Happy Birthday to William Bell!

Note: This review I wrote originally appeared in the Shepherd Express in 2019. The soul legend just celebrated his 85th birthday on July 16.

Walking casually toward the front of the stage as the song was ending, William Bell pulled his microphone up and down from his mouth slowly and purposefully as he sang “Everybody Loves a Winner,” sending out solid soul shivers to an enthusiastic audience at Potawatomi Hotel & Casino’s Northern Lights Theatre Friday night. Bell, who will turn 80 in July, introduced the song—which he wrote in 1967 after returning from a stint in the military to find his star had dimmed some—as one about “life.”

Despite his dramatic mic moves, Bell is famously not flashy or full-throated like his one-time labelmate and friend, the great Otis Redding. Bell was Stax Record’s first star, and the label billed him as a pipe-smoking intellectual, according to Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, where you’ll also learn that Bell once performed as Stanley Kowalski in an Atlanta production of A Streetcar Named Desire (!).

Indeed, Bell connects through his introspection and a softness that is still deeply soulful on songs like “Everybody Loves a Winner” and the oft-coved “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” which he also delivered with simmering intensity. Backed by a 10-piece band, Bell delighted the crowd while celebrating the Stax legacy by performing Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” The Big O’s “Hard to Handle” (which he also encored) and “Born Under a Bad Sign,” a song made famous by Albert King that Bell co-wrote with Booker T. Jones. He also paid tribute to soul music history at large by including song snippets and references to artists such as his hero, Sam Cooke, Ben E. King and others throughout the show.

Bell took a brief break while backup singer Phyllis Smiley, wearing a wonderful flapper dress, saluted Stax legend Carla Thomas with a heart-tugging take on “Gee Whiz” followed by a spin through “B-A-B-Y.” Bell joined Smiley for an enjoyable update (Instagram, Facebook, etc. referenced in the intro) of “Private Number,” which Bell originally performed with the late Judy Clay. An incredible, extended jam of “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” was a definite highlight, as was “The Three of Me,” which leads off Bell’s Grammy Award-winning 2016 album, This is Where I Live, on Stax.

Bell, who has written and performed several of the all-time greatest soul songs, is not necessarily speeding up as he enters his eighth decade, but, as evidenced by his performance at Potawatomi, he’s certainly not slowing down, either, and he deserves every bit of attention and affection he gets.

No More Excuses: Bret McCormick on Roger Corman

NOTE: I wrote this interview with Bret McCormick for Klon Joseph Waldrip's New Horizine: A Zine About Roger Corman in 2023. Under the pseudonym "Bando Glutz," McCormick penned 2023's Cocaine Shark, which, like, happened in real life or something, McCormick told TMZ recently. McCormick also reports he's reteaming with Repligator actor (and the author of  the never-to-be Circus of the Sexes) Randy Clower for Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Shark. The movie will be out "sometime in the next year or so" through Wild Eye Releasing. Sadly, Roger Corman passed away at 98 in May. Photos courtesy of Bret McCormick.

In Texas Schlock: B-Movie, Sci-Fi and Horror from the Lone Star State, author/filmmaker Bret McCormick describes how he came to work with Roger Corman when in late 1995 he wrote a letter to the legendary director and producer with an idea to remake Corman’s 1955 sci-fi cheapie Beast with a Million Eyes on the same budget as the original.

That did not happen. But McCormick, whose “schlockmeister” oeuvre includes The Abomination (1986), Tabloid! (1989) and Highway to Hell (1990), impressed Corman enough that he asked McCormick to direct a remake of Streets, a 1990 film written and directed by Katt Shea and starring Christina Applegate.

McCormick’s version, the first of two movies he would make for Corman, was called Rumble in the Streets (any guesses where the idea for that title might have come from?) and was set in Dallas instead of Venice, California. He followed Rumble with The Protector (1998) for New Horizons and Corman; it would mark the end of a perhaps not glorious, but certainly creative and prolific period for McCormick.

I interviewed McCormick recently through email about his experiences working with Corman and life in the B-movie business, which continues to this day for the 63-year-old.

In his letter to Corman, McCormick shared his desire to match Corman’s total of making five movies in one year. He had also included a demo reel and news article that dubbed him “The Roger Corman of Dallas.” With Corman’s help, the Texan, then in his late thirties, hit the number in 1995.

