Prepare yourself for the terror the prison of madness.

We have few inter and Nonritter.

Welcome to Unsung Horrors.

With LUNs.

And Denica.

Leave all your sanity behind.

It can't help you now.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Unsung Horrors, the podcast where we review underseen horror films, specifically those with less than one thousand views on letterboxed.

I'm Lance, I'm Erica, and this is our Wild Animals having Sex episode.

Yes, in case you are not in our discord, we did announce that we are now an animal porn podcast.

Yes, so we invite everybody to join.

Bring up you know, there's no kink shaming, Bring up your fantasies, bring up what you bring up, any animals you want to see.

We will be talking about animals fucking this episode.

Okay, so I guess get prepared to be turned on.

That's what I'm getting at.

I know I'm terrible, but no, seriously, So this episode's film does involve.

Animals, yes, but not thankfully nos.

Yeah, no reality with the kiddie.

Yeah no.

We will be diving into this director's film called sex and the animals, probably talking about it admittedly more than the Black Cat, which is the film we're covering for this episode, another adaptation of egg All and Poe's Wonderful short story.

This is the second time we're covering it.

We did it was our second episode ever that we recorded in separate locations in twenty twenty during COVID Luigi kat SI's Black Cat, which was a fun episode.

This one is from nineteen sixty six, directed by Harold Hoffmann.

As of this recording, it has six hundred and seventeen logs on letterbox.

You can find it streaming on two B It's on YouTube and apparently This Black Cat was thought to be a lost film until the late Great Mike Rainy, the head of Something Weird Video, He discovered a print back in the early two thousands.

So the first time it was made available was thanks to the Great Something Weird, who put out a DVD in two thousand and one as a Black Cat double feature, the other film being The Fat Black pussy Cat from nineteen sixty three.

And apparently that DVD has special features a lot for this pussy Cat movie, but it has a deleted prologue for the Black Cat, and I'm wondering what that'll be.

I'm wondering if it's that adorable.

Did you see the version where it's like the cat's playing with the yarn and it says like for your information, this isn't restrict.

I wonder if that's the problem.

Maybe that or even just like the him reciting a lot line from pose yeah thing with like and it's all like the it's all scratchy and stuff.

Maybe that's it.

It could at the very beginning.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Yeah, because that because that one you watched a version that had that.

They both did our YouTube Man two B had that.

Oh yeah, I think you're right.

I thought it just started off with the guy like reciting po That's what I'm talking about.

Oh yeah, well the YouTube one has the cats with the disclaimer, right, and then both versions have the guy reciting po.

Okay at the lake or.

Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe that is a prologue.

Maybe that's the version that's up like everywhere.

And Severn also released a limited edition box set in twenty nineteen called Hemisphere Box of Whores.

Do you have that?

No?

It was limited to thirty five hundred copies.

Hemisphere Pictures is the Philippine US production distribution company you know, they did a lot of sixty seventies v whores, including the Black Cat, and in the Severn set, the Black Cat is included as a double feature Blu ray disc with the Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism, which is interesting.

Yeah, and the other films are The Blood Drinkers Curse of the Vampires in al Adamson's Brain of Blood.

So I looked it up.

People are reselling it for you know, an ungodly amount of money, and so if you got any listeners, have it.

Good, good job.

Yeah, the Black Cat.

Everybody knows the Poe story.

If you don't, well, there's gonna be spoilers ahead.

Actually just pause this and read it.

It's like a couple of pages.

Yeah, it's just very long.

But in this version we have an unstable writer named Lou who is gifted a black Cat as an anniversary gift by his lovely wife Diana, and Lou is a complete asshole.

He gets drunk, he taunts all his exotic pets, offering champagne to his raccoon, messing with his two can, being a total dick to his pet monkey, point hot coffee on him.

We're going to talk about his you know, his room of caged exotic pets.

Later and he inevitably murders the black Cat, whose name Pluto by the way, just like impose short story.

Obviously, he's a bit insane.

So after a stint in an asylum, including some much needed shock treatment, Lu gets released but soon starts drinking again.

He gets another black Cat that he finds in a water fountain, and he starts believing that Pluto has returned from the dead to get his revenge again.

We kind of all know how it ends, but we will be getting into that.

It's immortal classic of horror and hate.

The Black Cat.

The most terrifying story ever filmed.

Fill me a cat, I thought you were my friend, Black Damon?

He does?

Nowhere he goes?

Can he escape the torment of the Black pat.

So this is directed by Harold Hoffman, and I couldn't find much about him looking at his resume, though in his affiliation with Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan, he's clearly a Texan.

He has a handful of writing, directing, and producing credits.

Almost all of them are associated with Larry Buchanan.

And for those just for some like you know, some background Larry Buchannon.

He was pretty much like a poor man's Texas version of Roger Corman, you know, very low budget, pumped out a lot of sci fi horror films.

A lot of them were like repurpose stolen ideas from existing Corman films.

Yeah, and he made films.

Most of his films were made with for under two thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars.

He made a few films that were under ten k, very diy stuff.

Most of them, if not all of them, were filmed in and around Texas, which is always fun to watch being a Texan.

I hate to admit that, you know, Texas sucks, but it's cool to see cool landmarks.

But I was reading more about him and his basic formula is having a cast of about four actors and two basic indoor locations, which is very much what we're seeing here.

Yeah, that's exactly what this is.

Usually in Buchanan films.

There was a poorly constructed monster with like ping pong balls for eyes, which we always love.

