Rule in the Temple of Love: LIVING VENUS (1960)

In the grand tradition of qualified hyperbole, let it be said that in its way, Living Venus is Herschell Gordon Lewis' Citizen Kane. In terms of legacy, impact and notoriety, Conventional Wisdom usually pronounces Blood Feast (1963) the rather-more-specific Citizen Kane of Gore. To that: fair enough, but we get ahead of ourselves. Living Venus is Lewis' first feature as director, and the plot traces the professional rise and personal disasters of a thinly fictionalized publishing magnate based on a real world celebrity. As with Charlie Kane, so with Jack Norwall of Living Venus: a new-breed whiz kid maverick slowly compromises the ideals of youth, and is corrupted by absolute power — or at least, you know, a lot of damn money. Where Welles finds his perfect embodiment for rebel-gone-bloated-and-gauche tyrant (LIKE AMERICA!) in William Randolph Hearst, Lewis takes fellow Hyde Park resident Hugh Hefner as his subject.

By the film's release in 1960 Lewis had not yet entered the business of nudie pictures proper, though he would, very shortly, with early genre entry The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), directly on Venus' heels. Living Venus begins as lighthearted rags-to-riches comedy, veers into tragic melodrama, peppers the proceedings with a handful of stilted, eerie nude modeling sessions and ends with a man weeping at his wife's grave. This sort of exposé-cum-morality-play is a common exploitation template, one Lewis would visit again in Scum of the Earth (1963), and frequent producing partner David F. Friedman would fall back on with regularity. It goes without saying that setting a story in the world of nude photography provides in-built excuses for depicting nude photography, but it also justifies threadbare production value and allows the filmmakers to essentially write what they know — not that they necessarily do so with much honesty. More unique to Venus in this regard is the about-face in tone as it voyages to the dark heart of the Mid-Century cheesecake biz.

What Kind of Man Reads Pagan?

Lewis-regular-to-be William Kerwin plays Jack Norwall in one of his best starring performances. The big, lanky, leading-man-handsome actor's J.R. "Bob" Dobbs appearance camouflaged a with-it technique; his button-down white dude squareness was always tempered with a slightly seedy, just-fuckin-around,-kids edge. For Lewis, Bill Kerwin would play straight-shooters and scumbags with aplomb, but here he's got something like an actual arc, and it is that of a self-propelled shooting star fizzling out in the void.

Since 1887
As Kerwin plays him, Jack Norwall starts as bright, creative hustler, his charm turned up past the point of insufferableness. His catchphrase, increasingly suspect with every delivery, is "I guarantee it!" He actually has a great, commercial idea but can't stop acting like he's running a con. Jack quits his job at the safe and stuffy Newlywed Magazine when his editor has the gall/good taste/responsibility to chew out for an entirely inappropriate, dubiously humorous cover photo featuring a "shotgun wedding" gag. "My family has published a first-rate magazine since 1887, and I won't have it ruined by your dirty jokes!," opines the uptight old bossman. The details — that the cover went to press without anyone noticing — may not add up, and one wonders exactly what the guy was thinking.

By Jack's estimation, he might be the liberator arrived to shake things up, to free the frustrated centerfold-peeping yearnings of the hemmed-in postwar suburban male. That's the gist of his exit rant: "I'm gonna let you sit here and die! I know what the public wants, and I'm gonna give it to 'em... I'm gonna start my own magazine, old man! It'll have everything in it that you don't understand. It'll have imagination! Humor! Aaand sexy girls!" None of which, of course, really belonged in Newlywed in the first place, so while sort of inspiring, by the end we more likely read the incident as an early foreshadowing of a self-destructive streak that is going to spark Norwall's self-immolation.

The Great Gazoo meets the Godfather of Gore
Thus does Jack exit Newlywed to launch his own revolution in the art of taking pictures of boobs. This is roughly true-to-life, as Hefner did leave a copywriting position at Esquire to strike out on his own. The first Playboy famously coasted to success with photos of Marilyn Monroe, originally taken for a calendar, to which Hef purchased the rights. This not being dramatic enough for the movies, Norwall recruits freelance photographer pal, Ken Carter, who leaps at the opportunity to express himself through naked lady pictures, rather than suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous baby photography. Living Venus is one of Lewis' rare run-ins with a name, mainstream actor, sporting a debuting Harvey Korman as Ken, who essentially becomes the second lead, and narrates in voice over throughout. Both Korman and Kerwin had previously appeared in Lewis' first work as a director, the educational short, Carving Magic!, which is about, y'know, how to carve a crown roast and stuff. That particular cut of cornball ephemera is more widely available than it has any right to be, as Something Weird Video regularly includes it as an ironically-themed bonus feature on discs of Lewis' gore movies.

The Stars Shine At Your Shrine

Newly unencumbered by employment, Jack blows off his put-upon girlfriend Diane (Linné Ahlstrand, who does not appear nude, but actually appeared in Playboy, as July 1958's Playmate of the Month. You guys know how to use Google, I am sure), who he will eventually ditch at the alter, and heads out on a brainstorming mission/excuse for a bender. Drunkenly wandering the night in search of inspiration (ever a good idea?), our hero spies a miniature Venus de Milo reproduction in an antique dealer's storefront, and finds the "Symbol" he requires. "That's it! It's the goddess of love and beauty! It's Venus!" The store is closed so Jack groans "I want my Venus," pulls a smash-&-grab and staggers away. As the goddess of Love and Beauty, the Aphrodite statue speaks to the girlie mag magnate in the most obvious ways. So does cocktail waitress Peggy Brandon (Danica d'Hondt), who becomes the second "Venus" that Jack bumps into that fateful evening, and he whisks her off to Ken Carter's dingy studio for a creeperific late night photo shoot.

Stand not between man and the gods.
But when faced a god, always remember that they do not arrive in color-coded white and black hats. As living metaphor for an essential component of the human soul, every god embodies its aspects in inverse, too: excess and depletion. Venus-Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love, and ain't that sweet?, but when that card lands upside-down she has a talent for inciting jealousy. On that drunken night of invention, Jack Norwall names his new magazine "Pagan" and appoints Aphrodite its mascot. Hefner's bow-tied rabbit (appearing from issue 2 on) may have been selected for its hump-happy popular associations, not necessarily as a trickster archetype, though it has a nice lunar resonance with Japanese and Korean folklore. In these times, the title might evoke finger-wagging Christians slinging pejoratives at native religions and/or robed hippies dancing in a city park, but to the popular imagination of 1960 it signaled something exotic and primal. Pagan is both Playboy and the anti-Playboy — a little taboo, a little titillatingly "backwards" and nature-sexy: the savage fantasy-desires of the sophisticated contemporary male unleashed! Jack can imagine himself as a sophisticate all he wants, but he is tangled up with old, old gods.

"Everybody seemed to like our first issue"
Pagan launches to instant success, backed by distributor Max Stein, a cigar-chomping, worldly bear played by a Lewis fave, character actor Lawrence J. Aberwood — you know him as the guy spewing the beautiful "down inside you're DIRTY!" speech in the Something Weird logo montage. Max is the only person to whom Jack must suck up throughout the film, and the round, relaxed man with a recliner in his office is another sort of contrast to the scrambling, foolish Norwall. Max gives nothing but frank, sound business advice, and wants nothing from Jack's success but his piece of the Pagan pie, but Jack comes to resent and ignore even this former role model.

