Animation Sidebar : “Superman Vs. The Elite”

As far as these DC Universe animated flicks go, 2012′s Superman Vs. The Elite was a bit of an aberration for me since, unlike most of the others, I had no familiarity whatsoever with the comic story on which it was based. I was seeing it with “fresh eyes,” is you will,  and therefore  actually found myself to  be in the very same position most other viewers find themselves in with this stuff.

Unfortunately, the on-screen product probably wasn’t arresting enough to get me to go out and hunt down its printed-page counterpart (sorry, I know it’s bad form to give away the “final verdict” this early in a review but oh well, too late to turn back now), so for all I know maybe the issues of the pre-”New 52″ Superman monthly comic this is taken from are the greatest thing since sliced bread (not that bread — sliced or otherwise — is all that exciting, but for some reason the cliches are flowing pretty easily today, please bear with me), but ya know — I kinda doubt it.

Which isn’t to say, I guess, that Superman Vs. The Elite is all that bad — it’s just kind of a bog-standard 21st-century superhero mash-up with cardboard characterization and very little depth. The basic run-down here is that Supes (here voiced by George Newbern, who’s okay in the role but no James Denton by any stretch) is confronted by the arrival on the scene of a new team of uber-beings calling themselves “The Elite” (hence the name), who hail from various corners of the world and not only show themselves to be more than willing to cross lines “Big Blue” won’t in terms of killing their adversaries, but are flat-out eager to openly show their outright disdain for his, in their view, antiquated set of ethics and morals. In other words, it’s fairly typical “meet the ruthless new blood out to take your place” sorta stuff. Youth — they’ve always been bad, don’tcha know?

Director Michael Chang does a decent enough job with the battle sequences, which are numerous briskly-arriving, but if you’re looking for anything much beyond that, there really isn’t a tremendous amount on offer to sink your teeth into. Lois Lane as voiced by Pauley Perrette (talk about a too-clever-by-half name that puts even Parker Posey or Imogen Poots to shame) is little more than career-woman window dressing, and Robin Atkin Downes as head bad guy Manchester Black (speaking of too clever by half) is all sneer and no substance, so don’t go look for anything too dramatically gripping on the vocal front, either.

Still, I guess I didn’t find this to be just over an hour of my life completely wasted — that’d be too harsh, and frankly I didn’t get the sense that anyone here was actually trying hard enough to come up with an actively lousy product. After all, that still requires effort.  This whole thing just sorta starts up, chugs along, and finishes its job on schedule. Don’t waste your time peeking around corners for surprise plot twists — there aren’t any — or hoping for complex moral arguments about the relative merits of doing things the Superman way or the Manchester Black way, since all that’s presented as a given, as well. But I guess if you’re in the mood for quick-n’-easy, shut-your-brain-off stuff, this’ll do in a pinch.

Superman Vs. The Elite is available on both DVD and Blu-Ray from Warner Premier. I got the DVD from Netflix (yes, some of us still have a disc rental plan with them), and as usual it’s a bare-bones affair with the only “bonus” material being promo stuff for other “DCU” releases. Widescreen picture and 5.1 sound mix were both pristine and unworthy of any criticism. I’m sure the Blu-Ray offers a few more goodies for the fans, but I’m not in any hurry to scrounge up a copy. All in all, this is strictly uninspired, by-the-numbers stuff, good for a single viewing if you’ve had a long day and just want to kick your feet up, but really that’s about it.

Animation Sidebar : “All-Star Superman”

 

As far as the 2013 summer blockbusters go, it’s probably fair to say that, at this point, Man Of Steel has pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Oh, sure, Iron Man 3 has made more money — at least to date — but its success was essentially a given, and a nervous studio (and an at-least-as-nervous comic book publisher) didn’t really have a tremendous amount riding on its box office performance. Add  in the fact that the last Superman flick  under-performed rather drastically in comparison to its pre-release expectations, and you’ve gotta concede that plenty of “suits” over at Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures, and DC Comics are breathing a fairly huge collective sigh of relief right now. Plus, people are talking about it. There’s a tremendous amount of internet “chatter” — good, bad, and indifferent — about both its relative artistic merits and the reasons for its breakaway box office success going on right now, all of which ramps up the likelihood that, no matter which of the already-released and/or forthcoming big-budget popcorn extravaganzas come out on top in terms of cash earned at the turnstiles, 2013 will, in all probability, go down on record as the summer where Man Of Steel ruled the roost. Or at least the interwebs.

