He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection

[DarkImbecile]

Killer sharks and human jellyfish and living mummies, oh my! Arrow Video is proud to present the first ever collection of works by William “Wild Bill” Grefé, the maverick filmmaker who braved the deep, dark depths of the Florida everglades to deliver some of the most outrageous exploitation fare ever to go-go dance its way across drive-in screens.

Bringing together seven of Grefé’s most outlandish features, all new to Blu-ray, He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection packs in a macabre menagerie of demented jellyfish men (Sting of Death), zombified witch doctors (Death Curse of Tartu), homicidal hippies (The Hooked Generation) and seductive matrons (The Naked Zoo) – not to mention the ubiquitous go-go dancing college kids – to create one of the most wildly entertaining box-sets of all time!

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Seven William Grefé films, all newly restored from the best surviving film elements: Sting of Death (1966), Death Curse of Tartu (1966), The Hooked Generation (1968), The
• Psychedelic Priest (1971), The Naked Zoo (1971), Mako: Jaws of Death (1976) and Whiskey Mountain (1977)
• Brand new, extended version of Ballyhoo Motion Pictures’ definitive documentary They Came from the Swamp: The Films of William Grefé
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations on 4 Blu-ray discs
• Original uncompressed mono audio for all films
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring an extensive, never-before-published interview with William Grefé and a new foreword by the filmmaker
• Reversible poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil
• Reversible sleeves featuring newly commissioned artwork for each of the films by The Twins of Evil

STING OF DEATH (1966) + DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (1966)

• Brand new introductions to the films by director William Grefé
• Archival audio commentaries for both films with William Grefé and filmmaker Frank Henenlotter
• Sting of Death: Beyond the Movie – Monsters a-Go Go! – a look into the history of rock 'n' roll monster movies with author/historian C. Courtney Joyner
• The Curious Case of Dr. Traboh: Spook Show Extraordinaire – a ghoulish look into the early spook show days with monster maker Doug Hobart
• Original Trailers
• Still and Promotion Gallery

THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968) + THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST (1971)

• Archival audio commentaries for both films with director William Grefé and filmmaker Frank Henenlotter
• Hooked Generation behind-the-scenes footage
• Hooked Generation Original Trailer
• Still and Promotion Gallery

THE NAKED ZOO (1971) + MAKO: JAWS OF DEATH (1976)

• William Grefé’s original Director’s Cut of Naked Zoo
• Alternate Barry Mahon re-release cut of Naked Zoo
• Original Mako: Jaws of Death Trailer and Promo
• Still and Promotion Gallery

WHISKEY MOUNTAIN (1977) + THEY CAME FROM THE SWAMP: EXTENDED CUT (2020)

• Whiskey Mountain Original Trailer
• Still and Promotion Gallery
• They Came from the Swamp: The Films of William Grefé – the definitive documentary presented for the first in High-Definition and in a brand new, extended cut

Extras subject to change

[Orlac]

JAWS OF DEATH has been on my wish-list for decades - a clip from it was used on the 1982 National Geographic documentary on sharks, and scared the life out of me as a kid!

[colinr0380]

Just received my copy of this and in doing some research on imdb it was fun to find out that Sting of Death has a song by Neil Sedaka on it! Do The Jellyfish, which I can only imagine is in the tradition of The Blob!

[Orlac]

That, or the Mashed Potato!

And let us not forget STINGATHON '09!!!! - http://b-masters.com/roundtables/32-stingathon-09/

[Perkins Cobb]

There has to be a story behind the omission of Impulse, which, with William Shatner in the lead, has to be at least in retrospect one of Grefe's most notable films. Rights? Elements? I'm sure Arrow must've tried pretty hard to get that one on board.

[Grand Wazoo]

There has to be a story behind the omission of Impulse, which, with William Shatner in the lead, has to be at least in retrospect one of Grefe's most notable films. Rights? Elements? I'm sure Arrow must've tried pretty hard to get that one on board.

I believe Grindhouse Releasing has this in the works.

[Perkins Cobb]

Oh, cool, I missed that. I don't think that ever had a watchable DVD release so that'll be huge.

[colinr0380]

I will be both expectantly waiting for and yet simultaneously dreading the chance to see William Shatner's parade of fashionable 1970s outfits in glorious HD!

