Demonwarp (1988)

To misquote Feargal Sharkey “a good Bigfoot movie these days is hard to find”. From the boggy creek inspired pseudo-documentaries of the 1970s to the direct to DVD titles that currently plague our supermarkets, there have been an awful lot of Bigfoot movies over the years, and the number of bad ones far outnumber the good ones. Indeed the Bigfoot movie genre has such a stigma of awfulness attached to it, that it’s understandable if people choose to give it a wide berth these days. 

There have been a couple of standout Bigfoot movies along this otherwise bumpy cinematic path though. A film from 2006 that deserves a shout out is ‘Abominable’, which we didn’t get in the UK till 2014. Abominable is basically Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but with Bigfoot. A wheelchair bound man who observes his neighbours through a telescope witnesses one of them being killed by Bigfoot, then has a tough time convincing others about what he has seen. It sounds like a joke movie, but Abominable really is a terrific, suspenseful, overlooked gem...written and directed by Ryan Schifrin, son of Lalo Schifrin, who provided the music for his son’s film. Abominable recently had a bells and whistles Blu-Ray release in the States, so hopefully that will cause it to appear on peoples’ radars, and earn it some much overdue acclaim.

When talking Bigfoot movies we can’t also overlook the disreputable, bad boy of the genre that is 1980’s Night of the Demon. Hands down the most goriest bigfoot movie ever made, whose enduring infamy rests on its appearance on the ‘Video Nasties’ list in the UK, and a scene in which a biker stops off to piss in a bush, only for an angered bigfoot to emerge from the undergrowth and pull the guy’s dick off. That film’s message is clear, be careful where you urinate when in the great outdoors, a pissed on bigfoot, will always be a pissed off bigfoot.



This brings us along to 1988’s Demonwarp, which gives Night of the Demon a run for its money in the ‘goriest Bigfoot movie ever’ stakes. It’s something of a photo-finish, but I think Night of the Demon takes the prize and Demonwarp has to settle for being the second goriest Bigfoot movie ever made. I can’t think of another movie though whose plot could so easily double as a series of ‘Weekly World News’ headlines ‘ALIENS TURNED MY UNCLE INTO BIGFOOT’, ‘POT-GROWING CO-ED HAS HER HEAD PULLED OFF BY BIGFOOT’, ‘ZOMBIES INVADE BRONSON CANYON’, ‘PASTOR ACCIDENTLY MISTAKES ALIEN FOR THE SECOND COMING’...incredibly all of that actually happens in Demonwarp, the only things that seem to be missing are an appearance by Bat-Boy and the cryogenically frozen corpse of Walt Disney.

Demonwarp stars George Kennedy, who of course everyone remembers from Hollywood classics like The Dirty Dozen and Cool Hand Luke and in his later years as Leslie Nielsen’s straight man in the Naked Gun movies. There was though this near forgotten chapter in George Kennedy’s career where he was getting a reputation as a ‘name’ headliner in low-budget horror movies, with appearances in this, Creepshow 2, Nightmare at Noon and Uninvited, before the Naked Gun series pulled him out of that career path. Whatever the genre though, few actors have played so many characters cursed with bad luck as George Kennedy. If George Kennedy gets onboard a ship in a movie its sure to sink, be possessed by ghost Nazis or a mutant car will stow away onboard, and if George gets onboard a plane in a movie you can be sure it will be hi-jacked by Islamic terrorists (lest we forget “I’m Jewish, and so was Jesus Christ”).

George’s run of cinematic bad luck spills on over into Demonwarp, where his character is spending some quality time with his daughter at a cabin in the woods...for all of about two minutes before, what would’ya know, fricking Bigfoot gatecrashes his way into the cabin. After his daughter is senselessly killed, George goes all Rambo on our asses, begins roaming the woods while armed to the teeth and sets up all manner of booby traps ....Bigfoot having after all drew first blood. George also takes to wearing a yellow hat, the stated reason for this being that it makes him more visible to Bigfoot. I guess the colour yellow is meant to have the same effect on Bigfoot that red does to a bull, and I’m sure George Kennedy’s adoption of this silly headgear had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it made him easier to stunt double.



Demonwarp is very much the late 1980s horror movie in a nutshell, you can immediately tell that the Friday the 13th series was still holy at the time this film was made. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before...there is this remote part of the woods that has developed a reputation for people mysteriously disappearing or being violently murdered there, so natch’ it’s a mecca for loud, fun loving teenagers who all wanna party with their ghetto blasters, take drugs and have pre-marital sex....yeah, you can see where this movie is going. Demonwarp’s second act is essentially a Friday the 13th movie with Bigfoot standing in for Jason. The film even has its own version of Tommy Jarvis, a guy called Jack, who has been mentally scared by a previous encounter with Bigfoot, but whose warnings about the creature fall on deaf ears.

