| Vintage Pulp | Apr 3 2024 |
Gloria Grahame is a bad mamma scamma.
We had to watch Mama's Dirty Girls, not because it's a 1970's grindhouse movie (though that helped), but because none other than 1950s femme fatale Gloria Grahame got snared in this low budget affair. Sometimes the bills simply need to be paid. Or maybe she thought the script was dynamite. Either way, she gets top billing in this drive-in quality drama that premiered today in 1974, which tells the story of a scam artist mother and her three daughters who are honeytrap serial killers dispatching men for their money.
When Grahame gets another rich man on the hook, she foolishly poses as a well-to-do widow without realizing that her target is likewise seeking to kill someone for their money. This twist is ironic, and the mutual murder attempts that follow can be read as black comedy if you peer deeply between the lines, but in our opinion Mama's Dirty Girls doesn't have enough brainpower to be satire. Grahame probably wished it were, though—then she'd have had an excuse for starring in it. Sadly, it's just an amusingly bad movie. Everyone is terrible in it—even Grahame. And there isn't near enough eroticism to save it.
But you may want to watch it anyway. The cast is beautiful, particularly Currie, and there's an interesting value-added co-star too. Fifteen minutes into the movie's running time you'll see an actress that'll make you go, “Who is that?” You'll be reacting to the radiant beauty of bit player Annika Di Lorenzo, née Marjorie Lee Thoreson, who was a Penthouse centerfold in 1973 and later carved out a career in b-cinema. Besides Mama's Dirty Girls she appeared in such films as 1974's Act of Vengeance and The Centerfold Girls, 1980's Dressed To Kill, and 1979's big budget porn epic Caligula.
She later sued Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, claiming that he forced her to have sex with business associates, and tricked her into the infamous Caligula orgy. She won a $4 million punitive judgement, but lost it in an appeal. Guccione took revenge by publishing a lesbian pictorial of Di Lorenzo. Afterward, she stepped away from the limelight, but in 2011 hit newspapers again when she washed up dead on Camp Pendleton Beach in San Diego under baffling circumstances. Police suggested suicide, but her family contended that it was foul play, possibly perpetrated by someone from the military base. In the end, her case was closed as unsolved, and today remains another Hollywood mystery.
San DiegoMama's Dirty GirlsAct of VengeanceDressed To KillCaligulaThe Centerfold GirlsPenthouse MagazineGloria GrahamePaul LambertCandice RialsonSondra CurrieMary StoddardAnnika di LorenzoMarjorie Lee Thoresonposter artcinemaposter artcinemamovie reviewxxx
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 10 2019 |
Bad girl! You stay in your kennel until you learn how to behave!
The list of great Italian movie poster artists is long. We've discussed many and today we have another new member of the club—Basilo Morini, who painted these two promos for Sesso ribelle, aka Questo sesso ribelle, but best known as Pets. The quality of the art is shockingly good considering how terrible the movie is. What you get here is a counterculture drama about the various misadventures of a Southern California runaway played by Candice Rialson. She meets fellow drifter Teri Guzman and is drawn into a robbery plot, becomes a nude model and sex partner for possessive painter Geraldine Mills, and finds herself pursued by woman hating sadist Ed Bishop. Morini's art makes clear that Pets is sexploitation but the film is pretty tame by today's standards—at least on the sex front. In other ways it's wildly offensive. When Mills wails at one point, “It's like a bad dream! This can't be real!” that's exactly what you'll be thinking. Pets premiered in the U.S. in 1973 and reached Italy today in 1975.
Use the Force, Luke...
The neighbors always suspected there was something odd about the house on Paranormal Lane.
I love what you've done with the place. Late period Edgar Allen Poe?
Check out this painting I did of you. It's what I picture you looking like after I drain all your vitality and essential electrolytes.
One can only hope.ItalyQuesto sesso ribellePetsCandice RialsonTeri GuzmanGeraldine MillsEd BishopBasilo Moriniposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 25 2015 |
Next stop—the b-movie circuit.
In Hollywood Boulevard Candice Rialson arrives in Tinseltown with dreams of stardom and is immediately conned into being the getaway driver for a robbery. As she screeches away from the bank with alarms wailing, she asks her partners in crime, “But where are the cameras?” That pretty much sets the tone of the film. She later becomes a stuntwoman and bumbles her way from one bizarre scenario to the next. There are some laughs here, but the same way you would laugh at a vaudeville routine, or a favorite uncle’s oft-repeated fishing story—i.e., you understand it’s supposed to be funny, and that alone is a bit amusing, but mostly it’s just tiring. Surprisingly, Rialson went on to appear in Moonshine County Express, Chatterbox (yes, it’s about a talking vagina), and other exercises in ’70s schlock. That’s a testament to Rialson's talent, or sheer luck, or both, because Hollywood Boulevard would have killed most actress’s careers. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1976.
Hollywood BoulevardChatterboxMoonshine County ExpressJoe DanteCandice RialsonMary WoronovTara StrohmeierJohn Solieposter artcinemamovie review
