One of my favorite actors of all time is John Ashley. Not because he was any good, or cool or even ironically hip. It’s just that for me, his is one of the classic faces of drive-in movies; mainly because that’s all he was ever did. He wasn’t a former A-list leading man who descended into B-movies, like John Agar, or a young guy who would go on to bigger and better things, like Dennis Hopper. He was an actor who started and ended at the bottom. His career high point? Playing a guy that hit on Annette Funicello in a Beach movie.

But he did get to have sex with Angelique Pettyjohn.

Ashley’s “franchise” was the series of Blood Island movies, produced in the Philippines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though not a prolific source of grind house sleaze, the Philippines were a valuable outpost of cultural debris, exporting several tasty bits of jungle nastiness for nearly a decade.

The Blood Island movies feature the 1950s plot staple of a mad scientist building monsters on a remote island; the first in the series, Terror is a Man (1959) is an uncredited adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau.” Producer Eddie Romero actually crafted a pretty decent movie, which was re-released in 1964 in the US to decent box-office.

When it came time to produce a sequel Romero updated the concept with color, tits and gore. Each movie is from here out is pretty much the same: Ashley arrives on Blood Island with a beautiful blonde in tow, native girls have their tops ripped off before suffering dismemberment by unconvincing green chlorophyll monsters, Ashley bones the village chiefs beautiful daughter, then bones the blonde, then escapes.

Brides of Blood (1968) featured the spectacular Beverly Powers (billed as Beverly Hills!) as Blonde #1. Nubile maidens are lashed to bamboo crosses, stripped bare and left as sacrifices for the monster, the least convincing guy in a rubber suit ever. The poor girls are ripped limb from limb during the physical act of love by this laughable Muppet reject. Later, Ms. Powers, running through the jungle in a black nightie, is stripped bare by the Nookie Monster before the dashing Mr. Ashley saves her from a fate worse than death.

Continuing the practice of hiring former cheesy Elvis movies starlets, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968) featured Angelique Pettyjohn as the beautiful, wide-eyed and completely unnecessary to the plot blonde. Many of you might recognize Pettyjohn from her memorable turn in the Star Trek episode “Gamesters of Triskelion” where she is draped in about a foot and a half of tin foil and has Shatner open her mind to the wonders of French kissing. For all of you who got boners when you were nine from watching that particular episode, you will be glad that Ms. Pettyjohn gets buck-naked here and rolls around the floor of a cave with our hero John.

Of course, if you really want to ruin happy childhood memories, you could check out Body Talk, Titillation, or Stalag 69, three hard-core porn movies Pettyjohn made in the early 1980s. Be warned, however, that Ms. Pettyjohn had by then morphed from a hot blonde sexpot into a GILF.

The last of the series, Beast of Blood (1971) brought in another former Star Trekker, Celeste Yarnall (she wore a red miniskirt uniform and took dictation in the episode: “The Apple”), as the blonde destined to roll around nude with Mr. Ashley. The standard plot was expanded with an army of goons who try to rape Yarnall and a talking, disembodied monster head in a jar in the Doctor’s lab. The monster makeup actually progressed in this movie to the point of coolness, and the poster for the movie, featuring a monster tearing off his own head, is one of the greatest exploitation movie posters of all time.

There is a fifth alleged Blood Island movie, Brain of Blood (1972), but it is really just a crappy Al Adamson movie rendered by the American distributors of the previous Blood Island movies. No John Ashley and no nudity.

What I enjoy about the Blood Island movies, apart from the tasty and plentiful nudity, was the sometimes beautifully rendered Philippines locations, the old-fashioned mad scientist angle that got daffier as the series progressed, and Mr. Ashley himself, who was never more competent. Add the fact that this is a foreign production filmed in English and not horribly dubbed and you have the recipe for diverting drive-in fare.

And did I mention that Angelique Pettyjohn, in her prime, gets naked?