know, the saga begins with Bela Lugosi. Bela was down on his luck at the back end of a career which began with much promise but had fizzled. Bela was a drug addict and Ed Wood became his friend and dreamed of creating a movie starring the veteran actor. He succeeded with the movie Bride of the Monster which starred Bela alongside Tor Johnson as a mute named "Lobo". Wood had used Bela in his autobiographical movie Glen or Glenda also, but his role was more symbolic. By the time of Plan 9, Bela Lugosi had passed away. But Wood had footage of the old star and used this stuff as a jumping off point for a movie about grave robbers from space using dead bodies to presumably conquer mankind. The movie was a weird blend of science fiction and horror, and as we all know epic unintentional comedy. 

Wood tries to make hay on the flying saucer craze of the 50's as well, using model kits to populate his cinematic skies with attacking spacecraft. He also cast Vampira, a well-known movie host who had just been let go from that position. She never spoke but her singular look is one of the best things about Plan 9. Tor Johnson is back as a police officer and even gets to talk a little bit (his only lines in any Ed Wood movie he was in) before he killed and turned into a very threatening yet cuddly zombie. Our doughty hero is Geoffrey Walcott, an actor who would go on to have an actual mainstream career in spite of Plan 9. Sprinkle in small parts for veteran actors like Lyle Talbot and Tom Keene among a gaggle of relative amateurs and in Wood's mind you had the makings of a classic. 

(What a pair!)

Watching the movie again (I've seen it countless times) I was once again delighted by the humor which leaps from the screen. Cops slinging guns around with aplomb, prissy aliens getting in a snit, and he-man heroes trying to save both the girl and humanity are all part of a pageant which entertains relentlessly. Ed Wood might have made some bad movies (and he did) but he was diligent and sincere, so one is forced to take him at his word. Watch Plan 9 form Outer Space with the same seriousness Wood brought to it and it won't get better, but it will impress. 

Rip Off

The Gorilla!

The Gorilla starring the Ritz Brothers is a wacky haunted house-like yarn from the silent days of film when such films as The Bat were popular and later again in 1930 in the earliest days of sound. Neither of those efforts survive leaving only this version. This 1939 variant sports a nifty cast with Lionel Atwill in fine form and Bela Lugosi doing what he did best, giving the whole shebang an eerie feeling.

This story has all the earmarks of a Scooby Doo yarn. A rich guy (Atwill) is threatened by his backers and seeks a way out of his dilemma and invites his niece over, a girl he just happens to share interest in a valuable piece of property with. He is seemingly threatened by "The Gorilla", a murderer who has terrorized the city in recent weeks and everyone is concerned.

He hires the Ritz Brothers who in this instance play a trio of detectives known as "Garrity, Harrigan, and Mulligan". They are as hapless as you'd expect and there are other mysterious figures and such. Patsy Kelly as a maid who keeps trying to leave but with no success.

The ambles along after Atwill's disappearance and all through the melee there is the resolute Bela Lugosi as a butler who seems weirdly unaffected by any of the odd goings on in the house. His straightforward portrayal plays nicely against the hectic Ritz Brothers and actress Patsy Kelly. I've seen a lot of people pan this movie, but I rather liked it for what it was and by the way there is actually a gorilla in it. 

Rip Off

Return Of The Ape Man!

When is an "ape man" not an "ape man"? When that "ape man" appears in the 1944 flicker Return of the Ape Man. This is one of those delightfully awful movies from the poverty row side of Hollywood and it stars Bela Lugosi, John Carrdine and George Zucco (almost). The final name appears only momentarily in the movie, but was taken ill and replaced by a bloke named Frank Moran.

Moran plays the title role, but alas is only an ancient caveman and not anything really much like an ape. From some of the dialogue and even the movie's title card one gets the sense a different creature was intended. Moran is mildly menacing at times, but hardly an "ape man".

He was defrosted from some Arctic ice by scientists Lugosi and Carradine who went looking specifically for a cave man in ice. Now it's worth pointing out that this movie has no apparent connection to the earlier Lugosi effort titled The Ape Man.

