Author Archive: Retro

Jesus Christ is born again on Earth. But his father is a hardcore Southern Baptist, and during his teen years, Jesus rebels, joining a biker gang and leading an LSD-fueled pilgrimage to “the West” to fight “the establishment.”

An abusive headmistress runs a secluded school for wayward girls in 19th century France, whose students are “disappearing” under mysterious circumstances after dark.

A beautiful virgin inherits a castle, but when she arrives at it, she finds that the inhabitants include a strange nobleman and a bevy of beautiful women she suspects may be vampires.

A beautiful virgin inherits a castle, but when she arrives at it, she finds that the inhabitants include a strange nobleman and a bevy of beautiful women she suspects may be vampires.

Earthquakes in central Korea turn out to be the work of Yongary, a prehistoric gasoline-eating reptile that soon goes on a rampage through Seoul.

Earthquakes in central Korea turn out to be the work of Yongary, a prehistoric gasoline-eating reptile that soon goes on a rampage through Seoul.

24 hours in a woman’s life in which she has sexual realations with both her husband and her lover.

An alien is dispatched from a faraway galaxy to take over the Earth by “duplicating” humans and creating a race of zombies resembling animated pottery in this low-budget sci-fi film. Enjoy the opening and closing shots of the alien spacecraft resembling a Christmas tree bauble dancing in space, the faces of the “duplicated” humans shattering like a cheap vase when thrown to the floor, and the formative “duplicates” as they are cooked up in the lab in individual coffins. The alien’s heart is softened by the persevering goodness of a beautiful blind woman, deeply conflicting his motives as the film plods to its “climactic” confrontation between the humans and their counterfeit duplicates.

Maverick sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman’s 1965 cheapie Bad Girls Go to Hell is a sexual nightmare that unfolds with the insouciance and inspiration of a child’s drawing. A comic-book variation on Sade’s Justine, it’s the tale of Meg Kelton (a darkly Monroe-like GiGi Darlene), a sexually neglected Boston housewife who must flee to New York after she accidentally kills the janitor who raped her. There her melancholy innocence is violated, again and again, as she is taken in by seeming Good Samaritans only to be exploited by leering, lecherous men and women.

Filming in glorious and gritty black and white, offers us the beautiful and talented Gigi Darlene as an everywoman in 1960’s urban America suffering the birth-pains of the sexual revolution. Take a peek at this, if you ever get the opportunity, to see an example of the art that influenced pulp film-makers of the 1960’s and 1970’s, John Waters, and many musicians [...]