In Search of Blood Mania's Elusive Peter Carpenter

Pull up any reviews for either of Peter Carpenter's 1970/1971 movies Blood Mania and Point of Terror, and you'll see the same rote review. Carpenter was a bad Tom Jones impersonator, the music was bad, the stories were incomprehensible, the women were hot. What's the point if you're just writing the same idiotic blog fifty other people have already cut and pasted from the central hive?

First of all, of course the movies were bad. Rumor is Carpenter had to hustle just to put together the money to keep the productions afloat. But to say Peter Carpenter was untalented, or didn't have enough sex appeal to carry a production is foolish. No, he didn't leading man talent, but he sure as hell had more than sufficient sex appeal to make an independent about a guy who was handy with the ladies. I didn't doubt for a moment in either one of these movies that Carpenter couldn't have bedded these women on, or off screen.

The songs in Point of Terror are bad? No shit, Sherlock. But they're not much worse than any song I would hear if I turned on the radio right now. The three original songs Carpenter supposedly performs in the movie are titled "This is...," "Drifter of the Heart," and my favorite, "Lifebeat." I enjoy all three songs, and if Carpenter performed them he's better than 90% of the standard fare out there. Let me know when you write, produce, star, and sing the songs in your first movie. Carpenter was reportedly a jazz dancer in Las Vegas in his earlier years, and as far as recognizing that his act was semi-ridiculous and campy, co-star Dyanne Thorne stated that everyone was aware of that on set and playing it up. 

Let me get this straight: though. Peter Carpenter was talented and driven enough to write, produce, star in, sing in, and generally carry two entire movies in a twelve month period, but for every other writer on the internet that deserves mockery, not a "hell ya!." ???? 

Almost nothing is written about Peter Carpenter's life, career, or death. If IMDB is to be believed, he died in December 1971 in Malibu, California, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, although co-star Leslie Simms states in an interview she remembers him dying in the late 70's or early 80's of pneumonia. What an odd enigma Carpenter is. No clear record of either his birth or death. How is it possible he might have made these movies back to back for Crown International, then disappeared altogether for up to a decade before his death? With the advent of the internet we assume all the information in the world is right here at our fingertips. It's strange, and I must confess somewhat exhilarating, that there are still some mysteries out there.   

Lounge singer Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter, BLOOD MANIA, VIXEN!) spends his evenings performing at the Lobster House, waiting for his big break to crack the Billboard's Top 10.  He has a chance meeting with the beautiful older Andrea (Dyanne Thorne, ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS, ILSA HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHIEKS) who happens to be the wife of a powerful record producer. She takes Tony under her wings, offering him opportunities and success in his singing career.  However, things take a deadly turn as Tony is soon enveloped in a twisted web of murder and adultery.  Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get what you wish for!  Featuring Carpenter singing his big hits "This Is...", "Lifebeat", and "Drifter of the Heart", POINT OF TERROR is an exercise in suspense in which there may be no escape! - 

If you want more of Peter Carpenter you're almost out of luck. He had a role in Russ Meyer's Vixen, and starred in one other movie, "Love Me Like I Do," which is out of print. So, if you're one of those with an odd fascination about Carpenter, Blood Mania and Point of Terror are your only road maps.

It's possible the marketing of Blood Mania and Point of Terror helped to elicit the vitriolic response by some reviewers and fans of horror. You see, neither is what we would strictly classify as a horror movie. They're more accurately described as soft porn soap operas with some action and horror. The movie posters and trailers didn't help matters by promising "the outer limit of fear." Rhino didn't do anything to allay the confusion when they included "Point of Terror" in their Horrible Horrors collection. Nonetheless, if you go ahead and pull up any one of the other blogs about Point of Terror or Blood Mania on the interwebs, the second sentence will be an angry declaration that these are not horror movies. No shit, huh, Sherlock?

But I am far from being Peter Carpenter's biographer. I have more questions than answers. The main one being if Carpenter did not die in 1971 why didn't he make any more movies? What happened to him. I'm curious why almost nothing is written about him.

