The Body Shop (1973)

User Rating:

3.3/10   

Director:

J.G. Patterson Jr.

Writer:

J.G. Patterson Jr. (writer)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

Welcome to the BODY SHOP!

Plot:

Emminent plastic surgeon and mad scientist Don Brandon loses his wife Anitra - pinup model and social butterfly - in a tragic accident...

Plot Keywords:

Surgeon | Mad Scientist | Experiment | Dead Wife | Murder

Cast

J.G. Patterson Jr.	...	Dr. Brandon (as Don Brandon)
Jenny Driggers	...	Anitra
Roy Mehaffey	...	Greg
Linda Faile	...	Girl in the Trunk
Jan Benfield	...	Pam
Jeannine Aber	...	Ellen
Candy Furr	...	Secretary
Vickie O'Neal	...	Company Corpse
Jerry Kearns	...	Old Man in Truck
Ken Sigmon	...	Max (Truck Driver)
Linda Lindsey	...	Scrubwoman
Bill Nevins	...	Bartender
Joe B. Lamb	...	Himself
Chris Allen	...	Guard
Howard Stewart	...	Harry

Also Known As:

Anitra (USA) (working title)
Doctor Gore (USA)
Shrieks in the Night (USA) (video title)

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:X

Filming Locations:

Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Trivia:

Over 15 gallons of blood was used in the making of the film.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: Near the end of the film, the slate is visible in one shot, indicating that the number of takes filmed for that scene were insufficient and the filmmakers were forced to use the slate shot to pad out the dialogue. If you look close enough, you can see that the working title of the film was "Anitra".

Quotes:

Dr. Don Brandon: Hands on a woman are more...most important. It's the delicate feminine hand that brings out the true femininity.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Planet X: (#2.5)" (2006)

Amateurish exploitation

"Dr. Gore" is the first, and thankfully the only, film by director and lead actor J. G. "Pat" Patterson. (Mr. Patterson reportedly died a year so after this movie was made. I'm guessing it was from lung cancer since he smoked about 100 cigarettes in this 80-min. feature.) It's the story of a "doctor" who loses his wife and then decides to build the "perfect mate." Like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, he goes out and kills half a dozen or so women and then sews together the parts that he likes best. The resulting "perfect mate" is a blond, well-endowed, empty-headed, bimbo.

Everything about this film is poorly done: the direction is bad, the camera work is awful, the editing stinks and the acting is abysmal. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge B-movie fan. But this one is so technically inept that it's more annoying than entertaining. "Dr. Gore" isn't one of those so-bad-it's-good kind of movies; it's just plain bad. Apparently, the only reason this movie was made was so that middle-aged, bad-comb-over-guy Patterson could make out with a bunch of young chicks.

Admittedly, there are a few (unintentionally) funny moments. At one point, you hear someone knocking at the door. The doctor says to his hunchbacked assistant, Gregory, "Go get that, it might be the door." Later in the film, the doctor is in prison (although no one bothers to explain why he's there). Anyway, he's talking to a female prison employee who is scrubbing the floor. The camera angle shifts and suddenly you see the movie clapboard (you know, that big black and white wooden thing with chalk writing all over it that they clap together before every scene to synchronize the picture with the sound). Somehow, they just forgot to edit that part out! There's also a full-length country-music "video" in the middle of the film. It's supposed to be part of a nightclub scene, but it's so long and so poorly integrated that you'd swear it got there by accident. I'll bet that one of the investors was a frustrated singer and told Patterson that unless he let him sing in the movie, he wouldn't give him any money.

One positive thing can be said about this Something Weird DVD: it's got a ton of special features. There are no less than three featurettes (all three of them are completely unwatchable -- avoid them), an alternate opening sequence (which is interesting because it has a special introduction by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the "Godfather of Gore"), a dozen or so trailers and more. The trailers are particularly entertaining. Most of them are for nudie movies from the late ' 50s early '60s and are positively hilarious.