Of course, for those of you who’ve read my own armchair musings on the film both here and over at Through The Shattered Lens, you’ll know that I found it a mixed bag at best. I appreciated its amazing visual stylings and some of the smart chances it was willing to take in terms of the character’s backstory, but by and large I felt that its reach exceeded its grasp in terms of the “uber-mythic” slant it attempted to give/graft onto the character, and the end result was a cold, emotionally distant film that tried to hide its flaws by, simply put, clobbering you over the head so hard time and again that you were either too awed (if you liked it) or worn out (if you didn’t) to notice them. Superman is a character that works best when both parts of his name — the “Super” and the “man” — strike a delicate (and admittedly tricky) balance and learn to not only co-exist with, but also complement, each other — and at the risk of repeating myself to those who did, in fact, read my Man Of Steel review, I feel it gives up on trying to establish the “man” all too quickly and goes all-in on the “Super,” ultimately to the detriment of both.

Still, what’s done is done, and we can — and probably will — debate what Man Of Steel got right, and what it didn’t, for a long time to come. Movie geeks are like that, and comic geeks, bless us one an’ all, are even more like that.

 

Still, if I were one of the legion of die-hard, instant Man Of Steel fans that are out there defending my new favorite movie from any and all detractors (or even semi-detractors like myself), the question I’d pose (to, uhhhmm, myself, I guess) at this point would be : “okay,hotshot, you talk in these big, high-fallutin’ terms about ‘delicate balances’ an’ all that, so name me a Superman flick that you think gets it right.”

It’s a perfectly apt question (even if I do say so myself), and fortunately you don’t even have to go too far back to find it — just a couple of years, in fact, to 2011 and the DC Universe animated feature All-Star Superman, adapted for the (small, since it was a straight-to-video release) screen from the highly-acclaimed 12-issue mini-series of the same name by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely by the late, great Super-scribe Dwayne McDuffie and director Sam Liu.

Here we have another in a long list of  hypothetical “last Superman stories ever told” (my personal favorite still being Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s legendary “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?”) done with heart, humor, and intelligence — a story that embraces the admitted absurdities of 1950s/60s era single-issue Superman tales that had him (and know in advance that he only does some of these things here, but it’s the thought that counts) getting amnesia, revealing his secret identity, turning into a gorilla, or going back in time and saving Krypton from destruction (only to have all of these monumental changes immediately cancelled out by some ultra-convenient plot contrivance on the last page, naturally), translates them into a form palatable to modern, supposedly “sophisticated” audiences, and ends up reminding us just why it is that we love the character, both “Super” and “Man,” in the process.

 

Okay, sure, it’s not without its flaws — this is a story that definitely works better on the printed page, as a series of interconnected “one-offs,” than it does as an animated flick, where its  entire litany of plot developments — Superman gets solar radiation poisoning and learns that he’s dying, then has a big, bad confrontation with an ultra-pumped-up Parasite while trying to keep his identity a secret from Lex Luthor, then goes ahead and reveals said secret identity to Lois Lane, then gives her his powers for 24 hours as a birthday gift, then solves the Riddle of the Sphinx, then has a final, winner-take-all battle with Luthor, then has to save the sun itself and thereby the Earth in the process, perhaps at the cost of his own life — feels a bit rushed at best and disjointed at worst, but trust me — that ear-to-ear smile you’ll have from start to finish will be sending a signal to your brain that says “who cares, just go with it,” and ya know what? You will. And yeah, while I’d have preferred to see a bit more of Quitely’s unique and, heck, amazing art style translated into the animated proceedings, enough of its awe-inspiring grandeur and childlike sense of innocence and wonder survives the leap in formats for me to not have much to complain about on that front. This is, both script-wise and art-wise, a Superman who dazzles and inspires us not because he’s apart  from us, like Zack Synder and Christopher Nolan’s take on the character, but because he’s a part of us. He’s an ideal for all of us to strive for, not something too awesome, too other, too alien,  for us to ever hope to emulate.

As far as the voice casting goes, James Denton is — as always — pitch-perfect as both Superman and Clark Kent, Christina Hendricks projects secure, confident humanity as Lois Lane, Anthony LaPaglia clearly relishes the chance to “evil-genius-it-up” as Lex Luthor, and little touches such as having Edward Asner on hand as Perry White and Frances Conroy as Ma Kent show that some real thought went into this thing from top to bottom. I hesitate to use grandiose terms like “labor of love,” but this sure feels like one to this usually-too-cynical-for-his-own-good critic.