Demonwarp also typifies the rise of the special effects artist as a horror movie selling point in the 1980s. It was one of the first, but certainly not the last, movies I remember seeing on the rental shelves whose cover emphasised its special effects team’s connections to other, more well known, horror movies “special effects by the team responsible for Re-Animator, From Beyond, Nightmare on Elm Street 4”.

Demonwarp appears to have originally been conceived as a vehicle for the special effects of John Carl Buechler. He designed the Bigfoot suit for the movie, wrote the original script, gets a ‘story by’ credit and was meant to direct the film before he got the gig to direct the seventh Friday the 13th movie instead. The job of directing the movie went to Emmett Alston, who was also responsible for a not very memorable slasher movie (New Year’s Evil) and a not very memorable Sho Kosugi vehicle (9 Deaths of a Ninja), on the basis of which Demonwarp and being replaced as the director of Enter the Ninja were probably his career highlights. It is understandable why Buechler chose to direct a Friday the 13th movie over Demonwarp. After all the Friday the 13th movie had probably four times the budget of Demonwarp, was made by a major studio and was part of a hugely successful movie franchise. Much as I like Friday the 13th part 7, I’ve always thought that Buechler was an odd choice as its director, especially as he wasn’t really a splatter effects kind of a guy, in the way that Tom Savini was. Buechler being better known as a wiz when it came to creature effects in fantasy movies. Demonwarp does feel like a movie more suited to his talents than Friday the 13th part 7.

Buechler of course, sadly passed away recently, and reading his obits does cause you to remember just how many brilliant movie monsters he was responsible for in films like Cellar Dweller, Ghoulies 1, 2 and 3, From Beyond, TerrorVision, Troll...he will be missed. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Buechler was to the VHS generation, what Ray Harryhausen was to people who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Buechler is also key to a theory I have that Troll, Ghoulies and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie are all part of a shared cinematic universe. Hear me out...in Troll, you see a portrait of a bald, gregarious looking fellow, which is actually a portrait of John Carl Buechler himself, but in the context of the film is meant to be the wizard Torok before he was transformed into a Troll. Hidden way in the background of that portrait is the ‘fish’ ghoulie from Ghoulies, and what do we find in the basement of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie but... the portrait of Torok from Troll, which also contains the fish ghoulie from Ghoulies. Anyway, that’s my theory as to how Ghoulies, Troll and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie are part of a shared universe...not that I’m holding my breath for a crossover movie anytime soon.



Buechler did have an instantly recognisable style when it came to creature effects, you really don’t need the video cover blurb to know that the Bigfoot costume in this film came from the guy who also worked on Troll, Cellar Dweller or Ghoulies. Buechler’s Bigfoot costume is undoubtedly his greatest gift to this production. In keeping with the late 1980s vibe of Demonwarp, the Bigfoot we get here is a super pumped Bigfoot who looks like he has been hitting the gym with Arnie and Sly. Bigfoot’s attacks on his victims resemble wrestling matches, with Bigfoot displaying a preference for pulling chokeholds on his victims. Suffice to say, this is one Bigfoot that the Hendersons wouldn’t want to take home with them.



Demonwarp does unfortunately suffer from a bit of downtime in-between Bigfoot attacks, where the film isn’t doing a great deal but lingering on an uninteresting bunch of teenagers and showcasing some young, rather wooden actors. My main issue with Demonwarp is one I have with allot of slasher movies, it is extremely predictable in terms of who is gonna live and who is gonna die. Pretty much from the get-go you know that Jack and his smart, sensible girlfriend are gonna go the distance, and that other characters like the pair of jocks who love pulling pranks are dead meat, ditto the pair of beer swilling co-eds who are trying to grow pot in the woods. It makes you wonder why none of these films succumb to the temptation of tearing up the rule book, killing off the goody two shoes characters and letting the obnoxious pranksters or the airheaded co-eds live to fight another day. Demonwarp though is a stickler to tradition in that respect, everyone you expect to die, dies, everyone you expect to live, lives.



one of these people is related to George Kennedy, the other is topless.


