Ted V. Mikels Signature Collection

Released by: Alpha Video
Released on: 9/25/2007
Director: Ted V. Mikels
Cast: Various
Year: Various
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The Movies:

Ted V. Mikels has been churning out films for decades now and while, like Jess Franco, his more recent output is shot on video with a micro budget, like Franco the fact that he continues to work is a testament if not to his skill at least to his dedication. The guy loves making movies and it shows. Ted's best material came out in the late sixties and early seventies and many of his 'vintage' films were originally released on DVD through Image Entertainment. Those rights expired and those discs went out of print but thanks to Alpha Video's New Cinema imprint, Mikels' films live on DVD again. Six of those films have been collected in one handy and affordably priced boxed set called The Ted V. Mikels' Signature Collection. Here's a look at what that set contains….

GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS (1968)

Leslie McCray is Michele, a foxy girl who grew up in a small town but who is lured by the sheen and shine of a glamorous Hollywood lifestyle. She leaves her home and heads to Tinseltown to seek fame and fortune after hooking up with a guy named Buzz Nichols (Tom Pace), a punk crook with a hot rod and some show business connections in the form of his sister, a go-go dancer. While anyone with half a brain would see that cruising to L.A. with Buzz was a bad idea, Michele isn't all that bright and so off she goes in search of a better life.

Along the way, the pair picks up a hitchhiker who calls himself Critter (Jody Daniels). This all seems fine at first until the three of them wind up a in love triangle, tearing apart friendships and bringing tensions to a boiling point. Once the group settles in Hollywood, Michele's new career as a go-go dancer soon proves to be a seedy and unfulfilling one way ticket to loserville.

Highlighted by a few live musical numbers performed at Hollywood's Haunted House club, a swinging nightclub with a stage made up to look like a monster's mouth, fake stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and light up cobwebs made up of light strings hanging out side, The Girl In Gold Boots is pretty standard good girl goes bad material. We know fairly early on once Michele hooks up with Buzz that no good will come of it and the film is pretty predictable. That said, it's just hammy and goofy enough that it's hard not to enjoy it. There's go-go dancing galore, hot chicks a plenty, some catchy musical bits and more screwball dialogue than you can shake a stick at. The film rose to some notoriety when it was skewered on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's not a good film in the literal sense, but not much of Mikels' output would fall into that category. It is well edited though in that it moves at a good pace and definitely succeeds in entertaining, if nothing else. The film isn't all that racy, it'd probably get a PG-13 without a problem despite the drug use and seedier aspects of the movie.

THE DOLL SQUAD (1974)

Mikels' insists that Aaron Spelling ripped him off when he made Charlie's Angels, and this film about a team of super agent hot chicks saving American from bad guys does appear to be pretty good proof that Ted's right. The film follows an elite team of beautiful female federal agents -lead by Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York) - who, just like James Bond, are licensed to kill in the name of their country. This comes in handy when they're assigned to take down a lunatic named Eamon O'Reilly (Michael Ansara) who wants to unleash a killer virus upon an unsuspecting world.

It's hard to deny the similarities between this film and the successful TV show that it likely did 'inspire' - they're fairly obvious. Outside of that, however, The Doll Squad is interesting and a lot of fun based entirely on its own merits. Francine York is great as the cute and curvy tough talking leader, while her chemistry with fellow Doll Squader Tura Satana (she of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame) is the stuff that B-movie dreams are made of. They've both got such a great screen presence that you can't help but get behind them and root for them as they chase the sinister bad guys around the globe.

The film never goes too far into seediness to qualify as sexploitation, rather, it's a low budget action film that features a bevy of hot girls in bikinis and tight fitting cat suits, but that doesn't really hurt the picture at all. It moves at a great pace, it's exciting and ridiculous and if it isn't exactly well shot or made with the best of production values, it's a Hell of a lot of fun. There's no deeper meaning to the film and any feminist underpinnings are likely little more than coincidence but damn if the movie isn't a whole lot of fun. Hot chicks with guns and bazookas taking down megalomaniacal bad guys always makes for a good time and while some might lament the PG rating, again, it doesn't really seem to take anything away from this deliriously enjoyable film.

10 VIOLENT WOMEN (1979)

When women in prison films proved to be box office gold in the late seventies, it only made sense that Mikels would have to try his hand at one. This film was originally written as a fairly straight women in prison film but Mikels decided that there had to be a reason for these women to be in prison in the first place.

