The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)

Written and Directed by T.L.P Swicegood

Starring Ray Dannis, Warrene Ott, James Westmoreland, Marty Friedman, Sally Frei, and other people you never heard of.

Reviewed by Billy Bob Biggs

This is a movie about a trio of motorcycle riding, masked thugs who show up in people's tiny apartments, or while they're in the steam room, or sitting in their car in broad daylight on a California seaside highway to beat them, stab them, and cut off their tasty bits and cook them up in a seedy greasy spoon that no one eats at. The two crazies at the greasy spoon have come up with a sure-fire recipe for their troubles, along with the undertaker. The crazies get fresh meat that no one will eat and the undertaker gets mutilated bodies for which he can overcharge whoever's paying for the funeral.

This was an impressive directorial debut for T.L.P. Swicegood (amazingly, apparently his real name), who had a couple of writing credits prior to this innovative gem. He had a lot of new ideas on how to make a horror flick which I'll note as they come up. Sadly, he was not allowed to make any more movies after this one so we'll never know how far he could have taken the art of blood-spattered gorefests.

• New Idea #1: Undercut the tension in horror with a boppy jazz soundtrack.
  

The movie opens with our motorcycle trio breaking into a woman's crappy one-room apartment, and, after a brief chase across the room, stabbing her to death and escaping with her meaty gams (apparently they had looked up in the phone book girls with big legs who lie around their apartments writing letters with no pants on.)

• New Idea #2: Having a photo comedically change expressions, from smiling, to alarmed, to saddened, while the victim is dismembered.

Cut to a private detective whose secretary moons over him and wants to marry him. In an apparent attempt to change her mind about his appeal he takes her to the aforementioned greasy spoon, where the owner behaves weirdly and has only one dish to offer per day. Then the p.i. takes her home and leaves her on her doorstep.

• New Idea #3: Completely disregard the Hollywood tradition of shooting a scene that's supposed to take place at night, at night. Audiences in 1966 were mature enough to not care when the sky goes from dark night to broad daylight to twilight and back again in one scene. Innovative!
  

The secretary immediately changes into her pajamas and goes outside to see who is strangling her cat. Upon finding three leather-clad motorcyclists in her backyard she neglects to scream or run back into the house, but cowers against the side of it in horror as the men advance on her like snails across 30 feet of open lawn. Finally, she attempts to run away when they are within grabbing distance but too late!

• New Idea #4: Have the murder happen off-camera and pan toward the body for a minute or two, until the audience has lost interest in watching, and just about the time they have decided to scoot out to the concession stand for another box of Raisinets, have the dead, impaled body of the victim peek into the screen for a split second and cut to a new scene. Peekaboo! Didja see it?

I don't want to spoil the rest of this cinema classic for you, but here are some of the other innovations of T.L.P. Swicegood:

• New Idea #5: When a woman is being chased by the men on motorcycles, reversing and skidding and revving their engines while she zigs and zags on foot across the blacktop, ignore the tradition of having the sound effects match what's going on. The sound of a softly purring motorcyle engine will suffice.
• New Idea #6: Have your villains be broadly silly and comedic before, after and during scenes of menace and mayhem. That won't undercut the terror.
• New Idea #7: Have your hero disappear inexplicably before the end of the movie so the villain can be killed by a supporting character, by accident!

Zero breasts. 5 buckets blood. Legs roll, internal organs are played with. Cleaver to the head, chain to the face, multiple stabbings, full-body acid dunking. Three stars.

Billy Bob says check it out.