Lugosi's scientist is properly mad and murderous and ends up dissolving his partnership with the much more easygoing Carradine in the most macabre manner. There are some younger folks to fill in as hero and heroine, but the story is hapless from the get-go with plot holes easily fixed which were not. The scenes are all on stages aside from some images of glaciers falling apart and the scenes are just dumb. Almost as dumb as the police, who will shoot at nearly anything at anytime. You'd almost think Ed Wood had something to do with this mess.

But that said, I found a few things here and there to hang some fun on. If you can see this one for free, it's worth a fan's time, but don't pay much for it unless you're obsessive like I am.

Rip Off

The Ape Man!

What happens when a scientist and his amigo concoct an experiment which changes said scientist into a bizarre Human-Ape hybrid creature who must kill to preserve his diminishing human traits? The Ape Man starring the legendary Bela Lugosi is the afflicted scientist and what he does to cling to humanity is well and truly inhuman. This is a zany movie with one mysterious character who dabbles in fourth-wall busting off and on throughout. William "One-Shot" Beaudine directed this programmer, a diverting entertainment I think, but hardly great.

Low-budget horror flicks have to be taken on their own merits and even with some fine actors like Lugosi and Wallace Ford and Louise Curry, a reporter and his photographer respectively who stumble across the weird scheme, the whole doesn't really add up to queer sum of the parts. We've got them, plus Lugosi's sister who is a medium and his partner in crime who balks eventually at helping him. The biggest attraction though is Emil Van Horn as a "real" ape who serves as henchman for Lugosi as he goes about his devious business.

This is a ride, albeit a cheap one and a short one and at times a bit of a slow one, and you pays for the ticket and takes your chances. I for one like it.

Rip Off

Dojo Classics - Revolt Of The White Zombies!

White Zombie is my favorite Bela Lugosi movie. I'm not alone in that opinion I suspect. This early independent horror flick by the Halperin Brothers features a vital Bela just months away from his defining role as Dracula playing an even creepier sorceror who enslaves the living and the dead.

Murder Legrande is a great villain, self-abosbed and absolutely ruthless. He doesn't seem to care a whit about anyone but himself. The movie is rich with atmosphere and if a bit stodgy in spots, nonetheless an enthralling movie.

Revolt of the Zombies is the belated sequel to White Zombie and this one I'd not seen until recently. Both this movie and its precursor are in public domain so it can be found for the cheap on many collections of old fright flicks. Coming to this one with a profound appreciation of the original, I had read that it was a bit weak. I found it stronger than I expected. The story is clever in that it eschews the setting of the original and goes to the Far East for its atmosphere. This is very smart and gives the film its own character. The acting is pretty decent, at least as good as the original save for Bela, and the plot ain't all that bad. But it suffers from a terrible ending, one that could've been outstanding but alas falls victim to the budget.

Unlike Murder Legrande, the villain here is a man torn by his passion for a woman who utterly and callously rejects him. We are more able to understand this "nice guy" seeking another solution. His choices doom him and many others, but it's a story that requires more identification with the badguy than the original. Dean Jagger in the lead role is pretty darn good. White Zombie is pretty scary for what it seeks to do, and this one is far less so, but it does offer up a few creepy sequences and at least one iconic image of zombies marching into battle. That's a chilling sequence for sure.

Rip Off

Meet The Monsters!

I recently had the great pleasure to enjoy one of the most exquisite perks in the teaching field, a snow day. They come in the depths of winter, some much anticipated, a precious few unseen and even more pleasurable, but they are jewels of time given over by Mother Nature and so must be used to best effect. I used mine to watch Abbott and Costello movies, especially those in which the classic comedy team match up against some of Universal's mighty monsters. Here are my results as along with Bud and Lou, I too meet the monsters!

