Original subtitles

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to behold a sight so strange, so

so utterly monstrous, that I urge those of you who are easily frightened or

upset, who suffer from nervous disarmament, weak hearts or queasy

experience nightmares, and any children under the age of 16 years to forego

witnessing this exhibit.

This is a wonderful world of exploitation film.

I was in the exploitation film business.

I was there. I saw what was happening and I took advantage of it.

Between Dan and Dave, there's a whole world and realm of different

films. There wasn't any master plan, any scheme or anything else. I'm not that

smart.

I wasn't as good as Dave at it, but I was a businessman.

I knew if you made three quarters, you could save one quarter.

They're not the kind of films that you will see today or even fathom were being

made. Sometimes watching them, you have to even wonder if they were made on the

planet Earth.

You remember Jack Fleck?

Oh, sure. He had the theater in Anaheim. Yeah, yeah.

Uh -huh.

You remember that guy, Jim Ginopoulos? Oh, sure.

He finally died.

Yeah.

He was an honorary old bastard.

Well, Tom Dalby.

used to tell me that you and your dad would get into a town somewhere up in

Montana or somewhere, and he'd put up a little tent, and you all would sleep in

the tent that night rather than having to take a ride. Tom Dolby, he never was

on the road. No, but I said he was telling me these stories about you and

dad. Oh, no, he never. That's a bunch of shit, too. Oh, okay. You always talk to

a bullshitter.

Tom Dobby was no bullshitter. He was my manager on Main Street. Oh, shit.

You think I don't remember? Well, I know it, but you're making a liar out of a

good guy.

Well, I am telling you what he told me, Dan. Oh, bullshit. I don't believe that

either. You just said I got a memory like a steel trap. You got a liar like a

shit trap.

Son of a bitch.

He lies like hell.

My father and mother came from Italy about...

When they were about 19, they were married real young.

And my dad started working in the coal mine in a little town named Tono,

Washington. My dad was strong enough to load up twice as much coal as any other

man. He loaded up 33 tons of coal in one eight -hour day.

I have a certificate from his boss that says that.

And so it got around that my dad was a super strong man.

They heard about my dad, so they wanted to make a policeman out of him. He

cleaned up that town real fast.

And then in the headlines that came out, Roy Gardner, the smiling mail train

bandit, escaped from jail.

And my dad had a picture of him. And my dad was on his beat walking.

And then another man was walking.

towards my dad, across from him, and he was all bandaged up. His hands was

bandaged, his face was bandaged, and he had a suit on.

So my dad looked at him, and he followed him to the hotel, went up to the room,

knocked on the door, and he says, I think you're Roy Gardner.

He knocked the gun out of my dad's hand, but he didn't know how strong my dad

was. See, my dad was like a superman.

So my dad got him down.

and hit him on the head with a billy club and put handcuffs on him. He got a

,000 reward.

There was a theater man.

He had a camera, a motion picture camera.

So he says, you know, Mr. Sonny, he says, you know, you're very popular. You

should go in the show business.

And he says, I'd like to make a motion picture of you and react to capture.

My dad says, okay, let's go.

Good luck, Gardner.

Hope to never see you again. I hope that I never come back again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, goodbye, Roy.

Good luck.

Thanks to you. I hope that I never see you again. Well, the same to you.

How are you?

Mr. Sonny, I don't know how to begin to thank you for what you've done for me.

And I'll do everything humanly possible to justify the confidence you have

placed in me.

I say it's a hard way.

Now, I want to again become a respected citizen.

I hope I may, and I know I will.

So that's how we went in show business.

And my dad started going on a road, a pantagious vaudeville circuit.

A man had captured Roy Gardner. You see, Roy Gardner's name in them days was

like Dillinger. And then he'd stand outside of the theater.

And then he would say, shake hands.

What do you mean, shake hands?

He's real fast on handcuffs.

It was a tough life. That road stuff wasn't good at all.

I hated that when I used to be on the road.

I used to go to Billings, Montana, Missoula, Montana.

You'd carry the can of film. You'd go put window cards out to advertise.

You'd put your displays out.

And it was just terrible.

He was showing someplace on Spring Street or Main Street in Los Angeles,

Dwayne Esper was showing in another theater down the street about three or

blocks. My dad was showing one of his prison pictures and not doing much

business at all, and Dwayne Esper had a lineup second to none.

My dad walked down there and said, what the hell is this guy selling? He was

selling sex, you know.

Seven Commandments don't screw around screwing somebody else's wife.

My dad never knew nothing about that. He used to handcuff people.

Anyway, he got out of the criminal business and went into the sex business.

Let's put it that way.

Then later on, they made a picture maniac.

And then that's how we got into the exploitation business.

What was in that pipe?

In Maniac's case, they tried to just shock you with horror elements, and it

not successful until Louis Sonny changed the title to Sex Maniac. Hey, you know,

then big difference. Then it became very successful. It's a wonderfully

sleazy...

creepy kind of film because it operated, you know, completely out of the laws of

the other horror films of the 30s. I mean, it bears nothing to do with the

Universal films or any of the films that were going on. They were showing a

beating heart in a jar, you know, a guy plucking a cat's eyeball out and then

eating it. I mean, this is something that's so far beyond what you would

So it's a very odd, exhilarating, incomprehensible film, but it works

because you're sitting there shaking your head today saying, I have not seen

something like this.

You know the greatest thing Dan Sonny ever taught me?

A movie is like a flower sack.

No matter how many times you shake it, a little more flower still comes out.

That's right. And if you don't, then you change the title to get some more

flower in there.

You just keep changing the title until you get more flour.

What the idea was, was to attract people to your film by showing them something

taboo, something forbidden, something that you couldn't see in the average

Hollywood film. Well, it shows that if a girl does something wrong, she'll get

pregnant or go to jail or things like that.

Mostly get pregnant if they do something wrong.

Now, mind you, they had to package it so it all looked like these were very

moral films. You know, it's the old canard about we're going to preach

here by showing you all the sin.

And that was the shell game involved, and that's the fun of them. I think both

of those words fit in together as far as I'm concerned. Education and

exploitation is good because it makes the people come in to see and get

educated on exploitation.

Adults only.