Actor/dancer/writer/singer/producer Peter Carpenter circa 1971, on the shoot of his movie Point of Terror. After the movie was released there is no clear record of what happened to Carpenter. He never appeared on film again. 

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Satan's Children: An Early Seventies Tribute To Satan, Homophobia, and Molly Hatchet

Satan's Children, Just your typical early 70's tract about Satan, queers, and Molly Hatchet. Here's how it breaks down.

Same old story: Bobby Douglas, not the Bears' quarterback, is a teen in Florida, living with his step- dad and step- sister, presumably after his mother has died. He's not really welcome in the home anymore, and is used primarily as a servant. His step-sister especially likes to torment him, like in this scene where she taunts him about his small penis, then later spills the beans about Bobby's secret marijuana stash at the dinner table, prompting Bobby to snap and run away from home. 

He dejectedly wanders the streets as sappy music lets us know this is sad wandering time. He enters a diner and gets hit on by an old queer. It is here we start to learn someone really has a bad feeling about gays. He is saved by a young macho dude just in time, taken for an exhilarating motorcycle ride, and invited back to his place to crash. It seems like a godsend. Maybe this guy will show Bobby the ropes and make an upstanding citizen out of him. For sure it's better than going down the trail of queerdom, right?

Wrong. Here's Bobby being gang queer-raped by the members of Molly Hatchet, three years before the release of their self-titled debut album. They decide after an evening of Flirting With Disaster that they're done with Bobby, and roll him out of the car at about forty miles an hour, where he fortunately ends up...

In a Satanic Hippie cult's backyard. These twat cannons like doing things like burying people in sand and covering them in syrup for the ants to enjoy, and hanging whoever it seems is out of vogue with satan this week. These are jerkoffs, but one thing everyone can agree on is gays are bad, especially satan. I never knew this, butsatan hates homosexuality, and Bobby is not welcome at the commune, even though one of the girls has taken a shine to him. She's the one buried here.

There's a whiz bang finish here. Lots of action. Bobby gets even. I won't ruin the fun by detailing the gruesome events. His sister does apparently find out what his penis size really is. 

Then everything ends on a real happy note as the cult members revel in this extended crucifixion scene of someone who has engaged in no injurious behavior to them or satan. 

The story of the making of the movie is rather interesting in itself. Back in the fall of 1973, longtime WTVT director Joe Wiezycki decided to return to his dream of directing an honest-to-gosh low-budget feature, shot entirely in the Tampa Bay area, using local cast and crew.  His first effort five years earlier was called "Willy's Gone."  It ended badly when the film failed to gain adequate distribution.  Making matters worse, the film's investors were all Channel 13 employees...each contributing $1,000.  But Joe was determined to prevail and become the Alfred Hitchcock of Tampa Bay. - from Making of satan's children

Long story short, he made the movie. I'm watching it right now. It's entertaining as hell, but the homophobia is a bit offputting, and Satanists always seem to make jackasses out of themselves when portrayed in cinema. Go ahead and give this pig a ride. You'll probably like it.  Pin It

The Wailing aka Murder Syndrome aka Fear aka Delrium aka Satan's Alter

I really love the compilation movie Zombiethon. Probably far more than I should, but there are sentimental reasons involved. In the late 80's and early 90's I used to rent the Wizard Video big box VHS version of Zombiethon every six months from the Dollar Video. These were the days when the video store was a destination. You got your snacks, you got an armload of videos, and maybe you didn't leave the apartment for a few days. Later I found out maybe you also had a personality disorder, but if you've got to have something, having a disorder that leads you to hole up in your dark apartment for four days eating instant Won Ton soup, drinking Tab Cola, and watching zombie movies on VHS doesn't seem like the worst thing that could happen. 