Ken Carter is the story's moral center as Norwall slides into his downward trajectory. In the key relationship triangle, Ken and Jack are something like friends, Jack and Ken desire Peggy, Peg desires Fame, and the model and photographer both work for Jack. Ken and Peggy spend a lot of time together by occupation ("Proximity," a wise friend once put it, "breeds boners"), and so Ken quietly falls in love while Norwall gets busy selling out. Perhaps the girl would choose the kind-hearted, talented photographer who sees her as a person with a future to consider, were it not for the magnetic, wealthy boss, who sees her as crucial to his brand. This plays out as the difference between a potential partnership and a sort of ownership. There is a mutual respect between the two artists, and the photographer strives for a better forum and warns Peg that the gig can't last forever, but Jack promises easy money and a certain kind of fame. It isn't all on Jack, either: "Ken, I'm not the vine-covered-cottage type," she explains as she turns him down, "For the first time in my life I'm going somewhere and I like it!" The exploitation king's "guarantee" is too alluring, the frustrated artist's dreams will require too much effort, and Peggy makes what we might term a Bad Choice. Alas! If only she knew the risks of both paths! She's going somewhere all right.

You can tell the vine-covered-cottage type a mile away.
Citizen Kane has Hearst's entire career up through the 1940s to mine for material, but Venus, produced only seven years into Playboy's history, traces only the magazine's creation before shifting into fantasy. That is, it imagines the premature downfall of Hugh Hefner. Not that accurate biography was ever the goal, but Lewis can obviously be forgiven for failure to predict the Sexual Revolution (he'd sort of make up for it later [see: The Girl, The Body, and The Pill (1967)]), and the way Hefner would reinvent the magazine by publishing world-class fiction, interviews, cartoons, and his own Playboy Philosophy editorials. As to whether Kane or Venus commits the greater act of character assassination, we might note that Venus is pioneering in the field of Hefsploitation, implying, decades before STAR 80, that the publisher might be complicit in the death of a former pinup girl.

Having decided that Peggy is the muse that inspired Pagan, Norwall turns her into an icon that graces every issue. Whether it is feasible to publish a girlie mag with the same girlie every month becomes a moot point, when, in order to curb the blossoming Peg/Ken relationship, Jack makes the critical error of the Anima-befuddled throughout history, and marries the muse.

Because she's not the Muse, she's not the Venus, she's not a goddess. She never is, fellows — those are concepts, metaphors, drives and ancient impulses that live in the synapses, chromosomes, and collective psychomyth. Real angels never appear in centerfolds. But Jack tries to lasso the ideal anyway, transfers the Peggy out of the pages of Pagan and insists that his new bride stop modeling and start helping sell ad space as his new Promotions Manager. Poor Ken Carter, too, is removed from service out of spite, replaced by Geoffery Page, a hack (from Hollywood!) who is more interested in scoring with the models than the integrity of the nude photographic arts. This poseur in shades and ascot is supposedly of some renown, but turns out to possess none of Ken's mad skillz: the reputation is hollow, the sunglasses-and-beret get-up an affectation. If Ken is Bunny Yeager, Geoff is Terry Richardson. Where Ken's signature style propelled Pagan to success, The Beret's artless bullshit drives the publication into hell.

Geoffrey Page Does it HOLLYWOOD STYLE!
In our already-belabored Kane parallel, Ken is the Jed Leland (a Jiminy Cricket conscience ignored at peril) and Peggy the Susan Alexander (forced on the public, possessed, and driven to drink!). Jack's worst impulses have taken over. He has sapped his creative vision, the magazine now increasingly given over to ad space propping up its indifferent content, revenue generated by forcing his own wife to seduce advertising clients. The happy, hard-working days of doing paste-ups in his bachelor apartment are gone, and with readership dropping off he cannot afford, let alone deserve, his new mansion. Any illusion that his work is dedicated to celebrating the female form is burned away: Jack Norwall has become a pimp, and in order to maintain grip on the Venus that lives in Pagan, he prostitutes his own Living Venus.

Climb Off Your Pedestal

When Ken sees Peg for the last time, she is stumbling toward a private tête-à-tête with an "advertising" client, and Ken is doing an outdoor "high fashion" shoot, saved by his premature dismissal. He does not say it, but still loves her (he "never married" in the last, uh, year), and offers assistance, if she will accept. Ken's sympathy inspires Peg's momentary resolve to tell off the client but she lurches toward the void alone. Unlike similar pictures like Scum of the Earth, Living Venus never attempts to shame, judge, or make tragedy of Peggy's modeling itself, or of the men for publishing a girlie magazine. It is Jack who is undone, and by hubris, not dirty-picture-peddling, Peggy merely the saddest casualty on the way. If Peg is debased by anything, it is mistaking fame for fulfillment, a brand of whoredom associated with marketing, and poor judgment in choosing a partner. She takes leave of her miserable job and loveless marriage to attempt to dry out. Ken watches her go with longing, and in contrast, when Peggy falls to the floor in an intoxicated heap during a Pagan editorial meeting, Jack declares her a disgrace, and leaves her sobbing on the carpet with a dismissive "I think you're an alcoholic."

As Jack prepares to celebrate Pagan's two-year anniversary, the ground is eroding beneath his feet. Everyone who he has not shut out begins to push away. Max Stein declares that backers are pulling out and he's going to dump the ailing rag, and recommends that Jack rehire Ken. But ambition has a way of getting tied up with pride, and the party rages against the dying of the light. Future Lucky Pierre himself, Billy Falbo, does a laugh-free stand-up intro, Jack stands with a model on his arm and gives an ominous toast — "Now, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, who knows?" — and Bob Scobey's Famous Band fires up a jazz inferno and the Pagans bop into one last bacchanalia.

makin money sellin out makin money
Living Venus gives a glimpse of another Herschell Gordon Lewis that might have been, a filmmaker more serious about the art, and not so single-mindedly focused on the marketing. Certainly in any conventional sense, the script, written by Kerwin, is stronger than most any of the others Lewis would use in the future, even if it is not as outrageous and keyed-up until the last act, or idiosyncratic throughout. This is a polite way of saying that it is not hilariously stilted, incompetent or indifferent, but also not as entertainingly nutty/dumb. It is hard to say from the very soft-looking SWV DVD-R, but Venus appears to be photographed with the polish of a rumpled indie, or at least a cut above the depths scraped by later Lewis pictures. Many of the director's sloppier habits are on early display, however. The nude modeling scenes come in two modes, with dialogue scenes awkwardly staged to avoid actual nudity, while more revealing snippets take place in a weird netherworld set with no "photographer" character present. We will certainly see Lewis' career-long trademark/problem of framing with too much headroom or flooring, particularly when characters will be sitting down and standing up during a shot. But for the most part, throughout Venus the blocking is logical and motivated, compositions convey the intended information, and a few are even, gulp, striking and attractive (e.g. see above, the image of the Venus statuette framed by noir-ish glowing Venetian blinds and looming nude silhouette)

In his first film endeavor, The Prime Time (1959), Lewis co-produced with exploitation grandmaster David F. Friedman. Though Lewis and Friedman have made much sport of Prime Time director Gordon Weisenborn over the years, the problem is not that Weisenborn was a bad director, but that he was a "bad" exploitation movie director, one who cared too much about the material, shot setups, and other niceties. Basically, by Friedman's account, he didn't work quick and dirty enough. Lewis did not ask Friedman's assistance on Venus, and produced and directed the film alone. Though the reasons are not confirmed, this was probably simply for a larger cut of profits, and Lewis may have assumed he had learned all he needed from Friedman. As it turned out, very few mortals could ever sell an exploitation movie like Dave Friedman could, and the partnership was rekindled for Lucky Pierre. One wonders, though, if Lewis did not learn something about filmmaking from working with Gordon Weisenborn, only to forget it again during his more lucrative nudies-and-gore Friedman era.