I thought I was doing good.

Alcoholism, birth,

venereal disease, roadhouses, miscegenation, prostitution, any of the

subjects were fair game for the exploiteer just as long as it was in bad

If it was liquor, liquor leads to sex.

Gambling, gambling leads to sex.

Drugs, drugs leads to sex.

And sex leads to, usually sex leads to more sex, which in the roadshow films

usually the whorehouse.

You know, I mean, that was the favorite destination for a bad girl is the

whorehouse. Here we are, honey.

Oh, uh, girls, this is Judy.

Hello.

You're going to like the girls here, Judy.

We're all just one big happy family.

Come on.

There's a nice new kimono.

Get into it.

Then have a bite of supper and be ready to go to work.

Work? What kind of a place is this anyway?

But there was always in every one of them, at the beginning of the picture,

we call the square -up.

And this was a crawl that rolled.

Well, for example, with Child Bride.

Now listen, Jenny.

I'm going to be your husband.

And you want to be nice to me because if you don't, you know what will happen to

your mama.

Do you understand?

Yes. All right, now take this.

Go on, go on, take it.

We show this picture not in any...

attempt to exploit the evils of child marriage as it exists in the mountains

Appalachia, but to hope through the showing of this picture that the public

be educated and that this vast evil will be stamped out.

Sincerely, the producers.

No, you just changed that.

Prostitution, alcoholism, dope, you know, you just inserted whatever the

was.

What I did, they had a burlesque theater downtown.

I would go down there and make a deal with the stage manager and the burlesque

people, and we'd shoot the whole show, and that would be my burlesque show.

And I took that on the road years ago, and I'd start playing midnight shows

and do a hell of a business.

Well, I made one with Lily Sincere.

And the name of that was Love Moods.

See, she got out of the bathtub, and what she did was put on clothes.

See, she got out of the bathtub in a nude.

We gave her, I think for one day, we gave her $5 ,000.

But don't forget, $5 ,000 them days was like $50 ,000 as now.

It was a good, safe way of showing naked women, or partially naked women.

And still skirting the issues of sex and, you know, the forbidden...

You

can't discuss forbidden adventure lightly. You just have to take a deep

It's hard to... You know, we're talking about exploitation. We're talking about

stuff that they've shown on American screens.

And then you have to stop and you say, now, wait a minute.

This is about...

Gorillas mating with women. You know, what kind of a subject is that? Gorillas

mate with women. That's the subject of it. It's about two explorers who

allegedly go to the lost city of Angkor in what used to be Cambodia.

And they, of course, are led there by an all -topless safari of native women.

But the highlight of the film is that, well, how come, what happened to

everybody in Angkor? Oh, well, they got all...

Rape by monkeys, I guess. I still don't understand what the hell they're

claiming happened.

Women and monkeys.

We stopped dead in our tracks.

The dance we had seen at Nun Ben leapt into our minds.

Again, the incredible suggestion of apes wielding power over human beings.

Monkey adoration. Monkey domination ruling the people of Cambodia since the

when Angkor was built.

Ten centuries ago.

When they file at the end of the film, the big highlight is, of course, all the

women not only are still mating with the gorillas, but they're trying to protect

the gorillas in this weird gorilla worship.

And I mean, do I need to keep going on? This is just I mean, it's jaw dropping.

They had a little storyline. I couldn't follow it. But there was a little

storyline in there someplace.

Dwayne Esper made it. We'd have to dig him up to ask him.

Somebody had to go see these. I mean, you know, there's a couple saying, hey,

you want to see the new Clark Gable film or would you like to go see a couple of

gorillas, bops and babes? Oh, let's go see that. I mean, I... What made it

popular is the bare breast and the native girls.

And that's it.

This wasn't an exploitation movie.

This here was Mau Mau.

It was just like a travelogue is what it was.

And the name was Mau Mau.

These guys filmed what was ostensibly a serious or, you know, somewhat

legitimate, let's say, documentary on the Mau Mau uprising.

Hello, I'm Chet Huntley. And they even had Chet Huntley as a narrator in the

beginning who must have, you know, fallen for this scam.

But what are they going to do with it? It was a little too raw for television,

so it was a little too short as a feature, so they brought it to Dan

despite the little bit of massacre footage in it, he realized it's still

usey enough to sell as an exploitation film.

So I wanted to put a little sex in it.

I went to a title guy down there, and he's the guy that...

that went in his back, and he had a little studio, and he shot these scenes

me with colored women and this and that. We built a fire, and I inserted

it into Mau Mau.

And so I wanted to make an exploitation picture.

They recreated Africa right there on Cordova Street and, you know, round up

local African Americans from the neighborhood, and it's really, it's such

embarrassment. Their idea of Africa is...

There's an awful little painted backdrop that must be about as far away from the

actors as this bookshelf is from me, with a little painted hut.

And I shot some footage for the stills. I needed stills. But I put the

film in the... I cut it in a little bit, you know, to make exploitation out of

it.

The whole campaign was built around those three minutes. If you see any

work or artwork from Mau Mau, it's always...

Those anonymous people that they rounded up in the neighborhood.

And it's just, you know, it's just another wonderful scam, a little more

than most. But then again, I'm not sure how I'm not sure how an audience back in

the mid 50s.

I'm not sure if they would have seen through the duplicity of it. They may

been looked at this and thought, wow, well, I'm surprised they got camera so

close to me.

We never did make any money. I wish I had my money back on that thing.

Mama don't mean nothing.

If you put a name, Mau Mau Sex Sex, then you could get the money.

That sex is what sells, you know.

Mau Mau don't sell.

These were grindhouses that played this stuff, you know. So you're not going to

get widespread distribution because you're limited to theaters that would

show, you know, where your audience is more interested in tearing up seats than

movies.

You could not be in this household without being somehow involved in the

business. There were a lot of people in and out of my father's office, just like

he had said that a lot of people were drawn there. I think it was because it

an office that was stable.

He was stable. He made money.

He would trade.