George Kennedy probably wished one of those beer swilling co-eds had more screen time as well, especially as one of them is played by his daughter Shannon. The behind the scenes story is that as part of his contract- Kennedy was paid 15,000 dollars for three days work on the film- there had to be a role for his daughter in Demonwarp. Now, when I first heard the story about George Kennedy’s daughter being in this film I automatically assumed that she played his daughter in the film, which would make sense, and Kennedy and the actress who plays his daughter do have quite the natural, onscreen chemistry. This isn’t the case however, Shannon Kennedy is one of the two airheads who break so many of the rules of how to survive in a 1980s horror film, they listen to rock music, they drink beer, they’re promiscuous, they’re trying to grow pot, and one of them takes her top off. Not Shannon though, the story is that there was allegedly some pressure put on Shannon Kennedy to take her top off for the film, which she wouldn’t do, and this incident is meant to have lead to some ill-feelings between George Kennedy and the filmmakers, which is understandable.

The other girl in this scene is played by 1980s Scream Queen Michelle Bauer, who of course was allot more forthcoming in the nudity department, and as a result does get a bit more screen time to bare the breasts and exercise the lungs that she was famous for back then. If it’s any compensation Shannon Kennedy does –hands down- get the most spectacular death scene in the film. However given this story about her being pressured to do nudity for the film, you can’t help but wonder if there was a degree of vindictiveness behind giving her such a thankless role in the film and such an ultra-violent death scene.



For all its occasional dull spots (just how many times do we need to see characters walking about in the woods) stick with Demonwarp, as it comes back strongly in its third act. Demonwarp’s greatest trick is conning you into thinking that it is just a simple Bigfoot movie and something of a spent force at its midway point. By that stage you’ve seen allot of the Bigfoot, you’ve seen nudity and you’ve seen gore, and there is the feeling that the film has run out of steam. Don’t be fooled however, for Demonwarp has a whole bunch o’ crazy to hand that it has yet to offload on you. How nutzoid does this film get? How about all of Bigfoot’s victims coming back to life as zombies, who steal electronic equipment in order to rebuild a UFO? How about Bigfoot turning out to be a normal man who had been abducted by an alien and transformed into a beast (as I said, this film’s plot is straight out of the Weekly World News). How about throwing in a mad Priest who sacrifices nude girls on an altar, and feeds their hearts to the aforementioned alien...who following in the footsteps of Robot Monster, hides out in a cave in Bronson Canyon. Demonwarp might be a Bigfoot movie, but it eventually reveals itself to be a Bigfoot movie with lots of extra toppings.



In that sense Demonwarp does begin to resemble Spookies (1986) another non-stop orgy in the special effects department, that feels more like a show reel for its make-up artists than a narrative film. Demonwarp does have the occasional whiff of calculated, cynical thinking behind it, as if the film was conceived by a bunch of corporate suits who brought a copy of Fangoria or Gorezone to the business table, and tried to nail down all the elements that made horror movie such big money earners. “We need lots of dumb teenagers who go to a cabin in the woods, and zombie movies seem to be renting well, we need some zombies in this movie, and we need one of those scream queens to get her tits out in this movie, and some other young actresses to get their tits out in this movie, and a star whose name will look good on the VHS box... Martin Landau?, Jack Palance?...maybe George Kennedy?...George Kennedy is available?, but he insists on his daughter being in the movie, ....will she get her tits out as well?” 

Demonwarp is unwavering in its belief that throwing all of the successful elements of the horror genre into one, big movie is a guaranteed recipe for success. The maxim that ‘too many cooks can spoil the broth’ is completely alien to this movie...zombies, an alien, Bigfoot, a Scream Queen, a star name, they all get thrown in the stew here. Demonwarp is all about excess and stupidity... it is after all a film from the 1980s. If future generations need a crash course in all that rocked the genre’s boat back then, look no further, and if you love the 1980s, and love old school, practical effects then Demonwarp may well cause you to cum in your pants.... ‘nuff said.

The Dynamite Brothers (1974)

The Dynamite Brothers is an Al Adamson film from 1974, and as is often the case with Al Adamson films, it has been different things to different people. The film was released as The Dynamite Brothers for the Kung-Fu crowd, but was also put out as ‘Stud Brown’ for the inner-city/blaxploitation market. Stud Brown being one of the names of the two lead characters in the film...not a nickname...that is genuinely the name of the character...and c’mon how can you not have some love in your heart for a film featuring a character called Stud Brown...and no one questions why or finds that funny. Doesn’t that already tell you everything you need to know about this movie.



