Tag Archives: 1965

Desert Rats Doing EVIL To Anyone Crossing Their Path! “Motorpsycho!” reviewed! (Severin Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Motorpsycho!” on a new 4K scan Blu-ray from Severin Films!

Three motorcycle hooligans on their way to Las Vegas through the Mojave Desert ride up on a smalltown Veterinarian named Cory Maddox and his voluptuous wife Gail.  A minor brush with the gang does little harm to the Maddoxes and the couple move on with their life certain the gang has moved on to the next town, but little does Cory know while on a professional checkup of a local mare, the gang invades his home and violently rapes his wife.  Hellbent for vengeance, Cory tracks their transgressive escapades through the arid landscape and comes across Ruby, a beautiful woman left for dead after her husband is gunned down and she herself being grazed by a bullet fired by the same delinquents.  The two track them down into an inescapable, unidirectional corner of the desert but with both sides facing car trouble, injury, and seeping slowly into mental instability, only one side will come out alive. 

By and large, “Motorpsycho!” is the Russ Meyer helmed B-picture that side straddles less explicit content.  The 1965 exploitational action feature, that sported less-than-speedy Honda Trials, flirted with bare-chested women, and immersed itself in light and dark innuendo, is nestled amongst two other Meyer films, “Mudhoney” and “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” released the same year and are showcase of unscrupulous violence and sexual content and innately sets the stage for Meyer’s bosomy and barren set movies that bestowed the former World War II photographer turned sexploitation director accolade success later in his career with the “Vixen!” branded films.  “Motorpsycho!” is co-written by Meyer and fellow “Mudhoney” writer William E. Sprague from an original idea from the screenwriters along with James Griffith (“Russ Meyer’s Lorna”) and Hal Hopper.  The Meyers, being Russ and wife Eve, produce the story in cahoots with Ross Massbaum (“Beach House”) and is produced and distributed theatrically by Eve Meyer’s Eve Productions.

The way Meyer sequences the “Motorpsycho!” story is an ebb and flow of events that culminate into a showdown and audiences, perhaps, won’t know exactly who the leads are until well into the chaos, such as with the female principal lead Ruby, a Cajun woman down on her luck travelling in a forced by necessity marriage to an older man in order ot start a new life in California, played by Haji, a Canadian dancer with a unique face and beautiful curves who caught Meyer’s eye for “Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill!”   For a new actress, Haji is impeccable and easy on the eyes while working off another first-time actor, principal lead Alex Rocco (“The Godfather”), playing vengeful veterinarian Cory Maddox.  Haji and Maddox have unquestionable sexual chemistry and tension despite their slight platonic relationship of seeking revenge as Meyer provides a great deal of sexual innuendo and reference instead, beating around the bush for the ultimate tease.  Don’t worry, “Motorpsycho!” doesn’t hang around the coquettish scene for entire duration as there’s plenty of one-on-one racy and salivating spiciness to sate sexploitation fans between the playful bedtime arousals of Rocco and on-screen wife Lane Carroll (“The Crazies”) and the playfully aggressive rape of Carroll and a fisherman’s wife a bikini-cladded large bosom.  “Motorpsycho!” has a man to woman ratio that strays from the normal Russ Meyer credits with the female cast rounding out with Sharon Lee in her usual typecasted role of a blonde bombshell and, more specifically in this story, a mare-owning flirt for Cory Maddox’s services.  While not a large breasted woman craving sex in every episodic scenario, this Meyer run has an interesting arc for the three ruffians who initially start with copasetic unity in their troublemaking fun through the Mojave only to end themselves in disbandment of backstabbing and derangement in unswerving performances from Timothy Scott (“Lolly-Madonna XXX”) as the handheld radio melomaniac, Joseph Cellini (“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”) as a hip cat love-taker, Steve Oliver (“Werewolves on Wheels”) as their military vet leader with a stoic expression but unpredictably violent.  “Motorpsycho!” rounds out the cast with Coleman Francis (“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), Steve Masters, Fred Owens (“Supervixens!”), George Costello and Russ Meyer as the unsympathetic, cynical Sheriff.

Not as sordidly sleazy or insatiably randy as many of the Russ Meyer films we all know and love for their perky antics, voluptuous vixens, and zany comedy with a isolated desert town backdrop, “Motorpsycho!” is virtually nudity free in comparison to his thereafter work and shot entirely in black and white that, too, tones down the situationally shaded situations of diverging sexual overdrives that conclude around a centered focus, usually around something sexually themed.  That’s not to say just because production year is in the cinema puritanical early 60s and is in black and white does that mean the film goes without a fair amount of brief nudity as Meyer slips into a couple of nipple slipping instances and countless sideboob that would be deemed too salacious for media content harking back 60-years ago.  Innuendo has always been fair game in all sorts of production sizes and studios but couple what Meyer has done with the sexualized material with the gang violence and what you have is one of the earliest known grindhouse pictures prior to its monikered labeling in the 1970s.  Production value and authenticity floats around the low-budget spectrum with a film titled “Motorpsycho!” that spends what little funds there is to supply Honda Trials that are more the speed and look of Mopeds than motorcycles, but Meyer competently adds and edits fast paced car chases, the discharging of a single pump action rifle, and a curtain calling explosion with body prop fragmenting special effects to level up the value where it counts. 