Dad, I remember one of my earliest memories is my father, when we lived in

Portland, big barrels of dishes were being unloaded because Dad had made some

deal on some film.

with dishes i mean silverware jewelry i mean he's a willer dealer there was a

lot of card playing a lot of cigar smoking a lot of people in and out all

time but at the same time it was orderly i mean it was like they were getting

all that stuff done but mostly it was the people it was the characters each

of these people is a character my father's a character dave's a character

everybody that walked in that office was the character they were right out of a

movie

Now that he's an old, old man, now I tell him what to do all the time.

Yeah, she's a boss now.

Now I'm the boss.

She's a boss. Yeah, right.

Let's see, what am I, I want a glass. When he lets me be the boss. I want a

glass. But she was married twice.

I'm married twice. I was married one time.

Oh, one time. God.

That's right. It just seemed like it was five times.

He's kind of, uh...

brute in a way in his dealings with women.

Women are not on the same level.

I think that's why, or when we grew up that's how it was, but I think that's

he had four daughters to prove him wrong.

When dad owned a art theater.

The La Brea Theater. The La Brea Theater in our.

On 9th La Brea. In our neighborhood where we grew up in our Catholic church

school. We all went to Catholic school. It's right down the next block down. So

when dad opened this theater.

Now it was an art theater.

It had originally been the neighborhood theater where we'd go and watch, you

know, Abbott and Costello and all that. And then Dad bought it, turned it into

this art theater. So when Dad opened the theater, he invited all of the

Catholic, the priests, everybody.

But he opens it with some Swedish film where they're giving birth on the

I mean, all the way. And I think half of the audience got up and walked out when

it was going on. You remember that, Danny? No, I don't remember nothing.

You don't? I don't want to remember anything bad.

I thought that the stuff that my dad did was probably pretty risque, but

I had, like, this double moral standard, you know, I guess going on in me

unconsciously. Like, well, my dad makes his money this way. Like, Mom didn't

like his name on the film. You know, he didn't want Dan Sonny on the film when

they were being made because somebody in the church might see it or it would

hurt the girls if somebody saw it.

It wasn't like,

I never really thought of it as any big deal, because I knew it wasn't really a

big deal. And I thought, after I grew a little older, I thought the Catholic

Church made much too much about a lot of things, you know.

Wake up, Daddy.

Yeah, you've got to have Dave around all the time to keep you awake. Yeah.

Dave is the world's greatest carny.

And he's a very brilliant man.

You know, I used to get a letter in my office and start reading it, and he was

standing on the other side of my desk, and he could tell me, read it upside

down, faster than I could read it frontward, and tell me what was in the

before I read it.

That's how good he is.

Well, six o 'clock and we got our first big bill. That's not bad.

I got to sign some passes for those cops.

There's only one Dave, and he's the world's greatest carny. You want a

You want a bunny, huh?

All you got to do is sit, see.

The balls land in the saucer, you win a bunny.

Keep an eye on that back entrance there. I blocked it, but if you see anybody,

just run them out. If they give you any argument, why?

Then you'll call the coppers. We've got coppers out here all over the life.

And never turn down a finger. Yeah.

Where were you all week? We needed some help here on the rides for crying out

loud. I was in North California.

Oh. All right, well, teardown is Sunday night, so be here for teardown.

You got my deuce?

You got my deuce?

All right.

There you go.

Looking at the weather report, I said, look out the window. Don't put any

attention to these idiots with these.

They could scare off more people.

Yep. All you got to do is look out the window. Look out the window. All right.

You need anything, Captain?

Yeah, give me that. Oh, it's up behind my phone.

All right.

I could use about three. I'm working.

All right.

The Eternal Order of Police Lodge takes care of our parking.

We make a donation for their charities at the end of the fair every year.

That's what's called squaring up the cup.

Well, now you've seen our happy little midway. Let's wait till it gets a little

darker and you'll see the thundering herd where we will proceed to separate

suckers from their shekels.

The carnival was the birthplace of exploitation in every way. And

eventually, of course,

What did people go to the carnival to see most?

The Couch Show.

The Girly Show.

Hey, hey, hey, this is a show where they take it off, roll it out, wrap it up,

throw it right at you. This is a show for those between the ages of 18 and 85.

You're under 18, you wouldn't understand it. You're over 85, you couldn't stand

it. Now, we've got 16 beautiful girls on the inside in various stages of dress

and undress. Now, I'm going to bring these girls out here on this stage just

more time, and I want you all to notice one thing. All of these young ladies is

going to be wearing a red kimono. Now, I want you to look. Examine that kimono

very carefully. Look at the sheer material in that kimono. Because once

inside, you're never going to see those kimonos again, but you're going to see

everything that was underneath them. You see, now that became the nudie, the

nudie cutie. In fact, the nudie cutie was the thing that destroyed girl shows

carnivals. Because now...

Every theater, every town in the country of any size had an adult theater, and

the guys could walk in and see nudist camp pictures and nudie cooties on

40 feet wide, 20 feet high with beautiful young Hollywood girls. They

to go on some carnival to see some poor old gal.

So that was the, everything started on the lot.

I had a very good job at Paramount. I was in the publicity department.

I traveled the country. I didn't have that much supervision.

I pretty much could dictate my own hours.

I had a fairly decent salary, a nice expense account.

My bosses liked me. As a matter of fact, before I decided to leave, they had

offered me the job as head of the department in New York City. That was

when the home offices were all in New York.

But I just decided that I'd like to be in business for myself.

And I'd always been fascinated by the never -never, the underbelly, say,

of show business, the carnivals, the exploitation, everything, and it seemed

like a good go for the dough.

This is the one sheet from my favorite picture, She -Freak.

And the rest of it is just an accumulation of things I have done,

of old circus and carnival posters.

And this is kind of my personal museum.

This is my wife.

I was out ahead of a picture called Houdini.

with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh about the great American magician.

An old carny buddy of mine could hang by his heels from the top of a building

and escape from a straitjacket. This was in Indianapolis. This was when you

could do a street stunt and tie up the whole town.

And, of course, hopefully after they'd seen this poor old guy hang by his

get out of the straitjacket, they'd all go in and see the movie.

So the next town I went to was Des Moines, and I had a little gag there.

Anybody that can escape from this straitjacket will give $100.

So this kid was the first in line.

Of course, it was gaffed, and I showed him how to do it.

