Unimonster's Drive-In Classics - Roger Corman’s Cult Classics—Nurses Collection Box Set: Candy Stripe Nurses; Night Call Nurses; Private Duty Nurses; The Young Nurses

Title:  Roger Corman’s Cult Classics—Nurses Collection Box Set: Candy Stripe Nurses; Night Call Nurses; Private Duty Nurses; The Young Nurses

Year of Release—Film:  1974; 1972; 1971; 1973

Year of Release—DVD:  2012

DVD Label:  Shout! Factory

Reviewer:  Unimonster

Anyone who is a fan of the CBS comedy series How I Met Your Mother is familiar with the theory expounded by Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, that in every era there is a profession towards which hot young women naturally gravitate.  In the early 1970s, there were two such professions—stewardesses (not flight attendants, that would come later), and nurses.  And true to form, both professions were frequently the subject of Exploitation films.

Roger Corman, the master of the low-budget movie, was never one to miss a trend, and often initiated them.  Such was the case when his newly formed New World Pictures chose as its first release in 1970 The Student Nurses, directed by Stephanie Rothman.  The movie did well enough to lead Corman to produce at least four more such films, and in 2012 these four were released in another of Shout! Factory’s excellent series of Roger Corman’s Cult Classics DVD sets.

Corman’s formula for these films was a simple one—take three or four beautiful young nurses, give each a plotline to follow, which would typically be something trendy or politically topical.  One girl would be the sweetheart, either innocent or slutty, looking for Mr. Right, or just Mr. Right Now.  One would be highly intelligent, usually more so than the doctors, and anxious to prove it; and the third girl would be the radical, representing the liberal feminist and racial themes that were close to both Cormans’—Roger and his wife Julie, who was producer on these movies—hearts.  Stir in generous helpings of sex, nudity, and action, and these movies were guaranteed box-office gold.

Private Duty Nurses (1971)

The earliest film in the set (one wishes that The Student Nurses had been included); this was the weakest of the four films, in my opinion.  It lacks many of the elements that one would expect to find in this kind of movie, namely copious amounts of female nudity, some measure of humor, and any semblance of a coherent plot—much less three of them.

Written and directed by George Armitage, what story there is in the movie is focused on the male counterparts to our three leading ladies—Spring (Kathy Cannon), who gets involved with a Vietnam vet with a death wish; Lynn (Pegi Boucher), who falls for a married ambulance attendant whom she meets when she finds a dead body on the beach; and Lola (Joyce Williams), who is dating a black doctor who’s the victim of discriminatory practices at the hospital where the girls work.

In the hands of a more competent director, there’s enough meat on these bones to flesh out a decent movie.  However, the women in the cast are given little to do except stand in the background, look pretty, listen to the men speak their lines, and (not nearly enough to save this movie) take their clothes off.  Not only does the lack of focus on the titular leads hurt this movie, but it’s by far the most political of the films, with the viewer constantly pummeled by the big three of the early 1970s causes—Vietnam, Racial Unrest, and the Environment.  That couldn't have been very entertaining in 1971; it definitely isn't now.

Night Call Nurses (1972)

Following on the heels of Private Duty Nurses, Jonathan Kaplan’s Night Call Nurses corrected some of the flaws present in the earlier film.  Kaplan, who was recommended to the Cormans by Martin Scorsese, was given a great degree of freedom by Corman.  He was allowed to rewrite the script, cast the movie, and edit the finished product—a massive amount of responsibility for a 25-year-old making his directorial debut.  The only part that was cast when Kaplan came on board was that of Janis, to be played by Alana Collins, the future former Mrs. George Hamilton and Rod Stewart—not at the same time.

Barbara (Patti T. Byrne), Sandra (Mittie Lawrence), and Janis are nurses in a psychiatric ward at an inner-city hospital.  Innocent young Barbara, under pressure from her boyfriend to conquer her sexual hang-ups and consummate their relationship, is seeing a sex therapist (Clint Kimbrough, who a year later would direct The Young Nurses) who has an unprofessional interest in the girl.  She soon becomes aware that she is being stalked—by a mysterious figure in a nurse’s uniform.