This is one of Adamson’s more obscure films, it had a DVD release in America in 2002, and a British one in 2003, but they’re both out of print now, and as far as I’m aware no one has done anything with this movie since the early Noughties. Which does illustrate an irony that Adamson’s producer Sam Sherman has frequently commented on. That the professionally made, straightforward and coherent films he and Adamson did together, never seem to command the same level of fascination as their misfit productions like ‘Blood of Ghastly Horror’ and most famously ‘Dracula Vs Frankenstein’, which were often put together from aborted projects and tied in with footage that had been filmed at different times. The rule seems to be that the more malformed Adamson’s films came out, the bigger their cult following became in the long term.

Which is a pity really, as The Dynamite Brothers is a rather overlooked Al Adamson film that has allot of energy and grindhouse charm on its side, and is one of Adamson’s films that I find myself revisiting allot. Simply put this is Adamson’s take on the 1958 Hollywood film The Defiant Ones, in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier played handcuffed convicts forced to overcome their racial prejudices when they go on the run, which had already acted as fodder for exploitation movies. ‘Black Mama, White Mama’ the shot in the Philippines, Eddie Romero film starring Pam Grier, being a famous example.



In Adamson’s film it is the turn of ex-American football player Timothy Brown to slip on the cuffs...in a plot that sees his character...Stud Brown... handcuffed to an Asian guy, played by Hong Kong superstar Alan Tang. Making the most of an opportunity to give the cops the slip, the two men go on the lam, first in San Francisco before ending up in the Watts area of Los Angeles. All the while being pursued by a hot-headed, racist cop played by Aldo Ray. This being a film from the time when Aldo Ray and Cameron Mitchell had pretty much cornered the market in playing racist cops in exploitation movies. It tended to be either one or the other. Aldo Ray basically being the guy you went to for playing racist cops...if Cameron Mitchell was away in the Philippines that week...or was recovering from his latest facelift.

The Dynamite Brothers does differ considerably from The Defiant Ones in that there is little antagonism between the two lead characters. Indeed, racial tensions between black and Chinese characters are notably non-existent in this film, with Adamson seemingly being more comfortable with depicting racism as a predominantly white hang-up, in the form of Aldo Ray’s bigoted cop as well as a bunch of rednecks who pick a fight with our heroes in the back of a pick-up truck.



Hateful as he might be Aldo Ray’s character does though come up with what is, hands down, the best insult in the movie when a guy asks for his gun, only for Aldo to bark back “where do you want it, in your face or up your ass”.

While for most of the film Aldo Ray’s character comes across as your typical blaxploitation movie villain. One scene unexpectedly humanises the character, when he breaks down and admits to his glamorous young girlfriend how tainted by corruption he has become, and there is the realisation that there maybe remnants of a decent man buried deep under all that hard-assed, racist exterior. It doesn’t result in you actually liking the character, but it does leave you with surprisingly mixed feelings when this character checks out.

The Dynamite Brothers has a laid back, easy going quality to it. Its basic ‘run-around’ plot might be action packed, as you’d expect from a seasoned exploitation film director –fight scenes, racial insults and female nudity are never far away in the film- but it’s also very undemanding. Meaning that this is the kind of movie you can put on, kick back and just chill out to. The location work in San Francisco and Los Angeles also takes in lots of 1970s colour, look out for great shots of ‘The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic’, the Chinatown district of San Francisco, the backstreets of Watts, and seemingly just about every Chinese restaurant and fast food outlet the mid-1970s had to offer, Adamson apparently being quite the fast food junkie. You definitely get the grand tour of Al Adamson’s America in The Dynamite Brothers.



Once our heroes arrive in Los Angeles and become unshackled, the Alan Tang character goes about investigating his brother’s death, leading him to the chief villain of the piece, a ruthless, castle dwelling, drug dealer played by James Hong, in what seems like a rehearsal for his role in Big Trouble in Little China. Stud Brown on the other hand goes about renewing his friendship with ‘Smiling Man’, an outrageously attired bar owner, whose business is being threatened by Hong’s right hand man, a guy known only as ‘Razor’. It’s difficult to not feel a bit sorry for Alan Tang, this is a film awash with brilliant character names... ‘Stud Brown’, ‘Smiling Man’, ‘Razor’....and the name of his character? ‘Larry Chin’...ermm I guess the well of catchy character names had run dry by the time they got around to naming the Asian guy.

Of course, calling a character ‘Stud Brown’ does give a fella a certain reputation to uphold...with a name like that you’d expect the guy to be getting as much pussy as John Holmes. By blaxploitation standards though, Stud Brown is a fairly monogamous guy, who is highly respectful towards women...he must have been such a disappointment to his parents. I mean...if you call your kid ‘Stud’, you obviously have expectations that they’ll grow up to break a few hearts and bust a few hymens in their time. It turns out though that Stud only has eyes for Sarah (Carol Speed), a mute waitress who works for Smiling Man. Stud even comes up with an impromptu love song about the pair of them.

