Poor Pretty Eddie

Yowza, here's a new old one I watched recently for the first time: Poor Pretty Eddie aka Redneck County, Black Vengeance, and Heartbreak Motel .  This sleazy 1975 backwoods set hicksploitation flick stars Shelly Winters, Slim Pickens, and Ted "Lurch" Cassidy and was apparently produced by pornographers attempting to make a legitimate mainstream picture to avoid undue attention by the FBI!  It knocked my socks so far off my feet I was inspired to write this capsule review entirely in haiku form.

Caution: spoilers ahead!

Poor pretty Eddie
Slow motion kick to the crotch
Shelly Winters sloshed

Rape scene cutaway
Rednecks ogling humping dogs
White sequined jumpsuit

Rabbit stew breakfast
Is that a dog collar?  Yep
This meal is ruined

Low Southern Gothic
Race relations? Women's rights?
Slim pickin's down here

Lurch stabbed but not dead
D. Lynchian red wedding
Not so pretty Ed

Here's a trailer:

The Mysterious Monsters

This may be the most startling film you'll ever see.
--Peter Graves

One of the many pseudo-documentaries exploring the Great Mysteries of the Unknown produced in the witchy 1970s, The Mysterious Monsters was a film I had long heard about but had never seen before; thanks to YouTube that has now been rectified.

This 1975 film from Schick Sun Classic Pictures practically invents the template that the long running television show In Search of... would replicate a year later in 1976, with Peter Graves--Captain Clarence Oveur himself--acting as your onscreen host to the investigatory proceedings, a role Leonard Nimoy would admirably fill for six seasons on In Search of...  The silver haired and humorously monotonic Graves interjects some welcome gravitas in between dramatic recreations of eyewitness encounters with the legendary Bigfoot along with just a bit of the Loch Ness Monster.  But whereas other low budget Sasquatch documentaries of this era might be content to merely suggest the existence of a mysterious monster through teasing glimpses of a beastly silhouette in the woods or film footage from the creature's point of view as it leers from behind dense shrubbery at skinny-dipping coeds or voluptuous snow bunnies frolicking in the woods oblivious to the prehistoric peeper lurking nearby, The Mysterious Monsters is proud to show off its top notch Bigfoot costume; the camera lingering lovingly and frequently on it like one of the weekly "bears" on an old episode of The Outer Limits, so that the viewer gets a good long look at the fine makeup job, one of the creepiest this reviewer has seen.

Though one of the very best films I've seen in the Bigfoot genre, I don't think The Mysterious Monsters ever manages to escape the gravitational bounds of the established tropes of the pseudoscience documentary genre to truly transcend into the refined aether of sublime weirdness that something like Overlords of the U.F.O. does, probably because it rationally sticks to the subject of mainly Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Abominable Snowman/Yeti-kind while only just dipping a big toe into the murky waters of the Loch Ness Monster mythos, choosing not to discuss any other of the Great Mysteries floating around in the 1970s or attempting to tie together all of these disparate threads into one Grand Unified Fortean Theory--so no ancient astronauts, UFOs, ghosts, or demonic possession here, thank you very much.  And there were a few characters and scenes in this film that I was sure I had seen in other documentaries--they all start to blend together after a while--but that could just be my advancing decrepitude and creeping senility.  But in spite of all that seems familiar in this type of film: the standard 1970s synthesized electronic musical score; the always memorable disembodied hairy Bigfoot arm through the window scene; the telegenic host as the voice of reason that surely the facts presented prove Bigfoot must really exist; the beautifully grainy 16 millimeter film look; all these are really first rate examples of the genre, and that's saying nothing of the abundant lens flare from shooting into the sun that would undoubtedly make J.J. Abrams figuratively (and possibly literally) cream his jeans.  To wit, I liked this movie a lot--it's pretty much a perfect example of a mid-1970s Bigfoot documentary.

There's just something about the great dark shape of the untamed Sasquatch that taps into some primal human fear of the unknown, which is probably why films about Bigfoot were so popular in the tumultuous, post 1960s Watergate/Vietnam War era when the whole world seemed turned upside down.  Bigfoot emerged into the collective consciousness of the 1970s as a "known unknown", to nick a term coined by that great American rascal Donny Rumsfeld; a dark and shaggy reflection of paradise lost, a dangerous and foul smelling but almost cuddly folk hero symbolic of our monstrous id.

Best line from this flick is from a pro-Bigfoot scientist defending the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film footage of a purported female Sasquatch:
"I don't know what the breasts of a Sasquatch ought to look like..."

Here's the trailer for your viewing pleasure:

Race with the Devil

Winnebago Warriors Part 2

Race with the Devil (1975) is arguably the greatest genre film ever made involving an RV (recreational vehicle).  OK, so there may not be all that many RV themed films to begin with; the only other one that your humble reviewer is even familiar with is the recently reviewed Ghosts That Still Walk, but Race with the Devil must surely be the most well known.

Released smack dab in the middle of the devil obsessed 1970s,  this film really does have it all: a big ass RV, motorcycle racing, Peter Fonda, car chases, robed cultists, a scary tree, Loretta ("Hot Lips" Houlihan from TV's M*A*S*H) Swit in a tight sweater, animal sacrifice, dirt biking, Satanism, female nudity only partially obscured by flame, that thing when you go to make dinner in your RV and then a rattlesnake jumps out of the cupboard at you, vehicular destruction, poolside leering, human sacrifice, a ring of fire, and last but certainly not least: public library non-circulating reference book theft.

Best line: After Warren Oates takes a spill on his dirt bike into a big puddle of water: "I'm getting too old for this shit!".  This has surely got to be one of the earliest sincere instances of this hoary saying before its eventual descent into action film cliche.

In spite of all joking at the preposterous absurdity of the whole thing, this film is actually really pretty scary and can be downright creepy, especially in the early scenes involving the cult at the sacrificial tree (which looks like a close cousin to the Louisiana devil tree from the recent True Detective).  One memorably terrifying action sequence has the RV vacationeers trying to flee the scene of human sacrifice they've inadvertently witnessed while several murderous cultists cling to the back of their RV, their hooded faces illumined by the hellish red glare of tail lights as they smash in the rear window in an attempt to gain ingress and thwart the protagonists' escape.  It's a truly violent and viscerally effective scene of motor vehicle violation.

But as the tag line says:  "When you race with the Devil, you'd better be faster than hell!"

Trailer:



One thing is for sure, a PG rated movie from the '70s like Race with the Devil could be way more explicit in terms of nudity and violence than a modern PG movie; it's hard to believe this film shares the same exact rating as something innocuous like Disney's Frozen; that would certainly make for an interesting double feature if you'd like to traumatize the kiddies for life!

P.S.: If you have the chance I highly recommend checking this film out on the recent Blu-ray from Shout! Factory (a double feature with Dirty Mary Crazy Larry).  It really looks amazing, almost like it was filmed yesterday instead of forty years ago.

Here's Dead Kennedys' "Winnebago Warrior" performed by The Fractal Cauliflowers to play us out: