HOT LEGS (1979)

The hectic and harried world of a modeling agency is the backdrop for 1979’s Hot Legs, Bob Chinn’s third picture for Gail Palmer and Harry Mohney’s Caribbean Films. A beautifully handled light spritzer of a picture, Hot Legs also proves to be smarter than the average bear with its insight into the high pressure world […]

TROPIC OF DESIRE (1979)

Opening on an absolutely gorgeous tableaux full of color and slow, gliding movement, Kitty Shayne, perfectly costumed as a wartime prostitute, sits in a chair in full recline and begins to undress. A serviceman (Eric Stein) watches and does the same, Glenn Miller’s “Sunrise Serenade” playing over a nearby radio. As they make their way […]

FANTASYWORLD (1979)

While looking for a good time to be had in San Francisco once they reach port, a group of Navy swabs stumble across an ad in the back of Screw Magazine for Fantasyworld, a mysterious sex club that promises the sky but for which there is no address or phone number listed. Intrigued, they set […]

BLONDE FIRE (1979)

As the 70’s began to draw to a close, so did filmmaker Bob Chinn’s relationship with Armand Atamian’s Freeway Films. Flush with projects from other companies (most notably, Harry Mohney and Gail Palmer’s Caribbean Films) Chinn had mostly been soldiering on with Freeway as a token of gratitude toward Atamian and also because of Chinn’s […]

THE CHINA CAT (1977)

When he made Hard Soap, Hard Soap for Freeway Films in 1976; Bob Chinn established a real talent with light material that focused largely on the relationships between women that were largely devoid of any antagonism or malignant pettiness. Chinn struck further gold in 1977 and 1978 with both Candy Stripers and Hot & Saucy […]

THE JADE PUSSYCAT (1977)

Shifting the Johnny Wadd formula to expand outward as far as the budget would stretch it, Bob Chinn’s The Jade Pussycat sticks the private eye, now a much dandier figure with a swanky office, into a pre-made mystery adventure which, as an explicit riff on John Huston’s 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon, […]

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

After a series of pleasant master shots of the rolling and rural Pennsylvania countryside over which the opening credits are not too obtrusively printed, Night of the Living Dead’s first line of dialogue is one of the hoariest bitches since daylight savings time was implemented. “They ought to make the day the time changes the […]

LIQUID LIPS (1976)

The San Francisco-set third act of Bob Chinn’s original script to White Gold makes up the entirety of Liquid Lips, a true blue sequel to Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here but released into theaters first due to due to Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here’s more complicated set of post-production tasks which delayed its […]

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974)

It would be tempting to say that 1974’s Shriek of the Mutilated, the final pairing of the legendary filmmaking team of Michael and Roberta Findlay, is a sad capper to a partnership that churned out many pioneering, underground classics. The seemingly sick and dastardly duo who once shocked audiences with a three-story grindhouse of sexual […]

TELL THEM JOHNNY WADD IS HERE (1976)

Bob Chinn’s Johnny Wadd series had come to an end when hardcore became a very risky business in vice-cop heavy L.A. and he had to hang back in the cut while biding his time producing softcore features. But after that had run its course and then dipping his toes back into the waters by helming […]