DRIVE-IN MASSACRE (1976) (Severin Blu-ray Review)

DRIVE-IN MASSACRE (1976) 

Label: Severin Films 
Region Code: Region-Free
Duration: 74 Minutes 
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English DTS-HD MD with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Stu Segall
Cast: John F. Goff, Steve Vincent, Douglas Gudbye, George Flower, Robert E. Pearson, Norman Sheridan, Bruce Kimball

This low-budget proto-slasher is set at a small town drive-in cinema in Southern California, a seedy joint run by an even seedier proprietor, the wonderfully bad-dressed former carnie sword-swallower (no that's not a euphemism) named Austin Johnson (Robert E. Pearson), a bad-tempered baldie who bares more a bit of a resemblance to Church of Satan founder Anton Lavey. Austin runs the movie joint with the help of a slow-witted laborer (and former carnie geek) named Germy (Douglas Gudbye). The local drive-in joints a popular place for teens and horny lovers to congregate, but a sword-wielding maniac is on the loose at the drive-in and lops the head off of a guy before stabbing his lady friend right through the neck, the decapitation is a nice bit of Herschel Gordon Lewis-esque cheapie gore to kick things off proper and then were off and running with a damn decent body count throughout. 

Local detectives Mike Leary (John Goff, The Fog) and John Koch (Bruce Kimball, Love Camp 7) arrive to investigate the initial double-homicide, they interrogate Austin and Germy looking for possible suspects, with Germy offering fingering a local pervert named Orville (Norman Sheridan) who is known to frequent the drive-in and whack-it while peeping on young couples through their car windows. The inept cops launch a befuddling sting operation posing as a couple parking at the drive-in, with one of the cops in the most unattractive drag I think I've ever seen, a ploy also used in The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) the very same year. However, even with the cops in attendance the sword wielding maniac manages to rack up a few more victims... and even after several murders happen over the course of as many nights no one thinks to closes the damn drive-in down, and now wonder, patrons don't seem to care about the maniac on the lose, business is booming, and goers are willing to risk their heads for some necking time!

While this inept drive-in cheapie will never be highly regarded as a proto-slasher or anything else it's got a decent body count and some cheap gore that will pass the time just fine, but if I'm being completely honest it's about a half-hour's worth of a movie with 43-minutes of patience-testing padding, but something keeps me coming back to it. The kills and set-ups are fun but this thing is padded with tons of z-grade filler including voice over narration, and an over abundance of red-herrings, including a from-out-of-nowhere subplot featuring co-writer George "Buck" Flower (They Live) as a deranged man stalking a young girl through a warehouse, it's strange stuff, the first watched the movie it sent my head spinning, wondering if I'd missed something earlier, but no, it's just a bizarre detour to pad the run time. 

The true joy Drive-In Massacre is not that it's some forgotten slasher  classic but that it's a bad slasher movie with a fun drive-in premise, with loads of bad police procedural bullshit, cheap action and gore and awful-ly entertaining dialogue. Some of the lines uttered here are deliciously eye-rolling, such as drive-in proprietor yelling "You really want to talk to this piece of puke?" and "You better watch it, you might be eating your father" when he catches one of the cops eating a ham sandwich, which did kind of make me laugh for real. 

Audio/Video: Drive-In Massacre (1973) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films in association of Dristribpix whose logo also appears on the spine of the Blu-ray. Not sure what their involvement is, but this is advertised as being restored from the original camera negative which was supposedly "found in the ruins of the Sky View Drive-In Movie Theater near Oxnard", and whether that's true or not is less important as how fucking cool it sounds! Framed in 1.78:1 widescreen the image is very pleasing, this is a movie I've seen several times on various public domain collections - all culled from fullframe VHS sources -  and all were uniformly bad. Severin's Blu-ray is the first time I've seen it in proper widescreen, and the image looks pretty great. Grain can be a bit chunky at times, and then there's some minor print damage and speckling to contend with, but this is still a pleaser with surprising amounts of 70's ugly fine detail, but it still has plenty of that grindhouse patina. 

Audio on the disc comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono with optional English subtitles, the source is a bit limited and doesn't have the spiffiest fidelity but it is clean and sounds true to the source. 