Scenes from a Pagan Marriage

I'll Never Be Free

The final show-stopper setpiece really belongs to actress Danica d'Hondt, as Peggy, three-weeks sober, crashes the party at her husband's house — the spirit of Venus-Aphrodite at her best is of reciprocity — and this time offers to help him. "I don't need any help," Jack spits, "You had your chance." The woman winces and stares to the invisible horizon, as if she finally sees the map of her fate from a tawdry Olympian view: "I guess I did have my chance. I married you instead." D'Hondt radiates a fatalistic glow as the dejected, demolished ex-ideal slumps down poolside, bottle in hand. One wonders, as she wallows in remorse and/or tries to work up some kind of courage, if she is reflecting back on this moment:

Partners in doom, now and forever!
During an early date for Jack and Peg, they relax at the lounge where she waited tables. She can see where she's been, and with Jack at her side, see where she might be going, as he talks circulation numbers and toasts "To my Living Venus, now and forever!" The bar's piano man, Harry, plays a special number that he has composed for his newly successful coworker. It is a serenade to Peggy, that contrasts the adoration of the Venus statue "Symbol" ("there's only one Venus/ just one perfect form/ and that one is cold, carved from stone") against the real-world human who may not be an idealized logo made flesh, but has something else to offer. Jack proposes to buy the song for promotional purposes. Harry is baffled — the song isn't for sale, that wasn't the point, and Jack, the supposed expert in celebrating the Joy of Woman, doesn't get it. Lyrics most certainly by Lewis, our favorite auteur-composer:

You're my Living Venus/ My warm, breathing Venus
You're all that I dreamed you might be
The gods on Olympus created/ the loveliest girl in the world
And they brought her to me
The stars shine at your shrine/ I'm floating on cloud 9
My goddess, I'll never be free
So climb off your pedestal / come down to earth
Show your arms! Throw your arms around me!
You're my Living Venus
Rule in my temple of love!

Nooo, Danica, DON'T!!
D'Hondt shines in the party scene, and in his way, the director does, too. From haphazard location footage of the backyard party revelers, impressionistic inserts of hands opening champagne bottles, and incongruent details, Lewis cuts together a montage to the bleating jazz band in cubist Romero-esque fashion; time and space stop flowing smoothly, frenzy and disorientation mount; a scream, a body floats in the pool, a smash-zoom into a paper lantern looks like a supernova, a drained bottle sinks in the water, and a Venus returns to the sea. In terms of an exercise in style and for actually creating an emotional impact, Peggy Brandon Norwall's may be the best death scene in the kill-packed Lewis oeuvre.

Born of foam and blood.
The coda exists to curse Jack Norwall for his crimes. At Peggy's funeral, Max Stein tells Jack that Pagan is finished, both Venuses disappeared into the open grave before him. Standing alone by that yawning abyss, a grave that is also his own, Jack screams "I don't need any of you, I created Venus!," but there is no one to hear him. Defiant to the last, burbling through tears of hot rage, he is still singing the same song as when he left Newlywed: "I'll bury all of you in every newsstand in the country! I'll show you all! I guarantee it... I guarantee it. I guarantee it." As Jack crumbles to the ground and the camera rises, two mute Shakespearean gravediggers shrug, make the international gesture for "cuckoo-brains," and start shoveling dirt. Let him sit here and die. You wanna play pagan and tangle with the gods, this is where you end up. I guarantee it.

Special thanks to the good folks at Something Weird Video, from whose DVD-R this piece is illustrated. Please note that technical issues on my end prevented proper screencapping, and the above substandard images are just slapdash TV display photos that do not reflect the quality of SWV's transfer (which is still soft, as noted above, partially due to limitations inherent in the source materials).

Previous investigations into H.G. Lewis:
—Let Them Talk! Let Them Scream!: THE PRIME TIME
—Notes from the New Beverly Cinema's Tribute to David F. Friedman

Down Inside You're Dirty!: A Tribute to David F. Friedman — Screening Report

Pioneering exploitation movie producer/ writer/ distributor/ actor/ advertiser/ theater owner/ etc. David F. Friedman died in his hometown of Anniston, Alabama on Valentine's Day of 2011. At the time, I happened to be eyeball-deep in studying his collaborations with Herschell Gordon Lewis (some of which I've written about here), and suddenly found myself at a loss for words. With a sizable filmography, leading the way or producing key films in a number of subgenres, Friedman's influence and import is something of a matter of public record, while the quality and reputation of what he made is rather up in the air. Part of the reason for that is that the audience for the sort of films he produced is an endangered species. While the groundbreaking splatter films with Lewis are certainly his most famous films, Friedman wrote so many of his own scripts that even when paired with a dozen different directors, his voice as an artist is clear as a bell.

On April 30, Eric Caidin and Brian Quinn of the Grindhouse Film Festival and Something Weird Video presented a special Tribute to David Friedman at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Seven saucy and shocking films, sundry titillating trailers, and sensational short subjects were screened over the course of twelve and a half hours, and a bevy of special guests shared personal memories and reflections about the beloved exploitation film impresario.

All told, turnout for this all-day sleaze-a-thon was hearty, if not packed to capacity, with an increase in warm bodies in the evening and severe tapering off after midnight and maybe a dozen diehards making it to the very end. Guests ranged from character actor Bill McKinney (the Ten-in-One owner of She Freak, whose work you surely enjoy) to L.A. Times critic Kevin Thomas (about whose work you may have Opinions), and Ted Bonnitt, director of the 2001 documentary Mau Mau Sex Sex read a message from Rosa Lee Sonney (daughter of Dan Sonney, Friedman's partner in the Pussycat Theater chain). If anything came across in everyone's reminisces it is that Dave Friedman was a tremendous amount of fun to be around, loved his work, and lived heartily. The always affable Mike Vraney was on hand for film intros, anecdotes about his adventures with Friedman, historical contextualizing, and available for pestering on the sidewalk during smoke breaks. Some SWV news was spilt, so to that end:

Something Weird Blu-rays should be out around September, 2011 with Basket Case as the first title! Sorry, fellow Shanty Tramp fans. This will be followed by a Herschell Gordon Lewis triple feature with Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red all on one disc. I'm sorry, for whatever reason, I just can't call it the "Blood Trilogy."

