Fans of Something Weird Video and its long-running Twisted Sex VHS series in particular got used to jaw-dropping surprises popping up in every volume, but nothing out there could quite compare with a 40-minute fragment of a shocker called Love Goddesses of Blood Island. Shot in vibrant color in Florida around the same time as H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast, this baffling experience combined tiki-style lounge kitsch, pin-up style actresses, and a sudden detour into graphic, entrail-tearing gore. The 28-minute beast was later included as a bonus feature on Image Entertainment's DVD edition of Sting of Death and Death Curse of Tartu, while a longer 46-minute variant from the uncovered A/B negative materials (adding footage and losing some in the process) turned up and was carried by Something Weird as a digital download and DVD-R. In a miraculous feat of exploitation archaeology, the complete version was finally made possible in 2024 by combining the negative materials from Something Weird with prints uncovered at the Library of Congress and Harvard Film Archive, resulting in a 62-minute version debuted in 2024 on Blu-ray from AGFA as the headliner in Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare II. Coming three years after the first volume, it's a step up across the board with three gore-spattered affronts to good taste you can't afford to miss.

Washed up ashore on a remote tropical island, NASA pilot Fred Rogers (Rogers) comes upon the entire population there, namely six bikini-clad women: Aphrodite (Hodges), Rebecca (Wintress), Desiree (Meridith), Pandora (Burton), Eris (Wood), and Valkyrie (Albert). Complete with "jungle foliage" by Florida's Davis Nursery, props by Tropical Traders, and statuary by Frenchy's of Miami, it's a paradise with a very dark side as we've already seen in the opening sequence that these ladies' biggest hobby is tying up and torturing any men who cross their path. Poor Fred gets used for manual slave labor by day and stud work by night rotating among the women, and eventually we get to see his Nazi predecessor's nasty fate in outrageous detail-- which sets the stage for catfights, comedy, and trysting before the obligatory twist ending.

The exact identity and history behind Love Goddesses of Blood Island took a while to piece together, with Something Weird's Lisa Petrucci laying out much welcome detail in the booklet enclosed here. Shot in 1964 with funding raised by building contractor and producer Richard S. Flink (whose Thunderbird International handled the two Bill Grefé films mentioned above), it was directed by Gordon H. Heaver (who makes a quick grinning cameo during the end credits), written by Blood Feast star William Kerwin, and barely released in early 1965 as Six She's and a He with a fleeting, later North Carolina run as Kiss Me Bloody. Seeing the entire thing put together here is a giddy experience with that glorious intensity you can only find in '60s Florida exploitation films (a la Doris Wishman's nudist camp films). The goofball comedy makes this feel like a cheesecake variation on Gilligan's Island at times, at least until the screeching gore scenes suddenly smack you in the face. On top of that the exotica soundtrack is a ton of fun, and the crazy hairstyles and costumes blend perfectly with the tutti-frutti production design including a purification swimming pool that gets a lot of use here. The image quality here is absolutely immaculate and for most of the running time, with the blazing aesthetic perfectly preserved with shades of red and green that will make your screen throb. As with the other two titles here, you get a DTS-HD 1.0 English mono track with optional English subtitles.

Another short subject shocker that turned a few heads from Something Weird (first seen in its Weird World of Weird promo compilation) is Follow That Skirt, a.k.a. Mondo Weirdo (evidently the name of a two-part anthology film to which it was added), which also draws inspiration from H.G. Lewis and David F. Friedman but adds much, much more nudity into the mix. Here we have a "thrill killer" on the loose in San Francisco, and he's prone to hanging out at apartment complexes where he can pick the prettiest resident as his next victim. Similar to the first act of The Toolbox Murders, it's an odd procedural approach to watching a psycho at work including a crazy game of peek-a-boo in a woman's apartment and some nasty strangling and stabbing for the grindhouse crowd. Then things go completely off the rails in the last ten minutes complete with a very bloody bathtub murder (with frontal nudity galore) and a twisted revelation about the killer's motivation that plays as very un-P.C. these days. Presented here in a gorgeous transfer from the original 16mm reversal positive, it's the perfect centerpiece here and a fine malicious miniature that sets the stage for our third film...

Another early entry in the splatter sweepstakes, The Undertaker and His Pals explores much of the same territory as Lewis and Friedman. The difference here is that the filmmakers go for laughs when they're not splashing fake blood across the screen, though as a result it's somehow less amusing than the "serious," catastrophically acted Blood Feast. Released by none other than Ted V. Mikels back in the day, Undertaker is a valuable and sometimes daring example of how graphic horror began to infiltrate the drive-ins during the beginning of the Vietnam era.

In the film's first and most striking sequence, we see sepia-tone footage of bikers cruising around a neighborhood parking lot. They follow a striking blonde woman to her home and force their way in where, as the film suddenly bursts into color, they impale her on a huge knife. The victim, a Miss Lamb, is just the latest victim in a string of killings performed by two biker/restaurant owners, who take the choicest meats from their prey and provide plenty of business for their buddy, Mort the undertaker (Dannis). Unfortunately, Miss Lamb also happened to be the secretary for a police detective who begins to smell a rat, particularly when the lunatics' restaurant serves suspiciously named plates like "Leg of Lamb." Carnage and hilarity ensue.

Call it what you will, but The Undertaker and His Pals wastes no time during its one hour to pack in as many rib-nudging jokes and gory thrills as possible on its meager budget. Apparently the Lewis-like atmosphere was potent enough to attract Mikels, who picked it up as a co-feature for his immortal The Corpse Grinders. (Legend has it that some explicit, vivisection-like gore footage was toned out by Mikels before the release, but these trims appear to be either lost or a rumor.) Often found in cruddy VHS transfers and numerous unwatchable, ultra-compressed public domain appearances on DVD from iffy labels like Alpha Video and Cheezy Flicks, VCI's DVD from 2000 was the best option around for a long time and still has the best color timing, even if it's compromised by some severe interlacing. The transfer on the AGFA Blu-ray comes from Something Weird's 16mm print (presumably the same one used for their VHS of it as #67 in "Frank Henenlotter's Sexy Shockers from the Vault"), looking brighter than the VCI disc and featuring more image info in the frame. Also included here is a new, funny commentary by Patton Oswalt with AGFA's Jackson Cooper and Bret Berg, which is mostly a loose conversation about their experiences watching films at the New Beverly and thoughts on the works of H.G. Lewis and other pioneering indie horror films like The Honeymoon Killers. Two of them state they had never seen this film until about a week prior, so you'll only get occasional reactions to what's happening on screen. The disc can also be played in a drive-in mode (167m42s) with the whole thing in one sitting, and you can also separately access the trailers and drive-in snipes here including a trailer for Undertaker (with The Corpse Grinders and The Embalmer) and bonus ones for The Devil's Wedding Night and The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio. In addition to the essential and informative booklet mentioned above, you also get a cool 32s collection of Love Goddesses outtakes with some alternate nudie footage in the pool and a 4m59s gallery of pressbook material and other goodies for all three films.

THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS: AGFA (Blu-ray)

THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS: VCI (DVD)

Reviewed on January 1, 2025