THE BUSHWHACKER (1968)/THE RAVAGER (1970) Limited Edition Blu-ray
Director(s): Byron Mabe/Charles Nizet
American Arcana/Mondo Macabro

Mondo Macabro launches their American Arcana Blu-ray line with a bang by way of the double bill of THE BUSHWHACKER and THE RAVAGER.

A bushwhacker is a hermit who has been too long away from other people and gone crazy, and when THE BUSHWHACKER (Ronny Runningboard, THE BIG SNATCH) needs to get his rocks off, he shoots down a plane which crashes nearby in the desert. The survivors – pilot Dan (Foreman Shane, FUGITIVE WOMEN) and a trio of models: blonde Dawn (Merci Montello, ERIKA'S HOT SUMMER), raven-haired Sherry, and brunette killjoy Maureen (Barbara Kline, HENRY'S NIGHT IN) – decide to camp out while waiting for sign of a rescue plane. During the night, while Dan is distracted from his night watch by horny Dawn, the Bushwhacker cops a feel of Sherry who at first dreams that it is Dan. No one believes Sherry when she tells them about the stranger, but she accepts the close comfort of Maureen while Dawn works up a thirst with Dan. When Sherry vanishes the next morning, the others are torn between looking for civilization or rescuing their friend from a madman.

One of about a dozen sexploitation flicks directed by actor Byron Mabe from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s – of which the most memorable was probably SHE-FREAK (an exploitation take on the Tod Browning film) – THE BUSHWHACKER is as spare in its execution as its plotting from the handwritten posterboard credits to scenes composed primarily of wide and medium shots. Released in 1968, there is full nudity but the sex is restricted to groping and slow motion desert romps – along with a bit of sorrowful necrophilia surprisingly not committed by the Bushwhacker – the violence, however, may shock with the Bushwhacker's slaps and punches to the women culminating in a bit of gore possibly inspired either by Hershel Gordon Lewis or NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD released the same year. The credits are full of made-up names like grip "Don U. Dragett" and gaffer "R.E. Flector."

"You'll be shocked and excited when you see THE RAVAGER doing 'His Thing'," promises the single surviving piece of advertising for the film; his thing, however, is blowing people to bits. No, this is not a war film but an early grindhouse film exploiting Vietnam PTSD as a plot device for a string of lukewarm sex scenes. Separated from his unit, demolitions expert Joe Salkow (Pierre Agostino, THE LAS VEGAS SERIAL KILLER) suffers a mental breakdown after witnessing to men whipping and raping a Vietnamese girl before blowing her up with a hand grenade. After six months of therapy at a veteran's hospital, Joe is released apparently cured; however we know that he is really "a very sick man with a very sick mind!" Purchasing a case of "60% Dynamite" and detonators (including underwater ones), Joe takes a room in a desert boarding house and stalks the desert in search of couples who have the temerity to make out in public including a parking couple who go beyond necking, a fisherman and his sex-starved wife, and a lesbian couple. The carnage ramps up his libido with a hunger for rape bolstered by the random peeping he does while saving up his dwindling dynamite stock for another exploit. Not even the accidental targeting of a mother and child can quell his raging libido.

Helmed by the enigmatic Belgian émigré Charles Nizet, THE RAVAGER shares with THE BUSHWHACKER with the desert setting and the murderous loner but that is where the resemblance ends. The Mabe film was a nudie flick with a violent kicker. Nizet's film is just insane and seemingly more of a self-exorcism going by what Robin Bougie was able to dig up on him (more on that later) than a vehicle to titillate Pussycat Theater-goers. The opening rape and murder is suitably sadistic to traumatize the protagonist, and Ray Dennis Steckler favorite Agostino spends the rest of the film twitching and bulging-eyed at some rather tame straight and lesbian sex culminating in literally explosive climaxes with real pyrotechnics. The film itself does not so much "climax" as wind down or burn out once Nizet has spent his creative load. The film is so single-minded in its progress that the omnipresent narrator would be unneeded if not for some real howlers like "The scene of the Vietnamese girl and her two captors had triggered something in Joe's mind which could only be satisfied if he could destroy others as he had seen the Vietnamese girl destroyed." Nizet only directed seven films over a twenty-two year period, but not for lack of trying, and his subsequent HELP ME… I'M POSSESSED! suggests that he learned more about producing and publicity than cinematic language in the interim.

THE BUSHWHACKER had previously been released on DVD-R by Something Weird Video and an unauthorized DVD by Substance Entertainment, both of which sported different transfers with the latter including a gore scene not present in the former. Mondo Macabro's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer is derived from a 2K scan of Something Weird's 35mm print which starts off with some scratches which recur intermittently and are most prominent around the reel changes. The image is a tad faded and the desert photography perhaps a little overexposed, but the transfer itself is on par with the best of the worst of Vinegar Syndrome and American Genre Film Archive. To make this a complete presentation, Mondo has had to insert the gore footage from a standard definition source along with some brief snippets but they are so momentary that they are no more distracting than any of the damage specific to the 35mm print. THE RAVAGER's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen is transferred from the only known 35mm print which is missing its title card and sports a lot more damage in the form of vertical scratches, missing frames, and dialogue-dropping splices. It is hard to tell if certain abrupt shot transitions are due to damage, the removal of something possibly salacious by the projectionist for his own spank reel, or perhaps just a lack of sufficient coverage and poor editing. The LPCM 2.0 mono tracks are as good as can be expected from the elements, with hiss present but reduced without any digital artifacts while the pops of associated with scratches extending to the optical track and missing frames are retained. There are no subtitles or captions.

Video extras are sparse, consisting of an American theatrical trailer (4:37) for THE BUSHWHACKER and a German one for THE RAVAGER (2:03) titled "The Beast of Lust" as well as a Something Weird Trailer Vault of five trailers for HOT SPUR (3:46), THE PICK-UP (6:18) which looks like a cross between a film noir and a roughie, THE SCAVENGERS, RAVAGED, and a most amusing one for the Italian NAZI LOVE CAMP 27 (3:50) which plays up the controversial content, interrupting glimpses of nudity and violence with a black CENSORED card. More interesting are the paper extras in the case starting with the twelve-page booklet "Help Me… I'm a Filmmaker: The Strange Story of Charles Nizet" by Robin Bougie in which he recalls his obsession with finding THE RAVAGER and its fulfillment when a tape release was announced in Something Weird Video catalog update. He also compiles material about the release and its reception and background on Nizet – including various biographical details he shared with THE RAVAGER as well as a large fire in which he was a suspect – from various far-flung sources including an interview with Ray Dennis Steckler. Most intriguing are the details of his later life, including his attempt to get an international film festival off the ground in Las Vegas and his intention to build a film studio in South America shortly before his still unsolved murder. The package also includes a reversible cover with each side emphasizing one of the features as well as six double sided lobby card reproductions with the American ones for THE BUSHWHACKER on one side and the German ones for THE RAVAGER on the reverse.

This release is exclusively available at Mondo Macabro’s “Big Cartel” site HERE. (Eric Cotenas)

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