Hoodoo Gurus Back in the U.S.A.

Note: This story I wrote first appeared in 2023 in the Shepherd Express in Milwaukee. It marked the Hoodoo Gurus' first return to the United States after several decades. The legendary Australian band is mounting another American tour in September, the "Back to the Stoneage Tour," which hits Madison at the Barrymore Theater on Thursday, Sept. 19. Tickets are still available. Dave Faulkner and band are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their debut album, 1984's Stoneage Romeos. 

The mighty Hoodoo Gurus are loose in America for the first time in decades and eager to make you Turn On.

The legendary Australian garage rock band, which celebrated its 40^th anniversary in 2021, hits Milwaukee on Saturday night at Shank Hall for a sold-out show.

While the band has done a few dates on the coasts in the U.S. this century, it was the 1990s when the Hoodoo Gurus last ventured on such a far-flung tour across America that will take them to nearly 20 states in less than a month, says front man Dave Faulkner.

The band made its U.S. return directly from a series of large venue shows in Brazil. The American shows have been decidedly cozier – largely in clubs – but no less rocking, according to social media reports.
“We’re playing as strong as we ever did,” Faulkner says. “I think that’s what most people who come to the show wonder: What are they going to be hearing and seeing? And we think this group is as good as you’ve ever heard us, with more insight into what we try to do as well.”

Hoodoo Gurus and their management had the displeasure of rebooking this American tour several times after being stopped repeatedly since 2020 by COVID-19 as flare-ups and related restrictions occurred in Australia and elsewhere.

“We postponed it once, then, of course, we postponed it again, and then we had to postpone a third time,” Faulkner says. “And I think it was the third time, I said, ‘We can’t do this to people. It’s been three years.’”
The fourth time was the charm apparently. The Tour that Seemed It Would Never Happen finally commenced in New Orleans on April 25, where Faulkner chatted by phone.

“I’m living and breathing in the United States,” he says. “And I’m getting ready to play, so it’s all happening, baby.”

Chariot of the Gods, Hoodoo’s Gurus first album since 2010’s Purity of Essence and only their third this century, came out last year to largely positive reviews.

Faulkner says the band had wanted to take off 2020 from playing shows and record and release the album in time for the Hoodoo Gurus’ 40^th anniversary, but COVID again played a part in delaying the band’s plans.
Even before the pandemic, however, Faulkner says they decided to make the album a little different from past recordings and not just head to a studio for a set time and knock it out.

“We decided to do a few boutique-style singles,” Faulkner says. “We’d go in a record a couple of tracks for a single, and then pull everything down and go away for a month or so and then come back and start again.
“It was kind of like how we did our first album, Stoneage Romeos, because at that time we didn’t have enough profile in the marketplace. Nobody knew who we were, so we had to make a few singles.”

Most of the recent singles, “Answered Prayers,” “Carry On,” “World of Pain,” and “Get Out of Dodge,” ended up on Chariot of the Gods. Another single, the angry, yet decidedly catchy, anti-Trump anthem, “Hung Out to Dry,” is only available on the double vinyl release of the album.

“We would just make the songs right there, and not think about the overall approach of the record, just make them as they come,” Faulkner says. “It made the songs have their own unique character because the drums never sound the same, and we were given space, so it didn’t sound like it was coming off a production line, Henry Ford-like, where everything sounds like everything else and everything’s black like the Model T.”

 This approach was slowed down more by COVID protocols in Australia that prevented band members from being in the same rooms for three months. While many musicians are successful completing their parts of songs on their own and sharing recorded files with other band members who might be far away, that approach doesn’t work for Hoodoo Gurus, Faulkner says.

“We have to be a room together communicating, working with our parts and feeling it,” he says. “It’s an experience rather than you do your beat and I’ll do my beats. The beats always have to be connected rather than done separately.”