 

All-Star Superman is available on a few different home video iterations from Warner Premier — either as a single-disc DVD, a single-disc Blu-Ray, or a two-DVD “special edition.” The single-disc DVD contains some preview material for other “DCU” titles but is otherwise essentially a bare-bones release, while the two-disc version and the Blu-Ray feature a fairly intriguing “making-of” featurette and a handful of tangentially-related episodes from various Superman animated television series selected by Bruce Timm as bonus features. Widescreen picture and 5.1 sound are stunning no matter which option you go for.

All told, if you like myths that you can actually relate to, and you prefer your Superman to be a bit more accessible than the Godlike,  Nietzchean ideal of Snyder and Nolan, I think you’re going to find All-Star Superman  right up your alley. And hey — even if you did love Man Of Steel to pieces, I still think you’re likely to dig this populist, universal take on the character that really does bring the legend to life in a way all of us can appreciate. This is a movie that leaves you saying to yourself “gosh, that was neat” and not feeling the least bit self-conscious for doing so.

 

Documentary Sidebar : “Trekkies”

 

I’ll start things off here with a confession — I’ve never been the world’s biggest Star Trek  fan. I don’t have anything actively against it — in any of its iterations — per se, but I never really quite figured out its appeal, and consequently the absolute devotion to it that its enormous legion of die-hard partisans displays has always felt, I dunno — kinda weird to me, somehow. Maybe even a little bit sad and/or pathetic.

Mind you, this is coming from a lifelong hard-core Doctor Who fan who once even owned a Tom Baker scarf, so not only would you be quite correct to take anything I say here with a grain of salt, you’d also be well within your rights as a sane and functional human being to wonder “who the fuck is this guy to call anyone else pathetic?”

But ya know, thanks to fellow Twin Cities area native Roger Nygard and his superb 1997 documentary Trekkies, I can honestly say I have a new-found respect for these folks who speak Klingon, give each other the Vulcan hand sign, and argue over the most pointless minutiae of each and every episode of their favorite show. I still don’t quite “get it,” true, but I’ve at least come to view it as a relatively harmless phenomenon — hell, for some, immersion in this collective fantasy world might even be a positive thing.

 

Okay, yeah, there’s nothing inherently normal about the idea of, say, a Trek-themed dental office, or people writing a Klingon dictionary, or the forewoman of a jury showing up in regulation Starfleet uniform, but shit — it’s not really hurting anyone, is it?

To his credit, Nygard never really loses sight of how all of this might look a little bit ( to say the least) weird to an “outsider,” but he gives an even-handed portrayal of all the various subjects he follows around, and by and large shows them to be mentally healthy, well-rounded individuals who just happen to share a mutual obsession. Choosing Star Trek : The Next Generation star Denise Crosby as his narrator was a wise move, as well, as it shows us all that the primary goal of this film is to respectfully explore, at times even celebrate, the Star Trek  universe, rather than to poke fun at it, and helps establish a “we’re on your side” tone that puts most of the film’s participants at ease — no matter which side they might take in the whole “is it ‘Trekkie’ or ‘Trekker’?” debate.

 

What’s perhaps most amazing to witness for someone not a part of it, though, is how admirably inclusive the whole Star Trek “thing” is. Gay or straight, black or white, male or female (or, as the photo above demonstrates, somewhere in between), it just doesn’t seem to matter — if you love Trek, those who also love it will accept you. All differences are small potatoes compared to the one thing that binds them all together. Methinks there’s a lesson to be learned there for society as a whole.

The on-camera interviews with many of the show’s stars are pretty revealing, as well, as they explain in very personal terms what their involvement with Gene Rodenberry’s fictional universe has meant to them, and how they feel it’s affected not only popular culture, but human culture as a whole, as well. Leonard Nimoy, for instance, reveals how the values espoused by Trek influenced the work of visionay “underground” cartoonist Sue Coe (of Dead Meat fame), and Nichelle Nichols relates the story of how her performance as Uhura inspired none other than Whoopi Goldberg  to pursue a career in acting. Hell, no less than Buzz Aldrin himself makes an appearance, vouching for how the show has helped to keep humanity’s dream of reaching for the stars alive and well.

 

All of which, I guess, is my roundabout way of saying that not only does Trekkies do a good job of laying out the territory for the “uninitiated,” but it goes further than that to show why it all actually matters, and even if you haven’t partaken of the Star Trek  Kool-Aid (metaphorically speaking), you’ll probably walk away from the film with a better understanding of those who have done so.

Yeah, okay — a Trek convention still looks like foreign territory to me, and not even one I’d be too terribly keen on exploring in person, but ya know what? If that’s your idea of a good time, you’re A-Okay in my book. Go knock yourself out.