Janis, meanwhile, has become infatuated with a truck driver who has been in the hospital treating his addiction to amphetamine.  He claims that he only takes it in order to do his job, and that without it he can’t meet his schedules.  She takes him under her care—in more ways than one.

While this has been taking place, Sandra has been approached by a black militant seeking to get a message through to the leader of his movement, currently in the hospital’s jail ward after an alleged suicide attempt in prison.  At first resistant, Sandra soon becomes embroiled in a plan to free the prisoner.

Narrowly losing out to Candy Stripe Nurses as the best of Corman’s ‘Nurse’ films, despite having a weaker cast and script, the movie’s quality, what there is of it, can be ascribed to Kaplan’s ability as director.  The only one of the four featured in this set to have success as a mainstream filmmaker, Kaplan directed Jodie Foster in her Best Actress Oscar-winning role as Sarah Tobias in 1988’s The Accused.

The Young Nurses (1973)

When the first camera shot post-opening credits is a lovely young blonde sunning herself topless on a sailboat, you know that whatever else The Young Nurses is going to be, a thought-provoking, sensitive, intellectual study of the day-to-day lives of medical professionals it isn’t.  Directed by Clint Kimbrough, a long-time member of Corman’s stock company, The Young Nurses is pure exploitation; what plot exists is there solely by chance, and is for the most part too convoluted to engender any interest on the part of the viewer.

Three young nurses (despite there being four women on the poster, there were only three female leads … Corman’s ‘Nurse’ posters always featured an extra nurse) work at the only hospital to seemingly have an attached marina.  Kitty (Jean Manson), the beautiful blonde mentioned above, rescues then falls in love with a young man who managed to fall overboard from his boat while ogling her sunbathing.  Joanne (Ashley Porter), a brilliant nurse, believes she knows more than half the doctors on staff—and doesn’t hesitate to act like it.  And Michelle (Angela Gibbs) is hot on the trail of pushers who are flooding the streets with a deadly new drug.  That’s it … that’s the script.  The rest is filler—nurses getting naked on cue, the obligatory bumbling doctors, actors who either overplay or underplay every scene, and just enough nudity, sex and action to make it all fun.

The only bright points in the film are the performance of Allan Arbus as Dr. Krebs, and the final on-screen appearance of Mantan Moreland (billed as Man Tan Moreland) in a cameo role.  Arbus, best remembered as Dr. Sidney Freedman, the wise-cracking psychiatrist from the TV series M*A*S*H, is clearly the only member of the cast present for his acting ability.  Moreland, whose career began in the era of segregated films in the 1930s, had his most memorable role as Birmingham Brown in the series of Charlie Chan movies produced by Monogram Pictures in the mid-1940s.

All that being said, The Young Nurses does what it’s supposed to do.  It just doesn’t go overboard doing it … I know, I apologize.

Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

The end of Corman’s ‘Nurse’ cycle was also the best of the series, Alan Holleb’s Candy Stripe Nurses.  Providing just the right balance of sex, plot, action and humor, and starring the queen of sexploitation films in the early ‘70s, Candice Rialson, Candy Stripe Nurses manages to be entertaining on a number of levels.

The film follows the exploits of three ‘candy-stripers’, young women who volunteer as nurses at a big city hospital.  Each girl has her own motives for volunteering:  Sandy (Rialson) simply wants to be close to her doctor boyfriend (as well as several of her patients); Dianne (Robin Mattson) sees it as the first step on her way to becoming a doctor; and Marisa (Maria Rojo), was ordered to volunteer as a consequence of attacking a teacher at her school.  The trio each finds a challenge to their talents, medical and otherwise.  Sandy works her way into the hospital’s sex clinic as a receptionist, a position which she uses to meet up with a famous rock and roll star who’s suffering, in the pre-Viagra 1970s, from an embarrassing lack of, um … enthusiasm, for his groupies.

