In the 1970's the Drive-In was still king, and along with the main feature, there was a call for second and third bills to round things out.
Of course sex comedies were a staple of the B world, where despite the occasional nude scene or suggestive situation, the emphasis was always more on the comedy then the sex. And yeah, these movies could be just plain awful. And yet, can still be fun in their own way.
And if nothing else their poster all totally rock.
So sit back and let's take a look back at some of the steamy and slightly exploitative fun.
The Pom Pom Girls (1976)
Ten years before Revenge of the Nerds, Robert Carradine was already meeting college girls.
2069: A Sex Odyssey (1976)
Can the Earth survive an invasion of sex crazed aliens from Italy, watch this badly dubbed wonder to find out for sure.
2069: A Sex Odyssey
Beyond Atlantis (1973)
For years John Wayne's pretty boy son Patrick hoped to make a career for himself in Hollywood although in the case of Beyond Atlantis he found himself having fun and working with the legendary Sid Haig, in this exploitation semi-classic from the Philippines.
Beyond Atlantis (1973) - PG exploitation
The Sex Perils of Paulette (1965)
Now this one isn't a comedy, but is instead an early example of the genre called, the "Roughie". Roughies were not quite porno, but they were way too much for the Drive-In's and normally would be shown in the seedier theaters of Times Square. Written and directed by photographer Doris Wishman, The Sex Perils of Paulette is a bit out of place, but at the same time, the trailer is just too good not to share regardless.
The Sex Perils of Paulette (1965) written and directed by Doris Wishman
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The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974)
Okay, now this one is actually kind of funny.
No seriously.
The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974)
Young Colleen Camp stars in what is basically some harmless fluff that with the exception of one or two quick flashes of nudity could easily have passed for an ABC movie of the week. Like I said, fun, harmless fluff. But fluff with a sense of humor.
In this post MTV era, television really doesn't provide very many places to watch live music anymore. Austin Cit Limits on PBS and Jonathon Ross on the BBC keep on plugging away, but they are the rare exception.
Ryan Adams on Austin City Limits
Now back in the 60's and 70's places shows American Bandstand would have all sorts of bands show up but the vast majority of time, it was to lipsynch to whatever hit they had currently on the radio. For actual live performances you needed to go to the talk shows, variety shows, SNL, Friday's and of course, Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special, where every week, Wolfman Jack would host the very best in popular music.
Here's a ripping version of Rhiannon by 70's monster group, Fleetwood Mac with the band almost certainly highly energized by whatever white powder just happened to be lying around, showing why they were one of the biggest bands of the era.
Another huge music group back in the 70's was the Steve Miller Band. For a time there Steve just was pumping out the hits. From a 1974 appearance on the Midnight Special, here's a really exceptional version of Fly Like an Eagle.
This performance by Gerry Rafferty of his hit Baker Street is from German TV, so not really part of this rant, but it's such a nice performance I had to throw it on anyway.
Steely Dan the jazz/rock band led by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker made a memorable 1973 appearance with this sizzling performance of their hit Reelin in the Years.
And finally for a bit more on the arty side there was the time in 1973 that the Midnight Special handed over their time slot one night and the people of the US were treated to the 1980 Floor Show, here's David Bowie and the ever lovey Marianne Faithfull, with their cover of I Got You Babe.
Interestingly, the Midnight Special was canceled in 1980, not because of low ratings, but because Dick Ebersol the man who took over Saturday Night Live for it's disastrous post Lorne Michaels era had demanded the cancellation of the Midnight Special as part of his deal for taking over SNL under the logic that it would make it easier for Ebersol to book top guests for the higher rated Saturday Night series. It is also worth noting that a year after the Midnight Special ended the Ebersol produced Friday Night Videos, a much less expensive series to produce, took over the Midnight Specials old time slot.
So about two years ago I posted a couple of nice little bits about Joe Kubert and a promotional magazine he made for Sparta printing titles Magazineland.....
Nice little posts, but nothing special other then the fact that it took hours to get the pages scanned and cleaned up. Still imagine my surprise when earlier today, I had a friend point out this post over at some comic blog named 20th Century Danny Boy.
Now, it's not that I mind my scans being taken and used without attribution, this is the internet and all of us have been guilty of this in the past. It wasn't that he only wrote a quick half assed paragraph before going to press, and it doesn't even bother me that he didn't even reprint the entire book.
