Radley Metzger interviewed by Jay Kent Lorenz
The Erotic World of Radley Metzger
From Psychotronic Video No. 17, Winter 1994
Radley Metzger was born in the Bronx and raised in Washington Hts, but many people still think he's European, simply because most of his features were made overseas. With the possible exception of (the very different) Russ Meyer, no other director of adult films had the same directing (and editing) skills. Metzger's films are in the collection of the Museum Of Modern Art and on the shelves of 42nd St. porno video stores. He started in the film business in the early '50s.
"I had a job as kind of a gofer on a Greek movie that was being made here in upper New York State. The mountains up here look like the mountains of Greece, so this Greek director made a movie about the Communist Revolution and very pro-government. After that I did censor cuts on (famous 1948 Italian film) Bitter Rice and whatever else needed censor cuts in New York. Then I joined the service (during the Korean war). I got into the motion picture unit of the Air Force doing propaganda. When I came back, I decided to make Dark Odyssey with a fellow (William Kyriakys) I had met on a picture named Guerilla Girl." Metzger was a gofer for the feature (released by U.A. in '53) which was shot in an upstate N.Y. convent." Dark Odyssey was the ultimate, low budget, shoe string picture. I don't want to sound boastful, but I still think that holds the lowest gross for any movie to ever play." Metzger and Kyriakys shared all the major behind the scenes credits for the b/w cinema verité style drama about a young Greek immigrant confronting New York City while searching for the man who raped his sister. It was released in 1961.[...] Radley Metzger interviewed by Jay Kent Lorenz, Psychotronic Video No. 17, Winter 1994 via http://www.vidmarc.demon.co.uk/mondo-erotico/metzger/interviews/EroticWorldOfRadley.html [Nov 2004]
The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film - Michael J. Weldon
- The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film - Michael J. Weldon [Amazon.com]
As Michael Weldon says in the foreword to his Psychotronic Video Guide: "Unlike other movie guides, nothing is omitted because it's in bad taste." Bad taste barely begins to cover the 3000 resolutely grade-B movies (some with grade-A aspirations and budgets) and the odd TV show included here. Weldon, who invented the word "psychotronic" and compiled The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, includes horror> (there are 15 movie titles beginning with the word "zombie"), science fiction, Blaxploitation, porn, spaghetti westerns and "anything that Roger Corman had anything to do with" in his purview. --Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc., amazon.com
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