As for the film fest, I might have organized the movies in chronological order and/or selected more representative or important productions for a sort of pedantic Friedman 101 presentation. But I'd have been wrong, because damned if the day wasn't programmed nearly perfectly. Here's the thing: you either enjoy these movies or you don't. I'm mostly talking about nudie pictures here, not low-budget horror or drive-in action, or sundry other exploitation subphylum. I do think they are a (rotten) taste that can be acquired, but there's not something to "get" before they start clicking, unless it's context or nostalgia. To me, Friedman's nudies are the heart of exploitation film, the dividing line of scum that separates the "real" grindhouse from the mainstream. So I'd like to think that everyone in Los Angeles who finds this the Mid-Century Smut anti-aesthetic inherently appealing was in the audience, and a few new pairs of eyes got a baptism by fire. The movies:

Space Thing (1968, dir. Byron Mabe as B. Ron Elliot)

Nonsensical, super-boring, and idiotic, Space Thing is about a Planetarian alien disguised (somehow?) as a Terranian (e.g.— Earthling, "from Kansas," no less) who infiltrates an enemy spacecraft, learns the art of making out with girls, wanders around a rock quarry, then concludes his mission by blowing up the ship with a bomb that he could have set off the minute the film began. On one hand starting with this movie this is jumping in with both feet, and on the other hand it worked perfectly, infusing a little SF genre flavor into the line-up, and providing the early birds with an opening salvo of interminable scenes of hairy-backed men rolling around on passably cute chicks with bad skin, unsynched audio over MOS footage and extensive whipping of bare butts. Because as much hysteria as it causes the first time, there will be a lot of whipping of bare butts. We do not, as the poster promises, visit the "Planet of the Rapes." If this is some sort of deal-breaker, be forewarned.

Presented in a print gone 500 shades of pink. Vraney helpfully explained a pointless, non sequitur prologue as an attempt to pad out the picture, which came in short when Mabe was fired.

Scum of the Earth (1963, dir. H.G. Lewis as Lewis H. Gordon)

1963 was a banner year for the Lewis and Friedman team, with a flurry of nudies, the invention of splatter films, and this J.D./ fallen girl/ pornography exposé melodrama in the vein of Ed Wood, Jr.'s The Sinister Urge (1960). Scum of the Earth might be my favorite Lewis/Friedman project. It's got the Bill Kerwin/ Mal Arnold/ Lawrence Aberwood acting trifecta chewing things up as crazy characters, the unforgettable "all you kids make me sick!" speech (among others), unconvincingly staged violence, great period cars and clothes, and a turgid, sweaty conviction that feels like it's covered with a coat of slime even though there is zero nudity. Also, 30-year-old Mal Arnold repeatedly brags that he is a minor in the eyes of the law, to the delight of all viewers.

What I like most about Scum (this goes for Sinister Urge, too) is that it is a wholly ludicrous depiction of the adult entertainment business from men who know perfectly well how it actually works. In this respect it is an interesting companion piece to their earlier Living Venus (1961), which takes a more down-to-earth approach to chronicling the professional workings and moral downward spiral of a Hugh Hefner analogue, and to Friedman's later Starlet! (see below).

Presented in a print with consistent scratching but otherwise aces.

She Freak (1967, dir. Byron Mabe)

Okay, I adore She Freak. It starts with the lowering of a Ferris wheel safety bar, and then we're off! If you want to know what Dave Friedman was about, who he was, where he came from, I suspect She Freak is the place to look. Whatever else is going on in the movie — loose remake of Freaks, ruthless maneater melodrama, love and violence among showpeople yarn, 80 minutes of barking for two minutes of horror — She Freak is head over heels for the carnival — the people, the culture, the lifestyle — and wants to show you in detail every tent stake being pounded, every midway lightbulb being screwed in, every corn dog being dipped. Where a majority of Friedman movies would have ten-minute heavy petting scenes, She Freak instead shows its carnival setting up, running, and tearing down.

Presented in quite nice condition, with color starting to go red but not entirely gone over.

A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine (1966, dir. Byron Mabe as B. Ron Elliot)

Hateful, fascinating and feverish, Smell of Honey sees seductress Sharon Winters (Friedman discovery Stacey Walker née Barbara Jean Moore) drive a string of would-be lovers into a frenzy, up until they try to peel off her panties, at which point she cries rape. And this she does over and over... until she pays the price. The roughie subgenre would obviously produce much uglier, more objectionable products, and Friedman hadn't gotten into Love Camp 7 or Ilsa territory quite yet. While Smell/Swallow is no walk in the park compared to the cuties of earlier in the decade, there is enough camp and bitter comedy to make this more entertaining than vile.

Besides almost working as a metaphor for the degree of explicitness allowable in nudie pictures, Smell of Honey strikes me as sort of a female counterpart to Raging Bull: a study of a character with single-minded, stripped-down psychology, a stunted person with one nasty trait that may be observable in real people but here is just hammered and hammered and hammered. Where Jake La Motta's entire sexuality, personality and being are focused down to "he punches things," Sharon Winters is a sadistic tease. Both one-track characters follow their patterns like rats in a maze until they spiral into hell. There's no inciting incident, no exploration, no learning, no excuses, no apologies. There is, however, a fantastic, relentless rock score by "Et Cetera" that might be described as "Exile on Shaggs Street," and a remarkable, bizarrely sexy lead performance by Walker. Cinematographer László Kovács (as Art Radford) and director Mabe are 100% on point, and this may be as close as Friedman ever got to a well-crafted picture.

Presented in an occasionally jumpy but otherwise excellent print.


-Short subject: "But Charlie, I Never Played Volleyball!" (1966)

Fun to see this stupid little nudist camp reel with narrated banter and wraparound story featuring Stacey Walker as an actress hired to judge the Miss Nude Universe pageant. IMDb says that this number, Smell of Honey and Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (all in a year) comprise all of Walker's film work, which is kind of a drag. If you need to see it, check the Fanny Hill/ The Head Mistress DVD, if you can get a copy.

This was also the point at which the audience had hit "the wall" and pushed through into "the zone." That is, things started to get a little loopy. Personally, my perspective warped, the dumb jokes became hilarious, and the prolonged softcore scenes whizzed by like they weren't completely stupefying. Case in point, Blood Feast seemed to move at light speed...

Blood Feast (1963, dir. H.G. Lewis)

This print was just about as close to perfect as one could ask, Blood Color intact and with barely a scratch but for those legs what got cut off. Hey man, it brought down the house like always. My favorite part is when Mal Arnold says "You see, I am an old man!," the same comedy in reverse as when he says he's under 18 in Scum of the Earth.

The Pick-Up (1968, dir. Lee Frost)

Vraney helpfully provided backstory on the search for this ultra-rarity, a film Friedman had asked him to locate for years, which was ultimately found in a Copenhagen film collector's vault. This nigh pristine print (with Danish subs) is the only known copy, so you can see it on SWV's DVD-R; it's only been screened publicly twice now. I'd enjoyed The Pick-Up before, but it gained a lot of power in this context, since Friedman has a large onscreen role as stressed-out Vegas crime boss Charlie Rosa. And, bonus, fellow exploitation producer Bob Cresse (you loved 'im in House on Bare Mountain!) plays L.A. mob boss, Sal. Both producers are extremely entertaining as they stress out about what happened to a missing Cadillac trunkfull of casino skimmings. Meanwhile, the hapless bagmen endeavor to retrieve the twice-stolen cash from a pair of foxy female crooks.