Dianne falls in love with a basketball player who was admitted with what she believes were the symptoms of a drug overdose, but no one believes her, especially when the blood test comes back negative.  And Marisa takes up the cause of a young man in the prison ward, charged with robbing a gas station.  Only he swears to her that he is innocent.

The three plots are well-managed, and Holleb keeps things from becoming too tangled and confusing.  It’s not high art, but then what Corman film is?  It does the job, providing an hour and twenty minutes of mindless entertainment while munching popcorn.  That’s what it was intended to do in 1974, and it still does it today.

The “King” is Gone

 

On 14 February 2011, Dave Friedman passed away in an Anniston, Alabama nursing home at the age of 87.  His death received little notice, save among those who consider themselves fans of Exploitation Film.  His involvement in the world of motion pictures spanned 65 years, from working in Paramount’s film exchange in Buffalo, New York at the end of World War II to his status as the elder statesman of Exploitation, giving interviews and making Documentary appearances.  Dave was known for many things, and by many names, during that long career.  One of his favorite monikers, inspired by his frequent cameo appearances in his films, was “Hitchcock of the Crotchies.”  To me, he was simply “the King of Babylon,” and now the King is dead.

Dave’s career could have been spent in the mainstream of the motion picture industry, quietly and competently rising through the ranks of Paramount’s distribution and promotional networks.  He could’ve remained one of the thousands of people without whom the movies we all loved would never have reached the screen, but who never receive any recognition for their hard work.  But the mainstream wasn’t what fired Dave’s passion for movies, toiling quietly in the shadows wasn’t his style, and he wanted more from life than a steady paycheck.

Dave began his Exploitation career working with the legendary Kroger Babb, out on the Road-Show circuit with two of Babb’s biggest money-makers, MOM AND DAD and KARAMOJA.  KARAMOJA was a Jungle movie, half documentary, half adventure film; in the parlance of the exploiteers it was a “Goona-Goona” picture.  MOM AND DAD is legendary in it’s own right, without a doubt the most successful and profitable of the “sex-hygiene” films, and one of the most profitable films ever, no matter the genre.  Produced on a budget of $65,000 in 1945, it was still booking into Drive-Ins in the 1970’s.  Dave once estimated, for the documentary SEX AND BUTTERED POPCORN (1989), that it had earned a total of $600 million in its long life.

Dave eventually found himself in position to buy out Babb’s share of Modern Film Distributors, the company formed to manage and distribute the movies owned by four of the leading exploiteers of the Road-Show era—Babb, Gidney Tally, Floyd Lewis, and Irwin Joseph.  His partnership in Modern Film gave the young man what he craved the most—independence, the ability to be his own boss.  From now on, his financial success or failure would ride on his shoulders alone, not on the whims of corporate vice-presidents he might not ever meet.

The next milestone in Dave’s career would come in 1959.  A young producer came to the offices of Modern Film in Chicago, looking for a distributor for his picture.  He had the financing lined up, had cast the film, had a script, it was all ready to go.  He was just looking for someone to get THE PRIME TIME into theaters.  That producer’s name was Herschell Gordon Lewis, and as the cliché goes, it was the “… start of a beautiful friendship.”

For the next five years, Dave and Hersch comprised one of the most prolific, and profitable, teams in Exploitation Film.  Together they owned the Nudie-Cutie genre, with films such as DAUGHTER OF THE SUN, ADVENTURES OF LUCKY PIERRE, and NATURE’S PLAYMATES; began the “Roughies” with SCUM OF THE EARTH; and poked fun at themselves, and the Sexploitation genre in general, with BOIN-N-G.  The duo’s most lasting contribution to the history of Exploitation Film, however, would come in 1963 with the invention of the “Gore” film, and the release of BLOOD FEAST.