[Perkins Cobb]

I was too much of a film snob to appreciate this kind of stuff when I was younger, but I can't get enough of it now. If it's Sarno or Meyer it's legitimately outsider art, and even if it's only Lewis or Grefe, it still captures a kind of reality you don't get in mainstream filmmaking. So yeah, bring on the Shat.

(And don't tell Arrow that I'm enough of a completist to delay buying their set now....)

[colinr0380]

Not that I know anything about whether Arrow would have been going after Impluse or not, but I would presume that Impulse has enough of a cache behind it to more than stand up on its own as an individual release. Also something on this box set has caused it to be 18 rated, so if it had been on that table I would assume that you wouldn't want to age-gate off arguably William Shatner's most famous non-Star Trek film if you don't have to.

Here's the Mondo Digital review of the set

[zedz]

This box was reasonably enjoyable, though a lot of the movies fall between the stools of not good enough / not bad enough. Grefe is a more talented filmmaker than H. G. Lewis, and most of the issues with the films are budgetary rather than talent-related. For instance, the squid monster in Sting of Death has one of the tackiest monster outfits in movie history, and the movie is kind of thrown together, but in the end it's just a mediocre, cheap monster movie rather than any kind of camp classic.

Elsewhere, Grefe is a lot more interesting. The Psychedelic Priest is a patchy, mostly improvised cross between Easy Rider and a Christian flick, but it's a fascinating time capsule with some genuinely effective scenes. Mako: Jaws of Death is kind of like a Jaws cash-in where the shark is the hero (when Grefe claims that this project was written before Jaws became a hit, that weird perspective is the detail that makes it plausible).

Whiskey Mountain might be the most interesting film in the set. It's a really sleazy, extremely nihilistic Deliverance derivative with gorgeous widescreen landscapes and the brilliant / horrible idea of conveying the inevitable rape scene as a series of polaroids developing before our eyes, while we hear the mayhem on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, this film is in the worst shape of them all.

The extras are okay, but very repetitive, and the same anecdotes get related over and over again. A lot of those anecdotes (the majority?) pertain to two films that aren't even included in the set: Stanley and Impulse. I don't know what kept those films out of play, as everything seems to indicate that they're the films Grefe is most proud of and the other commentators are most interested in!

[dwk]

Impulse is coming from Grindhouse Releasing.

Stanley seems to be a Crown title, so it seems a Vinegar Syndromw release should be possible.(Assuming VS still has a deal with whomever owns the Crown catalog. )

[What A Disgrace]

I came into this thread independently to comment on the films, but zedz said pretty much exactly what I wanted to say about every title, nearly two years ago! ALthough I would note that the Neil Sedanka dance number in Sting of Death is definitely a moment of high camp. Wince inducingly awful but in an appealingly silly way. If I were to make hooting noises and throw popcorn at any scene in a Grefe movie, it would be this one.

I would recommend Whisky Mountain without hesitation, if you're curious about exploitation films of the era - maybe not a GOOD film, but it had my attention throughout the run time, and it was perfectly entertaining and interesting, for reasons I won't repeat. It really is a pity it survives in such rough shape - it seems like it could be quite a looker, and films that prominently feature the American wilderness have a particular appeal to me (except for Florida, oddly - if it weren't for that I might like these films more!).

Grefé is very much a meat-and-potatoes exploitation filmmaker. Lewis's reputation seems to come from a completely different plane of high camp and ultra violence, whereas the G man relies on the bare essentials of genre films. This definitely works against him - high camp and animal viscera are much more immediately interesting forms of exploitation gimmickry, and with these sort of films what you see is all you get!

I'll check out the Bill Rebane collection later this year. He sounds more interesting than Grefé, at least for my taste, and the participants in the release seem more interested on the whole. My major criticism for this set is that the supplements don't do a whole lot to put his films into context, or to understand why the release was made in the first place. A pity that, like the Grefé set, it seems to lack a few key titles in his oeuvre - Giant Spider Invasion sounds like it's an absolute "masterpiece" of the bad movie form! Maybe Arrow will acquire the rights for a big 4K release for it, assuming that the current disc is OOP (and not simply unavailable) for that reason.