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GIMME SKELTER on DVD – August 26!

My favorite genre flick of the year – GIMME SKELTER comes to DVD on August 26…

And in the immortal words of T.Rex:

The town is tremblin’
The glitter maniacs pass
Well I can’t sit still
So baby lets dance

READ on for my original review, links to interviews (including Gunnar ‘Leatherface’ Hansen) and more!

I first got involved with the Albuquerque Mafia after reviewing Scott Phillips’ phenomenal lo-bud punk-rock Zombie flick STINK OF FLESH (You can check that review out HERE).

Scott liked my review almost as much as I liked his movie and, when his follow-up, GIMME SKELTER was in production, he dropped me a line and kept me up on what kind of shenanigans were taking place out in the New Mex desert. Since then I have made the acquaintance of several of the people involved, interviewed Scott, Elske McCain (found HERE) and even the legendary Gunnar Hansen (HERE!). I ended up writing the liner notes for the DVD release and getting a quote on the cover. And despite all that reciprocated geek-love – I can truly, honestly, still proclaim that GIMME SKELTER was my favorite movie of the past year. With the DVD release on the horizon for next Tuesday, I thought I would repost my original review from last fall and encourage you all, one more time, to pick up a copy of this amazing little flick. And stay tuned for interviews with Scott Phillips and, hopefully, the one-man Renaissance that is Kurly Tlapoyawa

***Originally posted on THE DEN OF INIQUITY – September 2007***

GIMME SKELTER is more than just another indie-slasher flick. It is a glorious Go-Go-Frug of a meditation on moral hypocrisy, the cult of personality and the true meaning of ‘The Manson Family Christmas Special’.
Just as writer-director-editor-FX-what-have-you auteur Scott Phillips laid out the sexual dysfunction of the last bastion of humanity in STINK OF FLESH, here he shows us the seedy undercarriage of small-town Americana.


Pajamas on the prowl

The film starts out with a bang as B-scribe legend Kenneth J. Hall rolls into a shanty-roadhouse and launches into a backroom dalliance with a blonde schoolgirl stripper named Little Delilah (strikingly memorable newcomer Ashley Bryce). The scene starts out feeling very Russ Meyer-playful and quickly turns into a 70’s-style grindhouse lesson in making flank steak from an unsuspecting John.


An unsuspecting Ken Hall meets lovely Little Delilah (Ashley Bryce)

Follow that up with an excellent old-school credit sequence (with rockin’ tuneage from the kings California Snake Rock, Spindrift) that sounds so much like The Doors that you’ll swear Jim Morrison just crawled out of the Parisienne Brasserie in which he’s been living undead for the last 30 years, and returned to the desert – dusty, drunk and disorderly. Speaking of the rockin’ tuneage… The music is stellar, tracks from Angry Johnny & The Killbillies, Zombina & The Skeltones, Black Maria, The Dirty Novels and many local New Mex bands infuse this film with energy, style and rythm far beyond the usual synth-score boredom of most lo-bud horrors. I want this soundtrack on CD.

(Phillips, if you read this in your travels, get Don Adams on the phone and cut that bastard – on vinyl – with a lurid and sexually inflammatory cover. Something like Herb Alpert’s WHIPPED CREAM & OTHER DELIGHTS just with more blood & violence.)

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