As the two would later recount, both separately and together, they were sitting in their office, looking for ideas for their next project.  They had been contracted to film BELL, BARE AND BEAUTIFUL in Miami for an independent producer, and were casting about for a follow-up of their own.  Both men had grown tired of the Nudie films they had specialized in to that point, and, in Herschell’s words, were looking for a type of film that, “… the majors either couldn’t, or wouldn’t make.[i]”  They tossed several Exploitation Film staples back and forth—Goona Goonas, Religious Con-Man, Nazi Slave-Camp—when Hersch uttered a single four-letter word: G-O-R-E.  With that, they knew they had something that no one else was doing—the only question was would anyone pay to see it?

They hammered out a rough script, and convinced Stan Kohlberg, the man who financed most of their pictures, to bankroll this one to the tune of $24,500.  When they headed south to shoot BELL…, they went prepared to shoot BLOOD FEAST immediately afterward.

Starring Bill Kerwin, Connie Mason, and Mal Arnold, the story concerns an Egyptian caterer (Arnold) who’s a secret worshipper of the goddess Ishtar, and is planning a cannibalistic “Egyptian feast” in her honor.  To that end, he’s been murdering nubile young maidens, collecting the required body parts for the dinner.  He plans to serve this feast to a young bride (Mason) at her rehearsal dinner.  Her fiancé (Kerwin) just happens to be the detective in charge of investigating the murders.

It would be quite a stretch of the truth to describe this as a good movie.  Hersch himself frequently compares it to a Walt Whitman poem.  “It was no good, but it was the first of it’s kind.”  It was the first of its kind, and it would open the door to increasingly graphic Horror Films.

They followed BLOOD FEAST with TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, produced on a much higher budget, approximately $65,000.  As expected, the production values were far better on this film than they had been for the previous one; indeed, the movie as a whole was much improved over BLOOD FEAST.  Their final Gore film, and their final collaboration (at least until they recently re-teamed for the sequel to BLOOD FEAST, 2002’s BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT)) was 1965’s COLOR ME BLOOD RED, starring Adam Sorg as an artist who becomes a success by using the blood of his murder victims as red paint.

During the production of COLOR ME BLOOD RED, tensions between the two friends began to rise, and culminated in an argument over finances.  As Dave would later say, it was, “[two] friends arguing about money—stupid.”  Though they would remain friends, the partnership was over.  Dave sold out his share of their films, packed up his wife Carol and their parrot Lolita, and headed west to join forces with Dan Sonney, head of Sonney Amusements.

Dan Sonney had spent his life in Exploitation Film.  The son of Louis Sonney, a renowned lawman-turned-exploiteer, Dan’s first job in the business had been as a production assistant on Dwain Esper’s MANIAC, which was produced by the senior Sonney.  Dan had been, for most of the early 1960s, the western states’ distributor for Friedman and Lewis’ films, and he and Dave had gotten to be good friends.  They would form a partnership that would be even more productive and successful than that Dave had shared with Herschell.

For the next fifteen or so years, until Dave retired in the early 1980s, the pair produced, under a variety of labels, some of the best Exploitation Films of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  From hard-edged Roughies like THE DEFILERS and A SMELL OF HONEY, A SWALLOW OF BRINE, to Period costume sex farces such as THE NOTORIOUS DAUGHTER OF FANNY HILL and THE LONG SWIFT SWORD OF SIEGFRIED, to SHE FREAK, Dave’s loving paean to the ‘carny’ lifestyle, the duo ruled Drive-Ins and Exploitation movie-houses.  They did so with low-budget but good-quality filmmaking, a good sense of humor, and by never forgetting to give the customer what they wanted, or thought they wanted.

As the Exploitation genre was gradually co-opted by mainstream Hollywood, the old-time exploiteers were left with just a few unpalatable choices.  One was to join that mainstream, to surrender their individuality to the corporations that to a greater and greater extent controlled Hollywood.  This ran counter to the core principles of most exploiteers, who had entered the field in the first place because it offered them the ability to make their movies their way.

Another path, and that taken by many, including Harry Novak and Ray Dennis Steckler among others, was to switch to making hardcore Adult Films.  Not ideal, and certainly not what most wished to do.  But it did offer some measure of creative freedom, and even in the waning days of “Porno-Chic” there was little stigma attached.

