"Bushwhacker! It's a woodsman! A woodsman that's been cut off from civilization for a couple of years, lives alone up in this brush, starts to talk to himself after a while, gets a little wacky! A little bushwacky! A bushwhacker!"
A crazy mountain-man shoots down a small passenger plane. He then proceeds to stalk, torture and kill the survivors in this horror sexploitation feature that was long thought lost. Director Byron Mabe helmed films for Dave Friedman such as A SMELL OF HONEY, SHE FREAK, and SPACE THING. He also starred in the seminal roughie THE DEFILERS. But as Friedman learned with THE ADULT VERSION OF JEKYLL & HIDE (which Mabe also produced), by the late sixties, skinflick audiences didn't like their sex mixed with gore. And exhibitors didn't like THE BUSHWHACKER in particular. "No one would play it," recalls Friedman. "It was a 'red flag' right from the get-go. The Pussycat chain immediately turned it down." As a result, it was shown in lower-end grindhouses with a print run that must've been less than ten.
But one of those prints has finally surfaced and this Holy Grail of Cinematic Degeneracy can now run amok in your very own living room. Brainless sex and violence, THE BUSHWHACKER is the perfect film for any pervert. -- Frank Henenlotter