For those of you sufficiently tempted to give Trekkies a whirl, it’s available as a bare-bones DVD from Paramount, where it’s presented full-frame with stereo sound, and at 86 minutes long it’s just enough to keep the average viewer fascinated without bludgeoning us with just too damn much — and  If I were a Trekkie (or Trekker, as the case may be), this flick would leave me feeling very satisfied, even happy, with its depiction of my world and my fellow fans. You can’t ask for a better endorsement than that. So hey, Trek fans — I may not be one of you, and I may not even want to be one of you, but live long and prosper, my friends. Live long and prosper.

 

Grindhouse Classics : “The Pink Angels”

 

It pleases me to report that my home state of Minnesota recently became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage, and gay and lesbian couples will be free to say “I do” beginning on August 1st of this year. There were many celebratory shin-digs, large and small, thrown to commemorate this historic moment, and there will be even more if whack-job congresswoman Michele Bachmann follows through on her promise to move to a more socially retrograde region of the country, and it’s certainly no stretch to imagine  that there have been plenty of movies playing, at least in the background, at many of these joyous get-togethers. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that director Larry G. Brown’s 1972 Crown International gay-biker flick The Pink Angels wasn’t among the viewing choices on offer at any of them. Call it a hunch, if you will.

Not that the film itself is especially offensive, mind you, even though most (though not all) of the characters are stereotypical “swishy” ’70s queens rather than the leather-clad “bear”types you’d probably expect to be a bit more representative of the reality of the homosexual motorcycle-enthusiast community. It would likely be quite a reach to describe this flick as being in any way a respectful treatment of its lurid-at-the-time subject matter, sure, but at least our titular Angels are depicted as being, by and large, decent, fun-loving guys who just want to be left alone to pursue their livesi n their own way, and the bad guys are the authority figures and gay-bashing, overly-macho hetero  Harley-heads who are out to rain on our (for lack of a better term) heroes’ parade.

Still — it’d giving it far too much credit to describe this film as a monumental leap forward for gay rights and/or tolerance in general, either. So what exactly are  we talking about here, then? Well, weird as it may sound to say this about a movie centered around gay folks made in the early years of the so-called “Me Decade,” The Pink Angels seems to have no political or social agenda whatsoever! But that’s just part and parcel of a larger issue, really — that being that it seems to have no clue what sort of flick it wants to be on any level, and Brown and company were quite obviously just winging things from the get-go and willing to settle for, well, whatever they ended up coming up with.

All of which means, of course, that’s this is an absolutely fantastic watch from start to finish — even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Or maybe because it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

 

The “plot,” to the extent that such a thing can even be said to even exist here, revolves around our erstwhile flamboyant protagonists making their way out to Los Angeles (from where it’s never stated) in order to attend a drag ball, and along the way they have a fancy roadside picnic, raise hell at a hot dog stand, get hassled by the cops, get hassled again by some of their straight freewheelin’ counterparts (led by B-movie stalwart Michael Pataki and future Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty) run afoul (from a distance) of a bumbling military General, pick up hitch-hikers, try on dresses, and generally engage in pointless tomfoolery just because — hey, they can. Throw in some bargain-basement wannabe-surrealism, a lame-ass pseudo-funky/pseudo-folkish soundtrack, uniformly bright and sunny cinematography, and the general “making this shit up as we go along” ethos of Easy Rider, and you’ve got a recipe for one thoroughly entertaining, always-engaging cinematic disaster.

Of the six principal players, John Alderman stands out as scruffy, rough-and-tumble leader Michael, Tom Basham takes a memorable turn as the ultra-effeminate David, Bruce Kimball does nicely as hulk-with-an-overly-sensitive- side Arnold, and Henry Olek is all kinds of stupid fun as the supposedly British, wanna-be-Oscar -Wilde-in-leather Edward, but it’s all such overtly campy and OTT stuff that you can’t fairly single out anyone as doing a “better” job than anyone else, I suppose.

 

And then there’s  that ending. Now, according to someone on IMDB who claims, at least, to be this film’s executive producer — one Gary Radzat — what they were really going for here was some kind of “cinema verite” thing, but director Brown was batshit insane, couldn’t keep things in order, and neglected to film a final reel altogether! So they had to get everybody back together and shoot some kind of conclusion (under whose direction the supposed Radzat never says), since CIP had picked it up, sight unseen, for distribution, and what they came up with was shockingly downbeat, even tragic, absolute “bummer” that, sure, at least ostensibly brings together the various strands of the impromptu “story” that had been left dangling and didn’t seem to be destined to meet up in any way, shape, or form, but that completely turns the light-hearted atmosphere established in the first 70-or-so mutes on its ear for no apparent reason other than a kind of ruthless-outta-nowhere expediency.

