Bachelors

If you go over to flickr.com and search the word 'bachelor', you will quickly discover the work of one Max Sparber.
Along with the usual pictures of friends and so on, he also has a set of bizarre album covers from years past (recommended), and something entitled "The Lost World of the Swinging Bachelor".

It's a bunch of stills from '60's movies, and they're all just fantastic. That to the left there is one Quinn Redeker, who co-wrote 'The Deer Hunter', and played "Alex Marshall" for several years on 'Days of Our Lives'. Last year, he has some sort of role in 'A Grandpa for Christmas'.
Here, however, he is in a movie called 'Spider Baby' (1968). IMDB also lists 'Attack of the Liver Eaters' , 'Cannibal Orgy, or the Maddest Story Ever Told' and 'The Liver Eaters' as possible substitute titles.

This is a still from 'Help Wanted Female' (1968). This would be the inevitable scene in which the swingin' fella takes his first acid trip, and breaks into an impromptu dance.
Funny thing is, an oft-repeated theme is at work here: all is well and swinging until one of your characters reveals themselves to be a crazed murderer. And one of them always does.

That's the thing: you can't just be a suave sybarite in American Pop Cultch. We gotta punish you for your enjoyment.
"Oh sure, Mister Pipe and Smoking Jacket! You're fine now, but what about when you're attacked by the Liver Eaters? Or beaten up by a leggy blonde call-girl type dame?"

This is from 1968's 'Love After Death', which is an Argentinian masterpiece: most of these movies seem to have come from Beyond The Sea, and all of them tend to be-as I've mentioned before, unclear on whether they're a good-natured romp, or stinging indictment of our modern society, rife as it is with unlikely plots to bury our husbands alive and then go-go dance with other men.

A commenter on IMDB puts it this way: "a man is buried alive by his adulterous wife, he rises from the tomb for a few minutes of Night of the Living Dead-style graveyard stalking, and then decides nothing would be finer than to peep at women in various stages of undress. Heck, so what if he's a corpse!"

Max observes, "Note our bachelor doctor's winning combination of hairpiece, short-sleeve shirt, and cravat. "


This scene from 'I Eat Your Skin' (1964) features one of those things that has largely disappeared from American cinema: the bachelor that is so swingin', he has to beat the broads off with a stick. This would briefly enjoy some vogue in blaxploitation movies as well, though the bachelor in question would be a black stud soul brother.

The movie seems to have entered posterity under the title 'Zombies'. A commenter on IMDB says, "Like draftees into the government-sanctioned moral hygiene videos of the '50s & '60s, the C-actors seem quite willing to mutter the screenplay's bizarre malapropisms: Rich guy welcoming guests to dinner at his uncharted island plantation: "If you want those cocktails I'm afraid your'll have to bring them with you. Juarita (?) is an excellent cook. One thing she will not tolerate is food getting cold. Perhaps it's just as well--I have a Borjelais (sic) I'm very proud of. Hard liquor will just dull the palate." The Spanish is even more improvised--as if translated by Google."

So yeah, brother: you're hep and all, and the skirts can't get enough of ya', but you'll still have to battle those zombies at some point. And by 'zombies', I mean commies, negroes, crazy women and the dread LSD.

'Dr. Sex', it turns out, seems to have been where the 1987 movie 'Mannequin' got its thunder. Let's hear what Max has to say about this:
"The bachelor, who dresses mannequins in store windows, is suffering from the delusion that these mannequins come to life and talk with him while he undresses them. The therapist, as part of his treatment, is here mimmicking a mannequin."

A commenter on IMDB offers:
"Three stories are told by a group of psychologists (one doing a bad Bela Lugosi impression) about their wildest cases, as told to them by their patients.
It's funny, I guess - but ultimately a little boring; as films in the past twenty years have made us expect more, and more quickly."

Max, again:
"This vacationer in Japan, from 1966's Mondo Bizzaro, has requested a special massage, provided for him by a topless Japanese girl. To his frustration, and despite the expectations of the typical Sixties bachelor, instead of providing him with exotic love acts, she breaks eggs on his chest and massages him with them. "

Ultimately, this world don't make no damn sense, even if you're a man of the world. You think maybe you're going to get some good Chinee, and instead (BOINGGG!) Ee-eeggs? On my che-eest?

Oh, those practices of the Exotics. Well, whatever larger point one may feel obligated to make here, I really just wanted to show everybody these damned fantastic pictures. See ya' soon.