Even if you take nothing else away from The Dynamite Brothers, I promise you’ll never be able to forget ‘The Ballard of Stud and Sarah’, which Timothy Brown, this big, tough ex-American football player, does seem slightly embarrassed to be performing.

“Sarah and Stud, 
Stud and Sarah, 
Sarah and Stud, 
Stud, and Sarah, Stud
Sarah, Sarah, Stud 
Stud and Sarah, Yeah 
Stud and Sarah, Yeah” 

I bet Bob Dylan wishes he could write songs like that.



We’re getting into spoiler territory here, but I find it hard to believe anyone can’t see from a mile away that the Stud and Sarah storyline isn’t going to end well. After all, she and Stud are blissfully in love...she is a mute...she owns a puppy...you can pretty much tell that she is as marked for death as any love interest or family member of Charles Bronson in a Death Wish film, and that Sarah exists purely to act as a catalyst for Stud Brown to extract some righteous revenge on her killers.

One of the misconceptions about Al Adamson is that his films were always a little behind the times and tame throwbacks to a different age. Something that will leave you unprepared for the tough brutality of several of his films, most notably Satan’s Sadists and The Female Bunch, whose viciousness actually pointed the way forward to the grittier tone that exploitation films adopted in the 1970s. While Adamson’s later films might be a bit more mellower, Sarah’s death (she has her face calved up by a man trying to extract information from her, unaware that she is a mute) ranks alongside the distasteful gang rape in Adamson’s Black Heat, and Georgina Spelvin’s seduction and shooting of a mentally retarded man in Girls For Rent, as evidence that Adamson’s films aren’t without their cruel edges.



Despite being born out of the Kung-Fu and blaxploitation crazies of the day, The Dynamite Brothers is a film that is ahead of its time in someways. Here, Adamson stumbled upon the mismatched buddy action movie, long before Hollywood did. As the UK DVD is rather keen to stress ‘...before Rush Hour, there was The Dynamite Brothers’. A comparison that in itself is starting to date that DVD as a product of the early 00s, Rush Hour not really being the new, hip film to name check anymore.

It is worth noting though that Adamson was working with a predominantly black and Asian cast here, long before diverse casting became fashionable. Something I think Adamson deserves more credit for, especially as he wasn’t one of those white exploitation film directors who threw together a few black cast movies during the blaxploitation days, but then never used black cast members outside of that genre. Adamson’s non-blaxploitation movies seemingly being happy to champion black actresses, notably Marilyn Joi in Nurse Sherri and The Blazing Stewardesses.

Whatever you make of Adamson’s films the general consensus seems to be that the man himself was an ok, straight arrow, average Joe kind of a guy, who no one seems to have a bad word to say about. So, it is all the more regrettable then, that in that grotesque Sharon Tate manner, Adamson is more remembered for the fact that he was murdered, rather than the movie career that preceded it, which often tends to get reduced to a quirky anecdote. Adamson’s death is a well told tale, but if you don’t know, in the mid-1990s, decades after he left the film business, Adamson got into a dispute with his live-in contractor Fred Fulford, who beat Adamson to death and buried his remains under the floor of Adamson’s house, where Adamson’s hot tub had once sat.




a typical day in the life of Al Adamson as depicted in 'A Stranger in my Home'


I’m losing count of how many TV documentaries there have been about Adamson’s murder...three at least. The best of the bunch is an episode of a series called ‘A Stranger in my Home’, which juggles talking heads with recreations of scenes from Adamson’s life. The actors they got to play Adamson and Sam Sherman are pretty spot-on facsimiles of their real –life counterparts. Less so their version of Regina Carrol, Adamson’s wife, who didn’t really look like the actress playing her, but the Stranger in my Home episode might be the closest we’ll get to a full-on biopic of Adamson.

That documentary has been repeated ad-infinitum here in the UK, and as a result it’s often odd to bring up Adamson’s name in conversation with people who aren’t B Movie buffs and have them know who he is. Albeit only because they’ve seen that documentary, and albeit only as ‘the schlock film director who got murdered and buried under his hot tub’.

Al Adamson deserves to be remembered as more than just a homicide victim though, while his horror movies will always hold a special place in my heart, The Dynamite Brothers ranks alongside Satan’s Sadists, The Female Bunch, Black Samurai and Death Dimension as one of the legitimately great Al Adamson films. Its badass credentials are such that clips from the film- and part of its title- even found their way into the affectionate, blaxploitation homage Black Dynamite (2009), and let’s face it if The Dynamite Brothers is good enough for Black Dynamite, then it sure is good enough for yo’ honky asses too.

