But for me, it was never about the killer bashing away at someone’s ass with a meat tenderizer. The Gore Gore Girls undeniably forged a brave new horizon in mannequin-molested ultra-gore. But that’s after a Cadillac runs over someone’s head. And the whole thing ends with Abraham Gentry sitting on a couch for five minutes and talking. Is it extraordinary? Well, Henny Youngman performs two stand-up routines. You’ve never watched the entire film, and 2. Is it influential? Sure, but that doesn’t interest me. Finally, a bartender yells, “I’VE GOTTA TAKE A SHIT!”

Woman’s lib protesters threaten the integrity of Tops ‘N Bottoms. Inexplicably refusing the advances of Nancy, his cute/sexy/drunk reporter sidekick, Abe hits the streets with hundreds of gloriously awful puns and a walking cane. What’s a Youngman to do? You got it - get a back-alley Columbo named Abraham Gentry on the case. Strippers are being murdered in disgustingly perverted ways, police are baffled by the killer’s identity, and a fat guy keeps drawing smiley faces on fruit, then smashing them. Unfortunately, trouble is afoot at Henny Youngman’s dejected strip club. When the sweltering Chi-town heat gets you hot, Tops ‘N Bottoms will get you hotter. But where Ray used a guitar and Robert used a Chaplin, Herschell used an ass-tenderizer. Like Sir Davies’ pro-solitaire pop treasure and Altman’s breathless ode to assertion, the film serves as a pinnacle to Lewis’s particular brand of self-aware ingenuity. The Gore Gore Girls is not a horror film - it’s a guileless comedy. For not only was it Lewis’ final curtain call prior to helming Blood Feast 2 three decades later, but also the only movie of his that never, ever degrades. Repeatedly, that is, except for The Gore Gore Girls. Lewis films that I’d watched repeatedly throughout the semester. I returned to my parents’ house with stacks of VHS blanks, filled with H.G. Even luckier, they stocked a vast majority of Something Weird’s VHS catalog. Since this was pre-DVD, I was lucky enough to have a superb video store, That’s Rentertainment, not three blocks from my dorm room. Running parallel to my Kinks obsession throughout the big 2-0 was an unconditional love for the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Fields impression in The Gore Gore Girls. The song became not merely an exercise in disposable culture, but a simple, pointed execution of its creator’s unassuming talent. Thanks to a decade’s worth of life experience, I heard what Ray Davies was actually saying for the first time ever. In short - my youthful draw towards form, rather than content.Ī few days ago, I listened to “I’m On An Island” again.

Yet, the lyrics did little to fuel my devotion. The song bookended a 90 minute “KOOL KINKS” Maxell mixtape that I made, and I even recorded a cover version on my four-track. At age twenty, The Kinks’ “I’m On An Island” was my defining mid-60s jam.

The gore gore girls