Blood Feast (1963)

Even a straight-shooting he-man director like Sam Peckinpah dropped his macho guard and got in on a little of the libidinous, gender-bent fun in the Sixties with his only feature-length comedy, The Ballad of Cable Hogue. In a goosing of the usual male-female hierarchy, Jason Robards stars as an Old West entrepreneur who takes one look at Playmate Stella Stevens' cleavage and becomes her starry-eyed love slave, soon crooning romantic ditties as he washes her spanking clean in an open-air bathtub.

Two Thousand Maniacs (1963)

While Meyer and Peckinpah lightened up and let it all hang out in the Sixties, other lesser-known directors took another approach to camp. Herschell Gordon Lewis's drive-in cheapies Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs! were gory horror films turned out in the Sixties and considered progenitors of today's "splatter" and "slasher" films. Playmate Connie Mason appeared in both films as the requisite beautiful victim, reportedly garnering a measly $175 for the former, which critic Danny Peary called "one of the most inept pictures of all time."

In an era when the Vietnam war and dissent on the home front were making reality a less-than-tantalizing concept, filmmakers and actresses of the Sixties seemed more and more drawn to the frivolous escapism offered in the movies. Sex became the decade's equivalent of the silent era slapstick's custard pie in the face -- a splendid, goofy release.

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