The Ecstasies Of Women (1969)

Ecstasies Of Women was a long lost Sexploitation flick from director Herschell Gordon Lewis until very recently when it was finally found and released on DVD for all us dirt-bags.

While it may not be the best example of a Sexploitation movie or even a Herschell Gordon Lewis film for that matter it does have some kind of bizarre charm like so many other films from the director.

The Ecstasies Of Women is sort of a anti-marriage film. This one follows a goofy looking prick named Harry who is about to be married in a few days. Harry and his pals go out to the local Go-Go titty-bar for one last drunken night of debauchery. Harry goes in and out of consciousness as he drunkenly sits in the sleazy boob-joint and dreams/fantasizes about various different women and the crazy sex-capades he would indulge in with them.

 The story is simple and stupid. It has an odd combination of unintentional and intended humor which is typical of the great H.G. Lewis. Fans of 60's Sexploitation should not be let down by the massive amounts of giant jugs on display in this one. While I usually prefer my 60's smut a little more on the violent side, this one still makes for a decent time waster. While the dialogue does tend to get a bit annoying at times, especially in the beginning, there is still enough silliness and bad acting to keep us B movie guys entertained. One of the highlights is Harry's smooth talking hippie friend who looks more like a business man in some really dumb fashionable get-up. Or at least I guess it was fashionable for 1969!? This guy is a total jack-ass. Come to think of it, everyone in the movie is kinda a dork.

I guess if you have some kind of crazy plans of getting married this one might do the trick. I guess the over all message is that there are too many fish in the sea. Well there are also too many crappy exploitation movies out there. With that being said I take my hat off to the Godfather Of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis for yet again delivering a total piece of trash without any shame.

Well perhaps there was a slight bit of shame considering he is credited as "Mark Hansen" on this one.  

Linda And Abilene (1969)

Herschell Gordon Lewis has delved into so many different genres. Of course he is most famous for his early gore films like Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs but he has dipped his feet into just about every exploitation sub genre known to man. He did nudist camp films like Natures Playmates. Sexploitation trash like The Alley Tramp. Hillbilly horrors like This Stuff'll Kill Ya. Biker films like She Devils On Wheels. Juvenile delinquent stuff like Just For The Hell Of It. I can go on and on but I'm sure you get the point. With this one he offers up a sexploitation flick in the form of a western.

This one starts off a bit slow and it takes quite a while before we even have any dialogue but eventually it gets into the warped tale of a incest, lesbianism and murder.

A brother and sister attend their parents funeral and are left to tend to the farm and house on their own and I'm sure their parents wouldn't be proud of them when the siblings start spying on each other in various states of undress. Both of them lust after the other and they have sleepless nights of a masturbation with dirty incestuous thoughts. Eventually they give in to their desires and its not long before they are humping all over the house, farm and creek. Things turn sour when big brother takes off to the nearest town for a night of liquor and ladies. A dude at the bar named "Rawhide" over hears a conversation between big brother and a local hooker about how he left little sister home all alone. Naturally Rawhide heads over to the farm-house where he will indulge in a night of rape.

When big brother comes home to the aftermath of his beloved sisters rape he promptly decides to kill Rawhide. So I guess it is also a rape/revenge flick too. The whole revenge thing comes off rather rushed and it all comes to an anticlimactic and abrupt ending.

The main problem with this flick aside from its boring beginning is that there just isn't enough naked flesh in it. There are only two girls in the entire movie and after a while we get tired of seeing the naked frolic scenes. However there are some truly awesomely awkward moments in here like the churning butter montage. We watch bro and sis join hands and jerk-off a barrel of butter. Who thinks this stuff up?

Linda And Abilene was thought to be long lost but lucky for all us Herschell Gordon Lewis fanatics it was recently found. Not the best movie in the world but fans of Lewis are used to that sort of thing. Check it out for fun with lesbians, incest, rape/revenge and of course butter churning.

