Out of the Inkwell

Ever since I introduced Steve Bissette to Cinefest in Syracuse one of our rituals has been to sit down and go through literally a dozen milk crates of movie stills offered by one dealers. Now this habit has been abated by the realization of just what we're going to do with the stills, the appearance or non-appearance of the dealer – a very nice guy who must get tired lugging all of this stuff to shows– and our ability to sit for hours scanning stills.

As the years have passed I find that a couple of hours or so of this activity at a time is about all I can handle before my knees begin to howl, my back aches and my mind wanders. Such are the pains of the collector!

Quite a while back I had periodically posted some of these stills on this blog and since I'm attempting now to blog every day, I thought this could be fun for film fans.

Today's still is from a tawdry but oddly compelling exploitation film, "The Fiend of Dope Island." Subtle, eh? The gentleman shown is Bruce Bennett who by 1959 was reduced to appearing in crap such as this film. Bennett had been in "Mildred Pierce" and "Treasure of Sierra Madre." Hey, everyone has to pay the rent.

Here he plays the fiend who rules a little island with his whip. The film is available from Something Weird Video.

© 2008 by Gordon Michael Dobbs