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Directed by Kemal Horulu
Written by Kemal Horulu
Starring:
- Bob O’Connell as Johnny Scaro
- Sharon Kent as Dora Natara
- Dora Natara as Prostitute
Rating: 
Leave it to exploitation cinema to produce a career as gloriously weird as Kemal Horulu’s. A Turkish sprinter in the 1948 Olympics somehow finds himself in Hollywood, takes a crack at filmmaking, stumbles into sleazy exploitation, and before long is pumping out skin flicks like a seasoned smut peddler. Tinseltown never fully opened its doors, but the porno boom certainly did. But before making the leap into hardcore, Horulu was already learning the ropes with one of exploitation’s most reliable hustlers, Barry Mahon. They cooked up Forbidden Flesh together, then Mahon happily slid into the producer’s seat while Horulu flew solo on Some Like It Violent. Both dropped in 1968, the undisputed high-water mark of the roughie cycle—a hell of a time for an ambitious Turkish émigré to start making movies where bruises and nudity were equally dependable box-office bait.
And while it’s hopelessly bad, it’s also endlessly amusing as one of roughie cinema’s most wickedly ridiculous specimens. Horulu’s pulpy little exploitation oddity makes quite the entrance with its tagline: “Some Like It Hot… Some Like It Sweet… Some Like It Violent.” There’s only the thinnest of lines separating “hot” from “violent,” and ’60s sexploitation understood that better than anyone. In fact, it practically built an entire subgenre around that very idea.
If the title didn’t give it away, the plot certainly will. Some Like It Violent follows Johnny Scaro (Bob O’Connell), a sadistic mobster who likes to work out his misogynistic rage by hacking female mannequins to pieces with a machete. Together with his delightfully incompetent crew—including one hiding behind facial hair so fake it becomes a special effect in itself—he sets his sights on taking over a computerized dating service to give his prostitution racket a technological upgrade.
This dating service doesn’t bother with romance—it cuts straight to the good stuff, matching lonely customers with tailor-made quickies like some sleazy proto-Tinder dreamed up by a schlock huckster. It’s the sort of shamelessly dirty concept that could only crawl out of the roughie boom, where technology exists solely to get people naked faster. Horulu’s execution is another story, blunting its sordid edge with unintentional comedy, stiff performances, and random bouts of nudity, yet the film’s sheer commitment to its ridiculous premise carries it surprisingly far. It’s all gangsters, techno-gimmicks, and gutter sleaze, stitched together with exploitation bravado. Some Like It Violent becomes the kind of lovable exploitation trash whose screwups only make it more entertaining.
