The Grindhouse Era, Part 6: The Mid-Sixties

During the mid-1960’s most of the movies shown in grind houses were New York productions that addressed subjects that were grim and gritty - with titles that announced the fact - and that starred the same group of actresses from one film to another. 

Buxom blondes showed up commonly enough and included Sharon Kent in Unholy Matrimony,



Maureen Gafney in One Shocking Moment



 and Lorna Maitland in a couple of Russ Meyer films.

Lorna Maitland in Lorna (1964)



Lorna Maitland in Mondo Topless (1966)

But much more common were brunettes in just about everything else, and foremost among them from 1964 to1966 were Darlene Bennett and June Roberts. 

Ms. Bennett has 34 credits on IMDb, including both full-length movies and short films, all within the period of 1963 to 1969.  In a couple of the shorts, she appears with her sister, Dawn.  That is true for 1966’s Double Trouble, which has the distinction of feeding three of the prime fantasies of your typical 60’s American man.  1) A guy stumbles onto a semi-clothed gal (Dawn Bennett) who seems utterly unaware of his presence; 2) The guy and gal hit it right off, so she invites him up to her apartment; 3) The guy, the gal and her sister (Darlene) wind up in bed together.  Tis the trifecta of every man’s dreams.

Darlene



Dawn



both

 

One of Darlene’s 1965 movies was The Beast That Killed Women

which co-starred Judy Adler, one the most attractive women to ever star in grindhouse fare.

I don’t know much about The Beast because I did not work on it.  The collages were from a decade-old post by a retired imager who called himself Unique1 - all I did was balance the color a bit and add the names.

I did watch Darlene and Judy's other 1965 effort, Sin Syndicate, and I am sorry for it.  The movie is a sordid, miserable mess that qualifies as a roughie - usually not my cup of tea, but the star power was too great an allure.  Darlene is in a lesbian-lite scene with Marlene Eck (neither party disrobes)

and in a walking around topless scene by herself.

 

Sin Syndicate also has an actress named Yolanda Moreno,

who plays a stripper with pointy pasties in one scene

and who sleeps topless in another.  Yay for her.

 

And Judy Adler - cute as can be - is in the roughest of scenes by herself



 and in a long shower scene with June Roberts.

Over a period of less than 4 years, Ms. Roberts appeared in more than 20 movies and 1 short.

Those movies included Flesh and Lace,



The Girl From Sin,



My Brother’s Wife,



The Sexploiters.

and Rent-a-Girl

Those who made the movie claimed it was composed of scenes cut from other films but all that is bullshit - they are just a series of poorly filmed and barely edited clips strung together with some modicum of narration.  The inestimable Oz sent me the clip from Censored that included Ms. Roberts’ scenes at the beginning and end - I stitched them together - and a bunch of gals playing nudists in between.

Also noteworthy in the June Roberts classics are:

 Darlene Bennett, who was featured in Rent-a-Girl,

and Gigi Darlene, whose challenge in The Sexploiters was to strip out of her clothes while eating ice cream - the gal had talent. 

By the end of 1966, the winds of change were blowing at gale force.  Mainstream movies shown at reputable theaters began to include nude scenes and hardcore movies began to show up at places that might get raided now and again, but that offered the viewer much more than shower scenes shot from the waist up or lesbian scenes in which neither party got out of her clothes.  Grindhouse movies would have two more years - 1967 and 1968 - to use the same formulas that had brought in customers for a while, but they would need to go much farther in the years that followed if they wanted to keep those customers.