Mind-Blowers and Girl-Grabbers

Mmm-hmm, who’s down for a classic black and white mad scientist sex orgy? There’s something for everyone in 1968’s softcore sexploitation classic THE MIND BLOWERS — no matter what your sexual orientation!

After a nostalgic stroll down New York’s 42nd Street (complete with marquees for THE PINK PUSSY, LOVE NOW PAY LATER, THE DEVIL’S BRIDE) a group of young people are asked to participate in a psychological experiment. They go to the office of a nutty professor with a bad German accent and have their brain waves “recorded” while having sexual fantasies. The four guinea pigs are a horny hippie chick, a prude, a studly sailor, and a nelly gay guy. Trust me, it gets better.

The professors naughty mute assistant Dumkoff (who dresses like a roadie for The Mamas and The Papas), switches labels on the recordings, interchanges the subjects’ brainwaves, and observes their behavior. Betty the Bimbo is reduced to a saintly virgin. Dainty Derek does Betty. Rugged Randolf gets in touch with his feminine side (and his sailor buddy Elmore), and No-Nooky Norma lets it all hang out for her frustrated boyfriend.

A wild free-for-all is arranged for the participants with the professor proudly announcing that the effects of the experiment are gone, but their awareness has been expanded so “throw your inhibitions to the wind and have a ball!” This they do, and become a writhing, undulating heap of flesh and saliva. Also keep an eye out for the odd scene where a leather-clad doofus lays a rather mannish black girl on the filthy sawdust covered floor of a seedy bar, and proceeds to maul her boobs in a highly unerotic yet hilarious scene that is 100% unrelated to the plot!

You can spot headliners Ellen Butler in GUESS WHO’S COMING? (1969) and Eric Emerson in Andy Warhol’s CHELSEA GIRLS (1966), but the real star in this picture is the incredible catchy score provided by Chris Markson. Chris went far beyond the call of duty — providing seriously funky fuck-beats, marvelous swelling (and swollen) horns, and furious bouncy bongos! Like WAY out, man! I have no clue who Markson was, but this is one of the best 60s sexploitation scores you’ll ever have the good fortune to dangle your ears on!

Nick (John Spence) is a suave denim-wearing young pimp who worries a lot about his hair. Louie (Stefan Peters) is a monosyllabic knife-wielding goof of undetermined sexuality — with his most noticeable physical feature being his red, greasy slug-like lips. Together they are: THE GIRL GRABBERS (1968).

As the opening titles roll, these two smirking hellions are wandering the streets of a sleazy 1960s NYC, knocking groceries out of the arms of women with big hairdos, and molesting butts — as they are wont to do. Unsatisfied with such simple pranks, they hold the brazen midday robbery and rape of Tania (Ludmilla Tchor), a very average looking red head with an awkward euro-accent. Her “rape” consists of Nick stuffing her panties in her mouth and then rolling around on top of her fully clothed while giggling like a retarded infant.

When her boyfriend Paul (Robert Kerman) stomps though the door, she’s still laying dazed in the middle of the living room with her undies in her yap, a sight which sends him immediately out to scour the city, pausing only to oogle some sexy go-go dancers plying their trade on the top of the bar in a local booze joint. Turns out one of the go-go girls (played by Louise Violet) conveniently knows one of the scumbags, and identifies the brothel where his whores can be found. “He’s a pimp. For fun he kills people,” she ominously states before flirting a little and sending Paul on his way.

The whorehouse is a hub of activity, with a garish madam, a skeezy shoe-sniffer, and various partygoers in the lobby. Paul finds amongst them a slut named Lynn (Jackie Richards), Nick’s main momma, and a foxy round-the-way girl who Paul immediately gets naked with and unabashedly plows — all in the name of getting information to avenge his sweetheart’s honor, of course. Lynn gives Paul a freebie for no good reason, and then points out that her pimp can be found at Frank’s Garage, where Paul will soon find that the two gibbering rapists are involved in a something MUCH bigger with their boss Frank (Alistair Burr) as the mastermind. I’m talking a drug deal worth millions, and Frank can’t afford to have any witnesses.

Can Paul get himself and his gal out of the shitstorm he’s landed them in by sniffing around a drug lord’s ass? What will become of the girl grabbers, and what special role does the foxy streetwise prostitute Lynn have to play in the violent nerve wracking climax?

This is an involving crime and sex-filled roughie, and the first picture in a long career for Robert Kerman (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST), who was better known to the raincoat crowd as one of best actors in 1970s XXX — Richard Bolla (AMANDA BY NIGHT, DEBBIE DOES DALLAS). It’s also the first project for writer, director, producer Simon Nuchtern, a contemporary of Andy Milligan and who later directed 1969’s TO HEX WITH SEX, and finished his tenure in film with 1985’s SAVAGE DAWN.

Both THE GIRL GRABBERS and THE MINDBLOWERS are available on dvd from Something Weird Video.