As such, the script starts off by showing us how the various characters in the film got put behind bars as we follow a group of female gold miners who tire of working for their lecherous boss and decide to hit the road for a life of crime. They rob their way around the land, hitting a jewelry store and fencing the goods to a guy named Leo (Ted V. Mikels himself) only to get a bum deal when he tries to give them bags of heroin instead of money. A few minutes later and Leo is dead, his heart impaled by a spiked high heel, and the girls are on the run with the jewels, the dope, and a murder rap trailing them. When they try to sell off the dope, they get busted by an undercover cop and are soon sent to the big house where a female warden with a collection of leather accessories and willing female servants does her best to keep them in line while they plot their eventual prison break…

Despite the fact that there are in fact eight women in the group, not ten, 10 Violent Women is an enjoyable mess of a picture. Tame by the standards of the women in prison genre, the film never the less has most of the requisite staples, the butch lesbian warden being the most obvious example. There's no characterization here at all and it's difficult to tell any one of the eight girls from the others but you don't go into a Mikels film for well written characters or intelligent drama. The film delivers just enough sleaze that it works, and as it generally is with Mikels' movies, the pacing is strong. Even when the film isn't making sense, it's a good, goofy watch made with very little money. The low budget shows, but that's half the charm of a Mikels' film.

BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS (1972)

Another trend that Mikels felt the need to jump on was the supernatural/occult phase of the early seventies. Shot almost entirely on location in the castle that Mikels was living in at the time, Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils isn't nearly as salacious as its title makes it sound but it's still a lot of screwy entertainment.

When the film begin, a coven of scantily clad witches are dancing to the beat of some congo drums until they're driving mad enough to sacrifice the man they've captured and bound to their altar. Lead by Queen Mara (Lila Zaborin), a woman who holds supernatural powers she's been granted by Lucifer himself, this cult has decide to make it their mission to avenge the deaths of the countless witches killed in witch hunts and burnings over the centuries (watch for Mikels in a cameo role during one of the flashbacks to a witch hunt). As the murder rate in the California neighborhood where the film plays out multiplies dramatically, a psychic named Professor Helford (Victor Izay), who has a team of exorcists at his disposal, uses his powers to hone in on Queen Mara's castle where she's been holding séances and communicating with various spirits. But Mara and her henchwomen aren't going to go down without a fit, and while Helford may be wise to what they're up to, he'll find that Hell truly hath no fury like a she-devil scorned!

The first film Mikels made to use a synthesizer on the soundtrack, this is a colorful, quirky film with some awesome seventies era optical effects, loads of garish lighting and plenty of over the top performances from various actors and actresses of differing degrees of ability. Mikels' regulars Tom Pace and Leslie McRae show up here in supporting roles but it's Zaborin who really shines, playing her witch Queen with no fear of overacting and gleefully chewing through the scenery with ease.

The film builds to a ridiculous conclusion that you probably won't see coming no matter how many seventies occult thrillers you may have seen, but along the way we're treated to lighting tricks that look to have been culled from Italian horror films of the era, lasers, fake blood, and copious shots of Mikels' 'Castle Girls' (the actresses who shared the home with him during this phase in his career) running around and gyrating in fur bikinis. Good stuff!

THE CORPSE GRINDERS (1972)

Next to Astro-Zombies, this is probably Mikels' best known horror film and definitely one of his more successful films. When this picture played drive-in's and theaters across the country it was tripled billed with The Undertaker And His Pals and The Embalmer and theaters would make attendees sign off and agree not to hold the producers liable for any fear related deaths that might occur during the screening - grand ballyhoo that would make William Castle and David Friedman proud.

The film itself is blackly comic. It takes place in a small town where, we learn, human cadavers are worked through a big meat grinder machine that effectively turns dead bodies into ground hamburger meat. From there, the meat is canned and shipped out to grocery stores around the country as Lotus Cat Food. When people buy this food and feed it to their feline friends, they soon learn the hard way that the food is making the cats go insane with blood lust. Having had a taste for human flesh, cats all over the place are attacking their owners.

