Some of Those Responsible: Ross Hagen

October Horrorshow: Click: The Calendar Girl Killer

For about two-thirds of Click: The Calendar Girl Killer, the movie flirts with being an erotic thriller, featuring a passel of middle-aged Hollywood b-listers cashing checks. Then, for the final act, the movie makes a hard turn into slasher horror. It’s a change in tone that’s unusual, only because there is no indication this will happen. It’s obvious to viewers that violence will be coming in the final act, but not the scale, and not how it is depicted.

Something of a vanity project in the world of b-movies, Click was written by Hollywood acting stalwarts Ross Hagen and Hoke Howell, with David Reskin and David Chute. Hagen also directed alongside longtime stunt man John Stewart. To make it a family affair, Hagen’s wife, Claire, co-produced. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Click: The Calendar Girl Killer”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Hellcats (1968), or, The Heck Kittens

“You’ve seen the guys. Now here are the psycho mad mamas who ride with them. They’re The Hellcats!”

So says the trailer to The Hellcats, the 1968 film from writer (with Tony Huston) and director Robert F. Slatzer. The trailer promises a biker gang flick along the lines of The Wild Angels, only with ladies in the lead. Well, that’s a lie, invented to trick unsuspecting would-be viewers into seeing this dog. There are women bikers in this movie, sure, but it’s an equitable relationship with the men in the biker gang. That makes it unique in this subgenre, where women are usually relegated to the role of property, but a lie, nevertheless. It’s not the first misleading trailer for a film ever made, and it won’t be the last. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Hellcats (1968), or, The Heck Kittens”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Droid Gunner, aka Cyberzone

His name isn’t in the credits, but Roger Corman was an executive producer on this piece of shit, which means a viewer can expect a masterful showcase of parsimonious filmmaking. Director Fred Olen Ray wasn’t given two pennies to rub together to make this flick, and it shows. Just about anything of consequence in the entire film was shot in the same three locations: an industrial basement, a dive bar, and an alley. That’s it. And, despite this being made in the mid-1990s, Corman and company didn’t spring for anything remotely resembling contemporary special effects, instead relying on work that belonged in cheap sci-fi from twenty years earlier. Hell, it could even be cribbed from a different Corman movie. He did that all the time. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Droid Gunner, aka Cyberzone”