This year, Severin released Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, a collection of 31 remastered films on 14 discs. This movie appears at the center of it and if you know nothing of the story of Adamson - somehow a man who could work with both Colonel Sanders and Charles Manson - get ready to have your mind blown out of the back of your brain.
Beyond his 1995 demise, murdered by live-in contractor Fred Fulford and buried inside his home, Adamson's life is of extreme interest to me, as it should be anyone coming to this site.
The son of silent film star Denver Dixon and actress Dolores Booth, Adamson was involved in movies from the age of six, as he acted in his father's 1935 film Desert Mesa.
After helping his father make Halfway to Hell in 1961 and meeting Sam Sherman, the two would join with Dan Kennis to create Independent-International Pictures, the makers of movies like Satan's Sadists and the astounding Dracula vs. Frankenstein. They'd go on to recreate - rip off, really - the Blood Island films in the U.S., as well as movies in the stewardess - well, he invented that category - western and biker genres, often shot at Spahn Ranch.
This film hits on everything I love and I couldn't have been more overjoyed watching it. I've been holding off, needing something to look forward to and this was more than worth that wait. Alien conspiracies? Murder? Go-go dancing? Shady characters? Stuntpeople? Carnival Magic? This has all of that and so much more.
Outside of a movie where George Eastman, John Saxon and Santo team up to battle Adolfo Celi, Telly Savalas and Christopher Lee to save Edwige Fenech, Marisa Mell and Caroline Munro from being horribly murdered, I can't think of a film that I more want to watch again and again. While the movie of my dreams will never be made, I am deliriously happy that this exists.
Beyond his 1995 demise, murdered by live-in contractor Fred Fulford and buried inside his home, Adamson's life is of extreme interest to me, as it should be anyone coming to this site.
The son of silent film star Denver Dixon and actress Dolores Booth, Adamson was involved in movies from the age of six, as he acted in his father's 1935 film Desert Mesa.
After helping his father make Halfway to Hell in 1961 and meeting Sam Sherman, the two would join with Dan Kennis to create Independent-International Pictures, the makers of movies like Satan's Sadists and the astounding Dracula vs. Frankenstein. They'd go on to recreate - rip off, really - the Blood Island films in the U.S., as well as movies in the stewardess - well, he invented that category - western and biker genres, often shot at Spahn Ranch.
This film hits on everything I love and I couldn't have been more overjoyed watching it. I've been holding off, needing something to look forward to and this was more than worth that wait. Alien conspiracies? Murder? Go-go dancing? Shady characters? Stuntpeople? Carnival Magic? This has all of that and so much more.
Outside of a movie where George Eastman, John Saxon and Santo team up to battle Adolfo Celi, Telly Savalas and Christopher Lee to save Edwige Fenech, Marisa Mell and Caroline Munro from being horribly murdered, I can't think of a film that I more want to watch again and again. While the movie of my dreams will never be made, I am deliriously happy that this exists.