What bugs me is that his post hit larger numbers on it's first day then the two I had in their first six months.
Obviously I am going to need to spend some more time working on Studd and seeing what I can do to increase my readership. Because I don't mind being ripped off, but I hate being obscure and ripped off.
Santa and his elves threatened by Martian robots from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
At Christmas time, we all still sit around with our kids re-watching yet again, Charlie Brown and the Grinch, Rudolph and Frosty, classics that have lasted for generations and will still be loved 50 years from now. Separate from the classics though, there's a hodgepodge (love that term) of movies, specials, plays and cartoons dedicated to the season, some quite good, but that never hit the popularity, let alone the staying power of the "big 4". Let's take a look at a few of the more memorable ones.
The team of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass were the absolute kings of Christmas cartoons during the 60's and 70's with their stylish, quality "Animagic", stop motion films, most famously Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. One of the duo's best looking projects was 1968's, The Little Drummer Boy, a thoroughly horrifying story of a small boy who after witnessing his parents brutal murders, survives as a beggar drumming in the streets, while being ruthlessly exploited by his "uncle" who also happens to be one of the most egregious collections of negative Arab stereotypes ever to show up on national television. To make a long story short, the drummer kid's pet lamb is killed in an accident just as they are heading to meet the baby Jesus, and after offering the newborn messiah a ripping drum solo, Christ gives his power to raise the dead a test drive and resurrects the sheep, restoring faith in God and humanity.
The Little Drummer Boy is actually very well done with beautiful animation and what is actually a very strong and moving story, but one that is so marred by the racial stereotyping that it really is not likely to be aired very often these days, and probably deservedly so.
For real Christmas depression though, there's The Littlest Angel, a 1969 all-star, made for television musical about the tribulations of a small boy adjusting to heaven that terrified the seven year old me causing nightmares and the brand spanking new concept of the existential terror brought by the reality of death.
Merry Christmas!!!
E.G. Marshal as God and Johnny Whitaker as the Littlest Angel, freaking me out at age seven
The below scene where our young hero Michael, played by Family Affair'sJohnny Whitaker returns to his parents house to retrieve his prized collection of rocks and trinkets that he wants to enter into a contest for what's going to be used to create the star signalling the birth of Jesus, while his mother and father sit and worry where their child has gotten to, when we know his crushed and very dead body is at the bottom of a ravine just waiting for mom and dad to find the next morning when they go looking for him.
Watching Michael obliviously going about his business, knowing what his parents were going to discover truly upset young me. I'd seen plenty of adults die on television, it was the 60's after all, but I'd never really seen a dead kid before, let alone one who was just so darn jolly about it. On a more positive note though the special did have Fred Gwynne singing and nice bits from Tony Randall, Cab Calloway and E.G. Marshal, the prey of the sentient cockroaches from George Romero'sCreepshow, as God.
Let me tell you about a double feature I went to sometime around 1970 that starred old St Nick in two of his more surreal appearances.
The Devil "Pitch" from 1959's Mexican production of Santa Claus
Santa Claus (1959) is a great example of the kind of children's films to come out of Mexico during the 1950's and 60's. Brightly colored, without a touch of subtly, Santa Claus and his band of international children helpers face off against Pitch, a mostly evil devil determined to stop this Christmas nonsense once and for all. A very weird film, but totally a good time, filled with bizarre imagery and situations that somehow remind me in a way of the kind of stuff Jose Marins would bring of course in a much more adult manner, in his Coffin Joe films.
Long since slipping into the public domain, here's the complete, badly dubbed feature for your pleasure.
The second film, which is also not so coincidentally in the public domain is the much better know Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
I'm not going to go too deeply into the plot (what there is of it), and I don't even really care that a young Pia Zadora is the cute as pie little girl. All I think that really needs to be said, is Martians trying to steal Christmas, and Santa not putting up with any crap from a bunch of green guys in space ships.
Both films should be watched by anyone who really loves Christmas.
I also wanted to mention two high quality animated adaptions of the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.
Created in 1971 by artist Richard Williams, his version of the classic won an academy award for best animated short. The style resemble the ink drawings of the original Victorian era and have a lovely creepiness that is perfect for the holiday ghost story. It is by no means a perfect version, but there are some wonderful images, and it was a very worthy attempt at the tale.
