THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT - Various Artists - "Rock Around The Rock Pile" (1956)

I always wanted the main emphasis of this blog to be about music in the movies, and tonight's Saturday Night Spectacular is a more than a perfect example of why! In fact, I'm going to go to Amazon right now and buy the MP3 soundtrack, that's how much I liked it!

"The Girl Can't Help It" is a rockin' musical of the highest calibre imaginable with an array of incomprehensible talent from start to finish!

The basic storyline is that Tom Ewell is a drunken washed up talent agent, and Edmund O'Brien is a washed up gangster who wants to make a young lady acquaintance of his famous! Before he even casts his eyes on her, Tom is totally disinterested, but he's just about to change his mind!

For being as close to a nerd as you can get, Tom cuts a pretty mean rug!!

Indeed, the girl can't help it! It's beyond her control!

Jayne Mansfield as Jerri Jordan is really not interested in being a star at all, in fact, what she would rather do is cook! Often portrayed as merely a ditzy blond, Jayne shows that she has quite a bit more depth to her acting talents in this role!

The title song is brilliantly performed by Richard Wayne Penniman, aka Little Richard!!

"The Girl Can't Help It" is packed to the brim with talent like "The Treniers!

     The lesser well known The Chuckles and ..........

.................Abbey Lincoln!

The sultry Julie London is Tom Ewell's ex-flame and performs "Cry Me A River".............

........in a scene where she haunts him from every square inch of his pad!!

Just look at the beauty of this scene, this girl, and this car, and just try and tell me you're not interested in seeing this movie! I don't believe you!!

The talent just doesn't stop! Just who is up next? Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps!!! Now you know why they called them the Blue Caps?

The King of New Orleans piano, Fats Domino even makes an appearance!!

The Platters show up!

And if Gene Vincent wasn't enough for you, Eddie Cochran is also in this move! That's right, I said Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran were both in this film! It's like Rock and Roll heaven!!

Great composition!

I love this shot where Jayne is in the recording studio to record "Rock Around The Rock Pile" and she gets an apple out of a vending machine to gnaw on while she's waiting for her part in the song, which is one long wailing siren shriek, and that's what the one big note on the page of music represents!

Not that it really has anything to do with this movie, but I'm a big Dan Brown fan, and I just finished reading his first novel, "Deception Point," but it left me cold, and I want to tell you something, "The Girl Can't Help It" was a Helluva lot hotter, fun, and interesting!

SANTO CONTRA HOMBRES INFERNALES / ATICCA - 1961

It's Friday and time for Santo with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We have Santo's second movie where he was more a government agent than the guy we came to know, a fighter of monsters in and out of the ring! He's on duty in Havana, Cuba this time...

Eegah!! sent over a fun little soundclip from this flick for our enjoyment, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to the stealth saucer, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our audio offering for... SANTO CONTRA HOMBRES INFERNALES!

Santo and his friends stay at the swanky Capri Hotel when visiting exotic Cuba!

Santo doesn't mess around, he unloads on this unsuspecting smuggler!

Like in every Mexican flick, there's a few songs sung and played along the way, this one's performed on a busy Havana beach...

Here's an important clue, an empty pack of H. Upmann Finos, stupid sloppy bad guys!

See, these guys are just looking for some inner tubes floating in a designated area, nothing suspicious going on here.

After they fish the tubes out of the sea they slit them open, and, now you gots a few kilos of that there heroin stuff!!

Classic portrait of the great Mexican character actor and wrestler, Fernando Osés.

We take another break to watch some Spanish tap dancers at the local club.

They coordinate with the land crew for the delivery, but!..

Santo is hot on their trail! Man, those Mexican wrestling actors did all their own stunts, one scene after another. Viva, Santo and pals!!

The whole story climaxes at the carnival grounds with a wild roller coaster ride for the audience!! Looks like a 'Roll-O-Plane' in the top still, hate those fucking things!! And, they always had barf in them!

RABID - “All The Rage” (1977)

Greg Goodsell here! This h’yar film is known as RABID, aka RAGE, as this opus was known in French-speaking Canada. 

This was director David Cronenberg's follow-up to his international horror hit THEY CAME FROM WITHIN in 1975, and would capitalize on his theme of "body horror." 