The Museum of Modern Art and Severin Films restore and scan Russ Meyer’s “Motorpsycho!” onto a new 4K transfer from the original camera negative and encode the transfer onto a new Blu-ray release as part of the Russ Meyer’s Bosomania collection.  The region free AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 is a perfect, snug fit for a well-endowed black-and-white feature restored to a virtually free of dust, dirt, and damage.  Meyer’s an eclectic electric editor and every transition is smooth and robust without fading reduction of quality in the rapid, rambunctious edits of his assembling panache.  Though in black-and-white, details don’t suffer from monochromic flattening and every inch of desert is captured with precision, every bodily curve is shapely contoured, and even when a resembled nights dims the lights, there’s plenty of definition of outline to let the mind do the rest of the work with textures and delineation within the presented 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  The English LPCM 1.0 track is about as expected, flat, but pumps through the single channel with great vitality and strength to be an effective, agreeable sound mix that, again, sees little-to-no distortion or interference.  Dialogue renders over clean and clearly without hissing or crackling in its ADR form with obvious but little asynchronous measure between visual and audio.  Closed captioning English subtitles are available.  Severin Films compiled special features, in association with the Russ Meyer Trust, include an audio commentary with queer film historian Elizabeth Purchell and “Malevolent” editor and filmmaker Zach Clark, archived interviews with stars Haji and Alex Rocco Desert Rats on Hondas, and the film’s trailer.  Primary red boxes in a mustard yellow background cover art with Steve Oliver and Sharon Lee providing the film’s genre caliber with fast bikes and big breasts plastically encased inside a black Blu-ray Amaray with the inside disc pressed with the same image, following suit to the previous first three Bosomania installments of “Vixen,” “Supervixens,” and “Beneath the Valley of Ultra-Vixens.”   The region free release has a runtime of 74-minutes.

Last Rites: “Motorpsycho!” is Russ Meyer convincing us he’s more than just a T&A sex hound with a 100% pure exploitation revved up with revenge, violence, and sordid sexual behavior.

“Motorpsycho!” on a new 4K scan Blu-ray from Severin Films!

Weak Meekness Leads to One’s Own EVIL Destruction. “Catacombs” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

Ellen Garth, a strong willed and wealthy but physically afflicted businesswoman devotes her all her love to an enervated doormat of a husband, Raymond.  When Ellen’s beautiful young niece, Alice, returns to London from Paris after a year abroad, Raymond is smitten by her flirtations for older men and strikes up an affair behind his very perceptive and sly wife’s back who catches them in each other’s embrace.  Tired of being a slave to his wife’s controlling behavior and wanting to be free to court Alice, Raymond kills Ellen and buries her in the potting shed behind their honeymoon house in a plot conceived with Ellen’s right-hand secretary and former con, Dick Corbett.  Believing he’s free of her and having been willed her fortune to share with Alice, Raymond suddenly suspects, after a series of strange events, that he’s being haunted by Ellen’s ghost, or even worse, the undead Ellen herself. 

Black and while horror from half a century or more ago always leaves a lasting impression that terror and suspense can be created by virtually story and acting alone instead of a heavily reliance of special effects and visceral coloring, such as with gore or grotesqueness of the unfathomable creature.  The British film “Catacombs,” or otherwise known as “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” in America, is one of those fear manufacturing films generated by pure acting talent and the managing cleverness behind the camera.  The 1965 film is directed by “The Oblong Box” and “Scream and Scream Again” director Gordon Hessler with American screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) penning the script based off an American novelist Jay Bennett’s novel of the same UK title.  Shepperton Studios served as house of operations for the Parsons-McCallum production under Neil McCallum and Jack Parsons and distributed by the BLF, British Lion Films.

