Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the Forgotten Television item Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997).
This time around it’s Episodes 14-16.
THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE FOURTEEN (April 21st, 1997)
Title: Gals & Ghouls
Truncated Films Shown:
IT’S HOT IN PARADISE (1960) – This is a film about hot nightclub ladies and their schmoozing manager getting stuck on an uncharted island after a plane crash. They learn that a now dead mad scientist made the place his lair and his experiments spawned dog-sized spiders whose bite transforms people into half-assed human-spider creatures.
The movie was mostly about footage of beautiful women in an island setting. In 1963, all topless scenes were edited out and it was re-released as a horror schlocker titled Horrors of Spider Island. Even so, the flick was still about 95% cheesecake footage and 5% horror story. Boring-bad, not fun-bad.
INDECENT DESIRES (1968) – Doris Wishman, one of the Psychotronic world’s favorite directors, helmed this sleazy horror movie. A typically crazed New York City loner named Zeb (Michael Alaimo) regularly creeps on women. One day he finds a discarded doll and takes it home with him where he treats it like it’s a real, full-sized woman.
By chance he spots a woman called Ann one day and feels she looks just like the doll. From then on whenever he kisses and caresses the doll the real-life Ann feels the sensations. Zeb, already nuts, is driven even crazier when he realizes Ann has a fiance as well as a friend whom he sees as an obstacle to having Ann all to himself.
Our villain sets out to eliminate the fiance and Ann’s female friend, and ultimately uses the quasi-voodoo doll to inflict horrific tortures on Ann when he realizes she still will not be his. A fairly disturbing premise that gets bungled in the execution. Typical Wishman!
HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN (1962) – The infamous Bob Cresse plays Granny Good, a Maude Frickert kind of old woman drag character whose school for girls is really a front for her bootleg whiskey racket. The lovely ladies who live there make the moonshine for her, plus she has a werewolf named Krakow imprisoned in her basement.
Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster invite themselves to crash the establishment in order to prey on the beautiful women and chaos results. The police arrive and things get even crazier. This bizarrely bad movie is part Benny Hill sketch and part Groovie Goolies episode.
*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers for and excerpts from The Legend of the Wolf Woman (1976), Nymphs Anonymous (1968) and I Eat Your Skin (1964).
THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE FIFTEEEN (April 28th, 1997)
Title: Superchicks
Truncated Films Shown:
WILD WOMEN OF WONGO (1958) – In this flick the attempts at comedy fall flat, the “action” scenes are ludicrous and the overall storyline is idiotic. Wild Women of Wongo is a Golden Turkey beloved by generations of Bad Movie fans.
On two separate islands in Earth’s primitive past, one boasts a village of beautiful women but undesirable men and the other sports a village of attractive men but undesirable women. Long before Love, American Style we got this pathetic schlock movie that tries to camp up the battle of the sexes but winds up making Ringo Starr’s film Caveman look like an Oscar winner.
SATAN IN HIGH HEELS (1962) – Meg Myles stars as a butt-kicking beauty who takes no crap. After slicing up the face of her abusive husband she flees to New York City and becomes a burlesque dancer.
Before you know it, she’s a superstar. For her encore, she becomes the mistress of a nightclub owner and also seduces his son. Conflicting passions lead to murder. Actress Grayson Hall of Dark Shadows fame also appears in this movie.
HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS (1967) – I’ve always thought of this film as “If Russ Meyer Directed Ocean’s 11.” Rita Alexander and a hidden Lorna Maitland headline the cast in this tale of three beautiful women who get together to complain about their no-good husbands and long for the days when they were young, single and wild.
The ladies launch a plan to pull off a diamond heist during Mardi Gras, then wind up on the run using every trick they can to elude the cops. We never see the actual robbery just like in Reservoir Dogs. Ironically, there was a good idea for a movie lurking inside this mess, but instead it’s known as a schlock classic.
CHAINED FOR LIFE (1952) – Notoriously tasteless and jaw-droppingly exploitative, this film has a well-deserved reputation as the most shameless movie since Freaks. Conjoined Siamese twins are the starlets of Chained for Life.
The movie shows us semi-autobiographical material mixed in with over-the-top melodrama to spice things up. Marriage enters the picture, presenting a challenge for our heroines. Sibling and romantic rivalries flare up, resulting in murder, but must both twins go to prison for the crime only one committed?
*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers for and excerpts from Superchick (1973), Zeta One (1969) and Deadly China Doll (1973).
THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE SIXTEEN (May 5th, 1997)
Title: Teens Run Wild
Truncated Films Shown:
GUN GIRLS (1957) – Psychotronic Hall of Fame member Timothy Farrell stars as Joe in this Juvenile Delinquent flick. Farrell once again plays a character who manipulates young ladies into committing violent crimes including, of course, a gas station holdup like in Girl Gang.
The violence escalates as the leading ladies want more and more kicks and cash. Romantic rivalry causes a catfight and by story’s end Farrell gets robbed and killed by the J.D.’s, and, typically for a 50s flick, the teenage Gun Girls die in a car crash while on the lam.
JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT (1968) – Herschell Gordon Lewis masterminded this iconic Juvenile Delinquent movie. Partying teenagers decide they need more nihilism in their lives. Naming their gang Destruction, Inc. they take vandalism to the next level. And then the next level above that. And so on.
Because it’s from Lewis he does his best to provide viewers with envelope-pushing violence but Just for the Hell of It STILL winds up looking very, very tame compared to what cinemas would show in the following decades. Some of the cast members from She-Devils on Wheels are featured in this film.
DANCE CRAZE (1964) – Bill Rebane’s early color effort that depicts supposedly uninhibited dancing from loco teenagers. A man who is obviously too old to be hanging around with teens tries to prove how hip he is and impress the girls by dancing along with them.
The schlub throws out his back and gets chided by his doctor for putting his aging body through the crazy dance moves practiced by those kids today. Our schlub feels betrayed, however, when he spots his doctor cutting the rug with teenyboppers himself.
*** TRAILERS – A look at campy trailers for and excerpts from The Choppers (1961), Youth Aflame (1944) and Ecco (1964).
I’LL EXAMINE THREE MORE EPISODES NEXT TIME.
Balladeer's Blog 
Very cool stuff here. I wonder if anyone is on YouTube?
All of them are, via the Something Weird YT channel and the St. Michael (?) channel.
Good morning and happiness, well done for posting, good luck and have a good day Balladeer
Thanks you! Good luck and good day to you, too!