In other words, it’s fucking perfect.

 

Let’s be honest — anyone who wants to watch a flick that fits anything like a standard definition of “competent,” or that even has anything vaguely recognizable as a point,  will have checked out of this one at about the 15-minute mark. Those of us still left standing by the time they need to put a wrap on things are pretty much willing to take anything the filmmakers serve up and just go with it. Sure, it’s a shocker to have such a crash-and-burn (not literally, mind you, but it may as well be) finale tacked onto an essentially harmless — and formless — romp, but hey, nothing  else about the proceedings makes any sense up to this point, either, so why start now ?

 

So — what are you waiting for? Grab Mill Creek’s 3-disc, 12-movie Savage Cinema DVD bargain pack  (where it’s presented with a nicely-remastered widescreen picture, pretty damn good mono sound, and no extras) and give The Pink Angels a go right now. It’s quite literally unlike anything else ever made — which doesn’t, of course, mean that it’s actually any good, but is still pretty much the highest compliment I can think of to bestow upon anything.

Grindhouse Classics : “The Big Snatch”

Honestly, with the absolutely harrowing news that’s come out of Cleveland over the last few days, you’d think — perhaps even hope — that I’d have the good sense and just plain human decency to not go anywhere near legendary exploitation producer David F. Friedman’s 1971 softcore sex-slave sleazefest The Big Snatch right now, but since I’ve never really been noted for my sense of timing —

I suppose the fact that no one involved in the actual making of this film wanted their real names to be associated with it probably tells you everything you need to know right off the bat (check the credits for hilarious pseudonyms such as “Jim Nasium”and “Mary Goround”), doesn’t it? Shot for a paltry $11,000 in Southern California by co-directors Byron Mabe and Dan Martin (who mas moonlighting from his gig as an L.A. county sheriff’s deputy and billed himself as “Ronnie Runningboard” in case his bosses ever got wind of this thing), The Big Snatch centers around the hare-brained scheme of two truck-driving yokels (ringleader Bart, played by a guy calling himself “Harry Chest,” and dim-witted sidekick Momo, played by a guy calling himself — well, “Momo”) to kidnap five beautiful young co-eds and turn them into their own personal low-rent harem. The  gals spend a pretty good chunk of the flick stuck inside a drained-out swimming pool,then they all get raped in turn (“rape” in this case being portrayed as a series of largely listless softcore dalliances featuring plenty of full-on nudity and simulated pseudo-penetration), a bit later one of the ladies tries to escape and has her panties yanked down before being tied down, spread-eagled,  to a revving car engine that’s had its radiator cap removed (the infamous “steamed clam” scene you may have heard about), and then the industrious gals actually do manage to  effect an escape en masse, whereupon they immediately strangle Momo to death before twisting and crushing  Bart’s cock with a pliers and then tossing him down onto a dirty old mattress and “gang raping” him for about the final 30 minutes of the film, although I have no idea how his “junior member” was even supposed to be functioning by that point.

Anyway, that’s what happens when you refer to women as “pigs” and order them to call you “master,” I guess.

It it all sounds pretty rancid and sleazy, well — it is. But it is fun to see future sexploitation semi-starlets such as Peggy Church, Jane Tsentas, and especially incomparable Russ Meyer stalwart Uschi Digard in early roles, and the truly atrocious “acting” is a hoot to sit back and absorb. Beyond that, there’s nothing much on offer here — the camerawork is all pretty straightforwardly haphazard (if that makes any sense), the revenge factor is decidedly dialed down since the rapes were portrayed as being an enjoyable experience for them women, and the whole thing’s quite obviously just a flimsy excuse to get some uniformly very good looking ladies to debase themselves for what had to have been an undoubtedly paltry paycheck. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — we all know that people will do anything for money, but it’s what they’ll do for no money that’s truly amazing.

Even for a “roughie,” this is a pretty mean-spirited affair, and even for a cheapie, its production values are astonishingly low, but I gotta (shamefully, I assure you) admit — as a curious memento of a largely-forgotten cinematic age, The Big Snatch makes for some strangely compelling — if crushingly, achingly dull — viewing at times. Which is hardly the same thing as me actually recommending this film, as I hope you’ll agree. If you’re foolish enough to attempt to take this flick seriously, you’ve gotta put aside not only your sense of what’s good and bad, but also what’s right and wrong. But who says you’ve gotta take something seriously in order to fully absorb what it’s all about? I’m not going to go so far as to say any of you good people will actually enjoy what’s on offer here, and chances are you’ll find yourself as flat-out bored during the “sex” scenes as I was, but there’s a certain amount of bravado on display here by our anonymous-at-all-costs filmmakers for even thinking that they could get away with making something like this in the first place that’s, while certainly far from admirable, at least interesting to witness.

