You Oughta Be In Pictures

It all started with The Bad Bunch. But then again, really it didn't.

The totally bizarre, B-grade brilliance of director/actor Greydon Clark came into my life when Joe and I found the VHS copy to this 1976 blacksexsploitation film in the previously viewed sale dump bin at Blockbuster Video about fifteen years ago, not having a clue what either of us were getting into at the time. The story about a white Vietnam vet (directed and played by Clark) who returns Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood to deliver a letter to the father of his fallen black comrade in war, he gets more than he bargained for when confronted by his old friend's militant brother, racist cops, vacant strippers with weird boobs, egalitarian nude pool parties, and fashions not seen since the likes of Mr. Furley on Three's Company. The acting, the dialogue, the um, editing choices, I still don't think I have laughed so hard during a movie the way I did during my first viewing of The Bad Bunch -- unless you count the second viewing. And the third. And, and... Deezus Deist there's no describing this picture. But it did change my life. Because from that moment on, I would be forever haunted by the ever-hovering spectre of uber-auteur Greydon Clark.

A short clip from The Bad Bunch, where Jim (Clark) is chased down and beaten up by his old solider buddy's brother and associates, until the cops (featuring Aldo Ray) sportin' roscoes and ridiculously wide neckties. One of my favorite lines from the movie is in this scene. Just try and guess which one that is. :)



Joe and I would show this movie to anyone who came over to hang out, from old friends to various bands sleeping over while on tour, and very few came away without a lasting impression. But it was the evening when our old friend Randy was visiting when, after watching the picture, Randy remarked "I wonder what other movies this Greydon Clark guy has done?" At that very moment Randy looked down at the video tape that he was holding at that moment, while rooting through my shelf of old VHS tapes that I owned, and this is what he saw:

Skinheads... written and directed by GREYDON CLARK! Joe and I had bought this movie years ago and left it on the shelf for ages, never getting around to watching it. Naturally, it had to be watched, and watched now. And oh, what a show. Another exploitation barn burner starring Chuck Connors and Barbara Bain, with lots of thunderous overacting and pistol-play. I had no idea I owned another Greydon Clark film other than The Bad Bunch. Who knew it would be Skinheads, the cover of which had been starring back at me from the shelf in my bedroom for years gone by?

A showdown scene with Connors and the skins, with another great Greydon line at the end, punctuated by an unexplainable head-butt. Priceless!

Now I may be remembering this wrong, seeing how it was fifteen years ago, but I think it mentioned somewhere on the back of the Skinheads box that Greydon Clark was also the director of a horror film called The Uninvited. Joe and I looked at each other with eyes a-poppin'. We both dove for the video shelf, and pulled this out together:

Sometime back in the 80's Joe and I saw an episode of Late Nite with David Letterman when a young Tom Hanks described his first ever film, a horror movie that I think was called He Knows You're Alone. Yet for some reason Joe thought he had said the name of the movie was called The Uninvited, and it sounded hilarious, so when we came across this VHS copy of The Uninvited with its gruesome demon cat cover we had to snap it up, even though, like Skinheads, it lingered on the shelf for years without either of us ever getting the chance to pop it in and watch it (we had a lot of those laying around the house at the time). Discovering that it was actually another Greydon Clark picture we inadvertently owned (Clark even had a fleeting scene as one of the scientists who created the mutant cat) sent us into whoops of gleeful joy. George Kennedy stars with a killer tabby cat who makes its way onto a yacht and tears out the throat (or foot!) of every human on board.

Check out George's greatest acting moment in the lengthy history of his illustrious career. "The.... CAT! Th-the... CAT!"

It wasn't much longer than that night with Randy and Joe when I received a call in the middle of the night from my friend S., who rarely calls me in the middle of the night unless it's of extreme importance. And apparently, it was. Barely unable to talk from the laughter, she explained that she had just been watching this insanely bizarre sci-fi movie running on late-night cable and she couldn't believe what she was seeing, but had to stick it out until the end. As the ending credits started to roll, the first thing that popped up on the screen were the words "DIRECTED BY GREYDON CLARK" and she literally howled and started dailing my number. Whutta pal, whutta pal...

Finally getting a copy of my own, I was utterly, and yet delightedly, unable to believe what my eyes were seeing. A 21st century world where humans live underground and serve as hookers and slaves to the cyborgs who control them, Dark Future is exactly one of those pictures you see come on cable in the wee hours of the morning and wonder what was in those peyote buttons you had sprinkled on your salad for dinner that night. No sign of Greydon in this picture, but it has been awhile so I may be forgetting. I think I remember finding myself oddly attracted to the lead cyborg dude way back then. See what you have wrought, Greydon?

I'm not even gonna set this up. Just... enjoy.

It was sometime even later than that when Joe and I purposely set out to search for the next Greyson Clark film, because its influence reaches even further back than any of his films that I had seen up to this point.

Maybe others who are older might remember this more vividly, but around 1990 or so, there was a bit of a lambada dance craze sweeping pop culture, and I was working at Music Man in Military Circle Mall at the time when the song from a movie known as The Forbidden Dance was at the top of the charts. It was several years later, after discovering the greatness that is Greydon Clark, that it was he who directed the picture that brought that into the mainstream. Was this perhaps Clark's most financially successful film? I would love to ask him someday. But the movie, about a beautiful Amazonian princess who comes to Los Angeles hoping to win a televised dance contest so that she could bring attention to the plight of the Amazon rain forests (okaaay...) the film for me at least is greatly enhanced by featuring Kid Creole & the Coconuts, who I think did "My Male Curiosity" during one of the many dance numbers. At least it was something other than the movie's hit song repeated throughout the picture.

Did people ever actually dress like this? I take back everything I just said about the fashions in The Bad Bunch.



So over the years Greydon Clark movies have snuck up on me, and it was always a sort of sneaking up, especially when it was something I had already seen back when it came out... like Joysticks, which my brother and I saw when it was first released for rent because it was back during the arcade video game craze, but seeing as it was 1983 it was just another teen sex comedy along the Porky's line (and starring Joe Don Baker!) and it almost hurt our eyes just to watch it. Then again it's not like the trailer would make anyone think otherwise. But YES! Directed by Greydon Clark! Though the dialogue is not his fault. But still, this technically makes this the first Greydon Clark movie I had ever seen, even though I hadn't paid any attention to who had directed it all those years ago. When it comes to these kinds of comedies, I imagine people seldom do.

Since then I've seen several other Greydon Clark films, especially the ones that appeared on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 during the length of its latter-day run, like Angels' Revenge and Final Justice. But Joe and I were particularly pleased when just two or so years ago they issued a DVD release of the very first directorial debut from Greydon Clark...

Black Shampoo! No, not the movie starring Warren Beatty, although an obvious blacksploitation picture of a similar nature. and as the movie trailer informs us, this stud is no dud. A handsome, two-fisted hair stylist who bangs every broad he blow-dries, and features lots of Greydon Clark's signature jumping-over-the camera crotch-shots, as well as the most disturbing anal rape with a hot curling iron ever presented on film. Written and directed by the master. Now Joe and I are actually seeking out Greydon Clark films on our own! See what a whole heck of a lot of subliminal suggestion works when you find your way into the mainstream without a lot of fanfare?



Thank you, Mr. Clark, for the wonderful clips from your youtube site. And your magnificent movies. And for The Bad Bunch, the movie that started it all.

But then again, really it didn't.