Arrow Video Announces He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection For Release On Blu-ray On Nov. 24

Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a very cool collection of films heading home on Nov. 24 from cult filmmaker William “Wild Bill” Grefé.  

Titled He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection, this four-disc Blu-ray collection showcases seven of his classic genre films … filmed and distributed theatrically over the course of a decade, beginning in 1966 with both Sting of Death and Death Curse of Tartu and concluding with the 1977 film, Whiskey Mountain.  

Seven film treasures for film buffs and genre fans to savor.  So, what do we have here?  

William Grefé started out as a writer and delivered the script to producer Herb Vendig’s The Checkered Flag in 1963, but — according to legend — the original director took ill and since Grefé had written the script, he was told to go ahead and direct it.   What could go wrong with a film budgeted for just $30,000?

The film was a success, critically, who knows, but financially for sure and William Grefé’s directing career was born.   Along with Herschell Gordon Lewis, Fred Olen Ray and even Bob Clark, Florida, not Hollywood, is where Grefé made his mark way back in the day.   

The first in the collection, Sting of Death, was shot down there. 

You have to love Sting of Death.   You’ve got marine biologist, Dr. Richardson (Jack Nagle — Darker than Amber, Lenny, Mako: The Jaws of Death), who is studying the Portuguese man-of-war, who are often mistaken for “jellyfish,” but are actually their own genus … equipped with venomous stingers, which makes them really scary.   

In any case, his research assistant, Egon (John Vella — The Wild Rebels), goes rogue, sets up his own lab and turns himself into a half-man/half- Portuguese man-of-war.   The timing for his transition is perfect as Richardson’s daughter, the lovely Karen (Valerie Hawkins — Sylvia’s Girls, The Delta Factor), and four of her college friends show up, which genre fans will immediately recognize as the victim pool. 

These “eye candy” victims are known only as Louise (Sandy Lee Kane), Donna (Lois Etelman), Susan (Blanche Devereaux) and Jessica (played by Deanna Lund, the only friend of Karen who actually had a film career, and who is perhaps best known as Valerie Scott from the Land of the Giants television series).

There was a problem, the film’s distributor couldn’t find a co-feature to go with it (double-bills for theatres back then), so if the elements worked for Sting of Death, then why not make another Florida Everglades creature-feature?   That’s exactly what William Grefé did with Dead Curse of Tartu … as he tells it, he wrote the script in one long day and filmed the whole thing in just seven.   It worked like a charm.

A would-be archeologist, Ed Tison (Fred Pinero) and his wife, Julie (played by Babette Sherrill … both her and Pinero also “starred” in Grefé’s The Devil’s Sisters), bring four of their “students” with them to help with some research — think: grave-robbing.   And sure enough, this victim pool meets Tartu, who mutates into creatures of the Everglades and munch, munch, munches them all up!

It was the late ‘60s and Grefé quickly got in on the action with The Hooked Generation, starring Jeremy Slate as a vicious drug runner (he was fresh from The Born Losers and The Mini-Skirt Mob … his long film career included two Elvis films, two John Wayne Westerns — The Songs of Katie Elder and True Grit — and a ton of TV series work).  

At some point during this period, he made his was to Southern California and directed Electric Shades of Grey for producer Terry Merrill, who didn’t have a script … just go out and shoot the “hippie scene” … it was shelved and didn’t see the light of day for 30 years.  When it finally surfaced, it was re-titled The Psychedelic Priest … it too is included in this collection.

After this diversion, Grefé landed Rita Hayworth for The Naked Zoo, a lurid drug-infused tale of adultery and murder.   Hayworth’s co-star was Steve Oliver (Peyton Place, Bracken’s World television series to his credit at the time) … it was a quick production, which features not only Rita Hayworth being murdered (yikes), but there was a nifty twist worked in for the ending.

This amazing collection wraps up with a shark movie that actually was made before Jaws.   It is, of course, Mako: Jaws of Death, which Grefé wrote in 1973, but couldn’t find any takers until Spielberg’s movie chewed up the box office, and then, as Grefé puts it, “the phone rang off the hook.”  

What’s really cool is that Grefé used real sharks in his film.   They’d catch sharks using cement blocks, a hook and bait, bring those that had been caught into a small bay on Bimini Island in the Bahamas and, are you ready for this, tie a rope to the tail of the shark and have it make a run at the camera!!   Spielberg used a big, million-dollar mechanical shark … Grefé used the real thing!!

And last, but certainly not least in the He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection from Arrow Video on Nov. 24 is Whiskey Mountain, starring Christopher George (Chisum, The Train Robbers, Day of the Animals, Grizzly) and Roberta Collins (Women in Cages, Wonder Woman, Caged Heat), as a couple who go off in search of long-buried Civil War muskets in the hills of North Carolina, only to run smack-dab into a bunch of inbred hillbillies!!

As to bonus goodies, each film in the series features vintage commentary from filmmaker William Grefé, numerous production featurettes and the documentary titled They Came From the Swamp: Extended Cut.