And if witness it you must, you’ll be glad (I guess) to know that The Big Snatch is available on both VHS and DVD-R from, you guessed it, Something Weird Video. It’s presented full-fame with mono sound, neither of which are very good (which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, quite appropriate), and the only “extras” to speak of are a smattering of trailers for other SWV titles. All in all,  bare-bones release for a bare-bones movie with a very bare-bones “idea” behind it. But shit, since the bare breasts are all anyone cares about here, I guess it all works out. Just please don’t go getting any ideas from this thing , I beg you.

Yo, Ese, Dis Be A Review Of “Hip Hop Locos,” Homes

 

Please note : I cannot be held responsible for any typos that may occur during the course of this review. Frankly, some of the terms most often used in 2001 shot-on-video shitfest Hip Hop Locos are ones I don’t even know how to spell, so you’ll just have to bear with me. Also, I should make it clear from the outset that I intend no disrespect toward Hispanic Americans, or anyone else for that matter, here — I’m merely trying to ape the absurdly over-the-top speech patterns of the two principle characters in this flick for the sake of — I dunno, authenticity, I guess. If you find the whole thing hard to understand, well — so is the movie. And trust me, I use the words “homes” and “ese”  far less than they do in the “script” for this thing, where each is employed in, at last count, every single fucking sentence from start to finish. And now that we’ve got all that out of the way —

Hey, homes, whas’is I be hearin’? Vatos be tellin’ me da’choo don’ like Hip Hop Locos, ese. Dey say you be dissin’ dis movie, homes. Dat true, ese? ‘Choo got somethin’ to say, homes, you say it to mah face.

Yo, ese, wha’s you’ problem, homes? Dis movie don’ be hard to understand or nothin’, homes. Da whole plot is right dere on de cover, ese, an’ it gets scrolled across da muthafuckin’ screen at the start, too. You slow or somethin’ ese? Ain’t nothin’ confusin’ goin’ on here, homes.

 

Okay, ese, maybe it looks confusin’, homes, dass true. Lorenzo Munoz Jr, de director o’ dis biyatch, he don’ point his videocamera in logical places. Even though de whole movie pretty much be nothin’ but closeups o’ “rapper”/”star”s Unodoz an’ J10, he don;t show ‘em so clear an’ shit. He uses fucked-up camera angles an’ shit, homes. ‘Choo don’ like it? Muthafuka, watch somethin’ else, homes. ‘Choo can see da sides of da faces an’ necks an’ shit o’ dese guys plenny, ese. Iss all good, homes.

An’ yo, dis be da real shit, ese. Dis be da hip hop lifestyle, homes. Dese muthafuckas got dreams, ese, an’ dey gon’ make ‘em happen. Dey gon’ be hip hop stars. Dey don’ need no talent, homes. Dey don’ need no eqipment, homes. Dey jus’ need’a take what dey ain’t got, dig? ‘Choo don’t like it, ‘choo don’ know da streets, ese.

 

Maaaaan, fuck you, homes. Dis art. Dis ain’ no bullshit, ese. ‘Choo don’ need’a see what be happening ta know what da fuck be happenin’, homes. An’ even if ‘choo don’t get it den — well, like I fuckin’ said, ese, dey ‘splain it to ya in words an’ shit. An’ ain’t no need to spend no muthafuckin’ money on nothin’ here, ese — dis jus’ take a camera out onto da streets an’ see what the fuck happens,  homes. Shit gets fuuuuuucked up, ese, ‘choo know dat’s right!

‘Sides, homes, iss only, what, ese? Maybe 70 minutes long an’ shit? ‘Choo ain’ ‘dat busy, homes — ‘choo can make it t’rough dis. An mebbe you even learn some fuckin’ shit, ese — like, I mean, ezzackly how not to make a muthafuckin’ movie an’ shit, homes. ‘Cuz Hip Hop Locos at least be a — wha’choo call it, ese? — a tex’book ‘zample a dat.

‘Choo wanna find dis muthafuckin’ thing, homes, it ain’t hard — dem vatos at Brain Damage Films done put it out on DVD an’ shit, ese. Prob’ly it gots extra features an’ shit on dat, too. But I ain’t seen it like dat, homes — I caught dis bitch on the Decrepit Crypt Of Nightmares 12-disc, 50 fuckin’ movie box set from dat Mill Creek label, muthafuckin’ Pendulum Pictures, ese. Iss full screen wit mono sound an’ it look an’ soun’ like shit, homes, but fuck it, ese — iss all good an’ shit.

