Career Bed / Sex By Advertisement (BLU-RAY)

A quintessential exploitation filmmaker, the late Joel M. Reed's filmography traversed just about every corner of genre filmmaking, from ultra-gory horror with BLOODSUCKING FREAKS to oddball action with THE G.I. EXECUTIONER. But at the start of his career, like so many working in B-movies, Reed helmed a set of sexploitation films. However, not content to simply offer T&A with a flimsy storyline, Reed instead created what rank as two of the most jaw dropping and demented such efforts ever produced, both of which at last come to Blu-ray, newly scanned and restored in 4K from their 35mm camera negatives from Distribpix + Something Weird. In Reed's electric debut, CAREER BED, Jennifer Welles (Scorpio 70) stars as Susan, an impressionable young woman on the hard road to cinema stardom. Under the brutal and cruel pressure of her manipulative and jealous mother, Susan's life quickly becomes overtaken with casting couches, lecherous producers, lesbian agents, and general money making scams. Chock full of jaw droppingly acidic dialogue, delivered through the powerhouse performances of Welles and one-time-player Honey Hunter as Susan's scheming mother, CAREER BED plays like an unhinged mix of underground theatre and classical Hollywood melodrama. Reed's no-less-strange sophomore feature, SEX BY ADVERTISEMENT, explores the weird world of erotic newspaper ads in a mondo-film styled pastiche. Hosted by Dr. Joanne Ridgefield (soon-to-be-superstar Georgina Spelvin in one of her earliest roles), all manners of perversity are uncovered, from hippie love-ins, violent sadists, transvestites, dirty photographers, and much more. Co-starring Warhol superstar Geri Miller (Trash, High Rise), this wild and wacky ride effortlessly manages to shock from beginning to end.