And he gets out. The first guy in line gets out. He wins the $100.

So then it became an AP story that a local boy outwits big city press agent

and broke the wires all over the country.

Come here.

Tell them about what happened there one night. This was at a small circus in

downstate Illinois, and they had no girls riding elephants, and they offered

to let me ride it and put me in this rather brief costume.

And I was thrown by the elephant's trunk up onto the elephant's back, and the

keeper walked.

By me as we went around, and that is one of the most exciting things that I have

ever done. Looking into the face of the audience looking up at you with their

mouths open and stuff, it was really marvelous. It was pouring down rain. The

tent was leaking, and you could see the elephant was wet.

You were a mass of mud when you got off of that thing. By the time they pulled

me down, I had mud on skin as well as costume.

There was the greatest act.

ever in history.

Johnny North was telling me one day, he says, I'm bringing back the greatest act

in history. I said, what's that? He said, Mr. Miston. I said, what does he

He said, well, he's only six years old. I said, what are you going to do, shoot

him out of a cannon?

He says, no, he's a xylophone player.

I said, a xylophone player in a circus? He said, well, you've got to see this

kid. He can hold eight sticks and play.

Sure enough, he brought him in. I went to the opening of the show in New York,

and the kid comes in, eight sticks.

Starts playing the potent peasant overture. It was unbelievable.

Of course, out on the road, people were saying, is that all he does?

Don't he dive into some water or get shot out of a cannon or something? How

did he last? One season.

Oh, so they really didn't like him in small town? Oh, no, no. He was great in

New York. And then when they took the show to Havana, they loved him down

But what are you going to do with him in Oskaloosa, Iowa?

I mean, they don't know from...

They thought he was a midget.

My husband Paul was a practicing nudist.

I don't think you understood me.

I said Paul was a nudist.

When nudity first started appearing on the screen, when nudity as a subject,

okay, as a genre could be made.

You know, you had your little innocent nudist camp films where everybody played

volleyball and no one had genitalia, and everybody just waved, and everybody was

just, it was just wonderful. Life was just so much better in the sunshine

wearing the wind, okay?

You went into a nudist camp, and they played volleyball, and you couldn't show

any fronts. You could show ladies' breasts, of course, and you could show

derrieres of both male and female, but you didn't show any genital or pubic

nudity. So it was kind of difficult in shooting a volleyball game because no

matter which side you were on, the other side was facing you, so you were always

shooting up.

Basically,

When we were shooting those things in those Florida nudist camps, we had to

the mines, so to speak.

The real nudists were not the most erotic

-looking or attractive young women, so we would hire models to come in and

cavort around the nudist camp grounds and basically leave the camera on them.

They've never been in a nudist camp.

It's about as erotic as walking through the cold storage room of Swifton Company

in the Chicago stockyard.

Then you had what they called the nudie cuties. And this is because legally you

still couldn't show sex.

And to make these films even, you know, just not to make it safer, sex wasn't

even implied. And usually in these, the man, there was a guy who would just

watch the women and he was a voyeur.

Either he ran when the women got too close, or he would keep it distant.

So it was kind of innocent, and it was women doing housework in the nude, just

retarding things like that.

But they were all very cheerful, and it idolized women. It sort of put them on

kind of an offbeat pedestal. I mean, they were objects of beauty, you know,

but don't touch.

Now, the nudie cuties were very rigid in their construction, that through some

device, the lead character, either through magic spectacles or...

He had the power. He could see all of the ladies in various stages of dress

undress. Nobody else could. But he could walk down the street and all of these

ladies that were approaching him, he saw them in the nude. You know, maybe he

had magic glasses or maybe he was the janitor of the building. Or in this

retarded case, he turns into animals.

One spot.

This one is so stupid that even in the midst of it, I'm sitting thinking, now

wait a minute, now wait. If I just turned into a goldfish, and I lost my

and I just had scales and fins, and I was submerged under water, would I still

be thinking it's cool to look at a woman's breasts?

I mean, I'm not sure that, you know, first of all, even if I changed to a

goldfish, would I have the mental capacity to understand? And also, if

goldfish and you're looking at, I'm taking this too seriously, obviously,

you know.

You know, if you're a goldfish, are you going to actually, will a pair of giant

breasts look attractive to you? I don't know. But that's the plot of it. You

know, a guy turns into a little putty tat so the naked girl can hug the putty

tat. And then he turns into another, you know, hey, whatever.

I mean, it's just insanity. And it's all that kind of wholesome, how many girls

with big breasts can we show you where we don't actually break the law and

there's no actual sex involved.

Dieter Mintz. He used to sell, boy, oh, could he sell pictures.

But, oh, they were god -awful.

Nothing was worse than the German nudies. You know, they were all with the

lederhosen. Oh, god, they were awful pictures.

The girls weren't bad -looking. I'll say that. They were all blonde, Teutonic.

girls, but the guys were all fat and they all had to have comedy in them. And

the guys would be wearing those little Bavarian hats and the suspenders and the

shorts. Oh, look at this. This must be the blaze.

Pictures were not salacious. They were not obscene by any definition.

But because of the pressure of the church on these pictures, you fought

uphill all the way.

The interesting thing about it was that it was only the independents, only the

exploiters that ever took on these sets of boards. The major companies didn't

have to. They were home free.

Be sure you take plenty of cold water of your own because there ain't none out

there.

Where's the top?

Carol, where's the top?

I don't believe you. I do not believe you.

Carol, where is the top of the thermos?

Huh?

I think the son of a bitch should have, from the draft -dodging bastard, I think

how he ever got to be the president is beyond me, and that wife of his who

to be the queen of the United States.

You can't talk about my president like that.

I like him.

I like him.

I'll guarantee, you know, that you, of all people, you'd be the first one to

screw if he was making a picture. Because that's all you used to do.

That's all you used to do is make a picture, just screw the lady.

Dan,

that is without a doubt.

Did I hurt you? I'm glad.

Son of a bitch.

Everybody accused me of having this long affair with Connie Mason.

And I said in my book, of all of the beautiful and willing young women that I

work with in movies, I'm happy to say that I never had illicit carnal

with one. And that one was Connie Mason.

