Invitation to Ruin (1968)

Director: Kurt Richter

Starring: Roger Gentry, Moe Weise, Kathy Williams, Bobby Ross, John Bliss, Julia Blackburn

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Eroticism in the Tradition of DeSade!

Plot: Pick-up artist Jerry Sloane is hired by mobster Ernie Pulaski to lure girls for his white slavery ring. Once Ernie gets his claws on them, the victims are turned over to mute Mama Lupo (she lost her tongue after tattling on some fellow schoolgirls), who tortures them in her dungeon and addicts them to heroin. Jerry unwisely falls for Ernie's daughter, resulting in a particularly painful, if appropriate, vengeance.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch this again? Nope.

#27 on 42nd Street Forever Vol. 2: The Deuce (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

There are two versions out there - you've got the 71 minute 1968 original and then there's the version released in '75 with painfully obvious (and yet sometimes cleverly seamless) hardcore sex inserts that runs an additional 8 minutes. I wish I had seen the '68 version. Is it bad enough to be called INVITATION TO RUIN 79 MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE? No, but it's no skip in the park either. There's barely a story and barely a budget but it's got something in there to like. First of all, one of the many loves of my life has a major role, Kathy Williams.


She really is a horrible actress but I'm strangely drawn to her in every picture of hers I've seen. She needs to have my babies. Someone PLEASE put her in touch with me. I want autographs, lunch dates, the works. She fascinates me. Then there's the evil mob boss, Ernie, played by Mo Weise. Weise has moments of being so good he doesn't belong in this picture and he does a convincing job as a sleaze merchant scumbag. The rest of the actors need help but that's what you expect and want in pictures like this. I really would've liked to have watched the shorter version without the sex because A) it would have been shorter and B) it was that really grainy, hairy, close-up 70s sex that feels like it belonged in one of those classroom films from the 60s and 70s, the kind of thing that would have turned us kids off of sex for a couple more years. At least the stock library music was groovy. Watch the trailer instead.