The third option was to simply get out—retire, leave the business.  Many of the older hands chose this path, as did Dave Friedman—eventually.  First, he tried his hand at producing a handful of hardcore films, all of which he was hired as an independent contractor to do.

But hardcore films violated Dave’s basic mantra—sell the sizzle, not the steak.  Exploitation was built on the premise of promising everything—but delivering just enough to keep the yokels coming back for more.  Hardcore violated those deeply-ingrained tenets of Dave’s beliefs.  It had nothing to do with the explicit nature of the movies themselves.  Dave had long been one of the staunchest crusaders for increased First amendment protections for motion pictures.  Indeed, he served as the first president of the Adult Film Association of America, a trade group representing Adult Film producers, distributors, and exhibitors.  He just didn’t enjoy making these movies.

So Dave retired to Anniston, Alabama, his boyhood hometown.  He expected to become a Southern gentleman of leisure, spending his time playing golf, playing cards, both he and his movies forgotten.  And such might have been the case, if not for one man.

Mike Vraney has long had a fascination with, and love of, Exploitation Film, as well as odd and exotic film of all types [Something Weird on the Screen:  The Wild, Bizarre and Wacky World of Scare-Your-Children Movies, Exploitation Shorts and Stag Films, 11 April 2009].  He began marketing a few of Dave’s movies on home video, without the proper permission, in the mid-1990s.  When Dave found out about this, his reaction was two-fold: one, he wanted what money was owed to him, and two, he couldn’t believe that there was a market for these films.  Mike, who had been trying to get in touch with Dave for some time, soon had the older man convinced that the market for old Exploitation Films did exist, and that if Dave would trust him with his film vaults, it would make both men a great deal of money.  Mike would soon prove himself a savvy judge of the movie-buying public, and the two would soon form a deep, lasting friendship that continued until Dave’s death.

Dave’s passing last month will leave a permanent void in the hearts of those who knew and loved him, but it will also leave an empty space in the hearts of fans of Exploitation Film.  Dave was one of the last living links to those days of the Drive-In movie, and perhaps the last to the Road-Show era of the 1920s-1950s.  That alone is enough for readers of the Crypt to mourn his passing.

As for me, there’s more than that.  Dave was a personal hero to me, an inspiration.  Recently, in connection with research for the book we are co-authoring, the Unimonster’s Crypt’s senior correspondent Bobbie Culbertson interviewed Dave by telephone.  For more than ninety minutes, he regaled her with tales of a bygone era, of legendary people long gone, and facts and figures still sharply in focus fifty years after the events transpired.  He recited, from memory, Elliot Forbes’ speech that he would deliver at intermissions in showings of MOM AND DAD.  For ninety minutes, this great man entertained and educated us with a cheerfulness of spirit that was amazing.  Dave Friedman spent eighty-seven years enjoying life—fine food, fine liquor, fine cigars.  He loved life.

The King of Babylon is dead—and there is no heir apparent waiting in the wings.  The King is gone—as is the kingdom over which he ruled.

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[i] A Taste of Blood: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Christopher Wayne Curry, 52

DVD Review: Dave Friedman Double-Feature: SPACE-THING / TRADER HORNEE

Title:  SPACE-THING / TRADER HORNEE

Year of Release—Film:  1968 / 1970

Year of Release—DVD:  2000 / 2000

DVD Label:  Something Weird Video - Image Entertainment

With the recent passing of Dave Friedman, I thought it would be fitting to review a couple of his movies that have found their way onto DVD, courtesy of Something Weird Video and Image Entertainment, the company that released the excellent collection of Something Weird Special Edition DVDs in the late 1990s-early 2000s.  The only question was which to review?  The “Blood” trilogy, which Dave and Herschell Lewis produced in the mid-1960s, was too obvious a choice, as was the duo’s early “Nudie-Cuties.”  Besides, those movies are more Hersch’s than they are Dave’s.

