In a dark theater...GLEN & RANDA, FLESH GORDON & MARK OF THE DEVIL

And then there were the films I actually went to the theater to see in the 1970’s. Some I went to out of curiosity, some because I was tagging along and it happened to be the film being shown. Some are well known and a few are known only to fans of 70s exploitation. For instance, everyone has seen Jaws (dir: Steven Spielberg, 1975) and I’ll bet you--just like most of us (of a certain age) can remember when and where we were the first time we heard Sgt. Pepper’s--the time and place we sat in the darkened theater and first heard the famous notes that usher in the movie are etched forever in our memory. Oswego, end of summer of ’75: I was about the last 17-year-old on the planet to see it. I finally went with Colette Simonetti, the most beautiful foreign exchange student I’d met and very quickly fell in love with. But I digress. My point is, the summer of ’75 was Jaws.

Few however probably have any memory of Glen & Randa (1971), a post-apocalyptic vision from Jim McBride (Big Easy 1983, Great Balls of Fire 1985). It was 1974 and I was staying with my brother Edward in Buffalo for a week. I ended up going with him and his housemates to the on-campus viewing of this X-rated non-classic. What do I remember? Lots of nudity for one. Not much sex but almost everyone was nude. Basically Glen & Randa were young beautiful naïfs growing up in the shards of civilization in the aftermath of a global catastrophe. Glen learns to read from looking at old Shazam comic books that for some reason or other didn’t disintegrate.

The most memorable scene involved an old salesman who peddled wares he had collected and rescued along his way. An old phonograph record played a 45 of the Rolling Stones’ Time Is On My Side. The record sits un-centered on the turntable hence the song is heard slow-fast-slow-fast. Later on, Glen is seen walking along, singing the chorus in the same lopsided way he had heard it. Hilarious...

I believe that same vacation, we trooped off to see Flesh Gordon (dir: Michael Benveniste, 1974). For all the frontal nudity and implied sex (my 2nd X-rated feature), I remember this as being really witty with Flesh & Dr. Jerkoff flying off to the planet Porno to stop the evil Wang from shooting his evil sex ray at the innocents of earth. Along the way, they confront penisauruses, raping robots with rotating drill-like members, and a foul-mouthed bird-flipping giant that would make any Ray Harryhausen/stop animation fan happy. Oh, and Flesh’s rocketship is shaped like a huge erection. Great stuff.

And then there was the great exodus of 1971 when the entire 8th grade class marched off to witness the depravity of Mark Of The Devil. A movie touted to be so violent it was given it’s own rating of V for…well, violence. We were each given a barf bag upon entering the theater too…just in case. Mark Of The Devil (dir: Michael Armstrong, 1970) was the Saw or Hostel of our day. It was a movie we were each dared to see. And how much we were able to stand marked where each of us stood on the evolutionary path from childhood to adulthood. I watched most of it through my fingers: the famous tongue-ripping scene; the eyeball being gouged; someone’s ass punctured on a seat of nails; all great stuff indeed. The most confusing thing for me however was the ending that didn’t seem to happen. Moments after the handsome blond hero got strung up and killed, the theater curtains shut (theater curtains? This was a long time ago!), lights came on and we were ushered out. Mostly to the sound of inflated barf bags being popped.

Next up…The Incredible Melting Man vs. It’s Alive vs. Phantasm