Search Results for: 1

Don Jones: A Jack of All Film Trades Exploitation filmmaker the late Don Jones (1938 - 2021) is best known by lifelong horror fans for his writing and directing debut in the genre - the infamous Schoolgirls in Chains (1973). Riffing on Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological horror thriller masterpiece Psycho (1960), it is encapsulated in a sleazy atmosphere, telling a haunting and shocking tale featuring disturbing scenes of sexually abusive violence. Nubile young women fight for survival, as a pair of deranged brothers holds them captive in chains in the basement of their Californian orange farm and tortures them, seemingly under the influence of their domineering crazy mother. The elder brother in Schoolgirls in Chains is played by fellow independent filmmaking stalwart Gary Kent, who as well as an actor was a stuntman and occasional director, and was Quentin Tarantino’s inspiration for Brad Pitt’s stuntman character Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Kent and Jones met when they started out in Hollywood in the early-1960s, while they were working nights at a restaurant in California as a doorman and a valet parking attendant, respectively, to support themselves, and so it freed up the daytimes for interviews and film work. Don Jones managed to get work at major studio Warner Bros. as a juicer (chief electrician) on eight-times Academy Award winning musical comedy-drama My Fair Lady (1964), and Gary Kent helped him get into the low-budget film business when he hired him for stunts and effects work. Jones tried his hand at acting too, but with wife and children, it was not paying enough to make a living, so he got behind the camera. A Pennsylvanian farm boy, a once aspiring middleweight professional boxer in his teens, and a former officer in The United States Army Signal Corps, he would find himself working in a variety of areas in filmmaking - gaffer, sound, editing, he taught himself how to use camera and lighting, and of course, he eventually became a writer and director. A jack-of-all-trades in low-budget filmmaking, and skilled in all, Don Jones worked very hard throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to make ends meet, including working on commercials, for the Discovery Channel, on educational programmes, and a show for German television. Jones made his uncredited co-directorial debut in adult film, while serving as a credited producer on the long lost black and white nudie Excited (1968), for notorious Poverty Row producer Ed De Priest and Canyon Distribution. The credited co-producer, cinematographer, and director is Gary Graver (1938 - 2006) under the pseudonym Akdov Telmig. Graver was a prolific director and cinematographer of pornography all the way through the industry’s evolution from nudies and roughies to hardcore, right up until the late-1990s under another alias Robert McCallum. Under his real name, he was the last cinematographer for legendary filmmaker Orson Welles (1915 - 1985) on The Other Side of the Wind, finally released in 2018, and shot many horror films from the late 1970s to throughout the 1980s, including The Toolbox Murders (1978), Mortuary (1983), and They're Playing with Fire (1984). He even wrote and directed his own horror Trick or Treats (1982), as well as serving as its director of photography. Although unconfirmed, the credited screenwriter of Excited is Edward Davis Wood Jr. - the one and only Ed Wood (1924 - 1978). The World's Worst Director of classic B-movie shlock, his magnum opus of cinematic awfulness is Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). By this time, he was making a living as a writer and director of softcore porn and as a writer of adult novels under various noms de plume, one of which for his book author work was actually ‘Akdov Telmig’, the name of his favourite drink spelled backwards - Vodka Gimlet. Graver adopted this pseudonym again for various roles after Wood’s passing, one of which was as the director of the softcore comedy short One Million Heels B.C. (1993). Its title is a sly nod to Ed Wood’s screenwriting work on sexploitation comedy One Million AC/DC (1969) directed by De Priest, which Don Jones was the uncredited DP on, and features Gary Kent in an uncredited small role. Although, Wood’s alias on that film is misspelled as ‘Akdon Telmig’. The trailer for Excited can be seen on Something Weird Video’s Twisted Sex Vol 09. Next up for Jones as a director of adult film was the sleazier roughie The Kiss-Off, released in the same year of 1968, again for Ed De Priest and Canyon Distribution, and starring Gary Kent. Roughies were softcore in nature focusing on the spectacle of T&A, and darker in tone than the lighter nudies of the era, but no more sexually explicit. Jones is credited here as D.E. Jones (his full name was Donald Evan Jones), but IMDB has it down as two different filmmakers. After The Kiss-Off, he refused to work with De Priest again due to his heavy drug addiction and failing to pay everything