The movie told the story of Jenny (Linda Carol), whose part in a foiled robbery results in her being sent to a girl’s only prison which is run by the twisted Warden Sutter (Danning) and her deranged henchwoman Edna (Pat Ast). The movie also marked a rare acting turn from Wendy O. Williams, better known as the singer for punk band Plasmatics, who would later commit suicide in 1998 at the age of forty-eight. Exploitation veteran Linda Blair was initially offered the lead role, having previously worked with DeSimone on the 1981 slasher Hell Night, but would turn down the movie for fear of being typecast after appearing in other women-in-prison flicks like Born Innocent and Chained Heat.

“The film was strictly for entertainment. No axe to grind, no soap box to get on regarding the treatment of women or young girls. It was our intention to just poke some fun at a genre that was well-established and had always been done with serious overtones. We wanted to keep our tongue-in-cheek attitude and just have a good time with it,” said DeSimone when discussing the film with Dr. Gore’s Funhouse. “The only new approach was the humour we decided to go for. These are well-known characters, well-known situations and almost all the WIP films up till then featured similar situations and characters. My intent was to take them and make them broader, funnier and more entertaining if possible. Nothing seemed to be too over the top for us as we were putting some things together.”

All images courtesy of Tom DeSimone.

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Read our exclusive interview with Tom DeSimone.

Released in 1983 and having been distributed under a variety of names (including Return of the Aliens), the movie recently enjoyed a new lease of life when he was interviewed for Stephen Edward Thrower’s exhaustive study of exploitation cinema, Nightmare USA.

“I always had a dislike for the more gory movies of the horror genre. I believed as Karloff did, that the best horror films were really “terror” films where the bloody violence is left to the imagination,” McKeown told Dr. Gore’s Funhouse. “Nevertheless, once I actually decided to do it, I gave it my all. And I loved every single creative aspect of working on the film, except the severe limitations to our time… I did regret not being able to assemble more of the footage myself into a rough cut. I really was the only one who knew how it was to go together, and it hurt to have to abandon so much work to others – and then to have to see it in its final form with so much I had intended end up, well, compromised”

Despite failing to attract much attention upon initial release, The Deadly Spawn has since enjoyed success on home video (including a DVD from Synapse Films back in 2004), whilst Michael Perilstein’s soundtrack was unearthed the following year. Fans of the movie may find much to enjoy on the tribute site.

All images courtesy of Douglas McKeown.

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Read our exclusive interview with Douglas McKeown.

Aside from a handful of images published in Stephen Thrower’s excellent study of exploitation, Nightmare USA, very little from behind the scenes has been made public. But in the years since the tragic death of Moede in 2001, Bryan has inherited a wealth of old film and has collected them together for your viewing pleasure. So, for the first time, fans can witness the filmmakers hard at work on what was arguably one of the most bizarre adult movies of its time.

“As the X-rated business boomed at the mid point of the seventies adult film budgets quickly grew higher driven by the audience demand for greater production values. When Dirtiest Game was produced the rules for the very tame theatrical adult features were really strict,” explained Bryan to Dr. Gore’s Funhouse in his tell-all interview regarding the production of the movie. “The distributor did have a slight regret over the extreme nature of Dirtiest Game, it was not the kind of film that could be re-edited to a softer drive-in version which represented a bonus rental market that could be utilized in a majority of cases of nudie films.”

All images courtesy of James Bryan. WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised!

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Read our exclusive interview with James Bryan.

“I was only nineteen-years-old, so I probably shouldn’t have been prepared at all given my lack of life experience! But surprisingly, by and large, the cast and crew met the challenges head-on and an awful lot of people devoted an entire summer to the bulk of the shoot in 1986,” Bookwalter explained to us in our interview, in which we covered the making of the movie in detail. “I wrote the first draft of the script in August, 1985 and the movie wasn’t completed until the spring of 1989… so it was almost four years! And yes, there were plenty of times where I wished I had never started it, especially when money ran dry and I had to go off and shoot weddings or music videos for local bands to keep our little office open and keep the dream alive, so to speak.”

All images courtesy of J.R. Bookwalter.

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Read our exclusive interview with J.R. Bookwalter.

Blending elements of American slashers, Italian giallo and ‘70s rape/revenge features, Nicholson’s movie saw patrons of a late-night bowling alley falling victim to a masked killer who brutally dispatches of those he felt were responsible for the gang rape of one of the young regulars. Whilst his earlier films, Tortured and Live Feed, failed to find their audience, Gutterballs would become one of the most talked about horror movies of the decade. This would in part be due to the original murder scenes, including a ‘death by 69.’ The graphic special effects were created by Michelle Grady, who would team up again with Nicholson on his subsequent pictures.

“All the films were a blast to work on and I can see how Ryan applies what he’s learned from his previous films every time we shoot. When you have a trust, professionally, you are naturally going to want to work with those individuals and I trust Ryan just like he trusts me,” said actor Dan Ellis, who provided Dr. Gore’s Funhouse with our first interview back in August 2009. Ellis portrayed the role of the Janitor in Gutterballs, which would mark the first of many collaborations with Nicholson. “Ryan and I are always talking about projects and I know he has about three or four ideas he wants to do, Evil Feed and Gutterballs II being two of them. I get a lot of messages telling me that we HAVE to make a sequel to GB and I would love to do that!”

All images courtesy of Ryan Nicholson and Dan Ellis. WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised!

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Read our exclusive interview with Dan Ellis.