 

She-Devils On Wheels (1968)

Here's another great one from The Godfather Of Gore Herschell Gordon Lewis. This one comes in the form of a Bikersploitation film. Typical of an H.G. Lewis film She-Devils On Wheels is quite different from the average biker film.

A all girl biker gang known as The Man-Eaters are concerned with two things. The first is riding their motorcycles and the second in men. "You treat men like a slab of meat". These chicks have one major rule. No boyfriends! Getting it on with as many men as possible is the key here but if you get hung up on a particular guy, you are dead meat! In one of the most memorable scenes a gang member does just that. They teach the girl a lesson by beating the tar out of lover-boy and force his girlfriend to drag his bloody body from the back of her chopper. As one would expect from Mr. Lewis this is shown in gory detail. The film also offers up a blood caked rape victim and a gory decapitation that comes complete with a head flying thru the air in slow motion.

With a plot like this one would think it would be an excuse for tons of naked female flesh and it would play more like a Sexploitation flick but oddly enough this is not the case. In fact the is absolutely no nudity in the entire film, not one bit of tit. You never know what you're going to get with a Herschell Gordon Lewis film except that its probably going to be crazy and done in total bad taste.

Unlike other biker flicks that pass themselves off as girl-gang movies like Hells Bells, Angels Wild Women and The Hellcats, She-Devils On Wheels actually casts real biker chicks and only one of them was an actor. So as one would expect the acting is totally ridiculous here but that is nothing new for a H.G. Lewis film. Another thing that makes this one so strange is the fact that these supposedly rough and tough street girls never use profanity. Instead they deliver absurd insults that a grandmother might use "why don't you fumigate yourself crap-head". However where these broads lack in the verbal abuse department they make up for it with violence. In very unbelievable gang fights we watch these chicks destroy gangs of men. They beat em with fists, boots and chains and win every time. Even the cops can't stop The Man-Eaters.

The original title for this movie was going to be Man-Eaters On Motorbikes but Lewis wisely changed it to the more exploitative title of She-Devils On Wheels. This thing comes complete with a bad-ass theme song called Get Off The Road which has been covered by multiple bands including The Cramps. If you dig crazy and violent biker films and you can stand the unintentional ridiculousness then this one is perfect.

The Alley Tramp (1968)

The great Herschell Gordon Lewis directs this 1968 Sexploitation romp under the name of Armand Parys but we know a Herschell movie when we see one, don't we?

H.G. Lewis fans will recognize a lot of the cast members from other classic films. Steve White who I remember best as the singer in The Blast Off Girls shows up here as Philip and our small breasted, blond hair, leading girl Julia Ames can also be seen in Blast Off Girls as well as Just For The Hell Of It.

On the other hand people who are only used to Lewis's gore films (Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red) might find it hard to believe that this slow moving sexploitation flick could come from the same man. All I have to say to them is watch The Alley Tramp back to back with The Gore Gore Girls and compare acting, cutting and camera work. You will see what I mean.

Marie is a sweet sixteen year old girl who is beginning to think about sex. In fact that is all she really ever thinks about. Then one day her cousin Philip stops by the house to study. Marie seduces Philip by wearing a short dress and no bra and giving him some peeks up her skirt. Yes her skirt is short even by today's standards but her giant 60's underwear is big enough for the couple to use as a blanket. Anyway, once the cousins indulge in a little bit of incest the sexual obsession becomes even stronger for Marie. What we have here is a classic case of a 16 year old nymphomaniac. Her nymphomania gets so bad that she even stops going to school so she can have more time to screw cousin Phil. Mean while mom and dad are neglecting the problem and are to busy cheating on each other. Pop is sleeping with his subhumanoid secretary and mom also really knows how to pick em. She finds herself a total creep in a local dive-bar. When Marie over hears mother dearest and her new boyfriend doing the dirty she black mails moms sleazy new boyfriend into being her own personal sex toy.