I read if he couldn't afford to rent special cameras and equipment and wanted to shoot like a fight scene or any type of slow motion scenes, he would have his actors pretend to move in slow motion and that would be in the movie.

Also, it took time to synchronize sound, so in his films.

Most of his films have very minimal dialogue, which we also see in The Black Cat, and he would do a lot of voiceover narration.

He was referred to as the Schlockmeister for his arguably poorly made films, which he nickname, he embraced, he loved.

But Hoffman, the director for The Black Cat, was an assistant for Buchanan for most of his film career, so it's easy to see a bunch of similarities between The Black Cat and a lot of Larry buchanan DIY films.

If you're familiar with a lot of his movies.

I'd argue that The Black Cat looks way better than any Buchanan film I've watched so far, and mainly it's because of a cinematographer who will get to here in a bit, but I think Larry Buchanyon would be a fun director to dive into at some point.

Anyways, The Black Cat is really Hoffman's only film which you can kind of rate his ability as a director because his only other directing credit is something we had just been talking about.

He was going by Hal Dwayne in this credit.

It's a documentary called Sex in the Animals from nineteen sixty nine, which is basically a collection of pre recorded segments of animals just going at it.

Yeah, with a couple of supervising zoologists or biologists.

Or yeah, e college or whatever.

They're just they just walk along the beach picking up rocks and narrating this thing.

Yeah, but we have to talk about this documentary.

It's sorry, sorry folks, but if you watch it, we put it.

I put a link to the movie in our discord.

It's on my Google drive.

It's public.

You can you can watch it if you want.

It's ninety six minutes long.

Yeah, so there's a lot of it's it's very informative and it's not just like music playing over animals mating.

You get a lot of information.

And I actually have, like.

I learned quite a few things.

I have a lot.

I have a half page of a few interesting Okay, I have like five things.

Well, yeah, I guess my go go lance.

Yeah, I get a little wordy on my bullet points here.

I I think both of our reviews on letterbox of this are about this are the same thing because the opening.

It's a cold open, and this fucking thing starts with a male and female turkey obviously catching each other's eye, slowly walking up to each other while a fucking sitar is playing like a beautiful melody, and this very you know, huge male turkey starts mounting the female turkey and it's a utter chaos.

It's the music's a little it's it's it's terrifying.

Well like one of his feet, clawed feet, pinning her head down.

And I was like, is this the tone that we're setting for this movie?

No kickshaming if she wants to be strangled, you know whatever, Like I don't.

I'm not going to kink shame humans.

I'm not going to kink shame animals.

As long as everything is consensual, it's all good.

But this opening, I was like, is this what I'm really going to be watching for the next ninety minutes?

Right?

And it's not.

It's not.

It turns into like a national geographic something you might watch like in a nineteen seventies biology class.

I would have actine.

It's very much like this felt like something I could have watched in my biology class in high school.

Yeah, I do feel though that it feels a bit wrong to watch something like this without David Attenborough.

Okay, like I feel like he should be narrating all of these things, like and watching it without his voice just felt wrong.

Like can you imagine David Attenborough coming in during the horse fluffer scene where like and he's just like and now we have the stable owner coming in to prepare the stallion to mount the mayor and you can see his hand like, you know, rubbing the this is essential, Like I can't.

I obviously I do a terrible David Attenborough, but him talking about a stallion's penis would just be the greatest.

It's amongst that.

Yeah, and obviously I kind of went into this knowing, Okay, the horse fucking and will probably be the most graphic.

Sure, but I think the rhinos actually took that.

There's a zebras and then they have the rhinos, which is very graphic.

But yeah, they have pigs, beavers, geese, geckos, pelicans, frogs, fish just going at it.

No ducks, sorry, Jim, Yeah there's no ducks.

Yeah, but apparently I didn't know that pigs have a quark screw pinus.

Yeah, and they showed it.

It was Yeah, it looked like something from the thing like it was.

It was just like popped out in the kind of mind of its own.

One of my favorite quotes though, that I feel like you'd appreciate Erica is the female biologist.

She was like a male moth can smell a female moth from miles away.

I already put that out of my brain.

Sorry, I know if everybody doesn't already that Erica loves moths, that's not even funny.

She loves me.

They scent live moths in the male.

They need to die, all every one off this planet.

I don't care what animal they feed, I don't care where they sit in the fucking circle of life.

They all need to fucking die.

It's the scle of life.

Okay.

So my favorite quote from this and I don't know if it's necessarily a quote, but it was more so like one of the ecologists or whoever, saying something about this particular animal.

They said that female humpback whales are nicknamed the prostitutes of the sea because she accepts the male as fast as he can present himself.

First of all, rude very rude, not very sex positive, like.

No, yeah, no, I'm scratching that one off of my list of notes here too, because that when I heard that, I was like, oh, Eric is gonna have something to say about this, the prostitute of the sea.

That's how dare you ecologist?

Person?

Like whatever, some.

Of the other fun facts that I have, let's share what we have here.

Male kangaroos have forked penises to match the two vaginas that female kangaroos have, so the forked penises shoot sperm in each vagina during sex.

Yeah, and then there's those seals that have the forked uterus so that they can just constantly be pregnant, which good Lord, that is just sounds like the saucing thing ever, Like even just normal pregnancy bad enough.

But then it's like, oh, you have your baby.

Oh your other vagina are your other uterus is free?

Why not fill that up?

It's like, God, Yeah, that's the terrible existence.

Sorry, God is a cruel person if you believe in the Creator.

Speaking of seals, the penis bone of a walrus was so large that Eskimo's club seals over their head when hunting them.