‘Choo wise to whassup yet, homes? ‘Choo gon’ see dis t’ing? Or ‘choo gon’ keep talkin’ shit, bitch, like you some expert ’bout somethin’? Man, choo don’t know notheeng, homes. ‘Choo fucked up. ‘Choo talk too much. ‘Choo donno da muthafuckin’ streets, ese.

 

Anyway, fuck you, homes. Dis da gen-u-wyne- muthafuckin’ t’ing. ‘Choo can’t see dat, homes, you ain’ got fuckin’ eyes in yo’ muthafuckin’ head, ese.

 

“Cheering Section” : Rah, Rah, Sis-Boom-Blah

 

It’s no secret to those who have been reading this site for awhile now that I’m a huge fan of the lower-than-low-rent Animal House knock-off King Frat. Even though Code Red’s release of it under their short-lived “Saturn Drive-In” label left a lot to be desired, I really don’t care. Full-frame, direct-from-VHS rip or not, I was just glad to finally have it available on an “official” DVD release. What can I say? Sometimes I can be pretty easy to please. It wasn’t until last night, though, that I finally watched — on a complete lark —  the movie it’s paired with on that disc, director Harry Kerwin’s 1977 teen sexploitation “comedy” Cheering Section, and discovered I really hadn’t been missing out on much all these years it’s been sitting, unviewed, on my shelf .

For one thing, Code Red, more times than not the gold standard in exploitation as far as I’m concerned, did an even lousier job with the transfer on this title than they did on King Frat. It looks like it’s been ripped from about a third (or greater)-generation VHS copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a — well, you get the idea. The full frame picture features colors that are completely washed-out, the image is grainy and blurry in the extreme, and the mono sound completely sucks and has to be cranked up in some spots and lowered, quite quickly, in others. There are no extras to speak of, but hell, maybe that’s a good thing.

 

The technical specs aren’t nearly as lamentable, though, as is Cheering Section itself, an unimaginative, uninspired, unimpressive, and well-nigh unwatchable riff on the previous year’s Crown International release The Pom Pom Girls — the first cheerleader-themed film to gain wide release after the Supreme Court decision legalizing hard-core pornography, and thus quite a bit tamer  than earlier entrants in the genre which were basically soft-core sex romps with 21-year-olds dressed up as high school girls. The Pom Pom Girls was hardly a classic by any stretch, but it did stake out new ground, since the suits at Crown realized early on that, with “the real thing” now readily available for audiences to see, they needed to tone down the (frankly usually dull) simulated sex scenes and dial up the hijinks and comedy. There could still be plenty of bare boobs on display, of course, but explicit — or even semi-explicit — sex was out, since that market was now essentially cornered by the likes of Marilyn Chambers, Linda Lovelace, etc.

Fly-by-night Florida distro outfit American General Pictures took note of this profitable formula not long after, and the result is this plotless, laughless mess. Ostensibly focused on a group of high school jocks who cruise around in one of those “pussy wagon” vans so popular at the time (they even mark their “conquests” by placing a new pussycat sticker on the rear of the van for every girl one of them scores with), things take a turn when an immediately-popular, pretty new girl (played by Rhonda Fox) shows up at school and they all compete for her attentions and/or affections. She takes a real liking to the purported alpha male “leader” of the bunch (played by Corey Pearson), who also just so happens to be the star quarterback of the football team (of course), and he likes her, too — there’s just one problem : her dad is his new, hard-ass coach.

Yup, folks, we’re firmly in “stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before” territory here, and trust me — you’ve seen it done better, too. There’s a sure-to-set-the-cause-of-women’s-equality-back-by-at-least-a-century subplot about the main school here literally betting their cheerleaders against their rival school’s cheerleaders on the outcome of the forthcoming big game, but that’s all about as interesting as it sounds, as well. Honestly, the whole thing’s just a dreary mess, and everyone’s so plainly just going through the motions — and even them just barely — that sticking with it as a viewer becomes a real effort.

 

Still, if you’re the sort of person that can be reasonably entertained by more or less any movie that bares enough young, perky, female flesh, you might find Cheering Section at least vaguely interesting enough to sit through — although probably only once. Me, I’d have rather watched the flagpole rust. Proceed down this road solely at your own risk — I’ve done my part by warning you; my conscience is clear.