Its all just your pretty standard run of the mill sexploitation stuff. With some hot beaver shots and some not so hot nudie antics. Mom is probably the best looking female in the movie and she has some pretty wild hair to boot but the thing that makes The Alley Tramp so fun is the really bad acting and the obvious reading of lines. The actors are clearly looking down to read the dialogue and the best moment is a long screaming rant from our teenager in heat. "I'm no ones little girl. I'm a woman! And I'll never be told what to do! Not ever again". There are also some ridiculous scenes where Marie flaunts her body in front of mommy and it all comes together with a really horrible and ridiculous message after a nice abortion. It was of course all mommy and daddy's fault and there is really nothing wrong with incest. Thank you Herschell Gordon Lewis for you are a god amongst men in the world of exploitation.

The Alley Tramp will probably bore most viewers and is probably only appealing to weirdo H.G. Lewis fanatics like myself.

Herschell Gordon Lewis : The Godfather Of Gore (2010)

As far as all of the exploitation documentarys to come out in the past couple of years this one and American Grindhouse are my two favorites. Herschell Gordon Lewis being my all time favorite director, it is no wonder that I found this documentary to be so great. Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case, Brain Damage) took on this existing project and re-edits it to what is a 106 minute look into the sleazy world of The Godfather Of Gore.

The documentary starts at the begining in 1959 with The Prime Time and Living Venus. We step further and further into depravity with every title from the great H.G. Lewis. We get discussion on each one and the market value (or devalue) of each film and genre. Lewis of course being a major pioneer in all forms of exploitation, the nudist camp films were amongst the first with Daughter Of The Sun and Natures Playmates but of course it is the darker and meaner stuff that we all know and love the Godfather for. Scum Of The Earth is the one that sort of broke away from the nudie-cutie romps and came in the form of a mean spirted Roughie.

The same year Lewis along with the help of long time partner David F. Friedman would unleash his groundbreaking Blood Feast and introduce grissly gore to film goers. This of course is where the film gets really good. Two Thousand Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red, Gruesome Twosome and Gore Gore Girls all get their screen time and it is great to watch cult favorites talk about them while awesome poster art and bloody images play on the screen behind them. John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble) shares some of his Herschell Gordon Lewis collectibles with us and the great exploitation historian Joe Bob Briggs shares his thoughts, feelings and ideas on the works of Mr. Lewis. We even get some never before seen scenes from unreleased Lewis projects.

H.G. Lewis fans need to see this one and trash-film lovers should also check it out Just For The Hell Of It.

The Wizard Of Gore (1970)

The genius of Herschell Gordon Lewis titles doesn't leave much room for question. Movies with titles like She Devils On Wheels and Gore Gore Girls. The title above gives you exactly what you expect... a magician and a whole lot of blood letting, gut spilling and general gory mutilation and mayhem.

The film opens up with our magician Montag The Magnificent giving a speech on the human race and the fascination with murder, execution and death. He then sticks his head in a guillotine and pulls the string. His severed head falls in a basket and blood squirts from his neck. Don't worry he is a magician... His head is rejoined with his body so the audience can enjoy a full 95 minutes of dismemberment and ghastly tortures.

They just don't get much better then this. If you're into conventional film making The Wizard Of Gore and any other Herschell Gordon Lewis production is probably not for you because these movies are definitely from mars.

For those familiar with H.G. Lewis and his earlier films like Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red, the format is the same. Gore substituted for budget and production value but Lewis definitely takes this one to the next level. More blood and much more graphic special effects are used and we end up with a true piece of smut that wouldn't be topped till The release of Gore Gore Girls. There is no doubt about it, The Wizard Of Gore was done in bad taste and that of course is the beauty in it.

This one also stands out in the sense that it is a supernatural film. The Wizard Of Gore and Something Weird are the only two Lewis films that I know of that deal with supernatural powers.