The album’s name comes from the 1968 novel Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past by Erich von Daniken, which explored the idea of “ancient astronauts.”  Faulkner says the book made a big impact in pop culture when he was a teenager despite its ridiculous claims.

“It’s a fictional novel, but it’s supposed to be a science fact that the aliens made the Pyramids and other large structures around the world,” he says. “It’s pretty silly, the whole thing, and I kind of like that.”

Faulkner compares it to modern reports of people using horse medicine and other bizarre “remedies” for COVID.

“There are many people who will take advantage of the vulnerable and impressionable and making them think they know more than they do,” he says.

There seems to be a pretty good chance this is not the last time you will hear from the Hoodoo Gurus. Maybe soon, maybe not, Faulkner says.
“Every record we’ve made has been we’ve thought would be the only record we made and the end of our story,” he says. “It captures everything we want to say. Then a few years go by, and you think I’ve got a few more ideas, and you make another one.”

To conclude, here’s a still essential question from the previously referenced “(Let’s All) Turn On” as Hoodoo Gurus returns to Milwaukee: 

“Waiting for my man, baby, can the can/I wanna hold your hand, remember Sam the Sham?”

Hoodoo Gurus performs at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 13, Shank Hall. The show is sold out.

Move Your Ass: It's Graduation Day

 Note: This review first appeared in Drive-In Asylum's 1981 Yearbook Special in 2023. It is now sold out, but the zine is currently working on a 1980 Yearbook Special, and I wrote a review of Battle Beyond the Stars for it. Look for it soon!

Despite being thoroughly trashed by critics in 1981, the Herb Freed-directed Graduation Day is a mostly appealing -- and often funny -- slasher enlivened by a cool cast, quirkiness, and sleaze. 

The adults are all self-absorbed and clueless and are either dismissing, ignoring, scolding, harassing, or banging the students. This is all filtered through the busyness/craziness of a high school graduation week but also one that is in the aftermath of a student-athlete’s death on the track field. 

Principal Guglione (Michael Pataki) actively despises the students and tells his secretary Blondie (E.J. Peaker), with whom he’s having an affair, to come in his office quickly – “like a bunny.” Pataki and Peaker are hilarious as an office/sex duo who fight over having to deal with those damn, worried parents who want to know why their kids haven’t come home yet from last night.

Coach George Michaels (Christopher George) is an intense, black-haired SOB track/gymnastics coach who says things like “move your little ass, Sally” to students and sees himself as a misunderstood, Great Molder of Young People, shitcanned because of a blood clot.

 Anne Ramstead (Patch Mackenzie), on leave from the Navy, comes to town after her younger sister’s death and is met with disdain by certain portions of the local population who call her a “lesbo,” “bitch,” and “weird” – all within the first 20 minutes of the movie. Mackenize is quite effective as a tough, tormented sibling who wants answers and isn’t afraid to use a little Kung Fu -- or squeeze the balls of taxpayers/sexual predators -- in the process. 

The movie’s title sequence almost seems like a TV drama or Afterschool Special with footage of a high school track event, propelled by a sports-appropriate disco song, a crowd that can’t get enough track, and athletes in action, on the track and off. But it ends with the victory of Laura Ramstead (the late Ruth Ann Llorens) in the 200-meter race – and her subsequent collapse and death.

After that opening, we see members of the track team being picked off, one by one, in various bizarre and bloody ways by an unseen, black-gloved killer, followed by a close-up of their stopwatch.

We come to know various students like Doris (holy shit, that is Vanna White), and Laura’s boyfriend, Kevin (E. Danny Murray), whose home can best be described as an art assault; and also friendly Dolores (Linnea Quigley), who romances her boyfriend by telling him, “I am going to nail your ass tonight,” and passes music class by the skin of her, er, by her naked skin. We also meet music teacher/playboy Mr. Roberts (Richard Balin) who after introducing his “snake” to an underage student and is pranked, knows who the real “scumbag” is.

