Shatner when he was sexy.
THE INTRUDER (1961) – William Shatner and Roger Corman are a match made in B-movie heaven, never more so than in this race-baiting movie that had critics reaching for synonyms for “incendiary.” Showing up in a small Southern town, Shatner is an insidious race-baiter whose tongue packs a punch and who manages to attract the KKK and manifest a massive, out-of-control lynch mob seemingly out of nothing more than words, words, words. And what words they are. Written by Charles Beaumont, a Twilight Zone scribe who also wrote Burn, Witch, Burn and The Masque of the Red Death, this is some of the vilest, most heinous, most evocative language ever put on film. It’ll scorch your ears and brand itself onto your brain. (Watch now!)
Shatner carpool.
THE BABY (1973) – television director Ted Post lends a movie-of-the-week sheen to this bizarro tale of a social worker whose newest case is an adult man living like a baby and treated as such by his mother and his sisters. David Manzy gets his diaper changed, sucks his thumb, and breast feeds, which is extremely disconcerting since he’s a man in his late 20′s. Fixated on the idea that this infantilism isn’t voluntary, his social worker becomes obsessed with the nightmarish, soft blue and fuzzy prison in which he lives, but it turns out that she’s got a pretty sick agenda of her own. Picking the scenery out from between her teeth, Ruth Roman plays mommy as a maternal gargoyle who gargles nicotine and delivers her line with the sneer of a John Waters diva. (Watch now!)
RAPE SQUAD (1974) – okay, so on Netflix it’s called Act of Vengeance but its other title is RAPE SQUAD and that’s the title that spells out pretty much exactly what happens in this movie. A squad of women get raped, so they form a squad to stomp out rape. See what they did there? A masked serial rapist who forces his victims to sing “Jingle Bells” while he violates them, chalks up a list of victims who all meet at the police station, recognize their mutual interest, team up, learn self-defense and go after the rapist. Unpleasant and uncomfortable one second, Dolemite-level campy the next, it’s the kind of bad taste roller coaster that’ll give you a case of moral whiplash. See what Ebert has to say about it. (Watch now!)
