SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Woodyanders Nutty rich lady Virginia Marcus (a deliciously wicked and vampy performance by Eileen Lord) offers three folks who are all murderers -- sniveling heroin addict Buddy (twitchy Ed Brandt), haughty actor Charles Freeman (a perfectly snooty Frank Grace), and brutish champion wrestler Rocco (essayed with snarly aplomb by legendary real-life boxer Jake LaMotta) -- $100,000 thousand dollars each if they manage to stay alive for twenty-four hours in Manhattan. Naturally, there's a catch: Virginia plans to hunt down and kill each and every one of these guys like a pack of wild animals. One-shot movie director Herb Stanley relates the familiar "The Most Dangerous Game"-style premise with surprising style and panache: he keeps the pace rattling along at a speedy clip, develops a substantial amount of tension, makes inspired use of authentically seedy New York City locations, sprinkles in a generous amount of grisly violence, and stages the rousing hunting sequences with tremendous rip-roaring brio (the big back alley confrontation between Rocco and Virginia is an absolute corker with Virginia dressing up as a matador and taking Rocco on like a ferocious charging bull!). Special kudos are in order for the inventive and impressive black and white cinematography: the overhead camera shots, distorted lens, askew angles, and lively hand-held camera-work ensure that this picture remains quite visually exciting throughout. The swinging groovy jazz score likewise does the trick. The much-criticized tacked-on gratuitous female nude inserts and lurid soft-core sex scenes further enhance this film's trashy appeal. Granted, the acting is decidedly hit or miss, with Lord's gleefully nasty portrayal of the cackling and cunning Virginia rating as a definite stand-out. Moreover, the tight 69 minute running time qualifies as another major asset; this picture never drags and certainly delivers the mean'n'lean lowdown scuzzy goods. Highly recommended for exploitation cinema fans.

lazarillo This is an interesting late 60's sexploitation film. It's basically a loose remake of "The Most Dangerous Game" except that the person hunting humans is a sexy woman, her victims are criminals who have gotten away with their crimes (usually murder), and her hunting ground, rather than an island, is all of New York City! Of course, there's also plenty of sexploitation filler. One of the victims, for instance, hides out at a friend's apartment where a seemingly non-stop orgy is taking place. There's also a ridiculous scene where a large-breasted (but not particularly attractive) "actress", who probably couldn't deliver a convincing line reading if you put a gun to her head, is sitting topless in a room carrying on a dialogue with a guy who was obviously not even in the same room. This is obviously "padding", but I don't know that it was "inserts" added later by someone else as was the case with movies like "The Curious Dr. Humpp" because, while that film was originally an Argentinean horror movie, this was obviously always intended for the NYC "grindhouse" sexploitation market.Obviously the sex scenes add nothing to the plot, but at least this HAS a plot. These 60's sexploitation movies differ from later porno movies in that they often did have some purpose beyond getting the male audience off. Some of the best ones actually took advantage of their "captive audience", throwing in the obligatory sex scenes, but also attempting to actually make a real movie--and sometimes even getting away with things the mainstream movies couldn't (they were kind of like horror movie in that respect). This isn't as creative as something like "Toys Are Not for Children" or "Swinger's Massacre", but it does have appeal beyond the merely prurient.This could be considered a "roughie", one of the films of this era that combined violence with softcore sex in lieu of hardcore scenes (which were still illegal at the time). These films courted controversy, then and now, because some people believed they were trying to make violence sexy. I like them though, not because the violence is "sexy", but because it tends to make the sex less boring. These movies are generally much less monotonous than the straight sex films that came later. In any event, this is one of your more palatable "roughies" because the violence is aimed almost exclusively at men (which no one can really claim is "sexy") and the victims really deserve it (both for their on screen crimes and the generally inept performances of the actors). This is not great, but it's not a total waste of a time either.

The_Void This decidedly odd little cult classic doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be. On one hand, it's a violent thriller, on another it's an absurd comedy; and it's all filmed in the style 'nouvelle vogue' style of films such as Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless! This sort of curio coming together can sometimes work well together, but the result with this film seems more messy than anything else, and while I imagine Quentin Tarantino got quite a kick out of this, I didn't...at least, not really. There are actually some really good scenes in this film, such the 'bull fighting' scene and the ending, but the way that these scenes are implemented in the plot doesn't offer much in the way of interest, which harms the finished product. The plot is no doubt interesting, and follows a young woman who invites three men to her house. After telling them of a game, she sends them away with the knowledge that once they receive a cheque for $100,000 from her, they will have to survive 24 hours in Manhattan before being allowed to cash it in. The only catch here is that she'll be hunting them down...The plot takes obvious influence from the 1932 classic 'The Most Dangerous Game' as it follows the idea of a human prey, but it's also obvious that Herb Stanley's film isn't too interested in it's plot, and more concerned with jumping on the sixties exploitation bandwagon, as many scenes (sex scenes in particular) exist for no other reason than to ensure that the film got the exploitation classification. This actually got on my nerves as the plot is interesting; yet not a great deal of screen time is devoted to it. The way that the film has an upper class woman as the hunter is fun, and the juxtaposition between her class status and the game she's playing works well in establishing her insanity. The acting leaves a lot to be desired, with only 'Raging Bull' himself Jake LaMotta standing out for the cult fans in the support cast (and standing out for all the wrong reasons, I might add). Eileen Lord is good, however, in her role as the title character and overall, while this film didn't appeal to me much - exploitation fans should be happy and it gets a recommendation to anyone who likes their odd cult films.

django-1 This very-low-budget independent thriller--a gritty NYC Freudian rewrite of The Most Dangerous Game--was a real surprise to me, as its director has no other credits on the IMDB. Psychotic Eileen Lord (whose performance belongs on the same shelf as Jack Nicholson's in THE SHINING or Tab Hunter's in THE AROUSERS)hunts down three men--a junkie, an over-the-hill stage actor, and a professional wrestler down on his luck--and cackles with glee while she's doing it. The crisp B&W New York locations are so real you can taste them, and the small, sparse sets (and some real houses/apartments too, it seems to me) are shot imaginatively. The camera work is unconventional and the editing is tight and gives the film a good pacing. Unfortunately, this film, which probably ran about 55 minutes in its original form, is ruined by about 15 minutes of poorly-shot nudie footage edited in at a later date, or at least shot by someone else who had no style to speak of. These inserts, I suppose, allowed the film to play on the "adult film" circuit, and probably gave it more of an audience than it could have gotten otherwise. However, it really belongs on the same shelf with films such as THE THRILL KILLERS, and its true audience is lovers of 60s sleazy,grim horror-crime films. Nudie fans have hundreds of films to enjoy, but CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT is a rare gem that once seen is not soon forgotten. Perhaps the release of this on a snazzy new DVD will cause the makers to come out of the woodwork and talk to some film researchers...maybe someday there will be a DVD with DIFFERENT VERSIONS of the film, including one without the inserts? A must-see for students of 1960s independent cinema.