JANIE (1970)

“It’s autumn now Janie. Your favorite season. The season when everything is dying. When life turns gold and brown and drops from the trees until the whole world is dead. Barren, frozen, stiff, lifeless, dead. Autumn is the best season of the year, Janie. It proclaims death to all.” According to the people actually involved […]

THE BLONDE IN BLACK LACE (1971)

The smashing successes of the same year’s Johnny Wadd and Flesh of the Lotus necessitated another entry in the cycle of the titular private eye films so another production budget of $750 was set aside and another day on the calendar was blacked out to make everybody’s dreams come true. In the world of early, […]

MNASIDIKA (1969)

Given the inaudibility of the voice over narration wedded to the only readily available transfer of Michael and Roberta Findlay’s Mnasidika, it’s hard to understand exactly what is stuck in Michael’s craw in regards to the women characters in the film (I mean, outside his usual issues). From what can be gleaned from watching this […]

FLESH OF THE LOTUS (1971)

While Bob Chinn’s Johnny Wadd did an outstanding job as a showcase for John Holmes’s hammer, there wasn’t much mystery nor adventure to be found within. Flesh of the Lotus, Chinn’s follow-up that, due to overwhelming demand by theater owners arrived in theaters a couple of months later, corrects this by opening up the space […]

THE NINE LIVES OF FRITZ THE CAT (1974)

Presented as an omnibus with no real sense of purpose, 1974’s The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is the “We have Fritz the Cat at home” meme printed to celluloid. Stacked to the rafters with pot humor, condom gags, dick and fart jokes, and knee slappers involving diarrhea, The Nine Lives of Fritz the […]

JOHNNY WADD (1971)

When Jeannie Hamilton (Patti Lee) goes missing, her girlfriend (Andy Bellamy) calls on Johnny Wadd (John Holmes), a private detective who lives in a groovy beachside condo in Marina del Rey. After taking the case, the plot thickens when Sandy Hamilton (Sandy Dempsey) hires Wadd to drop the inquest into her missing sister. The first […]

FRITZ THE CAT (1972)

Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat is a kaleidoscopic trip through the late sixties as viewed through the lens of the titular character (Skip Hinnant) who goes from idealistic college dropout to leftist revolutionary to a center-left resignation in the span of a fleet 78 minutes. The film’s march from its freewheeling beginning to the darker […]

AFTERNOON DELIGHTS (1980)

Jumping off with a rollicking, endearingly sloppy, soundalike cover of The Starlight Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” which sounds as if it were recorded by a marginally talented pack of runaways who were discovered while getting high off scotch guard in the parking lot of a Bay Ridge skating rink (and were subsequently paid in more […]

THE ULTIMATE DEGENERATE (1969)

Making their black and white film cycle a full circle experience, 1969’s The Ultimate Degenerate opens on a scene that hints that the film might be a twist on 1966’s Take Me Naked, Michael and Roberta Findlay’s first collaborative feature that was stacked to the rafters with narration, peeping, and exhibitionism. But instead of a […]

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)

When it comes to the discussion about style-over-substance, Michael Mann’s is not a name that should be spoken in the same breath as that phrase, which is apt for filmmakers who have a keen eye but a tin ear and an empty soul. For Mann is not only a dazzling stylist, but he began his […]