Psychotronic Movie of the Week: The Manster (1959)

The Manster (aka The Split) 

1959, Shaw-Breakston Enterprises

D/P George P. Breakston D: Kenneth B. Krane S: Walter J. Sheldon 

Starring: Peter Dyneley, Jayne Hylton, Satoshi Nakamura, Terri Zimmern

Michael J. Weldon's review in Psychotronic Video #4: 

Originally released in America by Loppert on an incredible double bill with THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTUS in 1962, this is the ultimate split personality movie. A man in a skinny gorilla suit kills some women in a bath. Blood splatters on the wall. Up in the mountains in a remote cave full of giant mushrooms and plants, we discover he's a mutant. Dr. Suzuki (Satoshi Nakumura) says, "You were my brother. You were an experiment that didn't work out. I'm sorry!," and shoots him. An ugly bug-eyed mutant screeching in a cage is his wife. Meanwhile Larry Stanford, an American journalist, shows up, is drugged and jabbed in the shoulder with a hypo. Star Peter Dyneley, who acts a lot like Lon Chaney, Jr., later provided the voice of Jeff Tracy for British THUNDERBIRDS movies. Back in Tokyo he gets drunk on sake and goes behind closed doors with with four gieshas. He misses his flight home. Suzuki sends his beautiful, obedient assistant Tera (Terri Zimmern) to further corrupt him in a mineral bath. Unshaven and hung over, the reporter ignores his worried, pleading wife, who arrives from New York. A priest is killed at a temple by a werewolf type hand . Two women are murdered on the street. At his room, Stanford sees an eyeball on his shoulder!!! - (a high point of screen surrealism). Soon a scary small extra head grows there. Both of his heads become uglier with big teeth and bugged out eyes. He kills a psychiatrist. The big climax takes place near a volcano. Behind a tree the Manster painfully splits into Stanford and a skinny ape man. They fight and both fall into a volcano! 

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Impulse (1974, William Grefe)

Impulse
1974, Conqueror Films/Camelot Entertainment

D: William Grefe S: Tony Crechales P: Scorates Ballis

Starring: William Shatner, Ruth Roman, Jennifer Bishop, James Dobson, Kim Nicholas, Harold "Odd Job" Sakata, William Kerwin


Michael J. Weldon's review from Psychotronic Video #9:

What a find! William Shatner is Matthew Stone, a creepy, lying, seductive psycho gigolo hustler with sideburns, a scar, and white flair pants. A perfect cliche black and white flashback shows how as a kid he defended his mother by running a samurai sword through a tattooed drunk (William Kerwin!). Another flashback shows him crying while strangling a woman then sinking her car (ala DEMENTIA 13). He seduces a widow (Jennifer Bishop from Al Adamson movies) whose best friend is played by Ruth Roman. Only the woman's bratty precocious little blond daughter (Kim Nicholas, who is perfect in the role) knows what a creep he is. Shatner/Stone runs over a dog, hangs Harold ("Odd Job") Sakata, and says things like "People like you should be ground up and made into dog food!" The video print is scratchy, but IMPULSE has excellent clever cinematography and editing and is the most enjoyable of Grefe's made in Florida movies I've seen so far. It's a sleaze classic. 

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Fugitive Girls (1974, A.C. Stephen)

Fugitive Girls (1974, aka 'Five Loose Women')

AFPI/SCA  Distributors

D/P: A.C. Stephen (Stephen C. Apostolof) 

S: Apostolof/Ed Wood

Starring: Jabie Abercrombe, Rene Bond,Tallie Cochrane, Donna Young, Margie Lanier, Harvey Shain, Nicolle Riddell, Douglas Frey

Michael J. Weldon's review from Psychotronic Video #2, 1989: 

