Jack Hill This page intentionally left blank Jack Hill The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film CALUM WADDELL McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London Photographs are courtesy Jack Hill unless noted. LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA Waddell, Calum. Jack Hill : the exploitation and blaxploitation master, film by film / Calum Waddell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-3609-5 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Hill, Jack, 1933 Jan. 28– I. Title. PN1998.3.H535W33 2009 791.4302'33092—dc22 2008048260 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Calum Waddell. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover (top to bottom): The cast of Spider Baby (1968); director Jack Hill on set; Pam Grier in Foxy Brown (1974) (AIP/Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com In memory of Chevy, my pet cat who died during the production of this book Acknowledgments Many thanks go out to the following great people for their help in the production of this book (and just their general all-round enthusiasm as well): Mark Atkins, Judith Brown, Roger Corman, Michael David- son, Sid Haig, David Kidd, Joanne Nail, Francis O’Toole, John Prizer, Jane Schaffer, Karl Schanzer, and, of course, Jack and Elke Hill themselves for making this labor of love possible. And a special thanks to Elijah Drenner, a brother in grindhouse grime, Joe Venegas (for outstanding services in LA). vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1. Beginnings 7 2. The First Films Spider Baby (1964) 14 Track of the Vampire (1966) 27 Mondo Keyhole (1966) 33 Pit Stop (1967) 41 3. The Boris Karloff Films Dance of Death(1968) 52 Isle of the Snake People(1968) 55 Incredible Invasion (1968) 59 Fear Chamber (1968) 63 4. Return to Corman Ich, ein Groupie(1969) 76 The Big Doll House(1971) 87 The Big Bird Cage(1972) 104 5. The Blaxploitation Years Coffy(1973) 114 Foxy Brown(1974) 132 6. From Cheerleaders to Sci-Fi The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974) 144 Switchblade Sisters(1975) 156 The Scripts of Jack Hill 176 Sorceress (1982) 186 vii viii Table of Contents Appendix: The DVDs of Jack Hill 199 Chapter Notes 205 Bibliography 207 Index 209 Introduction If you weren’t there, then it is difficult to imagine what it was like. A world before VHS, DVD and multiplex cinemas seems unthinkable to many of us— myself included. A child of the eighties, I grew up with numerous video shops in my small, but modern, Scottish town and discovered many B-movie gems as a young boy—ripe with imagination and willing to sit down in front of prac- tically any kind of film. The accessibility of a movie was never an issue for me—I could just as easily rent The Evil Dead as Song of the Southor The God- fatherfrom my local video store and I never had to wait for the theatrical re- release of a classic to see it again. Of course, this was not always the case—and in so many ways, video killed the art of the B-movie. You see, as I grew into my teens I learned about the drive-in cinemas that were once hugely popular in North America and I also found out about 42nd Street in New York—which sounded like an exploitation film connoisseur’s heaven. It was a result of such discoveries that I first came into contact with the work of Jack Hill, one of the most proficient and talented low-budget filmmakers of the sixties and seventies. After seeing Coffy for the first time, I knew I had stumbled upon somebody special. When one looks at Hill’s movies today it is easy to be transported back to a time before six major studios effec- tively controlled what was shown at your nearest cinema. A time when quirky, strange and unpredictable low-budget movies were projected for audiences who, without Internet access or DVD special features, knew little about what they were about to see other than what they learned from the film’s trailer or marketing campaign. As a result, the advertising that accompanied many of the great B pictures from the sixties and seventies has become as legendary as the movies them- selves—from the “To Avoid Fainting, Just Keep Repeating ‘It’s Only a Movie’” blurb that accompanied Wes Craven’s Last House on the Leftto Hill’s own “So Easy to Love. So Hard to Kill” that was used for Switchblade Sisters. Consider- ing that Hill spent a huge chunk of his career working for the legendary Roger Corman, it should come as no surprise that he was responsible for most of the tag lines that complemented his own directorial efforts—and indeed the work 1