There’s no such thing as wasted parts or throwaway performances in Hessler’s murderous-revenge haunt with precision-acute actors and actresses chin deep in their characters’ cruelty, callousness, conformity, and control.  Twists and tension-riddle rods help elevate this nearly 60-year-old film to refrain from aging poorly.  Gary Merrill, former husband of silverscreen actress Bette Davis and star of “All About Eve,” plays the meek husband Raymond wed into money but at the cost of his manhood.  Merrill plays convincingly into Raymond’s submissive, passive nature under the more dominant but fair and kind mogul lady Ellen Garth, a hip-afflicted women that doesn’t feel the ailment impede her wealth or attitude in life by way of British actress Georgina Cookson.  In the mix is Ellen and Raymond’s parentless niece Alice who has returned from her studies in Paris seemingly transfigured from a chubby child to a beautiful lady.  Jane Merrow, who co-headlines “Catacombs” with Merrill, finds her stride as the elder-entangling Alice secretly at-odds with her aunt by seducing Raymond behind her back.  Rounding out the principal foursome is Neil McCallum (“Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors’) as Ellen Garth’s sneaky secretary Dick Corbett who has a façade of a hard worker, but Corbett can’t keep up with boss’s demanding energy and is itching to subvert her.  When the story’s peak turning point hits, the expectation of character change recedes back to status quo as if Ellen’s death changed nothing other than open the door of opportunity for Raymond and Alice to connect without concern.  Yet, that inkling of shame, guilt, and fear, mixed under a plot of deception and murder, has the reverse effect of a now burdenless happiness, producing a very little capricious life-change, especially in Raymond who is still as amiable as ever.  “Catacombs’” fills out the intimate cast with Rachel Thomas and Frederick Piper.

The actual use of catacombs, or subterranean burial grounds, has little do in the film other than in its infinitesimal moment of being a key piece of evidence toward something amiss, a tell for foreboding or already doomed health, and serves as one playful, paralleling reason to Ellen’s resurrection, though not reflected in plain sight as playful or parallel by Hessler.  What’s intended the most is building the mysterious dread around Ellen Garth’s return in a semi-gloss gothic polish aimed to crack Raymond and Alice’s psyche in half.  Hessler breeds tension after tension to engulf the characters in an unrelaxing state of disgrace and distrust and what makes the matters worse for Raymond and unscrupulous company is while Ellen Garth may have held all the cards being an authoritative woman of status and wealth, she showed loyalty, humility, and adored her family, friends, and lover despite their flaws and circumstances.  That unjustifiable murder stings audiences the most, a straight shot to the sympathetic heart that creates a need to see those responsible punished by Ellen’s earth-soiled, grave-escaping, dead-cold hands with edge of your seat anticipation.  Is Ellen Supernaturally haunting her killers or is the guilt driving them mad? 

The only way to find out in glorious high-definition is to pick up a copy of Imprint Film’s definitive Blu-ray version of “Catacombs” on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 presented in a 1.66:1 European aspect ratio. The black and white picture receives a 4K scan from the original nitrate negative for its worldwide Blu-ray debt and though not much to mention in regard to colorization and black levels, the monochrome remains sharp at all times in a pristine negative that sees no damage. Usually, black and white can issue fuzziness, heavy grain, and ghosting during spliced cell overlap but this print, or rather this scanned print, looks amazingly fresh, holding patterns and transitioning seamless to the highest of restorative care. The English language is a mix between American and British English encoded with an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono, rendering a dialogue centric audio with composter Carlo Martelli brass band that’s minor keys taut tension to swell during the height of suspense. Dialogue is clean and clear with very minimal crackling; there’s no wispy or hissing detected. Although the mono feed vectors flatly, the range surrounding “Catacombs” is vast and timed to tackle distinction between the audio idiosyncrasies. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features include an exclusive feature-length audio commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby (“English Gothic: Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015”) and Kevin Lyons, a new interview with co-star Jane Merrow on her experiences in “Catacombs” Merrow & Merrill, new interview with continuity supervisor Renee Glynne and sound designer Colin Miller The Glynne-Miller Story, a new interview with composer Carlo Martelli Martelli & Martell, and with a still gallery ending the bonus material. Housed in a Hammer blood red cardboard slipcase designed with a rendition of the original poster, the Imprint release is it’s 317th title. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case is even more colorful with a giallo-colored title and back cover, overtop a frightened scene with stars Merrow and Merrill. The reverse side of the cover has more of the psychotronic photo of Ellen Garth (Georgina Cookson) staring blankly into a pocket mirror to submit herself under a trance. The BD is pressed with the same red coloring and half-woman, half-death figure as the slipcase with no inserts included. One thing I will say on the negative side of the package is that the Amaray case is a bit difficult to extract from the slipcase; you kind of have to shimmy and shake it out enough to pull the case out. The 90-minute feature is unrated and did play on our region free player without having to setup flip to the desired region for playback.

Last Rites: Gorgeously macabre yet classic packaging, Imprint’s Blu-ray release of “Catacombs” is must-own Machiavellian umbra of greed and foul play, a timeless tale yarned to yield a megaton of shadow-lurking, supernatural suspense.

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!