Erotic Inferno (1975)

The name of film producer Bachoo Sen is all but forgotten these days, save for perhaps as a footnote to the career of horror filmmaker Norman J Warren, or as the producer of ‘Nightmare Weekend’ one of the most laughably bad horror films of the 1980s. It wasn’t always this way though, back in the late 1960s Sen was being heralded as the British film industry’s answer to Radley Metzger. Like Metzger, Sen’s stock in trade was classy, self-consciously serious sex dramas, generally focused on the complex love lives of affluent 30-something aged members of the jet-set, with Sen productions like ‘Love is a Splendid Illusion’ and ‘Loving Feeling’ also giving their himbo star Simon Brent an excuse to emote in his budgie smugglers. Quite how Love is a Splendid Illusion and Loving Feeling didn’t make the front cover of ‘Films and Filming’, I’ll never know.



Simon Brent emoting...

For my money though, Sen’s productions didn’t really catch fire –no pun intended- until he started employing one Jonathan Gershfield, a young university student who wrote scripts for Sen’s sex dramas in the library of York University, under the pen name ‘Jon York’. Gershfield/York’s scripts brought some much needed dramatic conflict to Sen’s well-to-do film world. York’s scripts are obsessed with power struggles, class issues and combative relationships between men and women, both in and out of the bedroom. One of York’s earliest scripts was for a Sen production called ‘The Intruders’ aka ‘Let Us Play Sex’. Filmed in Sweden, it’s the story of a hippie biker who schemes his way into a bourgeois family, where he bullies the men and throws some rough sex in the direction of the frigid women, all in pursuit of power and money. Today, The Intruders is mostly notable for an early, pre-fame appearance by Stellan Skarsgård, but for British viewers there is the equally distracting sight of future soap opera actor Chris Chittell as the hippie biker who causes all the problems.

Sen obviously realised he was onto a good thing by having York as his screenwriter and Chris Chittell as his leading man, and back in the UK brainstormed another film that would bring them all together again...Erotic Inferno. In a perfect world, this is the film that would be remembered as Sen’s magnum opus, rather than Nightmare Weekend.

Having played an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder about the rich in The Intruders, Chittell does a 180% here by playing the spoilt, hard living playboy Martin Barnard, whose privileged lifestyle is placed in jeopardy by the death of his father. Old man Barnard has apparently died at sea, and his death triggers off a catalogue of infidelity, betrayal and pure hatred amongst his surviving offspring. Martin is summoned back to his father’s country estate along with his brother Paul (Karl Lanchbury) where they renew an old enemy in their father’s chauffeur Adam (Michael Watkins). Unbeknownst to Adam, he is old man Barnard’s illegitimate son, and Martin and Paul’s half-brother, something his siblings are desperate to keep from him. Their father’s will though dictates that all three men have to stay at the family estate over the weekend, until the will is read. The will also insists that Old Man Barnard’s mansion must remain under lock and key for the weekend. A source of frustration to Martin and Paul who seek to try and break into the place, in an attempt to uncover and destroy any evidence of Adam’s parentage.

Incidentally, the executor of the will, the rather sinister Mr Gold, is played by Michael Sheard, who’d go on to terrorize a whole generation of school kids as Mr Bronson in Grange Hill. Sheard’s involvement in Erotic Inferno apparently stemmed from the fact that he had money in the production, and that his role as an investor in the film also dictated that he step in front of the camera for an acting role too.

The men’s girlfriends, and various interested female parties, also find themselves sucked into the Barnard brothers’ conflicts, ensuring that this is at least a very dirty weekend. There is Brenda (Jeannie Collings), Martin’s sweet natured girlfriend, who is trapped in an unhealthy, abusive relationship with him and finds her affections drifting in the direction of brother Paul. Martin, on the other hand, is boning after bi-sexual stable girl Gayle (Heather Deeley), attempting to seduce her with the hilarious chat-up line “the smell of horses drives me crazy”. Last, but certainly not least is Nicole (Jenny Westbrook) the housekeeper, Adam’s on/off girlfriend and resident nympho. Nicole is a very popular woman around these parts, to put it mildly...who in the past has had relations with both Old Man Barnard, Paul and Martin. As Brenda sarcastically asks at one point “is Nicole always so friendly?”