Reversible Artwork 

Onto the extras we get a brand-new audio commentary from director Stu Segall, plus new interviews with Star/Co-Writer John F. Goff (who plays one of the cops), actor Nick Sheridan (the peeping-tom), and a video interview with the director as well, plus a theatrical trailer. They really give this one more than it might deserve, and that's why I love Severin Films, they're always giving these under-seen, under-loved movies spiffy new releases, such as they did with Blackenstein (1973) and Axe (1975), both of which got the deluxe Severin treatment on Blu-ray. 

The single-disc Blu-ray release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork, the a-side featuring the the traditional artwork of the slashed victim spilling upside down from her car, the b-side featuring an illustration of a sword-wielding man in a shroud (pictured above) - the disc itself features a version of the a-side artwork.  

Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Director Stu Segall
- Drive-In Days: Interview With Star / Co-Writer John F. Goff (16 min) HD
- Norm Sheridan Recalls Drive-In Massacre (12 min) HD 
- Making the Massacre: Interview With Director Stu Segall (7 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD 

Drive-In Massacre (1976) might be for the die-hard schlock junkies only, but I think it has loads of 70's z-grade cinema charms that might lure in the more casual trash horror fan, wonderfully inept though it may be. For starters it's a fun premise, who doesn't want to see a movie about a madman slicing the heads off of lovers at the drive-in? Add to that some ripe dialogue and a parade of bad cops, perverts, horny lovers, and former carnival freaks and you've got all the fixings for a fine Friday night solo-adventure on the couch. Severin Films once again dive deep to scrape the bottom of the cinema barrel, rewarding us with a tasty slice of z-grade 70's drive-in schlock, thanks guys! 

LOVE CAMP 7 (1969) (Blu-ray Review)

LOVE CAMP 7 (1969) 

2-Disc Limited Edition DVD/BD

Label: Blue Underground
Release Date: January 31st 2017 
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 96 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0, English Dolby Digital Mono 1.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1) 
Director: Lee Frost
Cast: Bob Cresse, Maria Lease, Kathy Williams, Bruce Kimball, John Alderman

Synopsis: The story of LOVE CAMP 7 is based on fact! During the darkest days of World War II, two young American WAC officers volunteer to infiltrate a depraved Nazi Love Camp on a desperate rescue mission. Once inside, they are subjected to unspeakable indignities and horrifying humiliations at the hands of their sadistic captors. Can they survive the sick degradations and perverted orgies long enough to complete their objective and escape with their lives - and bodies - intact? 

Love Camp 7 (1969) has the dubious distinction of being the movie that launched the notorious Nazi exploitation cycle of low-budget movies in the 1970s, it was cooked-up in part by the demented mind of exploitation pioneer/producer Dave Friedman (Blood Feast) and directed by Lee Frost (The Black Gestapo). While it might seem pretty tame in hindsight today this must have been a wild slice of nazi-cinema when it first appeared on drive-in screens, it was even certified as a video nasties in the UK where it is still banned today!

The story begins in 1969 in a London office as a pair of aging men are discussing a business transaction when the conversation turns towards their shared WWII experiences, one of the men details a wartime story that involved sending two undercover women soldiers, WAC Lt. Linda Harman (Maria Lease, The Scavengers) and WAC Lt. Grace Freeman (Kathy Williams, The Babysitter), into a notorious Nazi love camp, a place where the Jewish women were sent to serve as sex slaves to the front line Nazi soldiers and their superiors. So what we have here is a one-two punch of Nazi exploitation cinema mixed with the trappings of a scuzzy women-in-prison film. We have the expected rapes, some forced lesbianism, sadistic rope bondage, whippings, and some good old fashioned Nazi boot-licking, plus nude women as far as the eye can see.  

Their mission, to track down a female scientist named Dr. Martha Grossman who has vital information about the development of a jet propulsion engine that the Allies are keen to have, she was sent to the Nazi brothel when it was discovered she had been leaking critical information to the French Resistance. To that end the women find themselves captured and imprisoned at the infamous Love Camp 7 run by the tyrannical Commandant, played with a bit too much Nazi glee by rumored closet-Nazi Bob Cresse, House on Bare Mountain. 

