So, last night, I was feeling a bit down for a number of reasons so my BFF Evelyn came over and we had a little slumber party of sorts in my living room. And before everyone does a double take and accuses me of trying to be all like Paris Hilton, let me just explain that when we refer to each other as being “BFFs,” we’re not just being sincere but we’re being postmodernly satiric. It’s kind of the same principle behind why me and my sister Erin tends to casually toss around the word “bitch” whenever we’re having a conversation. Of course, “BFF” doesn’t inspire quite the same reaction from the older folks at the family reunion as “bitch” does but that’s a whole other story.
Anyway, as I informed everyone earlier on twitter, Evelyn and I did all the usual things that you do at a slumber party. We stripped down to our underwear, watched horror movies, ate food that we shouldn’t have eaten, had a violent pillow fight, and swore that we would never reveal the divine secrets of the ya ya sisterhood. I also recruited her to look through all the possible picks for the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers and help me narrow them down to just 6 trailers.
This, she helped me down without (too much) complaint. Though it may not always be apparent, deciding which 6 trailers to feature each week is actually a pretty long and thorough process and it’s one that can be very tedious if you’re not a fan of these movies. I think a lot of people would have said, “Who cares? Just toss up 6 random trailers and be done with it.” Not Evelyn. Even as I forced her to watch some really odd and kinda disturbing trailers, she stuck with it until we had this week’s 6 trailers. She even put up with me explaining to her why a certain trailer was more grindhouse than another. And that is one of the many reasons why I love Evelyn and why she’ll always be my BFF.
And here’s the 6 trailers that she helped me pick for this week…
1) Stigma (1972)
Okay, Evelyn and me both literally fell in love with this trailer from the minute we heard that narrator say “The curse that begins with a kiss.” Needless to say, we both jumped to a conclusion as to what that curse was and let’s just say it wasn’t syphilis. But anyway, this appears to be some sort of cross between an old educational short and a blaxploitation film. I haven’t seen this film yet and hadn’t even heard of it until I came across the trailer but now, it has become one of my obsessions. I must see Stigma. I must find out about the curse that begins with a kiss…
2) The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)
Wow, isn’t that just the most annoying title ever? It just screams “FILM SCHOOL GRADUATE!” at the top of its trust funded lungs. Still, this trailer does have one line that made me laugh out loud and that line was: “Where am I going?” Otherwise, this trailer is also memorable for the horrid “gingerbread” song that plays over the first few clips . Evelyn claims that the song is now stuck in her head, which is pretty bad since the entire song is basically “something something gingerbread something something gingerbread…” Evelyn thinks that Stanley (played by Don Johnson of A Boy and His Dog and The Harrad Experiment) looks hot in this trailer. I think he’s a little bit too much of a pretty boy. Neither one of us can believe that he later grew up to be the redneck in Machete.
Fred Williamson is …. Jesse Crowder! Despite our different feelings concerning the appeal of Stanley Sweetheart, both Evelyn and I agreed that Jesse Crowder would kick his scrawny little ass. That said, I objected to the “I’m going to bruise you up a little” line towards the end of the trailer but Evelyn defended it, making the argument that Crowder would have bruised up a man with a knife as well.
“It could have been … a love story.” Much like Stigma, this is a case of us just falling in love with a overdramatic tag line. Apparently, the film itself appears to be a grindhouse version of Cyrus.
5) Zachariah (1971)
We had to include Zachariah because, as the trailer explains, this was the world’s first electric western. Add to that, Don Johnson looks a bit less fancy here than he did as Stanley Sweetheart.
6) Get Carter (1971)
We saved the best for last. Now, I know that the original Get Carter is such a classic (especially when compared to the Stallone version) that you might wonder if it really belongs here. Well, trust me, it does. Get Carter is pure grindhouse art and this trailer proves it. Plus, both me and Evelyn were surprised and delighted to discover that once upon a time, Michael Caine was quite the sexy beast. When, at the end of the trailer, we were told to “Get Carter before he gets you,” we both responded with, “Carter can have us.”
