Sssssss: Bringing a Touch of Classsssss to genre films.

So I really needed to add Tobe Hooper's Funhouse to my collection. That's when I stumbled upon a Universal 4 Movie Marathon collection. It contained The Funhouse/Phantasm II/The Serpant and the Rainbow/Sssssss. It was ultra cheap and I loved every movie contained with the exception of Sssssss, which I hadn't seen. I figured they added the PG rated Sssssss to prevent making the package completely awesome. But I was wrong.

By the time I got around to watching it, the first shock was that Strother Martin was the star. Besides being one of the greatest character actors ever, he also played one of the greatest characters ever: The Captain in Cool Hand Luke.

The second shock was how well it was filmed. From the get go, this "B" movie was obviously done by people who knew what they were doing. And looking some of this up, yes, a lot of people involved in the making of this movie had already earned impressive resume's by the time this movie was filmed.

Maybe mad scientist movies aren't your thing, mine neither. Maybe animal movies aren't your thing, mine neither. Maybe the idea of a PG rated movie where a man turns someone into a human cobra sounds like a "so bad, it sounds like a ton of fun if I'm intoxicated" type, well it might be...but it's also a ton of fun while completely coherent.

We start with this nutty mad scientist Carl Stoner (Martin) who studies and obsesses over snakes. He has also come up with a serum that turns humans into king cobra/human hybrids. He studies them, like any good scientist would do and then sells them to a circus freak show.


The good doctor also has a lovely daughter named Kristina (Heather Menzies) who happens to share her fathers affinity for snakes.




In comes David (Dirk Benedict) who lands a job as a lab assistant to Dr Stoner. David and Kristina soon hit it off and become romantically involved. That will soon become a problem, mostly due to the fact that Dr Stoner has infected David with his human/reptile serum.




If someone had described this movie to me before I saw it, I would have cracked up. Of course I would still want to see it, but for other reasons and probably at another time. So I'm happy to say that I popped the disc in without any preconceived notions and I was blown away. Not only is this movie effective at what it sets out to do, the acting was impressive, the real snakes used in the movie were impressive, and the makeup done by John Chambers was impressive!

Yes, this movie is strange. But it's also strangely coherent and isn't self aware of it's ridiculous premise. It plays it straight the whole way through.



Don't believe me? Think I'm over selling it? Consider this:

Leonard Maltin gave Sssssss 3 out of 4 stars. For a point of reference - he also gave The Godfather 3 out of 4 stars.

Now I'm not saying that Sssssss is as good as, or better than The Godfather... I'm just insinuating it.

Trailer:
http://youtu.be/MnasfM3UtDc

Blood Sabbath and Brianne Murphy

BLOOD SABBATH - 1972



Ever find yourself watching a 70's porno and get totally caught up in the plot? Yeah, me neither. But that's how I felt watching the wonderfully bizarre naked witches-in-the-woods-romance-horror-exploitation flick Blood Sabbath starring b movie icon Dyanne Thorne(Ilsa) and future soap opera star Anthony Geary.

First off: this is obviously not a porno. In fact it's quite tame in both the sex and the violence department. The copy that I own is a pretty poor print(I'm not sure that a good print even exists.) But if you can get past a bad transfer of 16mm I recommend you give this strange flick a chance.


Dyanne Thorne as "Alotta"

Now, this movie is super strange for a couple of reasons. First, I'm glad that I'm not the only person who has genuinely enjoyed this ultra low budget tripped out oddity. In fact googling the movie I have seen other reviewers that have broken the film down in trying to describe it's charm, so I won't do that here. The basics:

A man traveling through the woods comes upon a coven of naked witches. Then he meets a water nymph who he falls madly in love with. Then he meets a hobo that tells him to stay away from the nymph. Then the nymph tells him that they can't be together because of the Queen Witch "Alotta" (Thorne). Then he has to give his soul to the Queen Witch to be with the water nymph. There's some boobs, some rituals, a beheading of a priest, a back story about Vietnam, some more boobs, and a conclusion that's just...well, it's a conclusion.

She's a water nymph, why not?


At one point halfway through the movie I got up to use the bathroom and I paused the movie. I actually hit pause because I was interested in what was going on- and no, it's not because I thought I would miss a boobie scene.





When I was finished the flick I went straight to IMDB to check some stuff out and to my delight I learned about the director, Brianne Murphy. Strange that a nudie type movie of this kind would be directed by a female. Even stranger that it would be directed by a future groundbreaking Emmy award winning cinematographer responsible for work over the years as diverse as Little House on the Prairie, to the movie Fatso, to Daytime After School Specials .

Brianne Murphy has quite a record of achievements. Starting out by crashing the opening night of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden in 1954 and performing the entire evening as a clown!! This antic led to publicity that eventually found her becoming a still photographer for the circus, which then somehow led her to Hollywood.

She married the infamous low budget director Jerry Warren, responsible for now mostly public domain bombs like Man Beast and Teenage Zombies. The former had her pulling multiple duties like script supervisor and even slapping on the costume of the Yeti. The latter she was a production supervisor AND played the role of Pam.

She was also married to another no budget maverick, Ralph Brooke. This was the gentleman we can all thank for Bloodlust! and The Right hand of the Devil. Thanks, Ralph...

She was the A.D. on Jayne Mansfield's last movie, Single Room Furnished, and a photographer on Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams.

If all of that wasn't enough she became the first female director of photography on a major Hollywood film and the first female member of the American Society of Cinematographers. And...she also directed Blood Sabbath.

Sadly Brianne Murphy passed away in 2003 of cancer in Mexico. But sadder yet is a shocking lack of information on this pioneer befitting her incredible life and her achievements. Both in B movie history and mainstream Hollywood. Even her IMDB comment page is basically empty.

Read Brianne Murphy's obituary here:
http://www.emmys.tv/news/2003/brianne-murphy-asc-cinematography-pioneer

And Bloodbath is part of a Mills Creek 50 movies pack:
http://www.amazon.com/Pure-Terror-50-Movie-Pack/dp/B003VOVW2C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324991397&sr=8-1