That's a terrible thought.

During colonial days, it was chic to carry a curved raccoon penis bone on a vest chain to use as a toothpick ew.

Yeah, bears like to masturbate.

That's a little one I have here from them.

Yeah, I think everybody does, right.

Yeah, male rabbits like to piss on females as an aphrodisiac, and during pregnancy, female rabbits grow a membrane over their vagina to padlocket from the male rabbits to go at it again.

Okay, yeah, I like the what are those things called chassaity bill check?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'd be awesome if it has like like it's a bear trap.

The female elephant doesn't go into heat until she's about thirty years old.

Same, it takes birds a few seconds to copulate.

Some of them copulate in flight, which is interesting.

And then my last one, lizard penises are different shaped amongst all lizards, and some of them can be barbed, making it extremely difficult to dislode, which you know, I guess a lot of species have that.

But yeah, this was an incredibly interesting documentary.

I was kind of surprised that I watched the whole thing.

Same yeah, but I was like, I'm learning stuff too exactly.

You know, it's not just like podcast research.

I'm actually learning some stuff.

You know.

There was a few things that you know, certainly irritated me, the whole female humpback thing.

But there was like one bird, I don't remember which one it was, where like the male has to build a nest for the for the female bird before she'll copulate with him, And I was like, good for them, Like, do you know he's got to do a little dance, make her a little nest then they can get down tonight.

The octopus that I think it was something like the male octopus will use one of his tentacles and basically like hand her a sack of sperm and be like, hey, he wants some candy little girl, Like I don't know how that works.

And then he uses the other tentacle to like stroker or something.

I don't I don't know totally.

Guy driving up on in a rate van situation.

That's in the front seat is what's up?

Hey, why don't you come on jump in the back seat.

I get some candy back?

Come here?

Are you terrible?

No?

I I enjoyed the documentary.

I'm totally going to be that guy at the next party where I'm like, hey, you guys want to hear a few facts.

I just learned this, you know what the prostitute of the sea is.

Like, I did enjoy this movie or this documentary.

I have to say it was a lot of fun.

I think it'd be fun to watch with a group of friends, Yeah, where we could just all learn together and just marvel in the the universe of mating and the world.

I'm sure there is some like outdated stuff in there by this point, which you know, I'm not a biologist, so I wouldn't know what that stuff is.

So maybe we shared some misinformation.

Maybe the female humpbacks are no longer referred to as the prostitutes of the seat, I would like to hope.

So, yeah, great whites, stick that on her now they're whrees.

Yeah.

They didn't have any shark mating, which isn't surprising because shark mating is pretty violent, Like those sharks will just fucking like latch on and like twirl around and oh yeah.

Yeah.

They showed some some alligator crocodile which was a little vilent.

Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess what we're saying, is there needs to be a sequel follow up to this Sex and the Animals documentary.

Yeah, we recommend it.

As Eric has said, it's in the discord, so have at it.

But Hoffman is credited for the screenplay of Sex and the Animals.

He also wrote The Black Cat, and he's credited with writing four other screenplays, all of which were directed by Larry Buchanan, all set in Texas.

First of the film, from nineteen sixty three, is called Free White and twenty one.

It's a courtroom drama about a black motel owner in Dallas accused of raping a civil rights worker from Sweden.

Apparently it's a very cheap to kill a mockingbird rip off.

It's on twob I didn't watch it, maybe one day.

Hoffman wrote a movie called Underage, released in nineteen sixty four.

It's another trial melodrama based on a real life court case about a mother who encourages her fourteen year old daughter to have sex with a sixteen year old boy.

And I read up the real case and they're actually a little older.

So Hoffman doing that exploitation move, which works.

And he then wrote The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald from also released in nineteen sixty four by Buchanan.

How was this?

I was going to watch it.

I watched it.

So it was interesting because it's obviously released a year after the Kennedy assassination, so it's very exploitative.

It's an exploitation film for sure.

You want to know what the most exploitative film of all time is?

What's Up in Knight and Ice.

It's a German film from nineteen twelve that was released just a couple months after the Titanic, saying.

Wow, yeah, yeah, that's that.

Those would be good devil features.

But yeah, that's brutal, and I'm sure it was very far fetched and made up.

It It was kind of adorable because like the miniature boat that they used for it, it just like you can see it like coming up to the to the iceberg and then it just goes boop into it and bounces off.

And then like immediately saying so then that's it, yeah.

In one piece.

So you know, they didn't know, they didn't know what had happened.

Yet they were like, we just got to make this movie, guys.

I mean respect to exploitation filmmakers of any century, but yeah, The Trial of Lee Harvey.

It's it's basically the defense is pushing for an insanity plea.

It's basically, what if he wasn't murdered, you know, by Jack Ruby, and the prosecution wants death by electric chair.

The defense is pushing for an insanity plea just so he's incarcerated in a mental facility.

It had an opening text crawl claiming that the film was banned because of I don't know, I don't know why it would have been banned.

I think it was just, you know, a fake kind of text crawl to bring in people.

What I thought was really interesting and I kind of enjoyed, and it was a good idea.

Is it breaks the fourth wall.

The judge and the defense and the prosecuting they all stare not the whole movie, but they stare at the camera a lot because you're a member of the jury.

The viewer, Oh, you're here to decide if he's insane or if he's just some nutjob who created And I thought that was really really well done.

They used real life statements from people that saw Lee Harvey.

All the statements supposedly are actually pulled from witnesses of the shooting and people that were around and knew Lee Harvey.