Nicole is also the only one who possesses the key to the old man’s mansion, which she keeps on a chain around her navel, in a chastity belt fashion. This unsurprisingly makes Nicole a person of interest to Martin and Adam. Both of whom see her as the ultimate prize and are determined to snatch that key away from...well her snatch. The two men adopt very different approaches to achieving their goal. Adam favours traditional working class brutality, and goes about slapping Nicole around, bullying her and calling her a bitch. Martin however, seeing himself as God’s gift to women and a man of considerable sexual prowess, uses rough, sadomasochistic sex as a way of getting what he wants, echoing Chittell’s character in The Intruders.

It cannot be emphasized enough just how amazing Chris Chittell is in both The Intruders and Erotic Inferno. He pretty much acts everyone off the screen in The Intruders, and gives a far stronger supporting cast a run for their money here. These are incredibly angry, aggressive performances as very desperate men. Martin Barnard might be an utter bastard, yet you cannot take your eyes off him, and Chittell’s charisma practically flies off the screen. Chittell later claimed that he’d gotten himself into financial difficulties during this period, and it was either take film roles like this or rob a bank. Bank robbery’s loss was sexploitation cinema’s gain, but on the basis of his Erotic Inferno performance you can’t help but think that Chittell would have made a terrific bank robber as well, you certainly wouldn’t think twice about opening the till for this guy. At the same time, these roles also feel like raw rehearsals for the lovable rogue character Eric Pollard that Chittell would go on to play in Emmerdale. Pollard essentially being a toned down for primetime TV version of Martin Barnard.



Erotic Inferno is either the most misogynistic film ever made or an indictment on out of control macho behaviour. It’s open to interpretation either way. There is much to titillate men in this film, but very little to flatter them. Erotic Inferno isn’t a film that will make you feel proud of being a man. Men in this film are all greedy, chauvinistic and venal. It’s difficult to know who we’re meant to be rooting for, if we’re meant to be rooting for anyone at all. Martin and Paul are elitist crooks who treat women like garbage, but Adam is no working class hero either, he beats up his girlfriend and it transpires had also been pimping her out to Old Man Barnard as well. No side of the class war comes up smelling of roses here, yet while you don’t really care who comes out on top, Jon York weaves a compelling enough yarn to keep you watching who will triumph in this almighty, gladiatorial battle between Adam, a man who fights all his battles using his fists, and Martin, a man who fights all his battles using his cock.



Released in 1975, arguably the peak year for the British sex film, Erotic Inferno is something of a square peg in the round hole of that genre. The British sex film was taking on an increasingly comedic tone during this time, the ‘Confessions’ and ‘Adventures’ films were at their peak, but Bachoo Sen stuck to his guns and continued making serious sex dramas with Erotic Inferno. There is also a heck of allot of explicit sex in this film, as if Erotic Inferno continually felt compelled to live up to its title. Erotic Inferno is highly pornographically minded, in its full uncut version featuring sex scenes that are only a few shades away from being hardcore. Never more so than in a subplot involving Heather Deeley’s bi-sexual stable girl Gayle’s same sex relationship with fellow stable girl Jane played by Mary Maxted, who’d soon after find fame as Mary Millington. Despite failing to get anywhere with his “the smell of horses” line, Martin continues to pursue Gayle, only to get shot down with a series of dirty looks from Jane, a possessive lesbian. Erotic Inferno certainly gives Mary Millington a far different image than the one she achieved fame with, indeed it’s perversely ironic that Millington here plays a humourless, lesbian cockblocker who puts the brakes on any heterosexual hanky panky going on between Martin and Gayle. All a far cry from the fun loving, heterosexual male fantasy figure that she would become.



Living up to their reputations as sexual dynamos and extreme characters, scenes between Deeley and Millington represent not only the most explicit depiction of lesbianism seen in a British film until this point, but also the most realistic. There is none of that inept hugging and fumbling about that you tend to get when clueless straight male directors depict lesbianism. Indeed, someone here has definitely been doing their homework, the importance of the use of fingers in lesbian lovemaking is made here, there is even some shots of Deeley rimming Millington in the uncut version of the film.

Deeley is somewhat unique in the pantheon of British sex film actresses, in that whereas most people used made up names to appear in these films, Mary Millington, Fiona Richmond and Sue Longhurst for instance all being fake names, Heather Deeley is an actual birth name. Specifically Heather J. Deeley, born 1956 in Bury St Edmunds...the things you find out from misusing findmypast.co.uk Deeley’s use of her real name is even more eye-opening if you consider that she also participated in hardcore scenes ...something that would have surely caused your average person to seek out a pseudonym in order to keep some distance between a porn career and their private life...but they truly broke the mould when they made Heather J. Deeley.