The women are subjected to the humiliation and rape you would expect from a WIP film with a Nazi twist, making it just that much more hard to swallow, I found some of this stuff difficult to watch, but it is also sort of silly, despite the distasteful content. For example, the American actors portraying British, French and German officer have awful foreign accents, with actor Bruce Kimball (Drive-In Massacre) portraying a more pervy and rapey version of the clownish Schultz from TV's Hogan's Heroes, as Sgt. Klaus Müller. Not all the Nazi's are rapey jerks though, we have a more sensitive type by way of Sgt. Gotthardt (Wes Bishop, Race with the Devil), who is kind enough to make love to, not rape, one of our undercover women, but you know the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi and it doesn't pan out so well for him in the end. 

The movie culminates during an orgy put on for high-ranking sex-mad Nazis, as the French Resistance assaults the prison from outside our women inside stage a daring prison break that goes wrong, with piles of dead Nazis and one of our ladies biting the bullet. The snivelling Commandant (Creese) ends up being blinded by a broken bottle to the face, crying hysterically and blindly gunning away at the women, it made for a high-energy finale. 

Like I said, this is a pretty tame slice of softcore Nazi exploitation compared to what would follow in the 70s, but this is still a seedy roughie with some dark and perverse content. Sure, the plot is a bit on the ridiculous side, just the contention that women soldiers would volunteer themselves to be whores for the Third Reich in a "love camp" in the name of the war effort is dubious to say the least, but that's all part of the charm of exploitation, right? Love Camp 7 earns extra points for being the first slice of Nazi nastiness, and for doing so with a certain amount of restraint that is commendable, we already have Nazi exploitation and WIP tropes in place, without resorting to hardcore sex and more visceral onscreen violence, which would come in the following decade. 

Audio/Video: This slice of Nazi exploitation arrives on Blu-ray from Blue Underground looking way better than I had thought to be possible, having only viewed YouTube clips of this one previously the crystal clear 4K transfer, framed at 1.66:1, is a stunner. Grain is nicely managed, and the amply seen nude women's skin tones look healthy and natural. Blue Underground went back to the recently discovered original camera negative for this 4K restoration and it is mind boggling how nice this looks in HD with loads of fine detail and texture, the image is near flawless with nary a scratch to be found. Like the visuals, the audio sounds great, clean and crisp, no issues with distortion or hiss, while the lossless mono track is not very dynamic it does the trick. 

Extras are a bit thin by the usual standards of Blue Underground, but we do get a extended trailer, a poster and still gallery, and they've licensed the Nazithon: Decadence and Destruction (2013)trailer clip show from Full Moon Entertainment, hosted by the tattooed female SS Officer Frau Bombshell (Michelle McGee), which is a bit silly but hey, it's there to watch if you want. There's also a collectible booklet featuring "The History of Nazi-Exploitation" by author Paolo Zelati which does a good job of detailing the swastika-laden sub genre of nazisploitation. 

The 2-disc DVD/Blu-ray Combo comes in a clear Criterion-style Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork, the main feature and extras are the same on the DVD and Blu-ray, the discs also feature two art options mirroring the reversible sleeve of artwork.  
Special Features: 
- Nazithon: Decadence and Destruction (80 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (8 min) HD     
- Poster and Still Gallery (118 images) HD 
- Reversible Sleeve of Artwork 
- Collectible Booklet featuring "The History of Nazi-Exploitation" by author Paolo Zelati

Love Camp 7 (1969) was the first Nazi Nasty, not the best by any means, but it deserves a certain amount of respect and notoriety for that fact alone, though I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a bit sloppy and funnily inept in a lot of ways, but if you dig exploitation with a nazi twist there's fun to be had, particularly with Bob Creese unleashing his inner Nazi as the seething Commandant, he's way over the top and loads of fun. Blue Underground's Blu-ray looks phenomenal, I wish it had some interviews, featurettes or a commentary to accompany the film but the new 4K restoration is awesome, so now you can enjoy this notorious Nazi nasty in all it's crisp HD infamy. 3.5/5