Comedy

Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959)

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The AIP teen/horror/comedy/racing quickie Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow is barely over an hour, and yet the plot doesn’t kick in until the 40-minute mark, and then promptly hightails it 10 minutes later. It’s about — and maybe I should put that word in quotation marks — a group of drag-racing gearhead high schoolers with cool, souped-up cars, and they unwind at the local malt shoppe where they sing and dance.

Following this “big story” is a some old-guy reporter in a three-piece suit. He talks like he has chestnuts in his mouth, barely moves his lips and takes copious notes on a notebook no bigger than a Post-it. I’m not sure why hanging around kids who play with chassis (“I dreamt I was a 12-shaft drive motor! It was wonderful!”) and do the jitterbug qualifies as a scoop for any print outlet, but hey, that’s overthinking it. No wonder the newspaper industry is fucked.

After more dancing and a pajama party with even more dancing, the teens go to a house that’s supposedly haunted so they can do more dancing. (Hey, at least the film commits to something.) Plot: There’s a monster lurking around the rooms, causing all sorts of dust-ups. End plot.

At the end, the would-be creature is unmasked as AIP special-effects man Paul Blaisdell, playing himself, saying he did it because AIP didn’t hire him for such-and-such movie. It’s totally Scooby-Doo, with lots of dated dialogue like “She’s the ginchiest!” It’s also the kind of movie that’s not satisfied with having a talking parrot, so it has to throw in a talking car, too. Can’t blame it. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Land That Time Forgot (1975)

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Amicus and AIP joined forces to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel The Land That Time Forgot for film, mostly to good effect. The selling point here is the dinosaurs, and while they’re not up to the standards of today (we’ve been spoiled by Jurassic Park), they do deliver.

Doug McClure (At the Earth’s Core) and his twee lady friend (Susan Penhaligon, Patrick) are the two lone survivors of a peaceful ship brought down by the torpedoes of a German U-boat during World War I. With the help of some fellow Englishmen they have the good fortune to stumble upon in the fog, the Yanks overtake the Kraut sub.

But the Germans have fucked with the compass, purposely sending the vessel way off-course in the Arctic. So off-course, in fact, that they’re lost and end up in a prehistoric world … that time forgot! Said land is inhabited by all kinds of dinosaurs that attack from the ground, air and sea. They’re either puppets or men in suits or models on strings, but they get the job done.

The land is also home to a tribe of fugly cavemen with lots of hair on their backs. With them, the creatures, the Germans and the Englishmen all at odds with one another, the line between who’s good and bad starts to blur, culminating in an ending that’s rather dark, but nonetheless satisfying. Directed by Kevin Connor (Motel Hell), the movie takes its precious time getting started, but eventually picks up steam after the first third, stumbling a bit in pacing toward the protracted, volcano-erupting climax. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Christmas Evil (1980)

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Also known as Terror in Toyland, You Better Watch Out and — at least in my book — I Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus, the oddball slasher flick Christmas Evil begins on Christmas Eve, 1947, when young Harry spies his father dressed in full Santa regalia getting it on with his mom. This prompts Harry to go upstairs, smash a snow globe and dig into his hand with the broken glass.

Jump ahead a few decades and Harry’s all grown up, now played by Brandon Maggart (Dressed to Kill), a mild-mannered, but ready-to-crack employee at a toy factory. He spends his spare time spying on neighborhood kids with his binoculars and recording their good deeds and misdeeds into leather-bound volumes of Good Boys and Girls and Bad Boys and Girls, one for each year. When he spots the Garcia kid sneaking peeks at Penthouse, he records “impure thoughts” and “negative bodily hygiene” right there along with “pulled Sally’s hair.”

Tired of being bullied and used by his co-workers who refuse to get into the Christmas spirit, Harry paints his van like a sleigh and decks himself out as Santa, ready for a night’s spree of gifts and gore. For instance, he gives a bag of fenced goods to mentally handicapped kids, then slaughters a few snobby parishioners outside their church. He entertains at a holiday party, then murders a co-worker while he sleeps. Yes, this Santa’s all about balance.

You’ll spot Home Improvement matriarch Patricia Richardson in a small role as the mother of the porno-loving kid, but Christmas Evil all belongs to Maggart. He’s hilarious and gives it his all. If he showed this to his own daughter, singer Fiona Apple, it’s no wonder she turned out so screwy. The ending to this — the looniest killer-Santa movie of them all — is a real howler. —Rod Lott

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Sex

The Peek Snatchers (1965)

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Remember the good ol’ days of burlesque shows? Me neither, but from the looks of The Peek Snatchers, they really weren’t all that. As a matter of fact, they were nothing more than sub-Stooges sight gags, lame plots, lamer accents and a string of voluptuous ladies — sexy guts and all — dancing around to seedy nightclub jazz. In other words: Why wasn’t there a sequel?

After a newspaper headline (presumably from The Plot Exposition That Won’t Be Used Later Times) reads “Tel-Star Orbits the World, Claim Many Things Uncovered” and “Big Jewel Robbery — Two Scientists Missing,” we meet two goofballs who may be the scientists. They bumble and stumble around, say stupid one-liners and stare into a white piece of paper masquerading as a super-computer that can see anything in the world.

With all that power, do they fall into international intrigue or get involved in some sort of espionage? Nope. Instead, they stare at 1960s tits and ass. So in between gay cowboy jokes and Japanese Beatle gags, we see a chunky stripping Latina, a chunky stripping blonde, a chunky folk-singing stripping Asian and a chunky belly-dancing Arab — sexy ladies one and all.

So fellas, wait for the wife to go to work, drop the kids off at school and get ready to masturbate, old-school! —Louis Fowler

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Thriller

Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

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Running second in a series of seven, the Japanese women-in-prison film known as Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 was way ahead of its time — and it still is!

The titular convict Scorpion (the largely mute Meiko Kaji, Lady Snowblood) — a nickname earned due to her gouging out the eye of the warden in this film’s predecessor, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion — is kept in an underground cell where she is habitually abused by guards. After a hard day of breaking rocks and getting raped, she manages an escape with her fellow convicts. They spend the rest of the film on the lam, and that’s about the extent of the plot.

But Jailhouse 41 turns wonderfully strange, oddly metaphorical and even supernatural, operating on its own brand of internal logic that’s indescribable.

Director Shunya Ito (who also helmed the series’ first installment and returned for its third, 1973’s even odder titled Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable) does more interesting things with color and sound than you’d typically find in an exploitation film. At times, I wasn’t quite sure this qualified as an exploitation film at all, as it contains some truly beautiful images — the blood-soaked waterfall comes to mind, predating The Shining’s famous slow-motion elevator shot. But then you see things like a naked prison guard with a log through his crotch to set you straight. —Rod Lott

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