Besides one over-the-top roughie-style torture scene, The Pick-Up is primarily a punchy hardboiled crime thriller, stylishly stripped-down like a Richard Stark book or a proto Reservoir Dogs. I'd say it really cooks along, because it mostly does, but my brain is phasing out on the ten-minute make out scenes. If you've already watched five Friedman movies, The Pick-Up is wound up like a watch spring. Cool vintage Vegas footage at the top, too.

-Aaand another goofy-ass short, "The Casting Director" (1968), also starring Bob Cresse, who sexually harasses an auditioning actress in an office full of beautiful, beautiful exploitation movie posters and lobby cards. Cresse mostly pulls faces and pours sweat, in the classic Lucky Pierrenudie-cutie-peeper style. Due to the lateness of the hour, excessive Junior Mints intake, and coccyx agony, I just kind of couldn't stop laughing. If you must see it, check the SWV double feature of Dr. Sex/ Wanda the Wicked Hypnotist.

Starlet! (1969, dir. Richard Kantor)

You shoot anything on the old Monogram lot, and I'm there.

Starlet! is an epic-scale (100 minutes!) portrait of the exploitation film industry and it feels rather like Friedman's final word on the subject. But it's not — he hadn't made Trader Hornee (1970), gotten into Nazisploitation, finished making those "Erotic Adventures" films or unleashed Johnny Firecloud (1975). While Starlet! isn't technically the end of an era, it does appear as the nudie cycle is winding down and — as metaphorically depicted in the opening scene — transforming into no-holes-barred hardcore. So the movie was a perfect capper for this celebration of Friedman's career, as it is, in itself, a celebration of Friedman's career, full of in-jokes and cameos and requiring of the audience at least a basic familiarity with the genre.

The tapestry-style story basically concerns the exploits at EVI Studios (the film's real production company, depicting itself within... oh, forget it) as it gears up, shoots, and releases the college-themed nudie smash "A Youth in Babylon" (a title so good or personally meaningful that Friedman used it for his autobiography). The backbone of the plot follows fresh talent Carol Yates (beautiful, funny, articulate Dee Lockwood credited as Deirdre Nelson), who we meet doing stag films for rent money and rises to become EVI's biggest new star. The emphasis is on good-natured situational comedy, but with a dozen colorful characters swirling around the fringes there is room for romance, slapstick, gripping blackmail plots, and All About Eve-type backstage drama.

The thing I like best about Starlet! is its familial, jocular tone, and though the characters are cartoonish to a degree, the film is non-judgmental about who they are, what they are doing, and why they do it. Where Scum of the Earth depicts a convoluted extortion plot just to get a girl to take cheesecake photos, Starlet! opens with its strong-willed, likable and down-to-earth heroine being convinced to turn a softcore scene into hard, and rather than weeping and screaming indignantly, Carol just rolls her eyes and shrugs. Insta-crush-object Deirdre Nelson is the rightful Starlet here, but the supporting cast is a great mix of talented vets (Stuart Lancaster, John Alderman, both kinda-sorta-not-really reprising their characters from Thar She Blows!) and unspeakably wooden topless gals. The overall warm "look what we got away with" tone is darkened and complicated with depictions of artistic frustration, the disposability of aging talent, and violent abuse of power by directors and producers. A particularly effective subplot, not played for laughs, involves a first-time nudie director learning to compromise his vision and morals, and finding out, basically, that joining the carnival comes with some personal sacrifices: those who aren't With the Show will never understand. If the nude squirming scenes were trimmed down, Starlet! could almost play to a non-weirdo audience, and I believe it belongs in the company of Ed Wood and Boogie Nights — a small family of affectionate, good-hearted but complex, conflicted depictions of particular times and places in trash filmmaking history. Starlet! does not achieve (or aspire to) the same level of fine-tuning and polish as those mainstream masterpieces, but it has something they don't: it was made by the people it is about. They lived this story, even as they filmed Starlet!

Presented in a... nice print? I was pretty out of it, sorry. Surely it is the same acceptable print used for the SWV DVD-R. Includes much vintage L.A. footage, always a joy.

Famously humorous and bombastic trailers for classic Friedman product were interspersed throughout the program, usually featuring tie-in glimpses of cast members, locations, or, in one case, a big white dog. I took no notes, but we were treated to trailers for: The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Brand of Shame (1968), Bummer (1973), A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine ('66), Thar She Blows! (1968), Love Camp 7 (1969), Trader Hornee (1970), and, undoubtedly, more which are lost to delirium.

Let Them Talk! Let Them Scream!: THE PRIME TIME

Were one to construct a Sarris-on-42nd-Street style pantheon of exploitation filmmakers, it would be topped by those who created masterworks that live in museums and are protected by government agencies as national treasures, and laypeople who don't have the Sinister Cinema catalog delivered aren't aware that the movies ever played in proper fleapits and ozoners. So that's Romero, Hooper, Carpenter, Ulmer, Argento, Corman, Meyer. There would be a tier below that for geniusy craftsmen that play by the rules but slip in a lot of intentional art agenda, or deliver more goods than necessary, entertain above and beyond the call of duty, generally make something far more special than the poster art. That's your Fulci, Castle, Bartel, Sarno, Jack Hill, Larry Cohen, Rollin, Corbucci. These directors don't so much transcend the ghetto as create its definitive touchstones, exemplary examples. Then there might be Fascinating Weirdoes, and there most of us would list Milligan, Esper, Wishman, Findlays types. Can't live with 'em, can't believe what you're seeing. The bulk of the rest of the sea of candidates would be those with an identifiable style, thematic preoccupations, stable of collaborators — anything, really, that makes the filmmaker distinguishable from the house style of their producer, studio, or any anonymous journeyman or semi-competent. So: Adamson, Steckler, Mattei, Cimber, Castellari, Mikels, Bert I. Gordon, etc. forever.

Feel free to shuffle/add/remove names around until satisfied/bored/confused. This will surely become a popular party game on the order of bobbing for apples and Seven Minutes in Heaven, and lead to fistfights about what counts as an exploitation film, what nationalities should be included, and where to place Jess Franco. Now in such an imagined framework, certain of filmmakers, producers, and individual works are going to be singled out as Important Innovators. Beyond that acknowledgement the subject may or may not be examined or appreciated any further as film art. No guarantees. This happens in the above-ground world of major studio product as well, so for consideration: The Jazz Singer is something like a household name, and there is not a BFI Film Classics volume about The Jazz Singer.

Point being: Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Occasionally in this scum-glitz twilight realm, one bumps into a filmmaker who self identifies as an artist. They are rare among the carny types, jolly, cynical or both. By the accounts of their intrepid biographers, Andy Milligan and Edward Wood, Jr. are among that small number. Though they may have had few illusions about the nature and reputation of their work, these filmmakers at the bottom of the industry caste system, whatever else they may have been, understood that every picture-maker and story-teller is an artist.

