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The biggest schlock-film event of the year thus far has been the pre­mière of Duke Mitchell’s leg­endary lost film, Gone With The Pope.  The pre­mière screen­ing took place in Los Angeles on Friday, March 12th (as pre­vi­ously announced here).  Your Humble Reviewer regrets that he couldn’t be there for the grand event but he has a nice bit of intel to offer any Mitchell fans hun­ger­ing for details on this film — a cap­sule review from some­one who attended this screening!

The fol­low­ing short review of Gone With The Pope comes directly from Nathaniel Thompson, a DVD pro­ducer, critic, author and friend of Schlockmania.  For Your Humble Reviewer’s money, Nathaniel writes THE best cult DVD reviews on the net and his site Mondo Digital is a must-visit.  He attended the Friday screen­ing and was gra­cious enough to offer this on-the-spot review:

“First of all, Grindhouse did an amaz­ing job putting it together — the print qual­ity, edit­ing, and sound mix­ing are great (maybe TOO great for a Duke Mitchell movie). Actually more enter­tain­ing start to fin­ish than MAFIA, com­plete with a horrifying/hilarious obese sex scene that out­does the Jean Hill les­bian­ism in DESPERATE LIVING, lots of ridicu­lous racial epi­thets, and some cosmic/spiritual plot twists you really, really won’t believe (includ­ing a bit involv­ing a caught fish that had the audi­ence howl­ing in dis­be­lief), which cli­maxes in a super­nat­ural final scene way out of left field. Oh yeah, and it’s got creative/hysterical use of Rome stock footage (and posters), loads of bloody gun­shots, gra­tu­itous nudity, a big dog named Hamlet, great mid-‘70s Las Vegas and L.A. footage, and a great sound­track that really should get released on its own. They’re book­ing it in a few cities already, so def­i­nitely check it out on the big screen if possible.”

Sounds like a clas­sic wait­ing to hap­pen, doesn’t it?  Like many Duke Mitchell fans, this is exactly what Your Humble Reviewer was hop­ing to hear.

As fur­ther infor­ma­tion on screen­ings and the even­tual DVD release becomes avail­able, Schlockmania will post it for you.   In the mean­time, check out the Grindhouse Releasing web­site for more infor­ma­tion on Gone With The Pope and the many other won­der­ful schlock-epics in their catalog.