I had a good time with it.

It's tough to recommend because it is very boring.

Okay, I did break it up in multiple viewings because I was starting it late at night and I was like, how finish this in the morning.

There's no surprises or real emotion here.

It's just facts presented in kind of the slow, fictitious manner, very silly cast a lot of whom are in the Black Cat and most Larry Buchanan films.

But I think it was on twob might also be on YouTube.

And lastly, I watched In the Year twenty eight eighty nine from nineteen sixty nine, which Hoffman also wrote Total Roger Corman Day, The World Ended rip off.

Thousands of nuclear bombs destroyed the world except for like a handful of survivors.

All the actors, again are very wooden.

It's mainly about a crazy dad and his daughter who survive and people start showing up at their house.

And the old dad is this crazy Texas not job who's been preparing for the nuclear event for years and he only has supplies for three people, so he's addicted to everybody that shows up.

But his daughter wants to help everyone.

These radioactive monsters start popping up.

They've all survived.

I thought this was interesting.

They all survived because the house is in a valley surrounded by lead mountains and a lake that generates hot air to keep out radiation.

Very lazy ass ending.

It's one of those movies that instead of ending with the end, it ends with the beginning.

Very kind of uplifting.

But yeah, Hoffman mostly seemed to write screenplays from previous ideas or real life situations or courtroom dramas.

Nothing really too original except maybe sex and the animals.

So yeah, I mentioned that I thought the Black Cat looks great.

It's got style.

I think the white screen black and white photographers crisp stunny looking.

Although some of the scenes are broken up by these rocking sixty tunes.

It has this very unsettling darkness and tone carried throughout, which I really like.

And I think that the beauty is all thanks to cinematographer is It Walter Shank, Yeah, who shot Russ Meyer's Faster pussy Cat, Kill Kill, Kill Mud Honey.

Faster pussy Cat is a perfect exploitation film.

Yeah, like Miss forty five, it's like five stars, but his photography Shanks photography in The Black Cat is what like immediately drew me in.

In the last episode, I talked about the other reasons why I picked this, but as soon as I started watching this, I was like, oh, yeah, it's beautiful.

Also, it's got a band playing like every five minutes I'm in.

And then lastly, and the crew that the editor of The Black Cat, Charles G.

Shelling, he also did a ton of Russ Meyers films.

Yeah, but this doesn't have who is the band from Kotzi's Black Cat The song.

Bank Tango Bank Tango?

No, yeah it you know obviously that Black Cat that musically surpasses this one.

Yes.

The music, yeah, this one is by a rockabilly singer from the Dallas area.

He's a Dallas musician, Scotty McKay.

The actual score is like repurpose you know, stock music, like most DIY films do.

But he does provide they're not original songs, are all covers, but it's his versions with his rockabilly band.

What do we have here?

Covers Chuck Berry's Brown Eyed Handsome Man, A Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Les Baxter's Center Man, and Bo Didley by Ellis McDaniel and Scotty McKay.

He also provided music for another Larry Buchanan film called Creature of Destruction from nineteen sixty seven, which stars our boy Les Tremaine good old Snakey Bender from Things.

In that movie, he does a cover of the nineteen sixty six Here Comes Batman theme.

Oh yeah, it's actually on YouTube.

I listened to it.

It's not bad, but it's like, why not just play the real Well, obviously you can't play the real theme.

But he doesn't do a whole lot with it.

Okay, let's jump with to the cast real quick.

Except for like two actors.

The cast are pretty much just people that are in a shitload of Larry Buchanan films.

At least these two are like in every film I watched.

Robert Frost plays Lou the asshole lead.

He doesn't have any other film credits.

Neither does Robin Baker, who plays his wife Diana.

She did have like a small credit in a nineteen sixty six film.

Same with Sadie French, who plays Lilyan the caretaker.

She had one other acting credit.

The side characters are kind of like the Larry Buchanan regulars, and some of them have interesting credits.

George egg Lee, who plays the family lawyer handling the estate.

He pretty much plays the judge in every Buchanan courtroom drama.

He looks like he does and he's a great judge, and the few that I watched.

He pops in a lot of other Buchanan sci fi films like The Eye, Creature, Zontar, The Thing from Venus and Mars Needs One.

Annabelle Weenick, who probably gives the best performance in The Black Cat in my opinion.

She plays a lady at the bar.

A lot of people in reviews call her the Fluozy, which is terrible.

It's like the prostitute of the sea.

But she has She's in a few Buchanan films.

She steals the show as one of the many unnamed witnesses in the trial of Lee Harvey.

She's really good in it.

She also has some small roles in s.

F.

Brownings, Don't Look in the Basement, Don't Hang Up, Wes Craven's Deadly Blessings.

She's in Henry Wrinkler's directed Burt Reynolds starring comedy Cop and a Half from nineteen ninety three classic Yes I Couldn't Even get that out.

I was so I was so.

Excited, like you were like stuttering there, bored.

And lastly, for the cast, other than the black Cat played brilliantly by Pluto, we have the Bartender played by Bill Thurman.

Doesn't have a big role on this.

He's an actor from Texas who He's in a lot of big roles in most of Buchanan's thirty plus films, popped up in every movie that I watched from Larry Buchanan.

He also had some bit parts in some bigger Halloween Hollywood films, including playing the air traffic controller in Spielberg's Close Encounters, popping up as a hunter in Spielberg's The Sugarland Express.

He's in Peter Bogdanovic's The Last Picture Show.

He plays the asshole sheriff in Gator Bait.