SHE FREAK was Dave’s personal favorite, a loving look at the world of the “carny,” a world with which he was intimately familiar.  But Senior Correspondent Bobbie is examining that movie in detail for a future review.  I briefly considered the double-feature disc containing two of Dave’s landmark “Roughies,” THE DEFILERS and SCUM OF THE EARTH.  He led the way with this type of Sexploitation Film, and there are plenty of titles available that illustrate this phase of his career.  Still, when I think of Dave, these aren’t the first movies that come to mind.

When I think of Dave Friedman’s movies, those that have his personal stamp upon them, I think of his Sexploitation Films of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.  With equal parts story and sex, these were movies that had a distinct feel to them, a quality that set them apart from those of his competitors.  Two of these films illustrate the broad spectrum of Dave’s work, and are available on the Special Edition DVD format.  These movies are SPACE-THING, from 1968, and TRADER HORNEE, from 1970.

SPACE-THING (1968)

Billed as the first outer space sex film, SPACE-THING truly takes sex and nudity where no one has gone before.  Directed (at least in part, but more on that shortly) by Byron Mabe (as “B. Ron Elliott”), it was written by Dave (under the pseudonym “Cosmo Politan”), who is on record as saying that this was his worst film ever.

Starring Cara Peters (credited as “April Playmate”) as Captain Mother, commander of the Space Cruiser S.S. Supreme Erection, Merci Montello (“Mercy Mee”) as Portia, Steve Vincent as Col. James Granilla, and Dan Martin (“Ronnie Runningboard”) as Willie, SPACE-THING follows the adventures of a Terrarian space crew in the year 2069.

The movie opens with a prologue featuring a man and woman in bed together.  As he reads Science-Fiction pulps, she tries vainly to get his attention, displaying her naked body to his disinterested gaze.  After several minutes of her parading her voluptuous attributes before this nebbish, he finally takes the hint and begins to make love to his wife.  We fade out, to the twinkling of stars, and we see the credits for the movie, a’la the Findlays, painted on the nude body of a young woman (Montello).  As the narration begins, we’re informed that Col. James Granilla, of the Planetarian Space force, has been deposed by his mutinous crew and set adrift in a “space-canoe.”  His ship had been on a mission to intercept a Terrarian space-cruiser on course for Planetaria, and Granilla wasn’t going to let something as trivial as being without a ship stop him from completing his mission.

He pilots his canoe to make the interception, changes his appearance to that of the Terrarians (who coincidentally look just like normal humans), and then boards the S.S. Supreme Erection, under the command of Capt. Mother (Peters).  He claims to be the only survivor of a ship destroyed in an accidental collision.  The Captain’s not pleased to have him aboard her ship, but agrees to put him to work.  As he begins interacting with the Terrarians, he decides that knowledge of the sexual customs of these strange people might prove valuable.  He turns invisible (another useful ability of the Planetarians), in order to observe the crew at play… and brother, do they play!

Shot on an average-sized budget for Friedman’s films to that time (about $17,500), SPACE-THING was far from Dave’s favorite production.  The last of Dave’s films to be directed by Byron Mabe, the two had a falling out before filming was complete, and Mabe walked off the set.  Mabe, who had been part of Dave’s stock company since he starred in 1965’s THE DEFILERS, had just recently begun to have some success in mainstream film, most notably a starring role in THE DOBERMAN GANG.  Mabe had begun to feel as though working for Sonney and Friedman was beneath him, and as Dave discusses in the excellent commentary track included on this disc, his condescending attitude towards his employers had worn very thin.  Dave finally confronted him, asking him if he really wanted to be making this picture.  Mabe replied “… not really,” and the pair shook hands and parted ways.  Dave finished the picture in the director’s chair, including shooting the prologue segment.

As is the norm for the Something Weird Special Edition DVD’s offered by Image, SPACE-THING comes loaded with special features from the vaults of Something Weird Video.  These are composed of shorts, trailers, and Exploitation Film photos and poster art.  The best of the extras, however, as is the case on any Dave Friedman DVD from Something Weird, is the conversation between Mike Vraney and Dave that takes place in the guise of a “commentary track.” 