You could believe it. You could believe it. He screwed every leading gal I ever

made a picture with.

Oh, Dan.

Yeah. Lock this door.

Dave's got that carny blood in him, and I think Dave also loves the scam.

I think Dave loves, there's a little bit of larceny in this, and I think Dave

loves that aspect of it.

What was so immoral about what I was doing? We got all the time in the world,

baby.

All the time in the world.

i was pushing it i was one of the the founders i guess the uh i guess the one

the leaders of the sexual revolution i've been uh

grandized by the liberals and calumnized by the uh conservatives for

my part in that but uh as you look back on it now it was all so innocent

that uh

You wondered, what was all of the hullabaloo around?

I don't apologize to anyone for some of the films I've made or some of the

things I've done.

They have to take today to pave this street.

Let's go, idiot.

I just help Margaret with... I help her do the washing.

I help her do the dishes.

The dishwasher is not full, so I'll wait until it gets full before I turn it on.

And I'll leave the kitchen in pretty good shape for an old man.

Now I'm going to walk over and start doing my laundry.

Life is just taking it easy nowadays. When you get to be 84, you're lucky to

to the bathroom by yourself.

My wife and I have been married 62 years, and we have four lovely

The oldest one is 61.

The youngest one is 51.

The oldest one is a retired school teacher.

And now I think I'll go over and get on a treadmill,

get a little exercise.

I can only walk about five different times a day on a treadmill one minute

time because I got a bad hip.

And this is the only way I can get any exercise.

I'm going to get off in about a second.

I think I'll go sit in my high chair now and watch television.

It's going to

rain in Palm Springs.

The best thing I ever did was marry my wonderful wife, and we've been happy all

these years.

We did have a very good marriage, and the girls were well -educated and went

college, and they all had their own cars.

And if my wife happened to die, I wouldn't want to live a day without her.

And this is true.

Oh, dig me up.

I told my wife, When I died, for her to commit suicide.

Because I do the washing.

The dish washing, the clothes washing.

He helps me and I help him.

And I think that really means a lot.

I think every child should have a mother and a father that don't drink.

And that smoking is no good too.

When Carl comes over, we play a lot of gin.

It's a nice game.

Count your cards.

People that would come in my office, they're film salesmen. They'd either buy

some of my pictures or I would buy some of their pictures.

You son of a bitch.

See?

Just because you saw me, I want it. You're going to take it. Sure.

You son of a bitch. You want it. Why should you be greedy? I always shuffle

cards for you. You always get the choice. I don't care. You understand?

You don't feel any guilt about that? No, not a bit. Not when it comes to

gambling. Son of a bitch.

Good. See, I could use this and eat your heart out. I'm gambling my children's

money. I hope so.

I'll throw them on the street.

Colonel, I don't want to say nothing, but you are a miserable person.

Listen, since I met you people, this is the way you get to be.

My hobby was playing gin.

They'd come into town just to play gin with me for three, four hours every day.

I'd win all their money, all the time.

Take him when he's down. You're building a good hand there. You're taking

everything in the world. I can see it.

So you'd win $30, $40, and then you'd go out and buy the guy a drink.

What the hell are you talking about?

Oh, God.

You know, you go back to your sneaky self, you get that... You look like

on your face there, and your belly aches about the worst cards.

This is what's called a splice, Donna.

You've seen these things in Vegas.

And here we go.

There we go. Here we go.

Whoa! Close, but no cigar.

We're getting there.

Oh, right.

Well, we're not getting there very good.

Ah, okay.

We're making big progress.

It's only going to cost $5 to win a quarter.

I'm gonna make a mess.

I was very small, seven or eight years old. I used to go out to the carnival, a

pretty good -sized carnival, the L .J. Hess shows.

My mother would take me out there and leave me there all winter long, watch

painting the merry -go -round horses and painting those garish banners that used

to go up in front of the girls' show and the sideshow.

I always said, boy, one day when they leave for the season, I'm going to leave

with them.

out to lunch with somebody every day.

It's company, it passes time, and I'm getting my belly full.

You can't get your belly full if you don't eat lunch.

Now that I made my money, I don't think of business.

So I like this retirement because I'm so old I can't go back on the road or even

produce a motion picture.

And I talk to Nanny quite a bit and pester him. We talk every day. We talk

you two.

Just find out we're both still living.

Daddy, let's get Steve over here.

He's okay over there.

Don't you want to talk to him or anything? No. I ain't moving out of

Open your mouth.

Come on. Open your mouth.

That's good.

Open your mouth.

Well, that's good cake, isn't it?

Yeah, but that's all you're having is the cake. You want to eat this thing?

Daddy.

That's it. That's the last piece.

That was a good dinner, honey.

It was a good dinner.

A long way to go.

But I'll come here again before he dies.

I'll be on the road for three or four months.

And I'd miss my wife. I'd been talking to her once a week.

When I'd go home to take a little rest, I'd probably knock up my wife, and then

I'd go back on the road again.

And that happened until we had a poor daughter.

Harold has always been very supportive.

We've just passed the 47th anniversary.

That's not totally usual these days.

It was his affair as far as I was concerned.

I always knew I could walk out if I wanted to or decided to,

which maybe is one reason that it lasted as long as it did. Who

knows?

As long as it has, the better.

And what I didn't want to see of what I had to sometimes sit through, I learned

very early to...

close my eyes and my ears, and not just didn't pay any attention to it.

I learned long ago in Hollywood that if something was sort of, hmm, you really

didn't particularly care for it, you always said to the director or producer

whatever, oh, that's most interesting.

What is something that no one has done that we could do that, you know,

suddenly the word gore comes up?

Could you think of a legitimate reason for torture or

mutilation? Oh, yeah.

Have you ever had an Egyptian feast?

Out of that comes the idea of this ancient Egyptian caterer

who must prepare a blood feast using the vital organs from virgins.

It was a blast.

It was a lot of fun.

The big problem was all of these girls who were being mutilated, horribly,

horribly mutilated.

Keeping them from giggling was the biggest problem we had.

In the key scene, I found a girl named Astrid Olsen who had a very large mouth,

a very pretty girl.

She, too, came from Playboy.

And we had this sheep's tongue.