Lewis has sometimes joked that his films are obviously well-made because the camera is always in focus.

Lewis' camera, of course, is not always in focus.

The hell?
Because Lewis and frequent producing partner David F. Friedman are world class showbiz raconteurs, and their landmark string of gore movies so pioneering, the films themselves are always overshadowed by their taboo-breaking legacy. The ten horror films account for less than one third of Lewis’ output (37 features), even when taking lost films into account (four known titles, supposedly upwards of dozens of shorts, loops and features). Among his horror pictures, approximately half of the very goriest titles dominate discussion of Lewis’ work. Which leaves us with an intriguing question: what is going on in the rest of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ movies?

The bulk of Lewis films are nudie cuties, a genre at which Friedman excelled. The balance of the filmography is filled out with hillbilly comedies, a biker movie, juvenile delinquent pictures, and oddball children's movies. All of these possess potential peculiar charms, but it is time to go hunting for the authorial stamp that marks them as H.G. Lewis films after the credits have vanished from the screen. Thankfully, all of Lewis' surviving work is available on home video, making it possible to evaluate his filmography beyond outstanding innovations in pulling out women's tongues.

Let’s take it from the top. Herschell Gordon Lewis' film career begins in 1959 with The Prime Time.

"Some kids grow up real slow. Me, I explode!"

Not content to hang around with her peers at Luigi's Italian Stereotype Restaurant, wild child Jean (Jo Ann LeCompte) screams at her mother, kisses Daddy goodbye and heads out into the day-for-night with clean-cut neighbor boy Tony (James Brooks). "Seventeen! I look at least twenty-two and I feel thirty!," kvetches the girl, burning with whattaya-got? rebellion (Friedman later quipped unkindly that "she was twenty-nine, and, on screen, looked forty-nine." To be fair, she's quite pretty and looks twenty-nine). The hot to trot gal is just toying with Tony's emotions for access to his wheels, and demands to borrow his convertible.

Meanwhile, Jean's nasty cop boyfriend Mack McKeen (Frank Roche) and his partner harass a pint-sized beatnik painter/ sex pervert known as "The Beard" (Ray Gronwold), who has been accused of molesting his underage models. Before leaving to make time with his own jailbait love interest, Mack extorts use of The Beard's studio as convenient location for his own romantic rendezvous. Alas, 'tis a date not to be kept. The Beard shows up to inform Jean that Mack has been called away on Police Business. Jean berates the hepcat's manhood, then commands that he paint her in the nude.

Poor Tony is bummed out about Jean's bad behavior, and mopes around Luigi's while his wacky pals spray bottles of Coke on each other. Even a late night underwear swimming party at the quarry can't cheer up Tony. His lovesick good girl friend Gloria tries to console him, but the situation worsens when Jean doesn't show up to return the car. Back at Chez Beard, the artist has gone berserk, tied up Jean, and painted her in a non-explicit pose unrelated to the way she's sitting. The wheels in motion, The Prime Time becomes a three-ring kidnapping drama as Tony and friends play teen detectives, Mack tries to throw the kids off the scent, and The Beard torments the captive Jean.

Two relationship triangles fuel the plot. The first is the questing knight/detective Tony torn between potential girlfriends, as light woman Gloria assists him in locating dark woman Jean. The second is free-spirit Jean turned object of desire and caught in the machinations of corrupt cop Mack and the crazed Beard. These figures of the Establishment and Counterculture respectively are both rotten abusers acting on self-interest, and it is great fun to watch the two creeps bicker.

The Prime of Jean: Sin, Suffer, Never Repent
Furious at the world, impatient at all times, and perpetually spitting venom, Jean is introduced posing in front of a mirror during the opening titles, and plays her first scene before another mirror. Jean is only interested in Jean, cannot see past herself, and sees others only in terms of what they can do for her or as objects of ridicule. Restless and dissatisfied, the self-absorbed girl desires constant movement and stimulation and nothing can scratch that unscratchable itch. Jean's quintessential scene may be as she waits for Mack at The Beard's studio, killing time by pacing incessantly, smoking and fuming. When she learns that her beau cannot keep the date, she is not upset because she cares about Mack, only indignant that she could be stood up, and in favor of the police chief no less! Doesn't the police force know who they're dealing with?

Sadly, the film's most compelling character is waylaid early in the story. Though we're stuck with the hopelessly square Tony for the second half, there are fun interludes with the sweaty Beard and his bitchy captive, and the trail to Jean is peppered with colorful exploitation elements. Tony's wiseass buddy Shorty beats up the owner of The Golden Goose bar where The Beard does live painting. A jumpin' rock combo plays "Teenage Tiger" (lyrics by Lewis, performed by "The Dodos"). A disreputable lady photographer tells an anecdote in flashback, in which Jean meets Mack during a dress-ripping, hair-pulling catfight. Finally, The Beard slips Jean a mickey and is about to stage her suicide and skip town, but blows himself up in a freak accident, slipping on a dropped match in his gas-filled apartment.

Beyond the rock n' roll, beatnik angle and semi-skinny dipping this is all fairly standard JD picture stuff (disregard any of several sources claiming it is any sort of nudie picture, cute or rough), but The Prime Time puts a plot development, trashy idea or weird, entertaining touch in every scene, and thus moves at a zippy pace. It may or may not be implied that The Beard sexually assaults Jean, and the film is a little more sexually charged than its contemporary cousins, but nowhere near as outrageous and seedy as Ed Wood, Jr.'s porn racket exposé The Sinister Urge of the following year, or crazy as his girl gang saga, The Violent Years (1956). Whether their morals are faux or no, wherever the finger is ultimately pointed, JD pictures are about the dangers facing a generation desperate to grow up too fast, but woefully ill-equipped to deal with their wild-for-kicks impulses. Some sophisticated entries in the cycle make social tragedies of this theme, as in Rebel Without a Cause and The Blackboard Jungle (both 1955), some, like the above examples from Wood, just gawk in fascination. The Prime Time is of the Wayward Girl subgenus, that is, it particularly focuses on the perils of adolescent female sexuality. Prurient and moralizing as it is, the film does not quite depict outgoing female sexuality as a destructive sin in and of itself, does not name VD, unwanted pregnancy, or ruined reputation as pitfalls, nor imply threat sexual activity is a gateway to drugs or violent crime. The danger in The Prime Time is that Jean's wonton behavior makes her bait for a society of wolves, and she is beset by controlling men who would possess and destroy her, and squares who would rescue, cleanse and change her. Jean cannot win, for the world cannot abide her as she is, nor she abide the world, and her ending has the fated feel of Lulu and Jack the Ripper's date with destiny at the end of Pandora's Box. Though Friedman recalls the movie having an "up-beat ending," it does not.