Yeah, he also plays the sheriff and creature from Black Lake.

He's in Mountaintop Motel Massacre.

His list of films are cool and I began recognizing his face when, like I said, I started watching these Larry Buchanyan films.

I was like, Hey, that's the Bartender.

He's kind of like the Dick Miller character to Larry Buchanan movies.

Yeah, kind of pops up, not as recognizable, though not as cool any other cast.

Members you wanted to talk about, that's all I got.

Okay cool.

So for anybody who is going to be watching this, pay attention to the quick intro because that adorable cat's playing with the yarn.

The restriction, you know, no admitts to persons under eighteen is very cute.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is an adaptation of Pose the Black Cat, and of all the different versions, and there's there are a ton out there.

We could talk about some of our favorites if we wanted, but I feel like this is almost the truest adaptation, a modernized version.

Yeah, to pose actual short story, there's a few, you know, obviously there's the caretaker Lilian.

I like how it explains how the house burns down because he electrocutes the cat.

But everything else is very down to naming the cat Pluto, that he's a writer, that he you know, how he's given the cat.

It's very much like the actual adapt the actual story.

Yeah, I mean sort of jumping ahead to like double feature picks.

Almost any other Black Cat adaptation could be a double feature with this because those films are also dissimilar from this one, using you know, only small elements of the story itself.

You know, you've got ful Cheese, You've got Katzi's which we've covered, You've got Olmer's with Karlof and Legosi, Stuart Gordon's two thousand and seven Masters of Horror with Jeffrey Colmes's Poe, which is peak one.

Of my favorites.

Like, I love that that version funny enough.

So I mentioned in our June'sploitation episode, I think that I had been because we were talking a lot about yea Facato, and I was like, Oh, I'm actually rewatching Homicide right now because it's on to be.

There is an episode that the day that I watched this movie, The Black Cat, I was like, oh, I'm gonna watch a couple of homicide episodes.

The first episode I watched was about this black cat shows up in the homicide unit and they're like, oh, yeah, they found it in a parking lot, and like a couple of the cops are like superstitious, Like Munch is like whatever you get there, ridiculous.

But then they get this case, a ten year old case where they get it.

They finally get a lead on it, and they go to find the body where someone told them it was and it turns out the body was bricked up in a wall.

Oh shit.

Yeah.

And then the guy who spoiler for this Homicide episode, the guy who they find out was a killer, is a drug dealing poet who is dealing right outside the cemetery where Edgar Allan Poe is buried.

That's awesome, it's a good that's sort an original idea.

I like that, Yeah, But it's just interesting that I was just randomly watching Homicide and that episode happened to be the exact same day that I watched this movie and was getting ready for this episode.

That's funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And another version that I like is Daria Argento's Two Evil Eyes with Harvey Kayitel and Adrian Barbo.

Yeah, that one's fun.

Yeah.

I already stated that I thought this looked great as soon as I started popping this on and watching it for the first time.

I kind of wish we got more from Harold Hoffman the director.

Obviously he learned his craft from Larry Buchanan, but it seemed like he was trying to take it in a more kind of artsy fashion than just like a DIY thing.

I think like the pacing he creates in this and the writing.

I think his adaptation is really cool, like the modernized.

Like I said, he makes light changes the whole thing with Lou thinking that his dad brought Pluto back and that you know, the argument and what got him into the whole, the middle, the mental institution.

That's all added, and I think that's a nice touch.

But yeah, I can't find out what happened to Harold Hoffman, what he's doing if he's alive.

I liked what he's done with his first off.

His documentaries are fantastic.

But I like the crew he got together for this, and I just like I kind of wish he uh he kept up with like this Texas kind of gothic atmosphere type of movies.

Yeah, Harold, if you're listening, hit me up.

Hey, I think my I mean you mentioned the pacing.

I think my only problem with it is and I know you love the little like oh, we're in the cafe listening.

To some yes hip you love the house band?

Okay, Well cuts to the night scene clips not.

So much for me.

Those.

I know that those got this movie to the running time.

That it needed, because you know, we're dealing with a short story that's two pages long.

We have to figure out some ways to pad this a little bit.

I did feel I think I checked the time, like a hit pause to go refill my drink at like the thirty minute mark, and I was like, Okay, this guy needs to get punished like more and sooner, because it just it felt like it took a while for it to get to the torment of him, which to me is more sort of central to a lot of pose stories.

So I don't necessarily feel I mean, it's already short.

It's like it's less than eighty minutes, so I'm not complaining about it in that sense, but I did.

It's about halfway through.

I think about the forty five minute mark where he gets out of the mental hospital after horribly killing Pluto.

Which there's some startling scenes in this, and we will talk about that a minute.

I just I wanted him to get punished, like right right, start right now, Like I know, yeah, okay, he's in the mental hospital getting shock treatment, which is you know, which is.

Like a two minute long scene in and of itself of him just moaning yeah, yeah, No, I.

Mean that's my only gripe with like the pacing is like, personally, I want to see any animal torturer get what's coming to them sooner.

But it's not necessarily a fault of the movie.

Right now, I gets and you're right because I did.

Actually I clocked the performances of the house band and the first performance and I'm not joking.

It's four minutes long.

It's the whole song, Yeah, four minutes of just them playing and I and again, this was very Roger Korman vibes to me, showing a band playing a little too long.

You know, these contextualized like lyrics that are just you given this exposition of what's going to happen to this guy or what's already happening.

I enjoyed those nightclub scenes.