And we'd had it several days, and we'd been keeping it in the refrigerator in

little suite there, but it was getting a little... So we put some pine salt on

it. And we fill Astrid's mouth up with this combination

of jello, strawberry jello, and this... The other advantage of this blood was

that it was not fatal.

In fact, one of the components of it, which we didn't tell the actors, it was

kaopectate.

We fill the girl's mouth up with this jello and this blood compound.

And we show the close -up of him ripping her tongue out.

And then we pan down to this gaping mouth, oozing this jello and

this blood concoction. And it was one of the great scenes in motion picture

history. So I have a screening.

And Carol comes to see this reading. I said, well, what do you think of it? She

said, in one word? I said, yes, she said, vomitous.

So that's when I went out and made up these vomit bags. You may need this when

you see Blood Feast.

Printed up a quarter of a million of them.

Now, Kohlberg, the man who had financed this thing, was an exhibitor, had a

chain of drive -ins.

Well, where do you want to play it? Well, let's not play it in Chicago,

if it drops dead, it'll be all over the business.

Well, what about Gary? That's too close to Chicago. Oh, wait a minute. I've got

to drive in in Peoria.

Okay, that's great. We'll open in Peoria. If it works in Peoria, it'll

anywhere. We drive 120 miles to Peoria. We turn off on the road to get to this

drive -in, and suddenly I said, my God, we're in the back of a funeral

procession.

This is three miles from the theater.

And as we inch along, finally I can see the screen tower. All these people are

going in to see Blood Feast.

And there's an Illinois state trooper there, and he said, no more, no more.

And I said, excuse me, Sergeant. He was actually a corporal, but you always

promote him. I said, I'm the producer. I ought to run you in. You've got my

whole district blocked up.

But he lets us in.

And that picture hit the screen that night, and history was made.

Some old boy had just gone down to the concession stand to get some drinks for

the kids.

And he said, they sure do make it look real, don't they?

And I said, you know what I heard?

That is for real.

You know those Hollywood people, they'll do anything.

He said, damn.

I did a lot of gimmicks with the thing. I think in Sarasota, I...

got an injunction to stop the picture from being shown in the town.

Unfortunately, the injunction stuck.

I was going to get the injunction as a fair -minded citizen and then go down

have it lifted, but the judge, well, so we had to play Bradenton the next town

up. But I would say that that little $24 ,000 picture brought back roughly a $30

million.

Gross. Oh, yeah.

That blood piece was terrible.

Well, you know what they did? They cut off a pig's head or something like that,

wasn't it? I mean, I didn't even see it. I didn't want to see it. I can't stand

to see things like that.

It all got kind of ugly fast.

And, you know, while you still couldn't show sex, the

nudie substituted, you know, other forms of shock for them, mostly violence.

You know, or really ridiculous storylines. I mean, really, really

Because you still couldn't show sex, so you had to come up with something.

And possibly the weirdest thing are these films they call the roughies. And

just find it interesting that one day you have nudie cuties, the next day you

have roughies. I mean, there doesn't seem to be much of a gap in between.

And the roughies were just... It was as if the audiences for these films were

almost immediately frustrated at watching beautiful women but not being

touch them.

So if we can't touch them, let's beat them up or something. I don't know,

because these films were just really rough and rude.

We were just getting tired of nudist camp pictures and nudie cuties. Let's

something a little different.

When I went out to California with Dan Sonny in

1964, I made what... Today, I don't like to sound too

immodest. He's still considered the standard roughy, and that was a picture

called The Defilers.

Everything they touch is days.

The Defilers.

Two guys who just have to kick, and one of them obviously is able to sort of

control the other one, and they kidnap a girl and just...

abuse her down in the basement as their own personal little toy.

And it's a very unsettling film, and unlike a lot of the other roughies,

not on the side of the guys in this one. You're really on the side of the girl,

and it helps it a bit because it's pretty intense, and it's also very well

and very well filmed.

That's only the biffy chick.

The only way out of there is to pull the chain.

It's inevitable, baby. Why not enjoy it?

That was a good picture. We made money with it.

We made money with it. Dave was doing the whole thing. I was putting up the

money. And Dave was making it and everything.

And I get my money back. We go 50 -50 on the problem.

I was around 55 years old. I was getting a little tired. I had my building down

there, and I was, you know, I wanted Dave to come out here because I knew he

knew something about Chopin.

Working with Dan Sonny was the happiest period of my life. When I first saw

Sonny Amusement, it wasn't a motion picture company. It was the winter

of a carnival.

There was the wax figures. There was the body of Elmer McCurdy, the mummified

body of this old Oklahoma outlaw.

There were stuffed crocodiles hanging from the ceiling.

It was unreal.

Dan's family, the first and foremost family of exploitation in this country,

all of the tales of Dan's father, Louis Sonny, who basically really founded the

exploitation business in this country, became my good

fortune and privilege to become the chronicler.

this family and all of their deeds and adventures which is fun fun fun

The original title of that was The Man Eater, but then the newspaper said they

couldn't take that.

So the whole idea was she was a little tease, and she would lead these guys

on so far and then holler, rape, rape, and they'd get arrested.

So it was a smell of honey and then a swallow of brine.

It's basically a cock teaser film. I mean, there's no other way of doing it.

It's about a girl.

It's a wonderful actress named Stacey Walker who only made two features.

Talk about offensive.

She actually leads one guy on so much that he is, you know, he turns into a

rapist. All of a

sudden, he's so turned on by her

that he is forced to run through the streets.

of Los Angeles stop briefly and look at mannequins in a window and then rape the

first girl he sees.

Then he gets shot through the head and you're supposed to feel sorry for him.

Okay, then, and then she, this being a film made for the male audience too, she

receives her comeuppance by ending up becoming a hooker at the end.

Stacey Walker.

Notorious daughter of Fanny Hill and a smell of honey, a swallow of brine. She

was really one of the prettiest girls I ever saw.

What you used to call her precious.

He always treated her as though she was very, very precious.

Two things you find in every one of Dave's exploitation films.

Lesbian scene and a whipping scene.

Doesn't matter what the film is. It doesn't matter what the context is. He's

going to find an excuse to put those two things in there. So in the midst of a

frothy, Silly sci -fi comedy.