Cop vs. Beatnik: The Eternal Struggle
Directorial duties on The Prime Time were handled by Gordon Weisenborn, though the Internet Movie Database and various print sources erroneously credit Lewis as directing "as Gordon Weisenborn" (Lewis himself makes no such claim). Lewis would adopt transparent pseudonyms on future productions and coincidentally has a "Gordon" in common with the director, so it is unsurprising that direction is frequently ascribed to Lewis. The principle account of the making of The Prime Time is in David Friedman's autobiography A Youth in Babylon, which contains at least a few minor gaffes, but certainly establishes that Weisenborn was a real person. Conceding that Weisenborn was "a competent craftsman and a nice enough guy," Friedman pokes fun at Weisenborn's artistic ambition — "he thought he was making a film of great social significance" —, and rhetorically ponders why Lewis recruited Weisenborn instead of directing the picture himself. Friedman does offer the lead that Weisenborn's resumé consisted of work created under the Film Board of Canada. The National Film Board of Canada website lists two Weisenborn shorts in its archive: "When Asia Speaks" (1944, 19 m.) and "Tomorrow's Citizens" (1947, 11 m.), the first of which may be ordered on DVD.

The Academic Film Archive of North America website indicates that in the early 1950s Weisenborn worked frequently with Academy Award nominee John Barnes on projects like "Safety on the Playground", a railroad safety documentary called "Impact" and story films to accompany Dick and Jane reading primers. According to his AFANC autobio, Barnes was from Chicago, though he spent periods living and working in London, Rome and elsewhere. As Lewis was based in Chicago and The Prime Time was eventually shot in the area, it seems likely that Weisenborn had relocated to Illinois sometime after the war. The most intriguing Weisenborn/Barnes collaboration, "People Along the Mississippi" (1952, 21:39 m), is an educational short made for Encyclopedia Britannica films, and is readily viewable at Archive.org. A sweet and historically interesting parable of racial integration in America, "Mississippi" is more poetic and stylish than the average '50s classroom film. Weisenborn is named as a Chicago filmmaker by the Chicago Film Archives, which houses ten of his prints and an interneg (titles not listed online).

It is likely that Lewis had a strong hand in creative decisions, and Friedman owns up to having shot some pickups of the quarry swimming scene, which are frankly the worst looking, sloppiest section of the film. Comparison between the filmmakers is inevitable, but both Weisenborn and Lewis have their strengths.

This is thorny territory normally bypassed in this journal. Lewis has given enough talks and interviews to establish his preferred position on the topic of his artistry. Plainly, he presents himself as a savvy businessman, sometimes as a jovial, witty huckster, and no more; the stance being that he provides product of ample running time and audiences are sufficiently entertained so as not to request refunds. Point certainly taken, and the rough edges and semi-competence are thus chalked up to indifference and irrelevance. But that lack of attention to technique accumulates into a recognizable, peculiar style, integral to Lewis' appeal, and that is the partial cause and purpose of this exercise.

The Girl, the Bottle, and the Phone
Based on The Prime Time and his available short subjects, Weisenborn has a better grasp of traditional cinematic basics than evinced by his producers in their own directorial work, or at least more interest in and dedication to classic form. He has a strong compositional sense, frames shots and moves the camera to accommodate movement with greater accuracy. The Prime Time is not exactly dripping with style, but Weisenborn sometimes stages action on multiple planes and foregrounds important props a few times. As Jean contemplates answering a ringing phone, it looms in the fore, as do a pair of carnival prize wicker monkeys in her bedroom as Tony reminisces about the missing girl. There is not enough available work to determine what constitutes the Weisenbornian touch, but the tone throughout has a intensity of conviction that Lewis' work does not. That may not be to The Prime Time's benefit as memorable entertainment, but it makes it less weird than many pictures on its family tree.

The Beard: Adam Sorg, Take One
Weisenborn may be a more technically competent director than Lewis — even after thirty feature films — but the fingerprints of the producers are all over The Prime Time anyway. Like John Carpenter, Clint Eastwood, and Charlie Chaplin, Lewis sometimes scores his own work, and here he provides lyrics for the two slightly alien musical numbers. The plot only produces a pair of corpses, but they are created by an elaborate, unusual accident and murder, then posed in interesting tableau. The Beard is the first in Lewis' lineage of obsessed, murderous artists, which will carry through Adam Sorg of Color Me Blood Red (1965) and climax with the unforgettable Montag the Magnificent, The Wizard of Gore (1970). Delinquent behavior, the rock n' roll scene, sexually active teen girls, and the men who would exploit them are topics that Lewis would revisit in various combinations in Scum of the Earth (1963), Sin, Suffer and Repent (1965), The Girl, the Body, and the Pill (1967), Blast-Off Girls (1967), She-Devils on Wheels (1968), Alley Tramp (1968), and Just for the Hell of It (1968).

With all its historic firsts, The Prime Time has another claim to fame as Karen Black's screen debut. Indeed, in the finished product, the future Trilogy of Terror star can be glimpsed dancing at Luigi's and posing for The Beard at The Golden Goose. Friedman relates an anecdote that midway through shooting Black signed a manager and the company was paid $2,500 to destroy the nude footage of her appearance in the swimming scene. A far-fetched tale, perhaps, but the point is clear: Lewis and Friedman found a way to make money off their picture before it was even completed.

Defier of Reason: THE WIZARD OF GORE (2007)

"What is a magician? A person who tears asunder your rules of logic? And crumbles your world of reality?!"
-Montag the Magnificent, 1970
It must be love. No other force on earth could motivate a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1970 warp-brained The Wizard of Gore. The Lewis film is possessed of one of the gore god's strongest premises: the blood and gut show illusions of lunatic magician Montag later come true as his audience volunteers die later, of identical wounds, far from the stage. But the camp-tinged title and cult-audience name recognition provide very little cache. If anything the Lewis pedigree is something remake director Jeremy Kasten and screenwriter Zach Chassler have to fight against, in their film's crackpot desire to be taken seriously. Love, of course, frequently misguides us all.

Lewis' Wizard is structured around a series of grotesque stage illusions, as Montag (Ray Sager, in a ham-and-cheese performance for the ages) hacks up victims on stage, tricks which appear bloodless to the in-house audience, but are revealed as bloody messes to the filmgoer. Not that there is anything coy about the rest of his work, but if most of Lewis' horror pictures are stories built backwards to justify graphic scenes of dismemberment mayhem, Wizard of Gore proudly declares itself: we're all here for the blood. A subplot - or is it truly the plot? - as TV host Sherry Carson (Judy Cler) investigates, leads back into itself, a mystery trail laid in the shape of a question mark. There is no answer to the riddle of Montag's powers, of his motive, his means of evading authorities, or significance of his weird rituals; in baroque philosophical stage patter, direct to the movie audience, Montag insinuates that perhaps we are dreaming, not watching his stage show, not watching a film, perhaps that we've never been awake, dreaming even that we wake and dream. Like a Zen kōan, there is nothing to "figure out" about H.G. Lewis' Wizard of Gore, no secret kernel hidden in its gory heart. Lewis' film continuously worms in and out of metaphysical conundrum with a thick, stoned confusion, as if the story has surprised itself.