Here we go -- this is the main reason we remember RABID today - porn superstar MARILYN CHAMBERS! From being the model that adorns the "Ivory Snow" detergent box, Chambers would rocket to stardom in the Mitchell Brothers' BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR in 1972! RABID was her bid to court more mainstream roles, but it failed -- she went straight back into starring in XXX-rated features well into her fifties! We imagine the adult film industry didn't treat Marilyn all that well -- her daughter discovered her dead several days after the fact in her trailer in Santa Clarita, aged only 56 years old in 2009.

In typical Cronenberg fashion, he names this plastic surgery clinic after something not many people know about. If you look up the word "keloid," this would be the absolute LAST thing to name your plastic surgery clinic!

Here is Howard Ryshpan as Dr. Dan Keloid, the head of the clinic. Those bushy eyebrows signify that he’s up to no good. One of the things I'm still taken about this picture is that it is so SEVENTIES it squeaks!

Long story short, Marilyn/Rose is out motorcycling with her boyfriend when she gets into a terrible accident and suffers terrible burns! Good thing that plastic surgery clinic is right nearby -- or is it?

Yet another Cronenberg-ian "in-joke." This fey patient is in fact the star of one of his first films, CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (1970), Ronald Mlodzik! This under-utilized thespian would also star in Cronenberg's THE CAME FROM WITHIN (1975) as the slippery apartment manager. Mlodzik only has one line but it provides a much needed laugh --"Can't they put a sheet over her or something?!" he lisps!

All righty then, the Keloid Clinic does some emergency skin grafting on Rose. Reportedly a snippet of dialogue explaining why she has a vampire-like syringe in her armpit is rationally explained away -- but it was edited out at the last minute. It probably wouldn't make any sense either way.

Here is the bad boy. If you think that it looks like something else, it's intentional, Cronenberg says.

Marilyn wakes up in the hospital after a nightmare –

 -- a male patient next door runs in to comfort her –

-- and WHAMMO! She gets them with the vampire-like syringe in her armpit! Note the blood on the robe.

That swinger Marilyn swings all ways, so she sneaks out of the clinic at night and tries some minor bestiality with her armpit thingy on a cow in a barn! It doesn't work, as she strictly feasts on human blood.

Here's the thing: When Marilyn feeds upon her victims, they usually don't die -- they go on to become slavering, rabid maniacs intent on infecting others! Such is the fate of the randy farmer in the barn who interloped on Marilyn's humble attempts at quasi-bestiality!

Marilyn then returns to the clinic, and pursues some Sapphic action in the hot tub.

The brunette declines the love that dare not speak its name, there is a tussle, and Marilyn tosses her into a refrigerator! AAAAAAHHHHHH! One of the most searing images of 1970s horror!

Here is venerable character actor JOE SILVER, whose voice sounded like a 33 rpm record played at 16 rpm! He has a very tiny role, and the fate of his baby son is -- uh -- never mind.

Leaving the clinic, Marilyn is fixing to hit the big city -- to spread some more of her special kind of lovin'.

Soon, everyone is becoming infected, like this unfortunate Caknuckle-head policeman, gunned down while foaming at the mouth!

In a masterstroke of cleverness, Marilyn now stalks unwary males at a PORNO THEATER! Since this film is about a woman giving her partners the what for, and Marilyn Chambers was trying to leave her fleshy past in the past, this scene is ironic and highly self-referential -- long before Quentin Tarrantino had his driver's license! The movie on the screen is MODELS FOR PLEASURE -- and since this film is shot in Canada -- the movie must be strictly soft core!

AAAAAAAAAHHHH! Another shot of the syringe thingy! It's only onscreen for seconds, so get a good look!

Good night, sweet Marilyn! You probably didn't think it would end well, and it doesn't! Cronenberg would enter the realm of the hoity-toity and leave science-fiction and horror for good later on, but this flick has EVERYTHING. Check it out -- and if Cronenberg's THEY CAME FROM WITHIN is a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD variant, he would continue to steal from the best -- this is obviously based on director George A Romero's THE CRAZIES (1973)! Men in white contamination suits would become just as horrific as any zombie or vampire in this post-industrial society!