The Weekly Screed (#615)

“Girls, Guns and G-Strings”
By David Benjamin

“… After consuming rabies-infected meat pies, an LSD-addicted hippie cult goes on a vicious murdering rampage…”

— Blurb for I Drink Your Blood

The best chronicle of the publishing industry’s excesses and errors comes from a Connecticut outfit called Edward R. Hamilton. This bookseller’s steady flow of densely packed “remainder’ catalogs, 30 titles to a page in 8-point type, offers a big discount on every book that has been recently overhyped, overprinted, undersold or unloaded unceremoniously by its makers. Whenever it arrives, I read Ed’s catalog cover to cover, patiently hunting for treasures and travesties.

Over my years of loyalty, Ed Hamilton has rewarded me with remarkable editorial consistency. His only change in style, a few years ago, was to alter his format. The catalog, previously a broadsheet blearily printed on onion-skin newsprint, is now a staple-bound magazine, with colored ink and illustrations. Also, bless his heart, Ed now has a spinoff catalog selling tons of remaindered DVDs.

Among Hamilton’s DVDs, if you look carefully, you can find Casablanca for $7.98 and every single episode of George Maharis and Martin Milner in Route 66. But why bother with the high-brow stuff when you can order, for a mere $11.98, your own man-cave copy of Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros, which includes as its villain a Penthouse “Pet of the Year.” Hamilton’s copywriters describe it thus: “Dr. Bikini Jones (Christine Nguyen) searches the wilds of Moronica battling man-eating dinosaurs and the sensuously wicked Evilla…”

As suggested by the perils of Bikini Jones, the depths of the E.R. Hamilton DVD catalog reveal the enduring prurience of Western civilization’s movie-going public. Indeed, Dr. Jones’ teeny-weeny bikini turns out to be a timeless theme. Among Ed’s listings are Bikini Warriors and the “cult classic” Bikini Drive-In, plus Beach Babes from Beyond, Beach Babes 2, Bikini Time Machine and Bikini Bandits Experience. In the latter, “… four scantily clad bad girls in high heels are trapped in the cold, hard city with their smooth, naked backs against the wall…”

Naked? Yes, Ed has naked, including the Roger Corman “classic,” Stripped to Kill and its obvious copycat, Strip Nude for Your Killer. Ed reveals that this flick features “…succulent flesh aplenty as a mysterious killer dressed in black leather and wearing a motorcycle helmet begins butchering young fashion models…”

OK, another recurring theme: Young (pretty much naked) women in danger, from prehistoric monsters, or insects (Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula) or some other gore-smeared thing from under the ground, beneath the lagoon or beyond the pale. Although our classic fiends (Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory, The Nude Vampire) still stalk America’s virgins, the current threat to my scantily-clad daughter (and yours) is the invasion of — and icky seduction by — the undead, which recurs in numerous Hamilton listings. These include the 20th anniversary revival of Redneck Zombies, plus Santa Claus vs. the Zombies, Porn Star Zombies, Girls Gone Dead and The Dead Want Women. The blurb for the irresistible title, Zombies vs. Strippers, reads: “…With a sudden outbreak of zombie virus, Vanilla, Bambi and Sugar Hill deal with the disaster the only way a stripper can…”

In this genre, my favorite is Orange County Babes and the Slasher of Zombie Town, a film whose Hamilton blurb is almost subtle: “Different groups of Orange County stereotypes are trapped in a bar due to a recent zombie outbreak…”

Of course, true cinephiles know that no list of trashy DVDs is complete without a few unjustly jailed gals. In the spirit of Jerry Gross’ Girl on a Chain Gang (which, alas, isn’t available), the latest Hamilton catalog offers Leandro Lucchetti’s immortal Caged Women, plus Women’s Prison Massacre (also known as Emmanuelle Escapes from Hell), Nymphos Behind Bars and the phantasmagoric historical drama, Dungeon of Desire. “… two lovely models are transported back to a medieval castle in the 15th century by a magical chastity belt…”

Actually, in E.R. Hamilton’s book, chastity doesn’t stand a chance. If there’s a camera nearby, girls are gonna go wild. They do so, according to Ed, in Busty Housewives of Beverly Hills and Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank. Unladylike behavior also runs amok, at discount prices, in Dirty Blondes from Beyond, Truck Stop Women, Train Station Pickups, Schoolgirl Hitch-Hikers, Revenge of the Boarding School Dropouts, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama and (what a title!) Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. The plot? “To avoid a serious avocado shortage, the U.S. government hires anthropology professor Margo Hunt (Shannon Tweed) to find the man-eating Piranha Women…”

While we’re on the subject of man-eating women, the top of the Honor Roll in this genre has to be Flesh-Eating Mothers, which Ed teases like this: “… the story of a kid’s worst nightmare: becoming dinner…”

Speaking of kids’ worst nightmares, Ed’s January catalog offers a plethora, including the 35th Anniversary Exhumed Edition of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, plus Asylum of the Damned, Mansion of the Doomed, I Eat Your Skin, I Drink Your Blood, I Spit on Your Grave, Three on a Meathook, Fistful of Brains and (a seasonal treat) Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!

After poring over the latest Hamilton’s movie book, I found my softcore porn budget torn between two of the best titles in the history of film. The first of these, Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars, is about “… Martians [who] decide to mate a human with a vacuum cleaner to create a species that will be better at cleaning up after itself. But a programming error by a drunken Martian…”

But the movie, in the end, that won my vote was a sort of religious tone poem, Nude Nuns with Big Guns — about the revenge of Sister Sarah, who becomes “one bad mother” after being “…enslaved and victimized by the drug-pushing predators within the church…”

I’m thinking of making it a St. Valentine’s Day present to the Pope.