I recently rented the DVD of The Defilers and listened to the interview of the director, David Friedman by Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video. During the interview, Mike asked David if he knew anything about the "over the top" movie from the late 60s called The Bushwhacker. David was very familiar with it and said that it was commissioned by some young lady and directed by Byron Mabe. They apparently produced some other wild movie in the desert which was never even released. Mr. Friedman commented that Byron Mabe was excellent at acting and directing movies but knew nothing about promoting or distributing them. Mike lamented that there appeared to be no print of The Bushwhacker still in existence. Several years ago, I talked to Mike of Something Weird Video on the phone and asked him if he knew anything about this movie. He said that "believe it or not, various customers had requested this movie" and he had been looking for it for years but had never found it. I was sorry to see that the actor and director, Mr. Mabe died in Orlando in 2002. I wonder if Rick ever met him.

I watched two showings of the movie in a row in a downtown theatre in Atlanta in about 1974. Wow, did it make me excited! I always planned to see it again but never had a chance to. From what I recall about the plot, it was about a beautiful, slender young girl with long blonde hair wearing a miniskirt who went on a camping trip with a couple of friends - a guy and a fat girl. During the movie, the young beauty was being stalked by the villain who hides in the bushes. While the blonde was walking behind her friends on a path through the woods, the stalker was following close behind. At one point, the young girl pauses to bend over and pick something up which causes her miniskirt to hike up even further. Meanwhile, the camera revealingly pans up her shapely long legs. You think the stalker is going to pounce then, but he waits until a few minutes later when they are walking through a field. He suddenly charges out of the forest, grabs the young beauty by her long blonde hair, punches her and slaps her hard in the face until she passes out. He then tosses her limp body over his shoulder and gropes her legs as he carries her away and disappears from sight.

When he gets to an isolated open area, he tosses her still unconscious body roughly onto the ground and rolls her onto her back. He then drives four stakes into the ground and stretches her body out as he ties her to them. As he cuts and tears off her skimpy clothes with a knife, the sexy victim comes to and starts screaming and acting terrified. The maniac proceeds to make numerous small cuts all over her body with his knife. He also whips her with a switch and tortures her with cold water while he roughly handles her luscious body, but does not rape her. He finally grabs one of her breasts and slices it off with a knife and walks away from her presumably lifeless body while munching on her severed breast.

The scene in which her breast was cut off was done so convincingly that I wondered for years whether this might have actually been a snuff movie. Years later, a friend of mine told me that he ran across a magazine with pictures from The Bushwhacker in which they clearly explain that although the scene looked very real, it was actually a masterfully created illusion created by special effects. When I mentioned The Bushwhacker previously on this board, I recall that someone (Sardu?) in the forum mentioned that they had also enjoyed watching this movie and later ran across what was probably the same magazine article assuring that the scene was not for real. The movie was quite a sexy shocker and probably turned me on more than about any other movie I'd seen to that point. However, that was before I had the pleasure of seeing such great classics as those of California Star, HOM, and ZFX.