One girl gets whipped.

Oh, God almighty.

It's a formula, and, you know, obviously it worked well for him.

You know, I mean, he had him down pat, and, you know, his films made money, and

they were big and successful, and they're the ones that hold up the best.

They're the ones that sell the best. We made pictures that made money. We made

pictures that we lost money.

On a picture we made, she freaked.

I still got like $20 ,000 to get back before I break even.

Dave, that was his baby. He thought that was going to be a gone with the wind.

There are only two kinds of freaks, ladies and gentlemen.

Those created by God and those made by man.

Look, if you must.

The way I describe the film is I call it carny noir.

It almost seems like it was made by somebody with a carnival fetish.

I mean, you just see, I mean, it's like tons of shots of the carnival setting

up, taking down, the carnival at night, the carnival in the day, the booth. And

I find that quite lovely.

I can't compare it to something. His carnival picture.

He had to sleep with that negative.

I had to send it to him to sleep with it.

Sadly, to a film buff like myself, but in many cases, the film is purely

incidental. The film is like, well, Jesus, we've got a great title, we've

great idea, we've got great posters, we've got great ads. Oh, shit, we've got

get a film to go with it. I would spend more time writing the trailer copy or

writing the poster copy than I ever spent writing the script.

If you are under 18, you are breaking the law by even seeing this preview.

Ah, she blows.

Built for filth's sake.

Teddy, a part -time swinger, full -time female, came from a thousand years

beyond. A crock of smut. It's an all -new, all -nude, lewd and

lascivious Zorro.

Here is a Zorro with balls.

What will you do next?

Next? I am getting laid.

Garbage. Unfit to be seen by decent, civilized people.

The heathen ritual of penetration.

Performed on the sweating, pulsating body of the defiled girl. This is a film

that literally assaults the sensual senses.

No matter how many times I am ripped off.

I'm still a sucker for the come on. If they tell me we're going to show you

something you've never seen before, I'm like a damn fool going, really, uncle?

A sweet sickness.

It has also been called eight reels of sewage.

You know, it's the old razzle dazzle, sell the sizzle, not the steak.

That's what it was all about.

And it worked for me, it worked for Bab, it worked for Barnum, it worked for

Bailey. So why change it?

We made a picture called Starlet, and I had a line.

Neuble starlet sucked and then into a vortex of passion was the second line.

And this guy said, okay, you can't use this copy here.

And I said, okay, you cut me. You caught me. So he said, what's wrong?

Like I didn't know. He said, this word neuble.

Neuble?

Yeah, I said, we know what it means. I said, so do I know what it means. What

you think it means? He said, it means naked Negroes.

I said, no, you've got it mixed up with two words, nude and Nubian. It just

means young girls of marriageable age. Look it up. Never mind that. We know

it means.

I said, okay.

Is that all you want changed? He says, yeah. I said, all right. Then blossoming

starlets sucked into a vortex of passion.

He said, now, why didn't you say that to begin with?

See, this is what's wrong with today's movies. Not enough bloody crotch shots.

Where are these people today? Do you think she's a grandmother today? You

brings her little kids in and go, look, watch mommy bear her hooters in this

scene. Now look at the guy bleeding all over them. Yes, mommy used to be in

movies. Sure, there's her ass right now.

The only film I'm aware that Dan was in was Fabulous Bastard from Chicago.

Boy, it was a lot of fun.

It was a lot of fun. I stood down there wheeling, dealing.

Get out of here, you bitch, you!

Or I'll break the goddamn bottle over your head.

I think it was simply that they were having a good time.

And also, when these films were made, you know, they really weren't studied.

We're doing more studying of them now than they ever would have done back

I mean, they played grindhouses and were forgotten about. No one analyzed them.

They weren't reviewed in legitimate papers. The mainstream didn't pay any

attention to this stuff. So what difference does it make? You might as

the films, have a good time, you know, count your loot and get out of town.

There were roughly 750 theaters in the United States by the end of the 60s

that were playing.

or roughies or nudie cuties or, you know, adult films.

But that was the absolute peak.

The name Pussycat became generic with adult theaters all over the country. And

Dan Sonny was the guy that came up with that name.

And where you and Margaret had been to see it. Yeah, we went to see it.

What's new Pussycat or something? No, no.

Pussycat? No, no, no. There was a song? No, no.

Goldfinger. Goldfinger.

Goldfinger. No, the girl in Goldfinger. No, no, no, the Goldfinger. The girl

was. Please believe me, because I've been arguing with you for 25 years on

Goldfinger had a balance out in front of the theater, and the aviator girl that

was bringing in the gold.

Pussy Galore.

Pussy Galore.

Okay.

Okay. You can't talk to him. He's a mule.

I'm a mule.

He's a mule.

I'm trying to tell you.

I'd like to bet you $100, and I'd take your $100 if we lost it.

No, no. Shove it up in your ass.

No, no, no.

You lose me.

Because I don't know if you remember, but I never lose a bet.

Never.

In fact, I even put up a 100 -year tent.

I'm so sure.

The girls that Goldfinger had was the aviators.

They called them Pussy Glower. It wasn't

Pussy Glower.

Son of a bitch, you got me going crazy.

I worked for Dad a few times. I worked for him at the Pussycat down across from

Pershing Square. What is that, Daddy?

Spring? What street is that? Hill Street.

Hill Street.

I would go down and work the cashier's booth.

I never go in the theater because, you know, I was like the girl.

And a very interesting thing happened down there.

I would get a lot of Oriental Japanese men.

buying tickets all the time. And they come in groves and groves and groves.

later on, one time after Vince Miranda

opened the Pussycat on Sunset Boulevard, my husband and I went in there.

And we're sitting in there watching Deep Throat or God knows what.

All of a sudden, like a busload of Japanese men and women came in.

sat there for like half an hour. They all got sat down. They all got up and

left. And Vince, it was on the tour.

It was on the Japanese tour.

The audience was basically a white male past the age of 35,

normally in a business suit, salesman on their lunch hour.

This was the only business where the matinee was as big as the night

So salesmen on their lunch hour would come in.