“That year, I started off by producing Takedown, an action film written by and starring Chris Heldman. Next, we made Time Tracers (aka Time Trap) with Jeffrey Combs. Then Bio-Tech Warriors, followed by Repligator. When Roger agreed to let me do Rumble in the Streets, that made film number five – all shot in 1995.”

Having been in the exploitation game since the mid-80s, McCormick was ready to break out into a higher level of production. And he figured Corman could be his ticket to boosting his movies from super cheap to just somewhat cheap.

“Most directors start out with Roger Corman and complain about having to deal with the low budgets,” McCormick says. “After making a lot of movies for under $30,000 – the sort of budgets Roger had worked with back in the 1950s – making a movie for Roger for $150,000 was a breeze.”

McCormick figures he saw Beast with a Million Eyes, which a 1956 Variety article estimated to have cost $20,000 and grossed $100,000, when he was about five years old. It left a lasting impression on him, mainly that he thought he could do it better. Proposing to Corman to remake it was McCormick’s way of showing he was serious, he says. To this day, McCormick wishes he could remake the movie.

He describes his idea for the remake as “something Lovecraftian.” “I thought I’d create a really cool little hand puppet for the alien and a nice little spaceship model. I’d done the effects for The Abomination in 1985, so I was thinking in terms of a glistening, slimy sort of alien with lots of eyes all over its body.”

McCormick, who received a reply from New Horizons a mere week after sending his letter to Corman, was thrilled at the opportunity to work with Corman even if it wasn’t Beast.

“When I was 12, I began telling people I was going to direct films for Roger Corman, so this was a long-term dream come true,” he says. “Most young filmmakers only used Corman’s company as a brief stop on the way to much bigger projects. Maybe I should’ve set my sights higher, but I was truly excited to be working with the king of low-budget exploitation flicks.”

Filmed on the streets of Fort Worth, Rumble in the Streets stars Kimberly Rowe, who would also appear in New Horizon’s Black Scorpion sequel in 1997, as Tori and David Courtemarche as Sy. It’s a gritty little tale of street kids, drug addiction, and a killer cop played by Patrick De Fazio, who also appeared in McCormick’s Bio-Tech Warriors.

Corman visited Dallas for a few days during production of the film to meet with McCormick, who says he found Corman to be polite and straightforward.

“He took me and the two leads and our DP out to dinner at a nice restaurant,” McCormick remembers. “It was great. I never had any head-butting with Roger like some other filmmakers report. Probably because I’d emulated his approach and understood what he was about. The bottom line: Roger wanted a cheap movie with no overages. That’s what I delivered.”

Pleased with McCormick’s work on Rumble, Corman enlisted McCormick for a second movie, but the Texan was disappointed when his first choice, Circus of the Sexes, fell through. He describes the script, written by Randy Clower, as “truly special” and a “great, sexy comedy.” Clower had co-hosted a horror movie show on Dallas television in the mid-1980s.

“Corman signed off on the thing, then came back and said he needed an action film instead,” McCormick says. “He sent me an atrocious screenplay for a Don ‘the Dragon’ Wilson movie he wanted me to remake. I said no and countered with The Protector, which Chris Heldman had written already. Corman agreed, and I had to let Chris Heldman produce in order to use his script. But I was eager to get back into production.”

Heldman, who played a sheriff’s deputy attacked by aliens while having shower sex in in Glen Coburn’s Blood Suckers From Outer Space, again is caught with his pants down as Bob in The Protector.

The movie stars Ed Marinaro, fresh off the cancelled ABC sitcom Champs, as Gabriel, a military trained assassin who uses virtual reality to help protect women in danger – and to “dance” with his murdered wife. Dallas-area actress Kate Rodger plays his love interest, and Lee Majors shows up as a hitman named Austin. Cyril O’Reilly (Dance of the Damned, Porky’s, Black Dog) is also memorable as the shit-talking bad guy.

McCormick says The Protector was like many other action movies from the period, but the computer-generated effects were somewhat new at the time, making the project a bit more contemporary.

“I felt it was a cut above just a martial arts flick (like the Don “The Dragon” remake),” he says.

Before his work for Corman, McCormick had done several other action movies, which he says was out of necessity, not out of a love for the genre.

