Author Archive: Retro

The conjoined twins Violet Hilton and Daisy Hilton, also seen in Tod Browning’s classic Freaks and the smarmy Slash of the Knife, star in this interesting melodrama about love, betrayal, and murder. They play Vivian and Dotty Hamilton, joined-at-the-spine singers in a vaudeville show managed by the unscrupulous Ted Hinckley (Allen Jenkins). Hinckley pays a sharpshooter named Andre Pariseau 100 dollars a week to date Dotty as a publicity stunt. When the pair are married, Dotty’s desire to be surgically separated from her sister leads the panicked Violet to shoot Pariseau dead, and she stands trial (with Dotty, naturally) for murder. Despite the exploitative ad campaign, this is a well-done melodrama presenting a realistic (?) situation in an engaging way. Viewers may still get the feeling that they might go to Hell for watching it, but at least it avoids the sleazy implications of Slash of the Knife. The British-born Hilton sisters were exploited in [...]

Melodrama warns against the threat of forced female sterilization. Watch for Writer/Director Wilbur as “Father O’Brien”. Dir. Crane Wilbur.

Townspeople want to sterilize a woman because her family is regarded as a bunch of derelicts and it is feared that her children will be the same.
100% hysterical! This ancient cry for the end of forced sterilisation will have you bewildered, and laughing. The Board of Health wishes to streilise a family of nitwits. The parents are lazy boozehounds well past 70 years old, yet they have infant children! Their oldest daughter is up for the operation, but she’s normal wants to marry some nice guy, and have kids. Highlights include a courtroom scene where a judge decides if an insane young man is to be sterilised.

Hypnosis In the tradition of “Mated”, these thinly disguised medical/educational films deal with the frank subject of sex and childbith form a clincal, yet revealing viewpoint.

A newspaper reporter investigates a strange cult living in the American Southwest who worship pain. Supposedly based on a fact. Actual footage of Penitentes – a sect of Catholic religious fanatics who engage in self-flagellation

With the exception of the vastly superior Caged, Columbia’s Women’s Prison was the quintessential “babes behind bars” drama of the 1950s. Ida Lupino (who else?) stars as Amelia VanZant, the sadistic supervisor of the titular prison. Unable to establish any sort of relationship with a man, Amelia takes it out on her long-suffering inmates. When prison psychiatrist Clark (Howard Duff) tries to improve conditions for the women, he too is targetted for destruction by the vituperous Ms. VanZant. The cast includes such perennial “hard-boiled dames” as Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Gertrude Michael and Mae Clarke. Not taken very seriously in the first place, Women’s Prison was elevated to the level of “high camp” by youthful film buffs of the 1960s and 1970s.

Wayward girl grows up to become a juvenile judge and meets up with the child she gave up for adoption, now a teenage punk. Dir. Nick Grinde

This action adventure features the skill of one amazing hero.

A white gorilla is snubbed by black gorillas because he is the wrong color. Cut off from his tribe he becomes lonely and angry. After troubling hunters and natives, the white gorilla fights the king of the black gorillas while we are told by a narrator that the fate of Africa hangs in the balance. The movie was made by editing some 1947 acting into footage from a 1927 silent serial, Perils of the Jungle, starring Frank Merrill the fifth screen Tarzan.