(1948)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is the first and best of these quasi-horror comedies. Bud and Lou play delivery men Chick and Wilbur (respectively) who end up getting on the wrong side of Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and his schemes to revive the Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange) as his slave. To help him he uses a beautiful criminal scientist named Mornay (Lenore Aubert). Looking to frustrate the scheme is Larry Talbot, the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) who tries to get Wilbur and Chick to help him. Also on hand is an insurance agent (Jane Randolph) who gets mixed up with Mornay's assistant (Charles Bradstreet). There is much highjinks  as the boys get dragged to a creepy island castle and run amok during a masquerade ball in which Dracula can walk around with little suspicion.

This is a romp of the grandest order, with delightful gags and truly amazing pacing. It's almost never a drag, even by modern standards and the spectacle of the sets is keen to the nth degree. For monster fans there are plenty of Wolfman moments with three four transformations, lots of Dracula allure with his changes into a bat handled with some slick animation, and scuds of Frankenstein action with Glenn Strange offering up another glimpse of the sympathetic monster. The Abbott and Costello gags are by and large pretty funny, so it scores high on that side as well. The Invisible Man puts in an appearance before this one is over and that's nifty since he's the focus of the next move.

(1951)

Abbot and Costello Meet The Invisible Man is the least of the four movies in this collection. The boys are two recently graduated detectives who get asked by an escaped murder suspect and former boxing hero Tommy Nelson  (Arthur Franz) to help him prove his innocence. We also meet his girlfriend Helen (Nancy Guild) and scientist Dr. Gray (Gavin Muir) who are working to recreate the formula of John Griffin (shown in a photo to be Claude Rains) to become invisible.

Chased by police detective Roberts (William Frawley) Tommy uses the formula and then becomes increasingly erratic as the story unfolds. To prove his innocence he convinces the boys to go undercover as a boxer and his manager to draw out the hoodlum (Sheldon Leonard) who framed him. Along the way a dame named Boots (Adele Jergens) who tries to seduce Lou to get him to throw a fight. There is much double-crossing and gags, but overall very little aside from a few great special effects.

(1953)

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stars not only Bud and Lou (named Slim and Tubby in this one) but Boris Karloff (as Dr. Jekyll though stuntman Eddie Parker played Hyde) as well. Karloff had done an earlier movie with Abbott and Costello but apparently had little regard for the work he'd done there. Nonetheless he's great as a scheming Jekyll who transforms himself into the murderous Hyde to get rid of rivals and critics. Slim and Tubby meet a reporter named Bruce Adams (Craig Stevens) and a suffragette named Vicky Edwards (Helen Westcott) who is also Jekyll's ward, a woman he has designs on. After many complications in Jekyll's lab assistant, them menacing Bately (John Dierkes) who chases the boys around for a bit.

There's a lot of a grand chase sequences in this one and really fun gags. But mostly it's the brisk pace, which after a somewhat sleepy beginning rarely lets up. It's the second best of these four flicks by a large margin, which in no small part because it attempts to mimic the first one. Karloff is typically great.

(1955)

Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy is the last of these four movies and as it turns out, the final Abbot and Costello major movie ever. They turned their attention to television after this and broke up in 1957. This is a movie that's desperate to keep the viewer's attention with a story set in Egypt in which our heroes who use their own names in the movie though the end credits do list character names for them. They run afoul of a cult led by Semu (Richard Deacon) trying to retrieve the mummy Khalis which has been taken by Professor Zoomer (Kurt Hatch) who is swiftly murdered and our heroes get blamed for it.

Chased now by the Cairo police they also run afoul of Madame Rontru (Marie Windsor) and her henchmen (Michael Ansara and Dan Seymour). There's a lot of running, and inexplicably lots of dancing as the movie often stops for simple stage acts to take off. We have a dance troup or two and a lounge singer (Peggy King) who entertain while the movie hovers in abeyance. It's a movie with moments but not a success. The Mummy is pretty good but the story gets out of control as its explosive ending indicates.

All in all, these are monsters exceedingly well met and a snow day exceedingly well spent.

Rip Off

Bela Over London!

