27. A group of swingers clean up their act when one of them attempts suicide.

Answer (ab); Suburban Roulette (1968)

After taking a five-year hiatus to work behind the camera, Allison Louise Downe dusted off her acting chops to star in what would be her final movie. Reunited here with Lewis & Friedman regular William Kerwin, the two actors continued to demonstrate a pretty interesting on-camera chemistry between them.

Originally intended as a splatter film, Lewis & Friedman retooled the premise, substituting the new hot-button topic of swinging (back then called ‘wife-swapping’). Not a good flick, to be sure. But it’s arguably Lewis, Friedman and Downe’s best work. The film had two trailers, the first narrated by Downe herself.

Figure 4. The “normal” Suburban Roulette Trailer



What caught the eye (and imagination) of the audience, however, was the second trailer, arguably the sleaziest I’ve ever seen. What’s interesting here is that none of the scenes shot for this second trailer actually appeared in the movie--that and the fact it featured a really sick (but cool) theme song.

Figure 5. The second Suburban Roulette Trailer


Suburban Roulette (1968)
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Almost always, acting in exploitation films ranges from really horrible to almost mediocre. But in this one, Tony McCabe turned in a sparkling performance as the creepy villain. Unfortunately, McCabe died in an automobile crash weeks after wraps, and never lived to see the final product.

Trivia: shot over a weekend outside of O’Hare International Airport, the film crew repeatedly had to stop work to let planes get out of sound range.


28. An old man rescues wayward women so that he can force them to fight and kill each other.

Answer (s); Mr. Mari’s Girls (1967)

A purely offensive film that has something provocative to outrage just about anyone. As one reviewer put it:

This film is pure Exploitation that titillates the viewer with nudity, drug abuse, abortion, and lesbianism….This black and white obscure oddity is a film that will never in a million years be made in the politically correct climate we live in today, so enjoy it if you can find it anywhere.

29. In order to simulate the eating of human flesh, the actors in this movie chowed down on ham covered with Bosco Chocolate Syrup. (According to them, this tasted about as good as it sounds.)

Answer (u); Night of the Living Dead (1968)

For the same reason that a clock which doesn’t work at all is correct precisely twice every day, you’d figure that the exploitation genre would occasionally produce a great movie, if only by accident. But Night of the Living Dead’s success was no accident. For a genre that usually rushed out any script it could, typos and all, George Romero pored over successive drafts, creating tight, intelligent dialogue. According to its producer, Karl Hardman (who also played the antagonist), the final tweaking came at the behest of its star, Duane Jones:

The script had been written with the character Ben as a rather simple truck driver. His dialogue was that of a lower class/uneducated person. Duane Jones was a very well educated man [and he] simply refused to do the role as it was written. As I recall, I believe that Duane himself upgraded his own dialogue to reflect how he felt the character should present himself.

Originally written for a budget of $6,000, Romero approached Hardman, then head of a firm that produced industrial films, about taking on Night of the Living Dead as a side project. Hardman helped Romero amass $114,000, three to five times the budget of most grind house movies.

For some reason, distributors decided to show the picture at kiddie matinees. Consequently, it bombed at the box office in its initial run. But real cinema connoisseurs saw its profundity immediately. Legendarily tough New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael called it.

...one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made — and when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience. . . . The film's grainy, banal seriousness works for it — gives it a crude realism.

Rex Reed wrote of it:

If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic ...don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see it.

Part of the allure of this movie is that it so deftly mirrors the underlying political tensions in the United States during the rough year of 1968, replete with raging war abroad and political assassinations at home. It also helped that the cast had a tremendous chemistry, both off camera and on. As a matter of fact, three of the actors--Hardman, Marilyn Eastman and Kyra Schon--were father, mother and daughter, respectively.

Listed #93 in American Film Institute’s most thrilling movies, it’s spawned a number of sequels, a fairly decent big-budget remake, and a stage play, with a prequel in the works. It’s the only flick on this list I would recommend.

Check out Schon’s website, The Ghoul Next Door. Because Night of the Living Dead is in public domain, you may legally download it, or stream it in its entirety here.