“I wanted to do nothing but horror and sci-fi flicks,” he says. “Distributors were resistant. It was easier to sell an action flick – even a bad one – than to market a horror or sci-fi movie. A lot of the foreign territories had very strict censorship laws but would accept action flicks.”

By the time The Protector came around, McCormick’s personal life was in shambles.

“To be 100% honest, I was having trouble keeping my demons down at the time,” he says. “Way too much booze and drugs. I was on a path toward self-destruction and feel lucky I completed the film and delivered it to Corman.”

After directing 10 movies in the early ‘90s, McCormick didn’t direct another movie after The Protector until a 2012 documentary.

“In the course of two and a half years, my father committed suicide, my grandmother committed suicide, my marriage of 18 years ended, I attempted suicide, my oldest son died in an accident and a distributor filed bankruptcy owing me a lot of money,” he explains. “I was at my wits end and just fell off the planet for a good long while. On the upside, I’ve been clean and sober since March of 2014. It's like being reborn.”

Had his personal life at the time been different, McCormick thinks he certainly would have made more films for Corman and other Hollywood companies.

Like many New Horizons straight-to-video titles, The Protector and Rumble in the Streets are only available on VHS, stuck in the 20th century. Those certainly aren’t the movies fans ask McCormick about.

“I am often approached by fans,” he says. “They want to talk about The Abomination or Repligator. Not one of them has ever said a word to me about The Protector or Rumble in the Streets. Even though I’m pretty sure Rumble is the best film I ever directed. Different strokes, you know.”

McCormick fans will be happy to know that in the near future The Abomination, Tabloid!, Repligator and Ozone will be reissued. He also sells limited-edition DVDs of Bio-Tech Warrior and Time Trap at horror conventions like the Texas Frightmare Weekend and online. But there’s also new film work from McCormick, who in addition to Texas Schlock, has also written short stories and edited horror fiction anthologies in recent years.

“I’ve sold three screenplays in the last year, and I just made a no-budget feature-length horror/comedy spoof called Christmas Craft Fair Massacre,” he says. “It was a test project so I could learn to shoot and edit digital media. I had a lot of fun and will be screening it at a Fort Worth venue soon. It is absolutely no budget but has its moments.

“I’m sure I’ll do another indie flick soon. Maybe something a little more serious. I’m amazed at how accessible everything is now. You can literally shoot a film for less than a $1,000. Even a really cheap film like The Abomination cost me $10,000 to do back in the ‘80s. I think anyone who wants to make a movie these days can. No more excuses. It’s available to anyone brave enough to try.”

Gamba! You Can’t Shake The Devil’s Hand

NOTE: This review originally appeared in print in the August 2020 edition of Drive-In Asylum.

In The Devil's Hand (1961, though filmed in 1959), Rick Turner (Robert Alda) thinks he has met the woman of his dreams in Bianca Milan (Linda Christian). She appears from the clouds proposing breathlessly, “let’s enjoy each other.” She offers to sing and dance the forbidden dance for him: “Should I dance for you as your blood races through your veins?”

But more quickly than he can grab a moist towelette from Bianca’s mute Tibetan man servant, Rick’s under the control of a satanic cult headed by high executioner Francis Lamont, played with stink-eyed intensity by Neil Hamilton, who had hundreds of acting credits going back to 1918 but who has been best known for the past 50-plus years as Batman's Commissioner Gordon. Lamont uses voodoo dolls and precise enunciation equally to keep members and others in line. Rick’s girlfriend, Donna Trent (Ariadne Welter), pays the price, landing in Belmont Hospital with a coronary condition after Lamont sticks a pin in her doll’s heart. An undercover reporter gets it even worse for trying to expose the cult, whose meetings seem largely to revolve around brief interpretive dances while Chaino (aka Leon Johnson) beats his bongo and members who sit on big pillows yell out, “Gamba!” occasionally and watch Lamont force people to prove their loyalty through encounters with a ceiling fan from hell.

Director William J. Hole Jr. (Hellbound, Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow) keeps things stylish and slightly spooky but with a definite light touch that lets 70 minutes or so of satanic shenanigans slip by devilishly fast. The enticing Christian (Slaves of Babylon, Murder in Amsterdam) is a lot of fun, saying things like “I saw you. I wanted you. That’s what made you special.” Music from Chaino and legendary session guitarist Rene Hall as well as a killer and magnificently sleazy opening dance theme from Baker Knight add mightily to the movie’s appeal.