They’ll Huff and They’ll Puff and They’ll Blow Your House Down

By Brandon Adamson

justforthehellofit

“What was the name of that movie we watched where the teenagers go around and do bad things and stuff that baby carriage in the trash can?” an ex girlfriend from years ago called me up to ask. She was talking about “Just For the Hell of It,” the 1968 Herschell Gordon Lewis I made her reluctantly sit through one time. For some reason it stuck out to her, and she wanted to show it to some dude she was hanging out with.

The movie itself is an interesting piece of art, basically it features scene after scene of teenagers terrorizing people just for kicks. There is a plot of course, but I’m not here to talk about the film, really. I just wanted to mention that the intro/theme song is yet another underrated classic among forgotten movies.

It’s Destruction performed by Tary Rebenar, a late 60’s early 70’s folksinger. He apparently later died of AIDS in 1989, which he was said to have contracted from a blood transfusion he received for a prior surgery for skin cancer. In the early 70’s he released an LP called Just a Dream Ago, which is hard to find.

justadreama_justadrea_101b

From that photo, he resembles the actor credited as “Steve White,” who appears in several of Lewis’ movies, usually in a musical capacity. I once thought they might be the same person, but after some research I realized Steve White is a different obscure and talented musician from that scene, who saw some success in a band called “Food” which released an album on Capitol Records called Forever is a Dream. It is very difficult to keep a lot of these things straight the way so many of these bands and actors in this era went under multiple aliases. Aside from legends like Ray Sager, most of these types seem to have disappeared without leaving much of a trace of information available.


Brandon Adamson is the author of “Beatnik Fascism

The Next Time

By Brandon Adamson

blast off girls - the big blast

“The Big Blast” was a group featured in the film “Blast Off Girls” by Herschell Gordon Lewis in 1967. “Blast Off Girls” was a low budget classic that chronicled the band’s relations with a sleazy manager “Boojie Baker” in a humorously cynical look at the music industry. One of the cast members, actor Ray Sager, later became a well known producer and is also widely recognized for his role in “The Wizard of Gore.” The film famously includes a cameo appearance by none other the Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

One of the recurring songs in the movie is The Big Blast’s signature song(in the movie) “The Next Time.” It’s quite catchy seeing as how as haven’t watched this film in almost 7 years, and it’s frequently in my head.