Movies: Run Swinger Run/Sex Club International (1967)

Oh, like you wouldn’t rent movies with those titles. I didn’t come here to be judged.

Actually, I don’t know why I rented them. Sexploitation movies bore me to tears. I prefer thrillers with a generous dollop of sleaze, not titillation with a half-assed plot grafted on. That’s what we get a double dose of here, courtesy of director Barry Mahon.

Sex Club International is the marginally better of the two. The club president can’t complete the simplest task without disrobing and looks just enough like Ann Coulter to give the enterprise some contemporary resonance. The movie is narrated by a regional man of mystery named, I kid you not, Lucky Bang Bang, who reads his lines off cue cards scattered on the floor.

But the good people at Something Weird Video know how to load up a disc with extras. There are several Mahon shorts as well as a collection of trailers for other classics of his oeuvre like Crazy, Wild and Crazy and Good Time With a Bad Girl. Sadly, there is no coming attraction for 1968’s immortal The Diary of Knockers McCalla.

Mahon eventually made the natural transition into children’s films. The disc includes the preview for his micro-budgeted production The Wonderful Land of Oz. Since watching it, I have not been able to sleep. It is that horrifying. I can’t find it online, but these photos will give you a taste of the horror that awaits you.

The best extra is a slideshow of adult film magazine covers accompanied by radio spots from the era. One ad trumpets a movie featuring footage of the birth of a baby. That’s soon trumped by one showing the birth of twins. All for educational purposes only, of course. It makes for quite a time capsule.

Amazing fact: Barry Mahon was the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s character in The Great Escape. Ed Wood gets a biopic and Barry doesn’t? Act I: War Hero! Act two is buck naked and bucking conventions. And in act three Barry gains redemption by reaching out to America’s youth. I’m telling you, this thing writes itself.

Miscellaneous: Links

Yesterday I mentioned The President’s Analyst. Today’s Variety Army Archerd flashback is all about it.

Via Kung Fu Monkey, it’s A World Without Us.

Maybe Bill O’Reilly is right about San Francisco values, because the demon cab is still rolling.

Top Ten Things You Didn’t Know About the New York Mets. Watch the video, it’s better that way.