The late Peter Carpenter is something of an enigma among exploitation movie fans. A pretty boy dancer/actor who had a few small parts in the late 1960s (including one in Russ Meyer’s VIXEN), Carpenter would co-produce, co-write and star in BLOOD MANIA in 1970, and quickly follow it up (performing the same chores) on POINT OF TERROR, both films being picked up by grindhouse specialists, Crown International. This would be Carpenter’s last film, and his fans (you know you’re out there) will be happy not only to own a pristine copy of the film, but also to explore the extras, which shed some light on the man and his short-lived rise to semi stardom.

Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter) is a groovy nightclub singer employed at a restaurant called The Lobster House (really) whose exhausting set consists of performing one tune in front of a tin-foil backdrop. Waking up on a barren beach, screaming from a nightmare (of his own dreadful nightclub act) he meets seductive Andrea (Dyanne "Ilsa" Thorne) who's luscious figure is adorned in a white bikini. Taking a liking to the Tom Jones/Engelbert What’s-his-dink wannabe stud, we learn that Andrea is the wife of Martin Hilliard (Joel Marston), the crippled and frustrated head of National Records. She signs him on to the label, makes love to him in the pool and later kills her wheelchair-bound husband in a fit of alcoholic rage climaxed by a confrontational match of shuffling lawn furniture and a laughable bullfight reenactment, complete with imaginary crowd noises! Tony witness the foul play, tries to blackmail Andrea with it, and then falls in love with her naive stepdaughter Helayne (Lory Hansen), who just flew in for dear old dad's funeral.

POINT OF TERROR is typical Crown International drive-in fair and is not really a horror film, even though it was promoted as such (“Demons long locked in the depths of the mind come to destroy the weak and believing!”, screamed the ads). It’s more or less a slice of melodramatic sleaze and at the same time very much a vanity piece for Carpenter, whose struggling recording artist/stud character beds three very beautiful women during the course of the film’s soap opera-inspired shenanigans. The players drink too much, commit adultery and deceitfully murder but the icing on the cake is the fact that Dyanne Thorne has a wonderful nude scene in which Carpenter removes that white bikini top to reveal one of the best racks in exploitation cinema (though by the time the “Ilsa” films were churned out a few years later, we really got to see more of the foxy Dyanne). Director Alex Nicol was also a character actor familiar as Mickey in AIP’s THE SCREAMING SKULL, as well as BLOODY MAMA, THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED, A.P.E. and many others.