For any psychotronic trailer compilation worth its salt, like Only the Good Parts: Volume 2, the intermission is the mission. Film Trauma‘s follow-up to first portion packs nearly 40 uncut previews into 70 fun-filled minutes, nary a one wasted and many featuring narration by guys who pronounced “horror” as “har-uh.”
With grindhouse icons like Al Adamson, AIP, Hammer and Paul Naschy represented, the program covers exploitation, sexploitation, Mexploitation — even Orson Wellesploitation, if that’s a thing. This second batch comes stool-loosely organized into themes of vampires, mad scientists and their experiments, high school hellions, hairy beasts and haunted houses. Heck, you’ll even find a run of half-dozen trailers for Don’t movies, warning against everything from answering the phone and going inside to looking now.
Speaking of not looking, the trailer for René Cardona Sr.’s Night of the Bloody Apes notably features an eyeball squeeze that today looks like YouTube’s ever-popular pimple-popping videos.
While that Mexican monster classic may be a common offering among trailer tapes, the same can’t be said for Japan’s disturbofest Bijo No Harawata (aka Entrails of a Beautiful Woman), Claudio Fragasso’s goopy After Death (aka Zombie 4) or especially the nude and hirsute sideshow attraction The Gorilla Woman (aka Dwain Esper’s Forbidden Adventure, I assume, represented by footage assuredly not in the 1935 picture).
Further proof the collection doesn’t skim off the top are The Loreley’s Grasp, The Unseen and House of Missing Girls. We can’t leave without mentioning The Raw Ones, whose narrator (“They throw their cares and their clothes to the wind!”) has the audacity to claim the 1965 documentary is “wholesome,” just as a totally nude woman jumps rope and a totally nude man trampolines. (Dramamine sold separately.)
The DVD of Only the Good Parts: Volume 2 features a bonus program, VHS Madness, merely an extra 10 minutes of spots. You’ll see Bloodeaters, Blood Farmers, Bobbie Bresee boobie and a kick-ass ad for Orange Shasta. —Rod Lott