One of Freed’s most exciting scenes takes place at an outside roller rink, conveniently adjacent to the wooded area near the school where some murders have already taken place, while a glam band, Felony, rocks out and a delirious layer of lights swirls.

On the trail of the killer, incapably, are Officer MacGregor (Virgil Frye), who keeps a joint in his gun and can’t find his badge, and Detective Halliday (Carmen Argenziano), who describes the students as “about to fly out of their nest and shit on the rest of us.”

Graduation Day was scripted by Freed and his wife Anna Marisse, who died in 1984, from a story by co-producer David Baughn, who previously worked with Freed on 1976’s Haunts and 1980’s Beyond Evil, and earlier had been a sales agent for Russ Meyer.

Notably, Freed points out in an accompanying interview on Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-Ray that he “never came close to horror again” and indicates it was due to a “self-reckoning” over the violence depicted in the movie and the “contamination” of the slasher scene.

MOVIE MOVIE Returns ... In 4-D!

 

Last time I “officially” talked to Derek Davidson in 2020 (we talk unofficially, mostly about movies, like all the damn time!), it was amid a frenzy of creative activity for the New York City musician with his long-running band The Electric Mess. But that group sadly broke up in 2022, and Derek has started anew with MOVIE MOVIE, a cinematically charged garage pop supergroup featuring members of The Above (Frank Caira, vocals and guitar) and Twin Guns (Andrea Sicco, lead vocals and guitar), as well as Davidson (bass and keyboards) and his Electric Mess bandmate Alan J. Camlet (drums and percussion). MOVIE MOVIE’s second full-length, the fantastic and varied In 4-D! is out digitally and on CD through Bandcamp. Topsy-Turvy will release it on vinyl in late September or early October.

I recently chatted with Derek about his new group, new album, and more:

When I last interviewed you, you were still with The Electric Mess. Can you tell me about the end of that band and how MOVIE MOVIE came together? I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were a Covid casualty, because after about 15 years, we might have hit the point where it was time to start doing other things, but right when the pandemic started our fifth record had come out and a Spain/France tour booked in May of 2020 canceled, and no local shows for a while, and we just never regained momentum after that. It was probably the catalyst we needed to officially make the split. But by the same turn, with all that down time I was able to write new songs and make demos and didn't want to wait around to see if the Mess would ever regroup. I wanted to hit the studio to record our debut EP, so the bands did overlap for a bit. In fact, MOVIE MOVIE's debut show was the Electric Mess’s second to last show.

Coming from the Electric Mess, what did you have in mind for MOVIE MOVIE? In a pretty short time, you guys have put out two albums and an EP. Can you keep up this pace? Ha! Well, as I said, with so much downtime in 2020, I was having a creative burst, writing new songs, but also I had a bunch of songs on tap that were slated to be Electric Mess songs once we came back. Some we actually worked on once or twice, others we never got to try. A couple of them turned up on the Now Playing EP, and about four of them are on the new record, In 4-D! Our first LP Storyboards was all new songs since I was so inspired how the EP went. I thought those fit the best. When we recorded them, The Electric Mess still hadn’t called it a day, so for the new one I had a small backlog I was able to tap into. Andrea contributed two songs to Storyboards, some unused Twin Gun ideas he gave me to choose from.

So many good songs on the new album (“You Can’t Hide from the Lies,” “Damaged Goods,” “Anywhere But Here” “I Want You Back (Again)” and others are early favorites). How does the songwriting process work for MOVIE MOVIE? Creatively, all the songs for this band I make very detailed demos going in before I present them to the band. Andrea studies them, comes up with his ideas, guitar-wise and vocally what he feels comfortable with, Alan gets his drums parts, and Frank runs some background vocal suggestions by me, which are usually right on the money. I consider him our not-so-secret weapon, since the vocals and harmonies in this band are the most important part to me. We rehearse a couple times and then just hit the studio to record. There’s no weeks of rehearsals or arrangement meetings or playing songs endlessly live when you're sick and tired of them when you'll finally do record. This keeps everything fresh. “You Can't Hide From the Lies” was definitely one that developed after we recorded the basic tracks, initially I thought it would be like a ‘70s Gordon Lightfoot type song, but turned into a 1980s prom song! Andrea added multiple guitar parts, and I added lots of keys and strings, so that one really needed to develop and be fleshed out, though the basics were all there. That one vocally is my favorite on the record, Frank and Alan on backups and harmonies really shine. “Damaged Goods,” on the other hand, the basic track was done in literally one take, with overdubs later. But what you hear is us just banging it out. That was an Electric Mess leftover.

