REEL WILD CINEMA: EPISODES TWO-FOUR

Balladeer’s Blog’s Forgotten Television feature provided background information on Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997) and examined its first episode last time around. This time I’ll take a look at episodes two to four.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE TWO (April 28th, 1996)

Title: Supernatural Sirens

Truncated Films Shown:

CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN (1963) – The Mexican horror film about La Llorona that got U.S. distribution and half-assed dubbing via K. Gordon Murray himself. I’ve reviewed this film in detail previously so for a quick recap for newbies to this flick it’s the old ghost story about an undead woman who sheds tears from her empty eye sockets while making with withering cries.

The Crying Woman has been searching for her dead children for hundreds of years and this version of the legend added a trio of leashed, ghostly hounds to accompany her on her nocturnal hunts. Death comes to all who cross her path.

THE NAKED WITCH (1961) – For starters, this is the Larry Buchanan film, NOT the Andy Milligan Naked Witch movie from a different year. As usual for Buchanan this was filmed in Texas, and is yet another variation of the tale about a witch who gets put to death but returns a century or more later to slay all the descendants of her killers.

Viewers get a reasonably attractive woman in the lead role. She’s never naked no matter what the title says, but she does do a weird dance when not killing her victims. And that’s just part of the unintentional laughs contained in this infamous piece of schlock. 

SAMSON VS THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1962) – K. Gordon Murray struck again with this Mexican lucha libre movie about the heroic masked wrestler El Santo. Though that means “the Saint” in Spanish Murray rechristened the hero Samson.

If you’ve never seen the movies about El Santo, Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras and other masked wrestlers you’re missing a lot of B-movie laughs. When those professional wrestlers aren’t in the ring they’re taking on monsters, aliens, gangsters, spies, you name it. In this flick “Samson” faces a coven of female vampires and their werewolf henchmen. 

*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers and excerpts regarding The Girl in the Cage (1965), The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman (1971), Devil Woman (1970) and Fanny Hill Meets Frankenstein (1967).  

All that plus a few of those old black & white Playtex living bra commercials where it looks like the spokesmodel turns invisible except for her bra as she models it for viewers.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE THREE (May 5th, 1996)

Title: Evil Carnival of Horrors

Truncated Films Shown:

THE GIRL AND THE GEEK (1964) – A truly awful movie made in Texas about a female stripper, gangsters and a monstrous carnival geek. Said stripper is on her way to Las Vegas but on a stopover in the Lone Star State she gets taken hostage by Cuban gangsters on the run.

A carnival geek who looks like Ric Ocasek wearing a Beatles wig breaks out of his cage to slay one of the gangsters strong-arming the stripper. Next, the geek chases the young lady around the low-rent amusement park that caged him until a roller coaster kills him. This virtually all-narration flick is irresistible to me and my fellow fans of Psychotronic movies.   

THE WILD AND THE NAKED (1962) – This sleazy, cynically “artsy” film is just boring titillation padded out with surreal horror bits. Or maybe it’s just a surreal horror film padded out with boring titillation.

We viewers get a model named Paulette going to a nightclub, fending off and fleeing from a psychotic male fan, taken captive by an apelike monster and saved by a Handsome Stranger. That man gets dragged off by four violent women who then dance to rock music. I’m so sick of movies recycling this same tired plot! Y’know?   

SHE FREAK (1967) – Incredibly dull, talky film that tries to pass itself off as a color remake of Freaks. The She Freak is a sleazy waitress who goes on to abuse and betray her freakish husband and, rather than turn her into the Chicken Woman from the earlier film, his fellow freaks turn her into a woman with a really bad makeup job for a few seconds. Not worth me adding a picture and not worth watching.

*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers for Mondo Pazzo (1963), Asylum of Satan (1972) and Karakum Carnival (1960). 

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE FOUR (May 12th, 1996)

Title: Burlesque Beauties

Truncated Films Shown:

THE SEDUCERS (1962) – A half-assed attempt at Alfred Hitchcock by way of Russ Meyer. A beautiful woman thinks she kills a man in a hit and run accident one evening. A man who witnessed it uses it to blackmail the woman from then on.

Eventually it turns out the hit-and-run victim might actually still be alive and coming for her. Remember I Know What You Did Last Summer? Well think of this as I Know What You Did Last Summer but I’ll be Damned if I Do Something About it Until the Movie’s Almost Over. Deadfall is the alternate and more appropriate title for this film.

DEADLY WEAPONS (1974) – The legendarily bad and weird movie from cult director Doris Wishman. Burlesque dancer Crystal (Zsa Zsa) has a boyfriend with – don’t be shocked – ties to organized crime.

When gangsters kill him and the police are helpless, Crystal takes things in her own uh, hands. She starts tracking down each of the murderers and killing them by literally smothering them with her massive endowment. This flick is incredibly boring and Zsa Zsa’s breasts are long and droopy so look elsewhere if you want titillation.   

SOULS IN PAWN (1940) – This is one of the old exploitation films that are hilarious to watch because of outdated attitudes and ham-fisted taglines like “A SEARING INDICTMENT OF TODAY’S MORAL STANDARDS!” Think of camp classics like Reefer Madness, Cocaine Fiends, Test Tube Babies and Tomorrow’s Children!

A young woman gets married but her husband gets an annulment behind her back. Rather than bear the “stigma” of being an unwed mother (despite the extenuating circumstances) she gives her baby away to a childcare facility. That facility turns out to be a black-market baby ring and our heroine tries to get her child back from the burlesque dancer who bought her. 

*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers for Riff Raff Girls (1959), Adam and Eve (1956), Spree (1967), Side Streets of Hollywood (1953) and Playgirl After Dark (1960).

I’LL EXAMINE THREE MORE EPISODES NEXT TIME.