Through the Shattered Lens 
Some great selections here, I think my personal favorite film of the buch is “Stigma,” it’s a prety atmospheric VD-thriller (for lack of a better term) directed by none other than David “I Drink Your Blood” Durston. It actually doesn’t really have any blaxploitation-type elements to it at all. I think you’ll enjoy it quite a bit even if it’s going to prove to be somewhat different from the impression you’ve gotten from the trailer.
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I knew I recognized the name David Durston from somewhere! I Drink Your Blood is one of my favorite films and it’s also one of the trailers that I’m definitely going to be featuring in some future edition of this series. If nothing else, it’s probably a far more enjoyable look at the 60s culture clash than The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart. (I haven’t seen Stanley Sweetheart, I must admit, so I’m basing that judgment just on the title and the fact that the trailer features a song about gingerbread.) Anyway, I will definitely have to see Stigma now. 🙂
(And actually, I Drink Your Blood was about people spreading disease as well so I guess this film would be a natural for Mr. Durston.)
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Great trailer set. 🙂 It’s wild to see what Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson were working on before their Miami Vice days. That Stigma one feels like a Dark Ages version of Cabin Fever. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear it was used in classrooms back then. The Fred Williamson one plays out like that story he told in From Dusk Till Dawn with all of the stabbing. While I’ve never seen the original Get Carter, I’ve heard of it. It actually looks pretty good, and reminds of Harry Brown (also with Caine), which was great.
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I liked Harry Brown, quite a bit. Oddly enough, Michael Caine just seems to embody the ruthless ability to kill without remorse on screen.
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Geez, hadn’t the people in the “Stigma” town heard of antibiotics? They act as though it’s the bubonic plague.
Yo, momma – checkit out – your girl Evelyn’s got it right. Da bitch pulls a blade on da brutha, and he’s supposed to just take it? Aw, now baby, that’s crazy talk. She’s lucky it’s only a brusin’ he’s gonna put on her. You diggin’ my rap?
Robert Klein, of “I can’t stop my leg.” fame? Who knew?
What makes a trailer like “Zachariah” fun is the idea that someone conceived the film at all, and thought it was a good idea (and was able to get funding for production and distribution). Granted, it was 1971. But I’m pretty sure this was also the world’s last electric western.
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There were a lot of things we loved about the Zachariah trailer, not the least being the fact that you just know that the film was probably dated before it was even released. I mean, seriously, if you saw this trailer on television, you’re first instinct would probably be to think that it was meant to be a really heavy handed satire on the stereotypical “hippie” film.
Another thing that made me and Evelyn laugh was just how desperately this trailer seemed to be saying, “Look, young people! We speak your language! He’s a head of his time — get it!? A head!? Huh? HUH? SAY YOU GET IT, DAMN YOU…”
Lastly, what really makes this trailer a keeper, is that having seen it, there’s really no need to ever see Zachariah because we can probably guess everything that’s happens over the course of the film. There’s actually a surprisingly large amount of clips from this film on YouTube (most of them highlighting the music) and those clips are so extremely late 60s/early 70s. This is one of those films where the cameraman simply cannot stop playing with the zoom lens.
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It’s pushing to say Get Carter is grindhouse, but when one watches the film it does straddle the line between mainstream and something exploitative. One thing for sure Carter himself is quite the anti-hero which is why some will call the film grindhouse.
If you and Evelyn want to see an even sexier beast of a Michael Caine then you should check out his very first feature-length film, Zulu. One of the best war films out there and has Caine at his most stiff-upper-lip best.
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Get Carter, however, I think very much has a grindhouse sensibility behind it even if it was made by the establishment. I don’t know, it’s a close call and, one thing that I did not realize, is that apparently Michael Caine was a pretty big star when this film came out. While it’s pretty common to see a future star or a fading star in a grindhouse film, you rarely see a contemporary one in one of them. Regardless, the trailer is definitely grindhouse. 🙂
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