Satan's Sadists

Al Adamson was the patron saint of cut-rate American exploitation, and this is the meanest thing he made. Russ Tamblyn, a long way down from West Side Story, sneers his way through the lead as the boss of a desert biker gang who murder their way across the Mojave and then hunt a Vietnam vet who saw too much. It was filmed in part at the Spahn Ranch while the Manson family was actually living there, which gives the grubby 1969 atmosphere a nasty edge no set could fake. The acting is rough and the budget is invisible, but the ugliness is real, and that turned out to be all it needed.