Not only is the gore exaggerated but the acting is so far over the top in almost appears to have been purposely. Some of the gory treats that The Wizard offers is a chainsaw to the torso complete with splatter and flying guts. A spike is hammered through a girls achy-breaky skull complete with brain matter. Hilarious hypnotism complete with nose-bleeds. Swords are rammed down throats of not only one but two girls who are bound at the wrists, An eyeball is popped out of the face of a girl, A man is burned alive, A drill press is pushed through a woman's stomach complete with gut fondling and blood appears on the hands of the magician's victims which is never really explained but I think it has something to do with the hypnotism. It reminds me a bit of The Wolf Man and the pentigram that appears in the palm of Lon Chaney's victims but it just adds to the weirdness that I love so much from a H.G. Lewis flick.

The Wizard Of Gore is the perfect remedy for anybody who is sick of polished horror movies. Stay away from the 2007 remake with Crispin Glover and chill with The Godfather Of Gore who delivered the goods and exploitation for all us filth fans for all those years.

A Taste Of Blood (1967)

A Taste Of Blood is the most boring out of all the Herschell Gordon Lewis gore flicks. It is also has the most production value out of all of his films and is the longest movie the Godfather Of Gore has ever done. A Taste Of Blood runs at just under two hours where all of H.G. Lewis other stuff stuck at the typical 90 minute mark.

Bill Rogers who plays the priest in the sexploitive Shanty Tramp takes on the role of a vampire named John Stone. Stone is a direct descendant from the late Count Dracula and when a bottle of "Brandy" arrives in the mail from his ancestor, Mr. Stone becomes a murderous blood-sucker. (P.S. it wasn't Brandy in the bottle.) Bill Rogers has a striking resemblance to Hammers Christopher Lee and makes for a pretty good vampire.

Aside from Bill Rogers there is a actress who looks exactly like Miss Shanty Tramp herself but according to imdb.com it is two different actress's. If it is not the same actress then they must be identical twins. The Godfather Of Gore shows up himself in a cameo as the captain of a ship with a big mustache and the worst fake British accent of all time.

A Taste Of Blood runs to long with not enough of the H.G. Lewis gore that we all know and love so much. Sure we get multiple steaks through the heart and a few blood drinking moments but the film is as tame as can be. The best qualities of the film is the crusty makeup that Bill Rogers wears when he transforms into the vampire. The blue lighting also adds a element of weirdness. On the other hand Lewis seemed to have no concept of night for day and vice verso shots on this one. The day and night continuity in A Taste Of Blood is even worse then that of Gore Gore Girls.

Only worth a watch for die-hard Herschell Gordon Lewis fans. The rest of the world should skip it. It runs to long and doesn't offer enough blood and guts.

Gore Gore Girls (1972)

Herschell Gordon Lewis is my favorite director and this is my favorite film he ever did. It was also the last film he would do until about 30 years later when he put out his sequel to his classic Blood Feast.
Gore Gore Girls is extreme as trashy exploitation movies get with its constant spectacles of over the top sex and violence. Any idiot can see that the title of the film is a play on words and the movie shows strippers and Go-Go girls being murdered and mutilated in great detail. The violent gore scenes depicted in the movie go so for over board that by the time the killer is done mangling a face, it looks more like a shag carpet covered in chop meat and red paint.
The most memorable scene follows a girl home after a hard day of stripping to circus stock music and being attacked by crazy feminists with signs that say things like "Quit With Tit!" and "Women Right On!". Well anyway once shes home she takes a cucumber out of the refrigerator and then has her throat slit by the black gloved killer. She falls face down on her kitchen table and the killer pulls her sheer panties down with a fork and smashes in her ass with a meat tenderizer until her ass look like raw chop meat and she eventually dies. We the viewer are not able to tell if she died from her throat being slit or her ass being beaten and smashed into a bloody mess. However the tasteless scene doesn't stop there. The killer then pours salt and pepper on the dead strippers ass wounds. Next her eyes are ripped out of her face with a fork and then squished with the fingers concealed within the black gloves. Fluid spews from the eye balls and the fork is then rammed into the eye socket and left there like a piece of art. The scene ends with a closeup of the cucumber on the kitchen floor covered in blood.