he owed him for his work. Therefore, thanks to his friendship with his future director of photography on Schoolgirls in Chains, Ron Garcia, his next directorial effort would be the nudie detective melodrama Who Did Cock Robin? (1970) for Republic Amusements Corp., which was owned by sultan of sexploitation Bob Cresse (1936 - 1998). His most infamous work was for his previous production and distribution company Olympic International Films, Love Camp 7 (1969) directed by Lee Frost, which Cresse also wrote and acted in, playing the role of the Commandant. The film would influence two sub-genres - women in prison and naziploitation, and it remains banned by the BBFC to this day. Garcia had previously directed for Bob Cresse the unknown sci-fi The Pleasure Machines (1969), which was barley released. He would go on to have an accomplished career as a cinematographer in film and television. His most notable work is Michael Mann’s crime drama series Crime Story (1986 - 1988), and crime thriller TV film L.A. Takedown (1989), which formed the basis for Mann’s 1995 masterwork Heat, and David Lynch’s pilot of cult mystery horror series Twin Peaks (1990 - 1991), and Lynch’s theatrical film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). Who Did Cock Robin? is easily confused with another 1970 nudie called Who Killed Cock Robin?, which IMDB lists as Jones’ film credited as Donald Jones. As adult film transitioned into hardcore, Don Jones wanted no part of it, so he made his first endeavour into horror. This was made possible by Ron Garcia, as he met producer Dave Arthur who wanted to make a couple of low-budget horrors. Schoolgirls in Chains was entirely financed by executive producer Arthur with a budget of $42,000, and filmed over 13 days in Riverside, California. The shooting title was The Black Widow, although, Dave Arthur thought it sounded too blaxploitation, so he came up with Playdead, but when the film was bought for distribution by Mirror Releasing, they slapped the Schoolgirls in Chains title on it so it would sound more exploitative, and therefore, more potentially profitable. It went through various other titles in the USA for VHS, DVD, and reissue releases - Let’s Play Dead, Girls in Chains, and Come Play with Us, respectively. It was called Abducted in the United Kingdom and Australia, and is also known in the Land Down Under as The Abduction. Swingers Massacre a.k.a. Inside Amy (1974) was written by Arthur’s wife, directed by Garcia, and shot by Jones. Don Jones would then serve as director of photography on The House of Seven Corpses (1974) directed by Paul Harrison, with Gary Kent as associate producer and production manager, and Ron Garcia as art director, who also had a small role. Jones’ next job as DP would actually lead to his next gig as a director, which would end up being his most memorable directed film next to Schoolgirls in Chains, albeit more obscure. “Your Feminine Pulchritude is Detestable” - The Love Butcher (1975) Don Jones was hired as the cinematographer on the twisted sleazy trash piece The Love Butcher, produced by Mirror Releasing, with Mikel Angel (1926 - 2001) in the director’s chair, who was also co-screenwriter with James M. Tanenbaum credited as Jim Evergreen. Angel’s best known work is co-writing supernatural horror Psychic Killer, released in the same year of 1975, and writing the screenplay for horror sub-genre pastiche Grotesque (1988) starring Linda Blair. He was an actor too, even having a small role in Swingers Massacre. Tanenbaum would go on to have a successful career as a sound mixer, and his work includes three Brian De Palma films - Blow Out (1981), Body Double (1984), and The Untouchables (1987). Shot in twelve days on a meagre $40,000 budget, The Love Butcher would be Mikel Angel’s sole directorial effort, and this could be because his first cut was deemed by the entire crew to make no sense and was unwatchable. Jones was then brought in to finish the film as director and do rewrites, with Austin McKinney as his director of photography. Mckinney had just finished shooting indie horror Axe (1974), which would end up as one of the 39 prosecuted films on the DPP list during the video nasties controversy in the UK, and he would later do visual effects photography for John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981), and James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). Don Jones created a new supporting character, so he did a little more casting, and injected humour into the script. About half of the film would end up being his, so he is co-credited director with Angel. Gruesome murders of beautiful naked young women can be seen in this proto-slasher. It was released in the grindhouse theatres and on the drive-in circuit the year after Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas - 1974 genre landmarks that would set the template for the modern horror film. It was given a slightly wider release in 1983, in an attempt to capitalize on the slasher boom, which was ignited by the...