Graphic as the lesbian scenes between Deeley and Millington are, these are also some of the most tender moments this film has to offer. Comparing favourably to the brutal, clothes tearing, dirty talk accompanying, heterosexual sex scenes in the film. It’s tempting to credit the actual actresses with making these scenes erotically come to life, both Deeley and Millington being openly bi-sexual off-screen, and therefore renowned experts in the field...so to speak. They were made for it, folks.




I suppose the easiest way of describing Erotic Inferno is as the most Jose Larraz film that Jose Larraz didn’t direct. There are a few shared personnel between Erotic Inferno and Larraz’s films. Erotic Inferno’s director Trevor Wrenn had previously worked as director of photography on Larraz’s Symptoms and Scream and Die. Actor Karl Lanchbury was another Larraz regular, with the majority of his feature film credits being in Larraz’s films, who had a tendency to cast the pretty boy actor as sexual weirdoes or serial killers.

Erotic Inferno also shares Larraz’s favouring of the English countryside as its preferred picturesque backdrop, as well as violent sex being the narrative’s driving force. It’s not difficult to imagine Erotic Inferno belonging in the same cinematic universe as Larraz’s Vampyres, and that all the drama surrounding the brothers Barnard is playing out just a few fields and lonely country lanes away from the murderous antics of Fran and Miriam in Vampyres. Would anyone really shed a tear if one of the Barnard brothers were to pick up a hitchhiking Fran and Miriam and try the ‘smell of horses’ line out on them. If truth be told there isn’t a single male character in Erotic Inferno who isn’t worthy of the Fran and Miriam treatment.

Upon its release Erotic Inferno enjoyed an unexpected boost of publicity when it became part of a well documented ‘research’ trip that anti-porn campaigner Lord Longford made to Soho. All of course done purely to discover how morally corrupting pornography was for the lower classes, you understand. While Longford somehow managed to sit through a double bill of Erotic Inferno and Hot Acts of Love at the Astral cinema duplex, a later trip to see a Jess Franco film called How to Seduce a Virgin, proved too much for him and resulted in a walkout from Longford. The common man obviously enjoyed having their morals compromised though, and Erotic Inferno was still making money, packing them in and playing in Soho four years later.



Finding a full, uncut version of Erotic Inferno has proven to be a tricky proposition over the years. The film was cut for its British theatrical release in 1975, however when it appeared on tape in 1979, the video label Hokushin seem to have issued a version of the film containing all the sexual material trimmed out of the theatrical release. Sadly, later British video releases have all originated from a far more substantially cut version, while an American video release, entitled ‘Maid in Chains’ is censored even further. Not even the Hokushin tape can claim to be the complete version of the film, as it is missing some dialogue, presumably due to print damage, that has surfaced in other video versions of the film. So, whether there has ever been a totally uncut video release of Erotic Inferno remains a question mark.



Unfortunately seeing any version of this film isn’t easy today, Erotic Inferno hasn’t been in circulation since the late 1980s, and now seems something of a ‘problem’ title when it comes to releasing the film on DVD or Blu-Ray. While I’m not certain what this ‘problem’ is, rumours suggests it is something along the lines of the rights owner not being interested in the film being released again, or wanting too much money for the rights. I’m sure the absence of Erotic Inferno on DVD and Blu-Ray hasn’t been for want of trying though, after all it’s a film with Mary Millington in, and we all know how people just love to exploit that poor cow. I mean...there is a Blu-Ray release of Eskimo Nell that gives her prominent billing on the cover, despite the fact that she is only in that film for all of six seconds and in a role so insignificant that the original film didn’t even bother to mention her in the end credits. Wasn’t Eskimo Nell meant to be a satire on the crass, dishonest nature of the film biz? rather than the epitome of it? So, I’m sure there are some folks out there who’d just love to be putting out and making money from Erotic Inferno, a film in which Millington does actually have a substantial role in, after all exploitation really doesn’t stop at the grave, does it?

The absence of Erotic Inferno on DVD is in some ways regrettable though. Not only is it one hell of a film, that deserves to be seen again, but it is also powerful ammo against the nonsense claims regularly trotted out by film snobs that all British sex films are forgotten embarrassments, containing little sex and looking hopelessly reserved when compared to similar films made in America and Europe. Erotic Inferno is one mean spirited, super sleazy sucker punch to that kind of mentality. Its fashionable these days for people to sneer and look down their noses at British sex films, much in the same way it is to do with British horror films, the Carry On series, sitcom spin-offs or direct to DVD East End gangster movies, but without these films what would British cinema be left to comprise of?...stuffy period pieces and miserabilist dramas born out of do-gooder circle jerks...i know which British film genres I’m more proud of.