Bela Lugosi is a legendary figure in cinema. It's difficult to imagine anyone in the western world, perhaps the entire world who is not familiar with his version of the vampire, the marble-mouthed over-dressed gentleman who politely wants to drink your blood. Some years ago I got on a Lugosi binge and gathered up as much of his canon as I could grab for relatively reasonable or small money and I had a great time savoring some great, good and terrible performances for various directors and companies over the course of decades.

One that I missed at the time was a notorious film from England which goes by a host of title including My Son The Vampire, Vampire Over London, and Mother Riley Meets The Vampire. It's the last in a long long list of "Mother Riley" movies which star comedian Arthur Lucan in drag as the zany washerwoman "Mother Riley".

The movie was shown in the United States in the early 60's (well after the deaths of both its leads Lucan and Lugosi) under the title My Son The Vampire and took advantage of the momentary hubbub surrounding the comedian/ singer Allen Sherman. He recorded one of his typical bizarre songs which served as the theme music for the show.

The movie is rather terrible. It appears to borrow the plot from Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and rumble off in all sorts of directions. When a robot (a better creation than any "Frankenstien Monster" or so says Lugosi's character) is misdirected in the mails to the home of Mother Riley, the evil mastermind Von Housen (Lugosi) and his bizarre gang of henchmen plot to steal it back and get Mother Riley along with it for their troubles. She at first is unaware of the nefarious nature of Von Housen's schemes but quickly realizes he is the notorious "Vampire" who has been kidnapping women in London for some time. Apparently the movie takes pains to suggest he is not an actual vampire and we don't see him do anything really vampire like save to sleep in a coffin and make unsubstantiated allusions to an unusually long life. After what seems like hours of not-very-funny mugging by Lucan as Mother Riley and some rather meager attempts by Lugosi to project a hint of menace the movie winds down with a showdown at the docks which is over in a whisk.

Bad movies offer up one of the great conundrums of life in that they are at once too short and too long. This movie is too short in that it doesn't take nearly enough time to establish the menace in a convincing or consistent manner and it's too long because the comedy plays really badly and often runs counter to the needs of the plot. It's the sign of a terrible movie when the characters are just as dumb or smart as they need to be in any given scene to keep the whole magilla tumbling along. That happens all through this turkey.


Lugosi returned from London and soon enough his career was in the peculiar hands of Ed Wood. The trip to London was apparently an attempt to get over one more time and reignite his career, but it didn't work and having now seen it I well understand why.

This one is for Lugosi purists for sure.

Rip Off

The Black Sleep!

The Black Sleep has been that one horror flick which has eluded me for years and years. Until recently, I'd never seen this final stab at classic horror by some of the screen's classic names. You'd think a movie loaded with the likes of Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, John Carradine, and even Tor Johnson would be a true horror pleasure. But you'd be wrong.

Despite an amazing assembly of talent, including the lead villain Basil Rathbone, this movie rarely gathers any momentum and just when it does, it stifles it with an abrupt and truncated finale which only serves to tie up loose ends and not all of those really.

The story is really rather a simple one. A mad scientist (Rathbone) in a deluded attempt to save his comatose wife who needs brain surgery assembles  a cadre of practice patients to do brain surgery upon. He works through a local tattoo artist and body snatcher and uses two nurses (one loyal and one not) along with another doctor who he has helped escape the gallows. This team of specialists wander around a classic castle filled with dungeons and operating rooms hidden behind giant fireplaces. Eventually his subjects get loose and all hell breaks loose.

The biggest problem with this movie is that despite a large ensemble cast, most of the actors don't actually talk or say much of anything of interest. Only four characters have much to do and much of that makes little sense in the long term. Much of the screen time in the middle of the movie is taken up with mind-numbing talk about the physiology of the brain with charts and posters and such used as static visual guides. 

I've waited many years to see this movie and frankly despite the grand cast it was disappointing. A missed opportunity to get some great stuff from some infamous actors falls into the trap of merely trading on their names for an advertising stunt. It was truly unfortunate.

Rip Off