What movie references have you cleverly hidden from me in the songs? Haha, I have to admit, I can’t think of any direct movie references or inspirations. “Lone Warrior,” from our last album, was inspired by Paris, Texas, and “Born to Win,” obviously the title inspired by a classic, but at the moment I can’t think of any Easter eggs or anything cryptic. If it comes to me, I'll let you know! However, the structure is supposed to be a flashback, from the 1960s through modern day, covering garage, psychedelic rock, glam, into New Romantic, post-punk, ending on arena rock. The original title was Flashbacks, but I thought too much like Storyboards in the one-word title, so In 4-D! It keeps it in the movie realm and especially the cover by Darren Merinuk.

Have you had any opportunities to play the songs live? We played one show recently, our first of the year, and we played all new songs, 7 of 10 from In-4D! It was a bit of a challenge, since as I said all the songs are basically studio creations to start, and then we need to actually learn how to play them live. This record has a lot of bells and whistles, not literally, but playing some of them live takes some adjustment, particularly “You Can’t Hide from the Lies,” which is rather lush.

You’ve maintained your relationship with Soundflat beginning with the Electric Mess and are one of the few American bands on the Cologne, Germany-based label. What is that relationship like? Soundflat is great, and Marco Traxel, the head of the label, is my rock ‘n’ roll guardian angel! He put out four Electric Mess records, and our last LP and now this one. Of course, MOVIE MOVIE is on their subsidiary called Tospy-Turvy, which are bands and records he likes that aren’t the typical 1960s garage style Soundflat favors. It’s nice being out in Europe, since we have toured in Spain already in November 2023, and plan to go back in spring 2025. Our EP came out on Ghost Highway/KOTJ, so it’s great having a base there. Record labels aren’t a charity, so it’s good to know our record sold well enough for Topsy-Turvy to do our new one.

 

 

Turner's Picture Palace: July 2024

I watch way too many movies. Each month for the last year or so, I've shared my favorite new watches in list form with a few friends. This month I turned it into a "movie notes" thing. Next thing you know, I decide it's a new monthly column for Paperback Zero. Why not? Let's go:

Hitmen and Hitgirls (revisited) -- Somehow watched four movies this month about hitmen: (ranked) LaRoy, Texas (2023); Looper (2012); The Outside Man (1972); and Hit Man (2023). Loved the hell out of LaRoy, Texas, which I wish I had caught in a theater. It reminded me of ‘90s neo-noir movies like Red Rock West (1993, also about a person accidentally stealing a hitman gig and the real hitman being an unhappy camper), Clay Pigeons (1998), and U-Turn (1997). Steve Zahn adds high hoot. As usual, the French are noir hip: LaRoy, Texas was the Grand Special Prize winner at the 2023 Deauville Film Festival. Oui, oui. The Outside Man, in fact, is directed by a Frenchman, Jacques Deray, but set delightfully in early ‘70s LA. I could probably switch my ranking order between any of the top 3, but Linklater’s Hit Man was definitely last. It was a light romantic comedy that I found mostly un-charming and sitcom-like. Honestly, I would also place the crazy, sleazy high school hitgirl movie I saw in May, Malibu High (1979), above it.