The second performance that they show is a little under two minutes, but still we have probably ten total minutes of just a band playing.

Yeah.

And if you don't like rockabilly, you're not gonna like this.

I'm a big fan of any band popping up in a band in a movie, and I kind of want to see their whole set I want to see what their set list is and stuff, all right, But no, I agree, because yeah, Lou is such and I love his performance as an unhinged kind of total asshole.

I mean, he's what I really feel bad is his wife.

So right away you know that this blue guy played by Robert Frost, he's he has this faint grasp on reality.

He's kind of otherworldly, he's out of his mind, and you know right away that this guy's fucking insane.

So I felt and it's terrible to say, but Diana's character, his wife, is so frustrating and sadly unsympathetic.

I'm like, girl, you're in danger.

You're in danger, girl, Like this dude is unhinged.

You should see this from the start.

Quit buying anniversary gets and GTFO.

So I did not.

I mean I liked her because you know, on this podcast, we love camp and this is all this is.

Yea, it's stupid, but yeah, he treats her like one of his pets.

I think it's weird how they almost try to get you to sympathize with Lou's character when they start doing his backstory about his him being beat and like he was adopted and like.

All that buddy poured fucking hot coffee on a monkey like we're done, Like I'm I mean, yeah, you lost me at, like all your animals are in cages.

You lost me at you know you cut out Pluto's eye.

Yes, you're keeping all these fucking animals in cages trying to make them drink champagne.

Like just I fucking hate rich people.

That's what it really comes down.

To, exactly, because I kept thinking, like as soon as they first showed the scene of him, like he receives Pluto and he just walks off and it's their anniversary nights.

He's okay, good night, honey, He's all, oh, good night, and he goes and spends the night with his exotic pets.

I immediately thought, who in their fucking right mind has exotic cage pets like this?

And I thought, oh, Michael Jackson, he probably did.

And tons of like rich crazy people who like to drink champagne and put them in their pets water bottles, like to show off like difference.

Yeah, now this guy, I think we all know how how it turns out.

So watching these scenes, I'm like, oh, yeah, I can't wait till this.

I fucking gets it.

Like you said, though, it does take a long time to get to that point.

Yeah, and honestly, and I know we're skipping the head to the end.

How he gets it unsatisfying, Like even even his death, like where he's like he's running from the cops and oh no, he gets in a car accident and dies right, Like, you deserve so much worse for the animal torture that you inflicted.

I am a big believer in like, when it comes to animal torture, you should get back tenfold what you put out.

Yeah, his I you know, his eye gets popped out.

I guess during the rec but yeah, essentially he got away and he sees a cat in the road and that's what kills him.

I do love the car chase.

I like how it ended with you know, the Classic Cops.

One of my favorite scenes is when they're standing by the brick wall and you know, he's like this house is built like a brick and he like hits it and then the cat meows and then the cops are immediately hall turn on the wall, like you know, that's how cops react when they hear a cat meowing.

But I did like the tact on card chase, so I was like, Okay, this is another.

And then like this car flipping in like it's a little miniature.

It's a little car.

I love.

I love the miniatures in this.

I love the house burning.

Yeah.

A dumb trivia that I found on IMDb is the owner of that Jaguar automobile that loves driving around throughout the whole movie is coincidentally named Tommy Poe and it actually says no relation to the author of the short.

Well, thank you for clarifying that, IMDb user, whatever your name is.

Yeah, so, yeah, I felt like the inded, although I liked the tack on car chase.

Yeah, he essentially got away and I was like, wait, what is this?

Is he getting away because he's smiling real big.

But then we see the cat in the road flip some miniature car and yeah, it's just him with his eye, which, again going back to the cinematography, shank the gore in this, it's startling like and it wouldn't have worked in color.

It black and white obviously makes this look way more authentic, way more kind of realistic.

But the plucking out the cat's eye and then showing loose slowly opening his hand to reveal the eye, that is like, there's so many memorable moments in this yeah, the acts to his wife's head, yeah, which is on a cover of uh yeah, it's.

The cover of the Anger Smoens album cover Inside My Brain, which don't give me credit for that.

Because I was watching this, fucking John comes.

Out of the fucking guest room, walks walks by, looks at the screen, is like, oh, that's where the album covers from, and I'm like what he said from Angry Samoans, and I'm like, I sort of fucking.

Gotta hate you.

I want that brain.

I know it's not fair, but and you know, I guess you need to be familiar with the band.

I wasn't familiar with the band that.

I haven't listened to Angry Smoans since I was in high school, so like I had to look it up and be like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

They're from like the early eighties is what it looked like.

And yeah.

I listened to some of their songs to see, like, maybe I can pick one for the ending of this, but nothing really worked out, Like what you picked anyway, Okay, Yeah, I was going to pick something like you know that that the Scotty McKay band.

We're playing some of the cover up, but yeah, I just pulled something.

No, but like the cover album is literally like her Head with the acts in it, with bloods you know, coming down it.

And so yeah, yeah, and John was like, oh yeah, this was my like you know, horror movie music album cover crossover.

Like obviously he's listening to a lot of like Death and you know, all of like the full Chy movies and stuff, all the references there.

But like, yeah, so anyway, I thought that was interesting, Like just this random obscure movies movie from the sixties ends up as an album cover for Angry Simoens, So there's clearly a fan in that band.

Yeah, this movie or maybe they don't even know where maybe they don't even know where it's from.

Maybe they just came across this random like photo and we're like, oh, let's use this.

Yeah, and again, like these the Gores scenes especially, I think the whole movie's gorgeous, but those are like memorable.

