No Help Coming

Between 1984 and 1986, WVEU (Channel 69) in Atlanta dropped its VEU affiliate programming and served up a schedule of cartoons, music videos, syndicated series and low-budget feature films. Among the latter were such Crown International drive-in faves as The Stepmother (1972) and Trip with the Teacher (1975) starring Zalman King in his most wacked-out performance (and probably the reason that he gave up acting for producing). Other ‘can you believe this?’ oddities that turned up were The Baby (1973) in which a man-hating mom (Ruth Roman) raises her son to be a gurgling, helpless man-baby and The Psychopath (1975) about a deranged kid’s show host who murdered abusive parents. You never knew what was going to turn up on Channel 69 but for a film buff it was a treasure trove of marginalized cinema. It was here that I first saw The Candy Snatchers (1973), a film which in many ways is just as misanthropic, sleazy and uncompromising as Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left which came out the following year. It was actually shocking to see this movie play in a late afternoon slot where school kids could easily tune in but the simple truth is that hardly anybody watched Channel 69 making it easy for something like The Candy Snatchers to pass unnoticed by all but a few.

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Al Adamson’s Kiddie Flick

He was the man behind such softcore sleazefests as Girls for Rent (1974), The Naughty Stewardesses (1975) and Cinderella 2000 (1977). He was also the schlockmeister responsible for exploitation classics such as Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1970) and the seriously deranged Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). He would be the last person you’d expect to make a child-friendly movie but that’s exactly what he attempted with Carnival Magic, which was completed in 1981 but not released until 1983. The film is almost tame enough for a six year old kid but also a terrifically weird and strange experience for older audiences who have seen any of Adamson’s previous work. He’s marching to the beat of a different drummer here and that drummer just happens to be a talking chimpaneze named Alexander the Great. Continue reading