That problem aside, business is good and the Lotus Cat Food company is running into supply problems - there just aren't enough cadavers around to keep the cat food coming, so they decide to take matters into their own hands when a nurse named Angie (Monika Kelly) comes to the factory to talk to the owners about her cat's strange behavior.

Co-written by Arch Hall Sr. and Joseph Cranston, there are long stretches in this film where absolutely nothing of interest happens. It's plagued by ridiculous pacing problems and stilted dialogue and by all other standards, it should be written off as a boring mess. Well, it is a mess to be sure - like most of Mikels' films, plot comes secondary to set pieces and low budget effects, but it's got atmosphere to spare and the whole thing has a weird, funny, scuzzball vibe to it that makes it completely watchable. The acting is horrible but the gore effects, as crude and obvious as they might be, are actually quite effective. The movie's twisted sense of humor works well in the context of the story that the film is telling and the sheer ridiculousness of the cat attack scenes add some welcome head scratchingly insane moments. Go into this one knowing that there are spots where the pace absolutely grinds to a halt, but appreciate it for the atmosphere, dopey-ropey effects and asinine plot and it's hard not to have some fun with it.

THE CORPSE GRINDERS II (2000)

Proving that you can't keep a good man down and that every film, no matter how good or bad it might have been, can be 'sequalized' Mikels brought the giant meat grinder back to the screen with The Corpse Grinders II. Again, if we go back to the Franco comparison made earlier on, this entry would be akin to one of his One Shot films. It's shot on video, made very cheaply, and utilizes some familiar cast members, including Shanti, his real life partner who is essentially the Lina Romay to his Jess Franco.

The movie once again takes us back to the basement of the Lotus Cat Food Company where new management has taken over and brought the company to the attention of an alien race from the planet Ceta. The Cetans, who are somewhat feline in appearance, are running out of food on their home world thanks to an ongoing war and so they've sent a few representatives out into space to find alternate sources. This has brought them to Earth, where they've run into some F.B.I. agents. Ultimately, Queen Felina manages to make a deal with the Lotus Company to supply Ceta with all the cat food they can eat, but we all know what happens when the Lotus Cat Food Company's orders increase, right? Once again, they need more meat!

Made on a low budget even by Mikels' standards, The Corpse Grinders II is pretty dire stuff. The humor is the cornball variety and while you're not meant to take much of anything seriously, the first film did have moments of effectively gruesome horror in between the campier bits, something that this sequel can't really claim. What it does have, however, is a bunch of people with dime store costumes sitting inside a bungalow doubling for a space ship. That's got to count for something. All in all, however, this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Mikels' never claimed to make high art but some of his other more recent efforts have turned out far better than this one. Delores Fuller, famous for her work on a few Ed Wood films, pops up in this film as does Liz Renay and, of course, Mikels himself but this whole thing plays like a bad high school drama class project.

Each film in the set comes with an audio commentary from Ted V. Mikels himself. Say what you will about the guy's movies, but it's hard not to like him. Anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting him knows that he's a kind and jovial guy and this affable personality comes through in his commentary tracks as well, which makes them easy to listen to. Ted's got a pretty sharp memory and is pretty aware of what works in his films and what doesn't and he's more than happy to talk about some of the effects work, promoting the films, the various locations that he used (especially during Blood Orgy, which was shot in his house) and how and why the different actors and actresses cast in his pictures got the parts that they did. Ted's got a good sense of humor about himself and has a very relaxed tone while speaking, and he makes it easy to forgive the occasional gaps of silence that pop up in the tracks by sharing some pretty interesting stories about how and why he made these films.

The Doll Squad disc also features a brief five minute selection of footage from the film over which Tura Satana provides some running commentary. These bits basically cover her involvement in the film and she talks about what it was like working with Mikels on the picture and how she feels about the film in general.

The Corpse Grinders and The Corpse Grinders II each feature brief making of featurettes.

Each disc also features menus and chapter stops as well as a selection of trailers for other Ted V. Mikels films available on DVD from Alpha. All in all, a pretty bad ass selection of extras (even if most of them are carried over from the Image discs).

The Final Word:

If you don't already own the Mikels releases from Image and have any interest in the man's films, Alpha's Ted V. Mikels Signature Collection release is a great way to remedy that. The films are all presented in decent shape and with some solid extras carried over from the previous releases - on top of that, each set is signed and numbered by the director himself and it's available at a ridiculously low price.