The name, Jim Wynorski, takes me way back. I was well aware of him in the mid-'80s as a director of such enjoyably stupid movies like Deathstalker 2, Not of this Earth (the first remake), and Chopping Mall. He wasn't what you could call good, but the movies were fun.

My old best movie pal was a big T&A fan, and I liked movie cheese, so we spent many enjoyable hours watching things like Bad Girls From Mars, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, and of course the inimitable Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama. The latter is up for a sequel after all these years. I do not plan to watch it. That bird has flown, thank you very much.

Wynorski was a tried-and-true practitioner of the cheesecake horror/SF movie. I always preferred his contemporary, Fred Olen Ray. Wynorski never did any movies as enjoyable as Ray's Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Armed Response, or the best of them all, Evil Toons.

These modest little cheapie movies were fun and seemed innocent back in the '80s. There wasn't a lot of mean-spirited nastiness, nor was there much hardcore prurience. The movies tended to be silly and lighthearted.

There was probably rampant drug use and sexual harassment on a lot of these kind of films, but I enjoy my illusions. The girls appeared to be having fun, the beefcake guys strutted their stuff, and the laffs were lowbrow and plentiful.

I know these movies can be called sexist, but I like to think the women were fairly paid. Most of them probably made more money later, on the convention/autograph circuit. They were minor celebrities.

As time segued into the '90s, things began to turn a little darker. Kind of grungier. A couple of magazines, Draculina and Scream Queens Illustrated, were devoted to the subgenre, and I guess it's natural that the women were trying to outdo each other. I lost what little interest I had in them.

By the 2000s things went really downhill. "Erotic Horror" movies were everywhere. Harder, darker, dirtier.

Jim Wynorski is a survivor. His early movies, mostly done for Corman, were decent enough. He was steadily working, and the movies were making money. When Wynorski did The Return of Swamp Thing in 1989, he had his biggest budget yet (and ever), and it looked like his career was on the uprise.

The home video explosion of the '80s was great business for people like Jim Wynorski. He cranked 'em out, and we watched them. They were on cable, on tape, and occasionally even in theaters.

As the market continued to simmer down, budgets dropped and so did quality. It isn't as if there was a whole lot of it in Jim Wynorski and Fred Olen Ray movies to start with.

Wynorski started doing very cheap knockoffs of popular movies. He claims to have made two a week. He had access to a cabin and he shot lots of erotic (not explicit) footage for movie with dubious titles like The Bare Wench Project, The Devil Wears Nada, The Hills Have Thighs, The Da Vinci Coed, and, well, you get the picture. I've seen none of these movies, but I'm pretty sure the titles are the best things about them.

Jim Wynorski was a guest on Charles Band's Full Moon Freakshow podcast recently. I listened in, not expecting a lot from a guy who was best known as a guy who loved, and I mean loved, naked women in his films.

It's bad enough for a young man in his twenties or even thirties to babble on about topless women, but to hear a seventy-year-old do it is sad. I know Wynorski was being at least partially tongue-in-cheek, but it was still pretty pathetic.

Wynorski also spoke of his early days of journalism, and how he wrote for Fangoria and Starlog in their infancy years. Well, that's pretty cool, I thought. Then he admitted, with no small amount of braggadocio, that he made up interviews with people like Joe Dante and Chris Walas. Completely fabricated. I'm not so innocent that I don't know that sort of thing goes on, but forgive me if I do not feel charitable toward someone who made some of the best aspects of my youth a lie. He was rightfully banned from both magazines.

I doubt Jim Wynorski would give a shit if he read this. He came off as a pretty cocky guy. Why should he care, anyway? Jim Wynorski has endured in a tough trade. He made films he knew would make money, and he never seemed too worried about what anyone thought of him.

The Interview didn't exactly warm my heart, and while it was extremely unlikely I would watch anything new from Jim, there is zero chance I will now.

Will I go back to the older movies? Maybe. Despite it all, I will always have warm feelings for those terrible old things.

The erotic horror/SF/action movie is now dead. No one cares anymore. Maybe old softies like me who want to re-experience old fun times. There's no appeal for younger viewers. Who wants lighthearted Cheese-and-A when there is so much explicit material at everyone's fingertips? It makes me sad for children who see that kind of thing.

Written by Mark Sieber

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