So while the rough timbers of the plot are good material for an H.G. Lewis movie, it may well be that the story is unfit for any other use. The Wizard of Gore 2007 keeps the icky magic show its deadly consequences, but reverses the spectacle: the jaded underground clubgoers in Montag's audience are misdirected to believe that the magician is actually brutally hacking apart Suicide Girls models as he delivers loopy life-advice speeches. When they flee for the exits, the bloodless reality is revealed... and later that night the audience volunteers turn up roasted, gutted, dismembered, etc, ad nauseam, literally. In these vicious main attractions Wizard of Gore fires all chambers at once. Presided over by Crispin Glover in pristine white and immaculate pompadour, Montag reborn as blood and thunder tent revival preacher, his stage patter berates the audience of glum hipsters, slouched on folding chairs in a moldering cathedral warehouse, for the sins of ennui, of cynicism, of casual misanthropy, of joyless hedonism edging into misogyny and brutality. Equally self-righteous and self-loathing, Glover is magnetic/pathetic as he squeaks terrible lies and more terrible truths, as he mimes the mutilation of beautiful flesh, and whirls the blame back at his audience, pleading "did you feel something?"

The greatest slight-of-hand in the exploitation filmmaker's repertoire is to pay lip service to important issues and charges critics may level against the film, creating an impossible tangle of politics and potential complications. Are Africa Addio auteurs Jacopetti and Prosperi racist or have they made a career of pointed social criticism? Is Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust a circumspect investigation of man's inhumanity to man, or pandering and hypocritical? Is Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper profoundly conservative, humanistic, hateful or satiric? Do a few cathartic moments of horrifying, violent vengeance by victims transform I Spit on Your Grave, or Mother's Day - or Death Proof - into a feminist statement? Or are they all just dishonest? Jungle-dense ambiguity or cheap parlor trick? If the artist is bluffing, is it wise to dignify the insult by responding in a civil fashion? What is reality? How can you know that you are really sitting there in your chair, and not asleep in your bed, dreaming that you are here?

Kasten's film walks this interesting line for a little while, as one Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue), trust fund slacker with a late '40s retro fetish that puts cartoonist Seth to shame, sets about writing a review Montag's show for his zine. Edmund finds himself and/or loses himself in an amateur murder investigation that begins to point to his own involvement in the crimes. Or are there crimes? The plot unfolds in double bind flashback, and a theme throughout is not to trust one's eyes. With cinematography that coats every surface in a slimy sheen, enough jittery negative-flash-frame editing for a mid-'90s alternative music video marathon, canted angles and screwy characterization from the opening frames, there can be no sense of mounting unreality or a man losing his grip. A frenzy of exotic plot points are announced in every scene, each wilder than the last, none disguising or relieving the fact that the story is essentially a man wandering around LA, sweating, and obsessively watching a magic show every night. What's going on, and what's real is up for grabs at any point, so take your pick from an escort service for sadists, CIA MK-Ultra-style brainwashing experiments, Oriental psychotropic neurotoxins, newspapers printed in human blood, gore-soaked sex dream sequences, spontaneous combustion, shark attacks, paper bag chemical huffing, Alice in Wonderland allusions coupled with L.A. strip club in-jokes, spams of electrical flashes that seem to reveal the Tron set or the Matrix code or something beneath the walls, signaling either virtual reality, Edmund losing his mind, or whatever. Depending on one's generosity, the voyage down the rabbit hole is either established or botched from the beginning. Either way, it all reads more interesting than it plays.

And either way, the remake, as seriously as it takes itself, comes up with no greater statement on reality and illusion than the crazy H.G. Lewis original. Without the brazen/stupid flare that buoys Lewis' movies, Wizard '07 just isn't any fun. Too chic to be unnerving, too banal to be horrific, the film's desire to freak itself out goes utterly splat, because it's too busy making cute to go bonkers.

By the time Wizard '07 reaches its climactic revelations and everything we've seen is not what we've seen - or, as Montag would have it, the trick began before the audience entered the theater - there is no bottom to drop out from under the audience. While striving for the puzzle-box psychodrama mystery of Lost Highway or Memento, The Wizard of Gore can achieve only low-rent mind-fuck of Hellraiser: Inferno (2000). Inferno, a fellow mish-mash-mush of horror noir, and Wizard both end up as films about sadistic murderers who have built walls of fantasy around themselves to protect their mean old brains, but eventually get their comeuppance when the appearance of otherworldly forces (Pinhead and Montag respectively) tears down the safe-zone, and reveals a private hell. Both films' main strategy for creating mystery and surprise is to exasperatingly withhold information, spring twists that only work because the audience has been lied to, and makes its dippity-doo reveals in undercooked page-long expository speeches. When a magician employs a skillful misdirect, part of the trick is in not pointing out that there's a trick.

Setting horror films among the Manic Panic and neck tattoo set never really flies. For as much as the subculture's aesthetic owes the history of horror film and literature, the posturing self-made freaks of 2007's Wizard of Gore look dour, silly and too big for their britches next to Herschell Gordon Lewis' inspired stilted, tacky, gleeful madness. When you promise to bring the weird, you gotta be able to bring the weird. The Wizard of Gore '07 has Jeffrey Combs as Montag's sideshow geek opening act, sticking a handful of wriggling maggots to his tongue. It has Brad Dourif as a mad acupuncturist who helps bleed all the brain-control drugs out of the antihero's body and walks around with leeches stuck on his back. It has these cult-favorite spaz-specialist actors, going through Jim Rose Circus Sideshow paces.

The Wizard of Gore 1970 has a guy wearing fake white eyebrows and a top hat telling everyone they aren't really there, then cutting off his own head with a guillotine. For no real reason. At the beginning of the movie. Which one is truly, bafflingly, unforgettably Fucked Up?

"That's some nice misogyny you got going there," snaps Edmund's nagging girlfriend Maggie (Bijou Phillips), when he enthuses about Montag's layered and electrifying magic show. During this lover's spat, as Maggie and Edmund back-and-forth about whether Montag's act is trash or High Art, there is a brief glimmer of a larger fish beneath the Wizard of Gore remake's stagnant pond. Grasp for it, and realize: this is how Mr. Kasten hopes his audience will quarrel about his film later.

Mr. Lewis' Birthday Zap-In!

Now it's Prime Time to celebrate!
Ramses Catering made no mistake,
It was a long, hard one to decorate -
Have you ever had an Egyptian cake?

Grab a knife and let's get cutting!
A Taste of Blood - or is that just frosting?
The Big Blast band will play and sing!
The Colonel brought some thighs and wings!

The guests are here; hey, Lucky Pierre,
Stop peeping at Miss Nymphette's underwear!
The odor of Lysol and beef in the air?
Astrid, please get that tongue out of here!

Monster A Go-Go, you old killjoy,
Alley Tramp would dance, if you weren't so coy!
Don't touch the art, Jimmy, Wonder Boy,
The Adam Sorg paintings aren't a toy!

Those maniacs from Pleasant Valley
Brought homemade drinks; right up your alley.
This stuff'll kill ya... so fill 'er up!
Uh, Abraham Gentry, do you need two cups?

A toast! To Gordon Weisenborn,
To R.L Smith and Seymour Sheldon,
Hoist a glass to Armand Parys,
That man of many pseudo-names,

Hats off to Herschell Gordon Lewis,
King of All Arterial Spewage,
The Gore-Gore Boy, the Sultan of Splatter,
Happy Birthday, and thanks for the movies, Godfather.