Very disappointing...

People are voting emotionally.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Deranged mama's boy psycho Louis (a creepy portrayal by Tony Palladino) preys on prostitutes in New York City. Eager rookie detective Johnny (a winningly sincere performance by Steve Hollister) and hard-bitten hooker Ginny Smith (ably played with steely resolve by Janine Lenon) join forces to stop this wacko.Director Anton Holden, who also co-wrote the tight script with Ray Jenkins, makes neat use of seedy Big Apple locations (the psycho's apartment that's littered with disembodied mannequin parts stands out as an especially spooky place), keeps the sordidly engrossing story moving along at a snappy pace, maintains an unflinchingly gritty tone throughout, stages the murder set pieces with savage aplomb (the one in an elevator rates as a real doozy), offers a pleasing plenitude of hot nude babes, and pulls out the brutal stops for the gruesome climax in which Ginny and her fellow ladies of the evening exact a harsh revenge on Louis. Gideon Zumbach's sharp black and white cinematography gives this picture a crisp noir look. Edmund Mitchell's spirited jazzy score hits the stirring spot. An on the money sleazy winner.

So where did noir go after 1959? There was a definite decline in Crime Genre films (of which Film Noir was, in great part a sub-genre though it did infiltrate other Genres also) if you check the year by year Genre lists, so that explains at lot, along with Hollywood closing down "B" productions. A good portion of it migrated over to TV, but there it was still sanitized by the Television Code and its "Seal of Good Practice" which functions much like the Hayes Code. Interestingly though, there were some independent productions that combined Film Noir with looser restraints in the industry that brought along the sexploitation films. "FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY… THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In Aroused (1966) is one of those directions, and it's a real gem. Directed by Anton Holden written by Holden and Ray Jenkins and Robert Shull and stars nobodies, Janine Lenon, Steve Hollister, Joanna Mills, Fleurette Carter, Ted Gelanza, and Tony Palladino. Janine Lenon is great as hardboiled Hooker/Femme Fatale, Ginny Neff. It takes two homicide detectives to wrestle a switchblade out of her hand while she does her best to stomp their feet with her stilettos, before she realizes they are cops and not killers. She swears to a cop that she will castrate whoever killed her lover Pat. Watch for her touching monologue about her lesbian relationship with Pat , it's very well done and a nice contrast to her hard as nails hooker persona. The story is simple, a peeping tom psycho with a mother-who-was-a- prostitute fetish follows hookers around, kills them and then violates them. Detective Johnny of NYPD is assigned to the low publicity case (who cares about hookers) The latest dead prostitutes bi/hooker girlfriend teams up with well meaning but screw-up Detective Johnny to track down the psycho. This is the second Neo Noir in the vein of "Noir meets sexploitation flick" that I've seen (there are probably more out there to be discovered and resurrected) the first being Satan In High Heels (1962), but the sex isn't anything you don't see nowadays and the film is artistically done with beautiful chiaroscuro Noir stylistics, a shout out to Gideon Zumbach director of photography (as Anibal Paz, I wonder if Argentinian cinematographer Aníbal González Paz was visiting NYC in 1965-66). This film is exponentially better, it's highly stylized, with a wonderfully Noir aesthetic. It's on the cheap but has good direction and a descent plot both furnished by Director Anton Holden. The way the street shots are shot suggests that possibly it was shot guerrilla style with no permits but they look great and bring back memories of that time period. I noticed a street location from The Incident (1967) that I just recently watched which used the Bronx Biograph Studios so some of it may be shot also in that borough. I'll give it a 8/10 for accomplishing so much with so little has a jazzy score to boot. It could be on a triple bill with Blast Of Silence and The Incident ;-) Available on DVD from Something Weird Video.

'Aroused' quotes from some big titles in film history; the 'shadow hand' running down the window from 'Nosferatu, eine Symfonie des Grauens', the shower scene with curtain (and the face that is behind it) that refers to 'Psycho' and the use mannequins that one may have seen before in 'Killer's Kiss'. I could be wrong, of course, but in any case director Anton Holden throws many beautiful black and white compositions of downtown New York at us, so there's the first big plus.Then there's the crazy story about another frustrated maniac on the loose and another frustrated cop on his tail; the acting isn't good, the lines are cheesy (most of the time; some of the ones by Djanine were pretty good) and the story has an equally cheesy way of 'evolving'. Some scenes are just (way) too long, of which the one with the black hooker is one where I didn't mind so much. There's some horror and blood, there's freeze-frames during the killings (with the dark memories of the killer's mommy in audio) and there's the wild wall-paper in the kitchen of the cop's wife... who could ask for more? O yes, there was some lovely vintage nudity, but I'd expected more.Well, I'm being a little too enthusiastic maybe, but it's an overall fun vintage exploitation flick with a terrifically merciless ending (indeed, that must have been the inspiration for 'that other horror film').A big 7 out of 10.

Gutsy tale with plenty of wonderfully shot crisp b/w photography. Strangely languid in parts (possibly to extend running time) because for the most part well paced, well edited and excitingly told tale of a sex killer prowling the streets of Manhattan. Great opening and first killing (and aftermath) and some of that power returns at times throughout. Novel attempt to give background to the killer's psyche whilst he's in the act and several nice touches make for an enjoyable ride as cops and prostitutes try to find the killer. It all ends in his lair in a fabulous scene with him returning to his room filled with mannequin parts, to hug his teddy bear but find himself surrounded by a pack of call girls intent on removing a vital part of his anatomy!