Having less in common with a serious discussion of the film in question than with a fun, freewheeling chat between old friends as a movie plays in the background, these commentaries are enormously enjoyable listening.  They are also extremely informative, as Dave manages to convey a wealth of information in between stories about his cohorts and cronies.

We learn much about Dave’s life in Exploitation that bears little relation to whatever movie is the nominal subject of the discussion, such as the fact that Dave preferred that his actresses not become known by name to audiences.  He feared that that would give them the ability to demand higher pay, thus explaining the bizarre stage names the actresses in this film were credited under.

After viewing SPACE-THING, it’s hard not to agree with Dave’s opinion of this as his “worst movie ever.”  Still, for fans of Sexploitation, Dave Friedman, and Something Weird Video, it’s priced to take a chance on, at less than $10.  Just do what I do—select the commentary track, push play, and enjoy listening to Dave reminisce about the ‘good ol’ days’ as naked lovelies cavort across the screen.

TRADER HORNEE (1970)

At the opposite end of the spectrum from SPACE-THING is TRADER HORNEE, Dave’s tribute to the “Goona-Goona” pictures of years past.  Made two short years after the former film, TRADER HORNEE was the latest in a string of ‘big-budget’ (at least, for Sonney and Friedman) pictures from Entertainment Ventures, Inc.

Beginning with STARLET in 1969, Dave made a conscious effort to boost the production values of his films.  The fact that his movies were now being booked into regular theaters—both Drive-In and Conventional—and not just the “adult” venues meant that the movies had to look much better than before.  This meant bigger budgets (in the case of TRADER HORNEE, about $62,000), locations that weren’t the back alley of the Cordoba St. offices, and at least an effort to have a cast that could act.

The story is simple, though well-put-together.  A detective agency in Indianapolis, the Hoosier Secret Service, is hired by the Bank of the Wabash to travel to Africa, to search for a missing heiress.  Heir to the famed Matthews fortune, little Prentice Matthews disappeared while on safari with her parents.  While their bodies were found, no trace of her was ever seen again.  Her twenty-first birthday is now approaching, and the bank president (Neal Henderson) needs to settle the estate.  The detective, Hamilton “the E’s are silent” Hornee (Buddy Pantsari) and his assistant Jane Sommers (Julie Conners, credited as “Elizabeth Monica”) are tasked with determining the young girl’s fate, and either confirming her death, or bringing her home to claim the inheritance.

They won’t be traveling alone.  Their party will include the last surviving Matthews descendant, weasely Max Matthews and his conniving wife Doris (John Alderman and Luanne Roberts, billed as “Christine Murray”), newspaper reporter Tender Lee (Elizabeth Knowles, as “Lisa Grant”), and an expert on African wildlife, Stanley Livingston (Fletcher Davies).  Each has their own reasons for venturing into the land of the dreaded Meshpokas, where the Matthews expedition met its unfortunate fate.

In the excellent commentary for this movie, Dave Friedman and Mike Vraney continue their habit of making these tracks more of a conversation between old friends; though with a good movie to focus on, more of that conversation directly involves what’s happening on the screen.  They discuss Dave’s writing process, the many in-jokes in the picture, and just what was involved in making and distributing an exploitation picture in the early 1970s.  We’re even introduced to Dave and Carol’s parrot Lolita, who has a cameo in TRADER HORNEE.

Overall, this is Dave’s best executed production, and one hell of a fun comedy.  Considered X-rated fare in 1970, it’s doubtful it would even draw an “R” today.  It’s one that belongs in the library of every fan of Exploitation Film.

The movies of Dave Friedman were like the man himself—fun, risqué, entertaining, and with a true carny spirit.  They promised much, and usually delivered enough to keep fans coming back for more.  They weren’t high art; high camp might be a better description.  But throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, they kept filling Drive-Ins and Theaters across the country.  For the man who had learned his craft at the feet of Kroger Babb that was all they needed to do.