This horror anthology was created using salvaged footage from three previously full-length films – the unfinished Scream Your Head Off (1981), which was later re-titled and edited into Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992); Death Wish Club (1984) and Cataclysm (1980).
They were edited together with a wrap-around scenario of God (Ferdy Mayne) and Satan (Tony Giorgio) on a train, having a congenial conversation about the fate of three individuals who are featured in three unrelated stories.
The first story -‘The Case of Harry Billings’ – introduces newlywed Harry (John Phillip Law), who is driving his car over a bridge while drunk. They crash, his new wife (Eva Hesse) is killed (and never mentioned again), and Harry wakes in a mental hospital.
Dr Fargo (Sharon Ratcliff) assures him everything is fine and then gives him shock treatment.
Something is definitely off about this hospital – and not just the large number of naked women tied to gurneys or the fact that Otto, the orderly (Richard Moll), spends his entire shift kidnapping, molesting, and butchering patients for their limbs.
Harry is hypnotised (with the aid of injections!) and forced to supply the horror hospital with fresh lady bodies, who he drugs in bars, restaurants and a church (!).
The hospital’s mass murder/appendage-selling production line comes to a screeching halt when Dr Fargo falls in love with Harry and accidentally misses a hypnotism injection.
The now lucid Harry frees the remaining women and dukes it out with Otto while Dr Fargo is operated on by her doctor business partner (Arthur M. Braham), who she lobotomised early in a hostile takeover.
When the blood settles, Satan says to God, “Wasn’t that lovely?”
The second story – ‘The Case of Gretta Connors’ – features the titular heroine (Merideth Haze), something of a wild child, hooking up with wealthy, middle-aged sleazebag George Youngmeyer (J Martin Sellers), who makes her a lounge pianist/porn star.
After seeing one of her films, clean-cut college kid Glenn Marshall (Rick Barnes) falls in love with Gretta, and the pair hit it off. But Youngmeyer isn’t going to make it easy.
To get close to Gretta, Glenn is forced to join the ‘Death Wish Club’ – a suicide cult gathering of aristocratic death fetish weirdos.
Club meetings consist of cheating death (or not!) in the most ridiculously complicated and absurd ways possible (including being stung by a ‘Tanzanian Winged Beetle’ – which has the unfortunate side-effect of making your face explode).
The final “game” has everyone zipped into sleeping bags beneath a swinging wrecking ball as the rope is slowly cut. The second the ball squashes someone’s head, it’s back to God and Satan, where we discover that Glen and Gretta left the club and lived happily ever after.
The final segment – ‘The Case of Claire Hansen’ – has a devout Catholic surgeon (Faith Clift) married to atheist Nobel Prize-winning author James Hansen (Richard Moll).
She is told by a priest (Juan Luis Curiel)that she must cut out the heart of an ageless demon Nazi (Robert Bristol, who looks like Shawn Cassidy in Cabaretmakeup) and put it in a box made of wood from the true cross.
What follows is a feast of detailed stop-motion monsters and laughably terrible Claymation humans, which look like HP Lovecraft meets Gumby.
Cameron Mitchell appears as a hard-nosed cop named The Lieutenant.
As the third and final story ends, Satan claims victory based on the overwhelming evidence that humans are a bunch of assholes.
But God overrules the decision – because he’s God and Satan is cursed to walk the Earth forever.
God
Ferdy Mayne Satan
Tony Giorgio Conductor
Gabriel Whitehouse Night Porter
Earl Washington
The Case of Harry Billings
Harry Billings
John Phillip Law Harry’s Wife
Eva Hesse Dr Fargo
Sharon Ratcliff Otto
Richard Moll Dr Brewer
Arthur M. Braham Verna
Lisa Watkins
The Case of Gretta Connors
Gretta Connors
Merideth Haze George Youngmeyer
J. Martin Sellers Glenn Marshall
Rick Barnes Contessa Pacelli
Toni Covington (as Anne Fairchild) Prince Flubutu
Mark Ridley Federico Schmidt
William Charles
The Case of Claire Hansen
Claire Hansen
Faith Clift James Hansen
Richard Moll Priest
Juan Luis Curiel Olivier
Robert Bristol The Lieutenant
Cameron Mitchell Mr Weiss / Dieter
Marc Lawrence Papini
Maurice Grandmaison
Directors
John Carr
Phillip Marshak
Tom McGowan
Jay Schlossberg-Cohen
Gregg Tallas
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They were edited together with a wrap-around scenario of God (Ferdy Mayne) and Satan (Tony Giorgio) on a train, having a congenial conversation about the fate of three individuals who are featured in three unrelated stories.
To get close to Gretta, Glenn is forced to join the ‘Death Wish Club’ – a suicide cult gathering of aristocratic death fetish weirdos.
Cameron Mitchell appears as a hard-nosed cop named The Lieutenant.