Then we get a scene where a girl is fondling herself in front of a mirror while obnoxiously blowing bubbles with her bubble gum. She is hit in the back of her head with a hammer and her bubble turns bright red as it fills with blood. During the 81 minutes of blood and breasts we also get to see a girl have her face burned to a crisp with a iron. She also has her eyeballs removed from her face. Another girl has her nipples cut off with scissors. The first nipple appears to be shooting milk and the second one looks like its spraying chocolate milk. Only in the warped mind of the great H.G. Lewis could you get this kind of stuff. We also get to see a girl being pushed from a window and cracking her head open on the concrete. Then a truck drives by and runs over the girls head leaving her brains on the street.  Theres also a scene where a girl has her face pushed into a pot of boiling french fries.
Henny Youngman also shows up in this movie and makes a bunch of dumb jokes but I personally find the main character Abraham Gentry to be much more humorous. He is conceded, rude and his acting is just plain bad. We also get a character named Grout, who sits at the end of a bar and paints faces on various fruits and vegetables and then smashes them. Gore Gore Girls is one of those movies that I can watch over and over again and it never gets old. Its funny, its bloody and its just plain filthy. Lovers of trashy, sleazy, gory, exploitation flicks will love it.

Color Me Blood Red (1965)

I have seen this thing countless times being that its from my favorite director, Herschell Gordon Lewis a.k.a. The Godfather Of Gore. I have always viewed this movie as a remake of A Bucket Of Blood from the great Roger Corman but I never realized until now how much this film is like another Roger Corman classic, Little Shop Of Horrors. Color Me Blood Red is kind of a cross between the two films, just with that H.G. Lewis touch of excessive gore. For instance in Color Me Blood Red the main character Adam Sorg is a failure as an artist until he realizes that human blood is the touch of color that his paintings needed. He slits his own fingers with razor blades in order to squeeze out the blood that he needs for his painting. Its not very long before he feels drained and decides to start using other peoples blood. Sounds a lot like Seymor in Little Shop Of Horrors, right? Now I look at this movie almost as a homage to Roger Corman. Either way Color Me Blood Red is typical of a Herschell Lewis film in the sense that its under par as far as film making goes but its a whole lot of fun. The body-count isn't exactly huge in this one, we only have four murder scenes but they are what you would expect from a Lewis film. Bright red gore fills the screen in scenes with eye mutilation, a spear to the guts leaving a damn bloody mess, a rifle wound to the face and the most infamous scene was

used on the cover of the 80's VHS that I used to stare at when I was a kid in the local video stores. Its a scene with a girl tied to a wall with all of her guts pouring out of her stomach. Adam the artist is holding a bowl in his hands and squeezing blood out of her intestines which he will later paint with. The gore is of course cheesy especially by today's standards but that's the fun of it all. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is just ridiculous and we even have all this nostalgic crap that is just amazing to look at today. For example theres a few scenes where kids are riding around on these weird looking water bikes. You sit up right on it like a bicycle and you can steer and peddle and the thing has little paddles that help it move in the water. As if this isn't dumb enough the thing has the nerve to have a horn as if other water bikers are going to be in your way. Color Me Blood Red also has the hippest lingo of the time, can ya dig it, daddio? and some really silly looking 60's get-ups.

Mr. Lewis is still making films today. He just finished up the Uh Oh Show which I have not seen yet but I heard from a friend that its pretty amazing. Cult icon Frank Henenlotter the director of Basket Case is finishing up a documentary on Lewis called Herschell Gordon Lewis : The Godfather Of Gore which I am really looking forward to seeing. I just wonder if in 40 years people will be watching Lewis's new stuff the way we love his oldies today. Color Me Blood Red is a great one for anyone who likes B-Gore-Movies.