Joseph P. Mawra
Directing
Biography
Joseph W. Mawra grew up in Queens , NY. From 1956-59 he attended Hofstra University, where he took courses in such subjects as English and creative writing. He got his start in show business as a freelance joke writer for talk show host Jack Paar. Mawra went on to edit advertising spots and trailers for motion pictures. He eventually wound up working for Stan Borden, who owned the production / distribution outfit American Film Distributing Corp. (AFDC). Over a two-year period Mawra made the four entries in the "Olga" series starring Audrey Campbell as sadistic crime ring boss Olga for Borden and producer George Weiss: Olga's House of Shame (1964), White Slaves of Chinatown (1964), Olga's Girls (1964) and Mme. Olga's Massage Parlor (1965). Shot in black and white on an average of four to five days on extremely modest budgets, these gritty exploitation features have gone on to amass a substantial cult following. Besides directing these movies, Mawra also edited them and worked on the trailers. In the wake of making the Olga pictures and weathering a storm of controversy in an obscenity court case against Olga's House of Shame", Mawra moved with his family to Long Island and directed several more films, including All Men Are Apes! (1965), Murder in Mississippi (1965), Mondo oscenità (1966) and Fireball Jungle (1968). After serving as an executive producer on Rain for a Dusty Summer (1971), Mawra continued to work in the motion picture industry editing, producing and writing the copy for trailers as well as a young children's TV program to teach kids how to tell stories through writing.
Known For
This exploitation classic purports to expose the secrets of the 1960s lesbian underworld.
Chained Girls
A young model and her friends vacation at a horse ranch. The owner of the ranch is a nudist and takes the girls to a nudist camp to show them the wonders of nudism.
Girls Come Too!
On a hot night in Dixie, the local shanty tramp heads out for adventure and leaves disaster in her wake. The lust she excites in the local men leads to fights, murders, lynch mobs, ruined reputations, and broken homes.
Shanty Tramp
In this third installment of the "Olga" series, our heroine adds jewel smuggling to her repertoire of dope pushing and white slavery. As the vicious Olga (Audrey Campbell) expands her criminal empire, she also encounters more resistance as a string of once-trusted partners turn traitor in an effort to steal the successful racket out from under her. The result is exactly what fans of the series expect, a barrage of torture scenes featuring soldering irons, floggings, spankings, and even an electric chair. As with its predecessors, Olga's House of Shame is a silent black and white film with narration to explain the action, but even with direct commentary it's difficult to keep track of the characters and Campbell (who is occasionally caught laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all) has all the menace of a kindergarten teacher, even when wielding a machete.
Olga's House of Shame
In Mexico, a mad general is leading his own war against the Church. Priests are rounded up, churches burned down and religion outlawed. The suffering of one pious catholic priest could bring the tide of change however.
Rain for a Dusty Summer
The beautiful, brutal Olga procures prostitutes and pushes heroin for the syndicate, confining and torturing her pretty victims in a private dungeon located in New York City's sinister Chinatown.
White Slaves of Chinatown
Ambitious driver, wanting to get to the top of the stock-car circuit, gets mixed up with gangsters.
Fireball Jungle
Nudist boat trips, nude horseback riding, a nekkid fashion show (!?) and a nudist wedding all figure in this vintage skin flick starring "Famous Figure Model Queen" Maria Stinger.
Nature's Sweethearts
Ruthless narcotics dealer and white slavery ring leader Olga keeps her harem of girls in line by hooking them on addictive drugs. Olga suspects an informant in their midst and uses various brutal methods of torture to weed out the squealer. Meanwhile, several of Olga's girls plot their revenge against Olga for her continual sadistic treatment of them.
Olga's Girls
A soldier stranded on a desert island is captured by a tribe of sadistic women who torture and mutilate the men who oppose them.
Six She's and a He
Cut-n-paste pseudo-documentary about the history of censorship in cinema and the changing mores of the '60s, comprised mostly of footage from the films of Joseph Mawra (who also directed this under the pseudonym of "Carlo Scappine"). Likely the only way to catch footage from Mawra's lost MME. OLGA'S MASSAGE PARLOR.
World of Obscenity
This last gasp of the grindhouse "Olga" series is a tossed off shrug of a movie that nonetheless entertains in a tacky, surreal style. Audrey Campbell no longer stars as the sinister femme fatale Olga, and her replacement retains none of her clumsy menace. Instead she languidly lounges about the flimsy sets smoking cigarettes and looking pale and sweaty. This new Olga is apparently too bored by the proceedings to even torture her white slaves. Instead the dirty work is handled by her partner Nick (Larry Hunter), a slimy, weasel faced man who lures innocent housewives into prostitution by offering them jobs as "dance instructors" in Olga's dance hall. Group sex, nude dancing and pretty ladies wrestling in their underwear are the results, along with several long, seemingly impromptu scenes where the characters talk endlessly and in circles.
Olga's Dance Hall Girls
A woman in prison relates her downfall from precocious thief of her mother's boyfriends to murderess. Plus, stripping! And a dude in an ape costume!
All Men Are Apes!
Elaine takes over Olga's health club and uses it as a front for criminal activity. When some of the syndicate's jewels disappear, Elaine employs various gymnasium machines to torture female employees into fingering the guilty party. Considered lost.
Mme. Olga's Massage Parlor
The OBIE-winning collision of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights with Joseph Mawra's B-movie classic, Olga's House of Shame.
House/Lights
Three white kids travel down to Mississippi to help with voter registration. Murder, sex slavery and general unsavoriness follow.
Murder in Mississippi
Two knuckleheads discover a rinky-dink machine that can “see all over the world.”