The American Nightmare -- I had a very special double feature over the July 4 holiday from 1975: Day of the Locust (first time watching) and Nashville. I got the idea because the two movies played together in drive-ins when they were released, which I know first-hand now had to make for a long, odd bummer of a night (but in a good way!). The two movies include politics, country music, assassination attempts, riots, and the late Donald Sutherland stomping a bratty child to death. I followed these tender takes at America a few weeks later with another look at the good ol’ USA and our capitalistic life plans: Seconds (1966). Former Miss Bay View (Milwaukee) at the South Shore Frolics (which croaked a few years back, iced by high prices and hipsters), Salome Jens gets buck nekkid during an unforgettable hippie wine festival ceremony that was a real event filmed for the movie that involved cinematographer James Wong Howe supposedly using seven handheld cameras (and winning an Academy Award in the process). Jens, a Bay View High graduate, offers this lovely quote about l-i-v-i-n’ in Milwaukee: "the only time I can imagine contemplating suicide would be if I was told that I had to go back and live in Milwaukee forever."

Black(and white)out: After the real-life assassination attempt on a populist creep, combined with another birthday, and general country shittery, I decided to watch mostly black-and-white movies from mid-month on. Some of my favorites: The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), The Chase (1946), Street Scene (1931), Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and fuck yeah, Sam Fuller’s Underworld, U.S.A. (1961). 

My favorite was probably Out of the Fog (1941), which also features the camerawork of Howe, who gives us all sorts of foggy fun. It’s an early noir that features two immigrant friends who just want to fish and buy a better boat but fucking John Garfield, a true prick in this, wants to bully them, steal their money, and nail the one’s guy daughter, played nail-rifically (see top photo) by Ida Lupino. Excellent dialogue in this, including, “In America, any man can be a king on the installment plan.”  

And this bit of “g” dropping, American Dreaminess delivered by good guy Eddie Albert to Ida Lupino, after she starts itchin’ for John Garfield: “Just doin’ the simple things – takin’ a walk on the boardwalk on a Sunday afternoon, watchin’ the people and the ocean. I could get a real kick outta just watchin’ you put on a new dress. It’s inside of you, Stella, with your heart spillin’ over with love for the things you’ve got, that you can hold on to forever; that’s where you’ll find what you’re lookin’ for.”  

At the Movies: During the pandemic, as movie theaters began to close, I made it a goal to go to theaters more frequently. Around 2020, I also read a New York Times article that predicted technology in 2040 (which I now can’t find) that portrayed a theater-less future. Including July, I’ve gone to 63 movies in theaters since I began tagging them on Letterboxd in 2022. To further encourage my theatergoing, but also to watch more newer movies, I purchased an AMC A-List membership in July, which lets me watch up to three movies a week for $20 a month. I made it to six movies in July, and I enjoyed them all honestly, but my favorites were probably Kill (2023) and Oddity (2024). Kill was bloody as hell, but poetically so (especially the title sequence, which comes about 30 minutes into the movie!) in a way that Sam Peckinpah would have probably loved or cursed at. Oddity was much more subtle but was creepy and fun and reminded me a little (but on a much lower budget) of The Lair of the White Worm (1988), which Roger Ebert compared to Roger Corman Poe's movies, which probably explains why I liked Oddity so much!

Yesterday's Newspaper is Dead:  From an 1975 interview with director John Schlesinger by Tom Shales of the Washington Post upon the release of The Day of the Locust: "Schlesinger talked about putting 'the reality of the place' on film and then admits that the phrase is a contradiction in terms. The reality of Hollywood? Throughout the film the characters turn their backs on reality. They walk out of the movie theater when the newsreel comes on. 'But that’s true of everyone, today as well,' says Schlesinger. 'The quicker the means of communication, the quicker the news is forgotten. People watch television, they hear about the horrors of Vietnam, then a baby cries or whatever and they leave the room or look away and it is forgotten. Yesterday’s newspaper is dead, no matter how real and appalling its news was. That’s always the way.'"

*All photos from IMDB

 

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.