I think once you see this image, it's that you can like it'll pop in your head like when you're watching another movie or if you see like an axe murder or something.

Really, that's what That's one thing.

One of the major things other than like what we've already talked about, but the feel and look at this movie, it's I don't know, I really liked this adaptation.

It's I'm not going to say it's one of my favorites of the Black Cats, but I've never really watched one from the sixties.

Most of them are like, you know, the great Basil rath Bone kind of comedy one from the forties.

Obviously the Ulmer.

Yeah, this is a good one though.

Yeah, and it comes from Texas, to which I have I think I want to pick Buchanan to some point.

I do have a theory to a few things about this movie.

I feel like the whole backstory of him being adopted Lou, like I almost trying to sympathize the character.

I'm wondering if he pulled that from Larry Buchanan's real life, because I was reading his short biography and it's very, very similar to this Lou character where he was like adopted, his parents like disowned, and he was adopted in Dallas, And you know, I don't I don't know if because they're so close and buddy, you know, buddies, maybe he kind of incorporated that fact.

And I have another theory too.

While he was filming this in nineteen sixty five or whatever, he gathered all these caged exotic animals and he's like he really got interested in him and he was looking at him.

He's like, man, I would I really wonder what it would be like to watch that too.

Can't fuck I'm going to make a documentary about this.

And then he started work on the documentary.

Yeah, So any other like favorites of this movie that popped up that you like, any other anything else you want to talk about.

I mean, I like I mentioned like I love the miniatures in this.

I think that the wife's death is really gruesome and fucking amazing.

You know, I'm not gonna lie.

It was hard for me to watch the scenes with Pluto, and you know, even if some stuff was like offscreen, I think the worst part for me was when he had the cord around its neck and he was dragging the cat and I was just like this, like I have like just a visceral reaction to things like that, Like I can't help my eyes tear up, Like I can't even help it, even if I know like this is fake blah blah blah whatever.

I just immediate reaction that sort of thing happens, Like that happened to me.

There was some movie a fantastic fast a few years ago called like the Pool or something like that, where a guy got trapped and there was like an alligator.

Yeah, and like the dog dies in a horrific way in that, and it's so like over the top, it's ridiculous.

Like the dog I don't remember, Like there's some rope that's hanging down and the dog like jumps down and like gets hanged its neck snaps really quickly, and like I'm sitting next to my friend Mike, and he busts out laughing, but he loves animals, right, But like I just tears just immediately coming down, even though like I know, like I just I can't help but feel that way.

So that took me out of it a little bit, which is definitely like, this is not my favorite Black Cat adaptation either.

I do like it.

I think people should watch it.

I think it's a great it's a great adaptation of the story itself.

I think you know, it represents you know, some Texas filmmakers.

It's got like that swing and sixties vibe to it, like that very much in the you Know Something Weird video Roger Korn like all of that.

It hits all of those beats, So I definitely, yeah, I'd recommend it to.

Folks, Yeah, to go back to.

Also the cord.

Yeah, the treatment of the cats.

He always picks them up by the scruff of the neck like it just looks rough throughout, especially that new scene with the cord.

I did want to shout out though the junk drawer in the kitchen where he pulls out the cord.

We all have the drunk drawer, yes, So when I saw that, I was like, hell, yeah, that's I mean, if I was a complete fucking asshole, that's probably the drawer I would go too too.

But I'm not an asshole, and I did want to this with our pale.

Josiemba wrote a review on this on the Something Weird release DVD.

He wrote this on this Bleeding Skull site back in two thousand and five.

I think it's just a short snippet of a long review that you should all check out on the site.

But he says the Black Cat hovers halfway between slick horror seriousness, excellent cinematography, interesting compositions, and cheap weirdness, mismatched miniatures, and eye lines, over the top acting.

Thankfully, the inconsistencies are what make it work.

For every gruesome hatchet chop or seemingly real needle injection, there's a solid dose of generic go go music and or bizarre incidental music cues straight out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, intentional sensationalism or inspired ineptitude.

Either way, I wasn't bored, and that's kind of sums it up.

Yeah, Like again, it's a short run time.

There are some animal cruelty scenes that a lot of animal lover I mean, most people should just kind of cringe at.

Actually everybody should cringe at.

Yeah, it's totally worth the watch.

What would you pair this with?

What's a double feature pick.

I mentioned earlier?

You know, I think any of the other Black Cat films would work fine with this, Like just have a Black Cat double feature night.

I think I think it was Henry in our discord said like he's saving this movie for October and he's going to be doing like all the Black Cat movies, which is great because like you're watching films of the same name, but none of those are the same film.

So I think any of those would work, but I'm going to go with I'm going to stick with an animal theme that we've you know, pretty much had for this episode.

No sex though, well kind of in my pick, so mine's a hell hath no fury Like an animal scorned double feature.

I'm going to go with Orca from nineteen seventy seven for those who have not seen this fucking stone cold classic, and Orca witnesses its mate and calf get killed by a drunk fisherman and then it takes vengeance on the whole harbor.

Like it's fantastic, Like it's it's hard to watch the opening, so it has that in common with it.

But just like the Orca just fucking going going after people.

It's fucking great.

It is a Jaws rip off, of course, but it's I think it works in like the more the animal vengeance side of it.

I almost went with Jaws to revenge, but I'm like, you know, I'm not going to go that far.

I've never seen Orca, have you not know?

Oh, I need to watch this.

You're in for a treat.

Save that for like Horror Gives Back or something.

