While Albert Bunder is one of the most talked about directors of regional exploitation movies, not much is known about him outside of what the man himself has told us. Much of the information on this site has been gathered by those who knew Bunder, those who attended the few Bunder conventions in the 1990s and early 2000s (known now as BunderCons), and cobbled together from obscure print sources.

Albert Bunder was born around 1940 in the Netherlands to a Dutch father and German mother. Originally van Bunder, the name was likely changed to just Bunder when they arrived in America shortly after Albert was born, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. Not much is known about Albert’s early life (we are open to learning more!). In the 1960’s, while working as a shoe salesman, he began shooting his first films on 8mm. Casting strangers and folks he’d meet at local dive bars, he filmed what has been determined as the first Bunder film: Death Knockers – only mentioned by Albert once at a convention in the 1990’s (thanks Jordy for the info!!). Apparently it followed a buxom female grim reaper as she collected the souls of men using her large, um, assets. His early movies were said to be more sexploitation than anything else, often featuring full-frontal female and male nudity. One of these films that is known to exist is The Painus in My Anus – a 30-minute sex comedy that didn’t reach the bootleg community until 1997, as evidenced by the cover featuring a photo from the making of Squirt (thanks for the information, Erik – he has the only known copy of this film). This was also Bunder’s first collaboration with actor, stunt man, and writer Thorny the Gooch. No one knows what Thorny’s real name was but it is believed that Thorny was born in the early 1950’s and was the downstairs tenant in Bunder’s duplex in the early 1970’s.

Thorny, Bunder, and Bunder’s ex-wife, Melody, also produced the STOP! series during this time, and shopped the films around local adult theaters, though it is unknown whether there were any takers. Another Bunder mainstay, Trevor Lunch, appeared briefly in STOP! STOP! STOP! and STOP! 4 as the partner of the main police officer. In 2009, an unknown individual came forward claiming to have a 16mm print of STOP! 4 but no proof was offered and the individual did not respond to repeated emails. Eventually, the STOP! series made it to release at an early BunderCon (some say it’s 1990, others say it’s 1991) but none of the original copies of the series have appeared on the open market.

Soon after shooting STOP! 4, Albert and Melody separated. Within a year, he was married to Patricia, who has remained his wife. Sometime in the early 1970s, Albert and his second wife welcomed their first son, Albert Jr., into the world. Around the same time, Bunder had spun his once employment in the shoe shop in which he worked as a young man into ownership. With some extra money in his pocket, Bunder returned to filmmaking with a little more budget and a lot of ideas. He first made The Booger Wolf – a 45-minute film about a teenage werewolf. Several clips of The Booger Wolf has made it online – the most accessible is the transformation scene – but the full film remains elusive to majority of Bunder fans. According to those who have seen the film (even I haven’t gotten a copy!!!), many of the same costumes, sets, and plot points were recycled the next year in the far superior film The Latkethrope. The movie follows a Jewish teenager who discovers he’s a werewolf on his bar mitzvah, only to wreak havoc on his small town during the eight nights of Hanukkah. To some, this is Albert’s finest work: funny, gory, and unhinged. It also marked the third film made with Trevor Lunch.

But he followed this film up with the killer animal picture Goreilla! about a massive, mutated gorilla that escapes a military laboratory and terrorizes a city. This has not garnered a similar positive response, as the movie lacks the laughs of Latkethrope and signaled Bunder’s deviation from horror into science-fiction and action films. During the 1970s, him and his wife welcomed another son and a daughter in the world, though not much is known about them.

With the advent of home video recording equipment, Bunder was now able to shoot his films quickly and cheaply. The first film, shot entirely in a warehouse owned by his shoe company, was Mongos From Space – a science-fiction movie featuring a scantily-clad protagonist who is abducted by the Mongos, a half-alien/half-robot, yet dimwitted, species that wants to mate with her to produce a smarter super race to dominate the galaxy. She must escape their clutches and somehow find her way back to Earth, with the help of a sympathetic Mongo (again, played by Trevor Lunch). For a science fiction movie shot in several days, it’s a pretty competent story though the limitations of the budget do hamstring some of the more fantastical scenes of the picture.

Following the release of Mongos From Space, a small group of Bunder fans in Cleveland got together to watch all of the existing Bunder films together. This is earliest known get-together surrounding Bunder, so it is no referred to as BunderCon 1981, even though there were only five or so people in attendance. This group would grow over the years to dozens of fans in Cleveland and beyond, and they celebrate BunderCon each year in Cleveland. There are no public tickets sold for BunderCon and it is not advertised, existing as an invite-only convention. Throughout the years, this is where Albert Bunder would sell majority of his films, often for high prices. The secretive nature of the group might also help explain why so few official releases of Bunder films make it to the secondary market. On the other hand, almost all bootlegs can be traced back to BunderCon participants, so we have them to thank for exposing Albert Bunder to the rest of the world.

Bunder was thought to have financed many of his films personally, as he had expanded ownership to two popular shoe stores in the Cleveland area. Following the filming of Mongos From Space, Albert Bunder teamed up with actor Dint Warley to shoot two films back-to-back: Borgman’s Revenge, a police procedural, and I’m Gonna Shoot Your Ass Off, his first high-octane action film. The 55-minute Borgman’s Revenge doesn’t have much of note besides it being the second film collaboration of Bunder and actress Chrissy Kreizer. In I’m Gonna Shoot Your Ass Off, Warley stars as Clint Storm, a former Army Ranger who is hot on the trail of an assassin named Juan “The Panther” who is killing prominent government officials. Alongside his sexy side kick Samantha Bucks, they unravel a dasteredly plot that has implications farther reaching than he originally thought. This marked the last collaboration between Bunder and actor Trevor Lunch. Clearly designed for mass consumption, I’m Gonna Shoot Your Ass Off never really got any traction with distributors (though some claim this film had a Canadian release by Celebrity Video Presentations but no known copy has surfaced), as this film was self-distributed by Bunder himself at conventions throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s.