We had a theater in Minneapolis that I was partnered with a man up there. There

was a phone in the lobby and I could hear these guys.

Well, tell Mr. So -and -so I got a deal with 3M, but I'm going to be late. I

probably won't be back in the office today and hang up the phone, you know,

talking to his secretary. And he'd go into the theater. We were running double

features there.

I do remember in those theaters seeing guys masturbating, you know, under the,

not overtly, but so you were, there were guys there masturbating just at the

bare breath.

And that is what it was all about.

I don't think the guys came there.

to see a plot. The Vice Squad comes in to theaters, and they look, they got a

peek -hole in the men's bathroom, or the women's bathroom, and they want to see

if men are jacking off.

And I don't know why they do that, but it's true. Did you know that?

Oh, yeah.

Every once in a while, they would arrest somebody in my five theaters down

there.

And who do you think they would be, the people jacking off?

Attorneys, ministers?

Teachers, those are the type of people that jack off in theaters.

Pee -wee was jacking off in the theater.

You know, they don't have nothing else to do, I guess.

There was an unwritten law in running an adult theater that no one sat beside

anybody, no one sat in front of anybody or behind anybody.

Dan Sonny had a theater down on Main Street, and one day he just took out

other chair. It looked like a big checkerboard.

I have no interest in this stuff today because most of the porn made today is

not movies. They're simply masturbatory aids.

Our secret was the old Carney tease. Boy, we didn't see it this week, but

week we're going to see it. Did you see the previews? Ha, ha, ha. Oh, boy, we've

got to come back next week.

But here with explicit films, the minute you raise the curtain, you're giving

away the third act.

Where do you go from there? It just wasn't fun anymore.

It wasn't my cup of tea.

That's why we're out of the businesses.

Hardcore took over.

God, I got to pee.

How are your prostrate glands? Pretty good? Very good, Danny. As I said, since

started taking that Palmetto.

Go ahead, Danny.

Mention my name, you get a good seat.

Where's Mike?

Here he is.

Mike, hey, hey, hey. Hey, kid.

How you doing, Mike?

You look like you grew two inches.

I'm sorry I'm so dirty, Dan. Come on in.

This is where I've been keeping everything.

This will remind you of your old place.

Oh, my God. It really does.

Well, is this all yours?

Oh, you're crazier than I am.

Dan, it gets even better. Oh.

I can't believe it.

I'm a pretty organized guy, huh, Dan?

Young in the den, this is a colony pussy.

No, no, no, no.

Colony. Wait a minute. That says pussy there.

Oh, pussy galore. Pussy galore. You know, you and I have been in this

so long that the word film had two syllables.

I said to him, I said, nobody's interested in this old

stuff. And he said, just give me a shot.

And when I told you about it, you said the same thing. Who'd look at that junk?

But I've been seeing things on these new pictures that I think some of our old

shit's better than new ones. That costs a million dollars.

I really mean it. I know. I agree with you.

I agree with you.

So probably the most exciting thing is these guys are still in the game.

You know, for ten more years when they thought it was completely over, they

dumping the stuff, they were clean, they're all moving in different

you know, to retire and whatnot.

I came along, and now we've gone from video to television to clips, stock

footage, where this stuff is going to be used over and over again and seen

constantly probably until the end of time.

Is that a school over there? Yeah, it is. What kind of school?

Elementary.

Don't tell him you're over there. I know. Isn't that just, you know?

Danny, you're still thinking back in those terms. Hey, little boy, you want

buy some filthy pictures?

Every day for 28 years, I drove this.

And we had nice offices, didn't we? We sure did.

All right, here we are on Cordova Street. This is where it all happened.

Silvestri is still here, Al. This used to be the big popcorn plant.

And then all of the theater equipment dealers were down here.

The neon company. The neon company. Here we are.

Park right here. Park right here.

Look, they got a gate on there.

I don't blame them.

I don't blame them. Okay, we're here.

Well, Danny, we're home.

We're home.

There it is down there.

Yeah. Oh, shit.

You got it.

Oh, God.

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

Here, Danny.

Give me your hand.

Give me your hand. Okay. Okay.

Okay, thank you, Danny. Okay, baby. Thank you, Danny. You better lock the

Yeah, lock the car. It'll be gone before... Danny, we're back.

We're back on Cordova Street. Well, they painted the building. They painted it.

It looks good. They put bars up.

Looks good.

Remember, EVI used to be up there.

Presbyterian Church.

Haram, Haram Presbyterian Church.

Can you imagine this citadel of sin becoming a church?

That's right.

Then, Armand was in here. Yeah, the next door, the photographic studio we had

next door. The photographic studio we owned, ultra -volume photo.

And we used to grind out.

Well, I guess 5 ,000 stills a day if you had to. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Then Armand was in here with the poster.

Poster company was in there. In there.

And then our little Mexican artist, Rudy, was here.

Yeah, right there. He was good.

Yeah, he was quite a guy. He was a whale of an artist.

A cocksman.

See,

we had a regular.

A regular film roll here, you know, with vaults and cutting rooms and

everything.

My dad built all this stuff here. That was a pretty good little insert stage.

We shot down in Santa Monica, and then when we wanted to shoot the scenes for

the group, we'd shoot it inside there. You wouldn't know the difference.

See, these pictures, a lot of these, out of 100 pictures that I donated to UCLA.

90 % of them, not 90, but 70 % of them was made by other producers that died,

like Irving Claw in New York.

Well, after they died, I went and bought these negatives from their estates,

like J .D. Kennes, you've heard of him, and Willis Kent, and all those people. I

went ahead. For some reason, I don't know, I guess I was the buyer, and I

up with them, and now that's why my name is on UCLA, because I donated 100

pictures to them.

And that's it. That's the end.

They should have given you a doctrine.

You know, isn't it funny? I don't actually remember when we came here.

It could have been 1950.

It's cold.

God, it's cold as hell.

Don't you catch cold, though.

See how I walk? I walk like... It's terrible how I walk.

You all right?

Oh, yeah, I'm fine.

Actually, you should walk some every day, Danny.

I try to walk a mile every day. Yeah.

Well... Look at the picture.

Wow. Look at it. They don't shit on your head.

That's great.