Like, Okay, we should do an animal yeah, attack one.

Yes, we'll get back to that.

So yeah, I'm gonna go with Orca in nineteen seventy seven.

What about you?

So I thought a russ Meyer pick would work with the cinematography, especially specifically one that Walter Shank shot, but I'm going to go with the Poe film, And since there are elements of both goofiness with some sprinkled and serious tones, I landed on Roger Korman's horror anthology Tales of Terror from nineteen sixty.

It contains three segments merging a total of four a Girland Post short stories.

The Black Cat is one of them, easily the standout here, with Peter Lourie and Vincent Price just trying to outdo each other every scene they're in, particularly a wine tasting scene that is so fucking entertaining, like everybody's just watched that scene on YouTube.

One of the segments, the first one, called Marella, is short, very atmospheric, leaning a little lesson to horror comedy, so the shifts in tone are welcome, kind of like what you see in Hoffman's Black Cat from time to time.

So yeah, double a ground Poe double feature.

I'd start with Tales of tear end it with a short seventy minute black Cat because I think the black Cat does have a satisfying ending way in the night.

So we have August coming up.

We love August, yeah, I mean, it is one of my favorite months to do on the podcast, but it's my least favorite almost episode to cover because my pronunciations are just.

Oh yeah, we're terrible.

I mean, I mean, honestly, we're bad with French Italian, so you know we're going to be equally bad with you know, names from folks in Hong Kong.

So sh August is back now this year because we are running into some challenges with finding films that a are Shaw Brothers, be like all that have to be all of the above, that are Shaw Brothers, that are whore, that are under a thousand and that are easily accessible not only for us to watch but for our audience to watch.

So because of that, we're going to be a little bit more flexible this year.

I've already broken a rule before, I think with Nine Demons.

Was it Nine Demons, which isn't Shaw Brothers, but I picked it because it was Chang che and I was like, whatever, he's a Shaw Brothers director.

Yeah, like adjacent totally.

So we'll probably have some flexibility with our picks this year, whether it be maybe they're not actually Shaw Brothers produced, but there are Shaw Brothers, you know, their Shaw Brothers adjacent have cast or crew affiliated with them.

Maybe have some flexibility with genre.

Maybe, I don't know, we might even have to push some flexibility on views.

We'll see.

But Shaugust is all about celebrating Shaw Brothers, you know, basically Hong Kong horror.

So I hope everyone is just sort of in that mode for next month.

And again your watches, if you participate, it's just you know, you can watch whatever Shaw Brothers you want.

Make some recommendations in our discord channel of what you're watching.

I know I'll probably throw in a few that are non horror that I love.

I tend to watch more just martial arts action during the month than Shaw Brothers horror.

Yeah, yeah, because October we go hard on just horror, so like sh August is nice to kind of break away from that a little bit.

Now that being said, with all of the flexibility I said, we are going to have my pick is a Shaw Brothers movie.

It is a horror movie and it is under a thousand, so I managed to find one thanks to our folks on our discord who pointed out this one is actually online streaming, not on one of the normal platforms, but I'll put a link to it in show notes.

And it's also in a box set released by Imprint called Shaw Horror, Shaw Scares or something like that, Volume one.

So Sex Beyond the Grave nineteen eighty four is my pick.

This is not as salacious as you might think from the title, so basically, it's it starts out that way, like the opening scene, you're gonna be like, oh man, this is this is rough, not rough, like this is gonna be hard to watch, but like rough isn't like ooh, that's nasty.

But it quickly turns into a Poltergeist ripoff and also sort of a after school special about gambling in a way.

So it's it's very disjointed.

It makes sense though, because the there is no like single writer or even writers credited on this.

It's written by the Shaw Collective group, so I would imagine that involves at least five or six people.

Interesting, it's a little it's a little messy, but there's a lot of fun moments in it, and I think there's plenty still worth talking about.

I'm sure we'll have Ian Who's with us every sh August for one of our episodes.

We'll figure that out offline.

But yeah, let's uh so sh August coming up this month?

Sex beyond the Grave again.

I'll put a link to where that is in our show notes.

As of this recording, that has two hundred and five views.

Yeah, low, I think it'll go up because of the box set plus hopefully this episode.

Ye.

Also, we are seven weeks into Klon's sizzling Summer of Side Splitters movie Challenge.

I'm way behind, but I hope to make up some ground and finish strong.

So reminder to anybody who is thinking about or is participating, this is a fifteen week challenge with Klon giving away one of his awesome zines if you complete it, so I'm hoping I can.

Everybody should check it out.

We could put a link to that.

Yes, definitely put a link in show notes for that.

If you're not already, you can follow this podcast on Instagram at Unsung Horrors.

I am at hex Massacre on Instagram and letterboxed.

I'm also there at Elschiby Thanks.

Everyone for listening.

We'll see you back next month for sh August Banks.

Get the long until you've been babbled, you believer, neighbor.

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My kids is a dream the well?

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My kids dream of.

The wealth?

To hanswer her, Sam Lovedy'll miss you will always.

You did know, my b No.

Hell of Maluke just like you handles one.

Let off the top of yours.

You just like you hound those, just like you hound those.

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Hello, Filthy movie lovers.

My name is Gentry Austin, now In Casey Scott, and we're the hosts of the Sin Syndicate Film podcast.

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And Joseph Sarno of Ficionados join us semi weekly as we peer into the adults only theaters in sticky floored cinemas of the golden age of sexploitation, when the morals were loose, the laws were murky, and the intercourse was all simulated.

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