From the time he wrote ORGY OF THE DEAD (see PV #1) until his death in 1978, cult figure Ed Wood (a forgotten man at the time) worked (often uncredited) on nudie films made by Stephen C. Apostolof (A.C. Stephen). He wrote this one and appears as "Pop," running a remote gas station. This film was rated X and has soft core sex scenes (which would earn it an R today). An R-rated, softer version was called FIVE LOOSE WOMEN. After a sex scene with badly dubbed in "Oooh Aah Ooh Aah,...," the guy, with long thick sideburns, decides to hold up a liquor store, shoots the owner, and leaves Dee, the cliche women's prison victim/star (Jabie Abercrombe) to take the rap. Her cellmates at the minimum security farm are nudie (and porn) star Rene Bond as a bank embezzler with a thick southern accent - "There's only two things worthwhile for a girl - men and money!" Cap, a manic, short haired dyke who killed her husband - "His mistake was, he turned me on to women and I dug it!" and a black woman who trades insults with the Southern "Dirty white trash!" Cap says "I'm getting sick and tired of this rainbow trip!" After Cap forces Dee into a long lesbian scene, they all escape and stay with camping, organic hippies until Cap says "They all smell like freaks!" A hippie goes "Good Christ, a lesbian!" and a chain fight starts. In a scene Ed borrowed from his script for THE VIOLENT YEARS ('56), the women steal a guy's car and rape him - "Leave me alone!" They also ambush some bikers, fight them using martial arts, then take over the home of a paralyzed Nam vet. FUGITIVE GIRLS is too dark most of the time, but has a funny recurring Hammond organ theme, and enough Wood touches to make it a must for fans who can't get enough. 

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Down On Us (aka Beyond the Doors, 1984, Larry Buchanan)

Down On Us (1984, aka 'Beyond The Doors')
Omni Leisure International

D/S: Larry Buchanan, P: Murray Kaplan

Gregory Allen Chatman as Jimi Hendrix, Riba Meryl as Janis Joplin,  Bryan Wolf as Jim Morrison, and Sandy Kenyoun as the Assasin

Michael J. Weldon's review in Psychotronic Video #1, 1989:

Dallas director Buchanan is known to many for his minimalist 60s direct to TV science fiction remakes like 'Mars Needs Women' and 'Zontar The Thing From Venus.' He's also a conspiracy buff and made 'The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald' ('64), years before the TV movie of the same name, and 'Goodbye Norma Jean' ('76). There's no way to seriously defend Buchanan as a director, but since he made those films, nearly everybody is aware of the Mafia/Cuban/Marilyn/Kennedys/F.B.I. nightmare, and very few believe the Warren Commission anymore. 

These days, it doesn't take too much political awareness to think that maybe the American government was somehow behind the deaths of famous role model rock stars. Down On Us, which shows how a government assassin killed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, has never been released, even on video. Other less interesting Buchanan eighties projects (Mistress of the Apes, The Loch Ness Monster) are easy to find. Has this movie been repressed?

A lot of time is spent showing actor clones performing the rock songs which sort of sound like songs made famous by the originals. You might recognize bits of familiar lyrics, but not enough for Larry to have to pay any copyright fees. The only song he could get away with copying is "The Star Spangled Banner!" No matter who's supposed to be playing in whatever city, they always seem to be on the same stage in front of the same audience. Jimi and Janis meet and sing drunken blues together backstage. Janis confronts Morrison in the ladies' room. You get to see Jimi pose with blondes for an LP cover, meet the Plaster Casters, and watch a New York drag show. Morrison in Miami screams, "Wake up before the whole world goes into the atomic sewer!" and "How does it feel to be vermin?" See Janis shoot up while watching Vietnam war footage on TV. Nixon is heard saying "These voices must be still." The government assasin (Sandy Kenyon, who landed a short lived role on Knott's Landing after this) is shown at home breaking his son's records and and yelling, "I told you - no nigger music!!"  He offs two of the stars - but Jim Morrison fakes his own death in Paris and hides out in a Spanish monastery (!), where he later dies anyway. 

Down On Us is a eerily fascinating dispite (or because of) being too long, too dark, and too cheap. Someday a more respected, major director will tackle the same idea for a major company and Larry will be able to say, "I did it first" again, I hope you have to opportunity to see his unreleased effort. I'm waiting for a movie showing how our government killed off, jailed, drafted, tamed, or brainwashed most of the best fifties rock stars, and backed the career of Pat Boone.