Surprisingly there's another version of the Dickens classic that manages to capture the spirit of the tale with both style and a sense of humor that most people might not expect, and yet Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol is a first rate adaptation of the story, with Magoo playing it straight as Scrooge.
Finally I wanted to post this version (at least the second filmed) of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, from the great Max Fleischer.
From all of us here at Studd, to each and every one of you...Merry Christmas.
Judeo-Christian Values, National Lampoon (December 1974)
Christmas is sometimes just a little too family friendly for my taste, which as most of you know is mostly a little questionable. So to keep the saccharine levels down and to prevent either diabetes or tooth decay, here's a little something to keep us old grumps happy...
Truly dark humor from Robert Smigel in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, just remember if you're a star it's all about you.
Frosty the Snowman is nothing compared to the Fleischer Brothers truly disturbing Snow Man.
I know it really isn't all that Christmassy, but it's too fun not to share.
It's the holiday season, a time for family and friends, a time to contemplate the tiny bits of happiness we have in this life, and to do what we can to share this simple joy of living. Such as making sure that everyone in the family from grandpa to the dog get's his share of good, wholesome American tobacco.
Here we are in the 70's when everything really is horrible and it really stinks. The mass media, everything on television everything everywhere is just rotten. You know it's just boring and really evil, ugly and worse.- Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs, despite being a world class grump, was right, the 1970's were a pretty weird and unhappy time for the United States, from the National Guard opening fire on students at both Kent State and Jackson University on one end, the loss in Vietnam and the debacle of Watergate in the middle, and a great big Iranian hostage crisis to round the whole mess out. The 70's was also a time when the idealism and hope of the young people of the 1960's turned into the cynicism and self-absorption of the yuppies. It was a boiling cauldron of a time.
Probably not the boiling cauldron I was referring too, but
I've been waiting for a chance to post this cover for months.
Besides, beats posting yet another still from Bewitched
But it was also a time when African Americans, Latino Americans and Gay Americans were getting their first taste of real political and economic power, it was the era when women were making giant leaps into the working world and it was a time when ALL of them began to demand to be treated equally.
People were angry, but dammed stylish
It was like Dickens said about another revolutionary era, "the best of times, the worst of times".
But I'm not looking to get too serious here, instead I just wanted to explain a little bit, about why it is that when you are talking about the 1970's, you get such a wide field of styles and subjects. How the same decade can produce both John Denver and Johnny Rotten, and have both of them work as equally valid symbols of their era.
Both John's are fully legitimate symbols of the 1970's, it was a complicated decade
Okay, enough preaching, let's have some fun....
Say what you will about the disgraced President Richard Nixon, but it is pretty undeniable that he truly was a cartoonists dream....
TV Guide, February 1972, Nixon goes to China
The nose, the 5 o'clock shadow, the beady little eyes, our 37th President, was a cartoon natural.
Balrog Nixon 1971
The 1970's was a great time for parody, both high..
Neal Adam's Son-O-God, National Lampoon
And low..
Charles's Girl's, Tunnel Vision, 1976
The 1970's gave us the awesome nature shows like the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, with narration by the great Rod Serling.
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
And then there was good ol Marlin Perkins and the ever endangered Jim Fowler in Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
Of course not all television in the 70's was nature shows.
Take the classic annual TV blow-out, Battle of the Network Stars for example.
Cheryl Tiegs vs Victoria Principal
Yes, Battle of the Network Stars, where stars from major networks television programs would go against each other in silly sporting competitions that a few of them took, just a little too seriously.
Robert Conrad loses his mind on national television
In the 1970's, both Planet of the Apes and Logan's Run were made into television series with the exact same plot.
Not quite Michael York or Jenny Agutter
Logan's Run was about three people in a post Apocalypse future, moving from society to society and having new adventures in a world they don't really understand.
Meanwhile, the Roddy McDowell series, Planet of the Apes, was about three people in a post Apocalypse future, moving from society to society and having new adventures in a world they don't really understand.
A young Jackie Earle Haley is stuck in the Planet of the Apes
While the nighttime series Planet of the Apes was pretty bad, they did manage to do a surprisingly decent job with the Saturday Morning cartoon series.
The animated Planet of the Apes 1976
It was the first time that Apes were shown with aircraft and tanks, television and other items from modern society, and it was the only version I have ever seen that actually made it look like an actual PLANET controlled by apes.