There are seven or eight zombie movies Zombiethon draws clips from. I can't name them all off hand right now. I actually probably can... Zombie Lake, A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Oasis of the Zombies, The Invisible Dead, The Alien Dead, Zombie, and the movie I'm watching tonight (if it ever loads on the Amazon player, that is) for the first time. It's called Murder Syndrome. And it's called Fear. And it's called Delirium. And it's called Satan's Alter. And ultimately they decided to title it The Wailing for worldwide English-language release. 

There's really no good reason for me to have rented it at one in the morning, but nonetheless, here we go. 

I guess seeing that box with the Wizard Video logo I'd probably like to find a copy of this on VHS. Pretty standard opening. Actor gets overwrought, tries to strangle and actress during filming of a movie, decides he needs a vacation, so retreats to an eerie family estate to relax. And it is is eerie. The actor's mother, who is supposedly dying, but still looks pretty dang good, seems really happy to see her son. Uncomfortably happy, and is terribly disappointed to see her son has brought along his girlfriend. I wonder what's going to happen. 

Methinks Anita Strindberg is a little too hot to have a strapping thirty year old actor son. But nudity to the rescue. What next? Are you going to tell me the actor's friends start showing up and putting themselves in precarious positions where they could easily be knocked off in gruesome ways by someone, or some thing, that inhabits the estate?

Listen, I'm just going to have a quick shag with Laura Gemser, you know, the chick who played one of the Emmanuels. What could go wrong? 

Ahhhhhh. Shit, I hope nobody saw that. They'll put her spleen back in, right? This is turning out to be a very bad weekend. What else could even possibly go wrong?

Son of a bitch. Listen, I'm going to go watch the final 57 minutes of this movie and have a cup of tea. If you want to know what happens, you go ahead and rent The Wailing on Amazon, or wait for Netflix to add it, which, let me look at my watch, ain't never going to happen. Seems pretty good from the bit I was able to watch between typing this and having only bar of connectivity right now. 

I lied, I'm back. Because this chick goes down the stairs, runs into the spider, decides to run through the woods, then ends up back in the basement, where these two figures are waiting for her as Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" plays. And that's pretty more than ok for two a.m. I'll let you know if anything equally that good happens in the last thirty minutes. 








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Class Reunion Massacre

Class Reunion Massacre T.G. Finkbinder

You wonder why some movies were ever made. The ones that perplex me most are the one-off movies made by a team of directors, writers, and actors who never tried to make another movie again. Electraglide In Blue is a recent example I saw. There are dozens of others. When the movie happens to be good it just adds to the question "Why did they just make one movie?" I have friends who make movies, and I know the process is so brutal and exhausting that it seems impossible anyone could ever do it without a passion for the process. The Redeemer: Son of Satan is far more than just a competent first movie from a creative team that got lucky: it's a good movie, period. So why did writer William Vernick and director Constantine Gochis never even attempt to make another movie again? I have no idea.

Only two members of the crew of Redeemer: Son of Satan went on to work in the business at all. Actress Jeanetta Arnette, who plays Cindy, and T.G. Finkbinder, who plays the Redeemer himself. Finkbinder found his was into a couple of roles as an extra, but soon gave up the movie business and is now an English teacher. He's the one pictured in the scene above, my favorite, which demonstrates a couple of the factors that make this movie enduringly successful. The setting is perfect, and not at all wasted by the director and art direction. It was shot in a military academy, and although the school is supposed to have been abandoned for a decade in the film, it has a perfectly maintained grounds, Olympic sized pool, and auditorium. 

This is Redeemer, Jr. He stars in a concurrent storyline involving kids who sing a church choir. Overall the story is pretty standard, and doesn't allow facts or continuity to get in the way of the fun. It has been pointed out elsewhere this movie has a meanstreak, and I suppose that is true. The six people singled out in the beginning for punishment of their sins by The Redeemer might be jerks, or worse, but probably are no better or worse than everyone else on the planet. They really haven't done anything that would warrant being sentenced to summary execution by a religious nut, and it if it's even explained how this guy even knows them to have known who they were or what sins they were committing ten years after graduation I didn't see it. But those are the quibbles. And if you're a fan of B genre horror of the 70's you have to see this movie.  Pin It