Grindhouse Classics : “The Sex Killer”

I know, I know — it’s customary around these parts to feature the actual poster for the movies being reviewed on these virtual pages at the outset of our (okay, my) reviews, but when it comes to Barry Mahon’s 1967 16mm black-and-white quickie The Sex Killer (also released under the only-slightly-less-lurid title of The Girl Killer), no actual, stand-alone poster seems to even exist for it — which probably indicates (along with its scant 55-minute run time) that  it was always part of double- and even triple-bills at the various downtown exploitation houses and rural drive-ins where it got its most-likely-quite-limited-in-number theatrical playings — so the cover for Something Weird Video’s DVD release of it (where it’s presented full frame, with mono sound, and the usual plethora of SWV extras which have very little to do with the films on offer themselves, but  at least bear some tangential relation to the overall theme of the proceedings), which finds it packaged up with The Zodiac Killer  and Zero In And Scream, will just have to do. Sorry in advance, and I sincerely hope its poster-less nature won’t deter you from seeking this curiosity of a bygone era out.

For that matter, I hope the movie’s  obviously-dubbed-in-during- post-production sound, low-rent production values, and risible “acting” won’t scare you off, either, because honestly, the rank amateurish nature of this film isn’t just one of the interesting things about it, frankly it’s the interesting thing about it. The story — or variations on it, at any rate — has been told elsewhere, told much better, and certainly told with more polish — but the gutter-level realism of The Sex Killer really does give it an immediacy that most of the other, slicker fare of this nature (notable exceptions like William Lustig’s classic Maniac notwithstanding) lacks. In short, this flick has an uncomfortable habit of feeling quite like the real thing.

There’s no point in kidding ourselves — this semi-realism is entirely a function of Mahon’s budgetary restraints, but what the hell — it works. The basic premise is pretty well foolproof — a quiet loner named Tony (played with near-documentary naturalism, except when he’s talking, which fortunately isn’t too often, by Bob Meyer) works in a dilapidated New York City mannequin factory with a bunch of rough-n’-ready yokels who question his manhood at every turn. Tony doesn’t need them for much, though — he’s got the head of one of the dummies he works on to keep him company, talk to, and even take out on the town! Still, that gets a bit dull after awhile, as you’d probably expect that it would, and our soon-to-be-lust-murderer decides to start spending  his off days spying on topless female sunbathers at the rooftop pool of a supposedly-ritzy apartment complex through a pair of binoculars. Even that doesn’t keep him too interested for too long, though, and next thing ya know he’s raping, killing, and then re-raping (yes, there’s some necrophilia in here) the ladies he was quite happy, just a day or two previously, to marvel at from a distance.

Give Tony some credit — he’s not content to rest on his laurels when new avenues for advancement through the sex predator ranks present themselves.

I guess that’s all you really need to know about what goes on in this movie because — well, that’s all that goes on in this movie. But Mahon (upon whose wartime exploits Steve McQueen’s  character in The Great Escape was based — seriously!), like his contemporary Ray Dennis Steckler, manages to translate the seamy, sleazy, sordid world of his protagonist onto the screen with almost no stylistic “filter” at all — simply because he can’t afford one! It’s entirely possible — hell, even quite likely — that he would have liked The Sex Killer to be a more professional,  or at the very least competent,  piece of film- making, but let’s thank our lucky stars that he didn’t have the cash to do so, because while the end result of his probably-less-than-a-week’s-worth-of-work-here may not be “good” by any (yawn) conventional definition of that word, it certainly is memorable — and that’s often worth so much more.

Appropriately enough, the film ends without credits (although seasoned viewers of New York-based exploitation productions may recognize Rita Bennett, Uta Erickson, Helena Clayton, and Sharon Kent, among others, as some of the female flesh on display here), which further amplifies the “slice-of-life” aesthetic established from the outset. Lots of movies these days, particularly in the horror genre, are going for a “found footage”-type feel, and while some of Mahon’s supposed binocular angles defy logic or explanation, he by and large achieves exactly that with The Sex Killer.  If somebody popped in an unlabeled VHS tape of it and told you they’d just found it sitting in a trash can or at the bottom of a box in an old yard sale — or better yet, in a dusty corner of a police evidence locker — you’d believe it. I can’t think of higher praise than that — and I’ll take entirely accidental cinema verite over $50 million Hollywood  ”realism” every time.

“Easy Rider” Checks In To “The Last House On The Left” In “Wild Riders”

It’s definitely a tough call, with many worthy contenders to the “throne,” but if someone were to ask me what the out-and-out sleaziest entry in the Crown International Pictures “canon” is, I’d probably have to go with writer/director Richard Kanter’s ultra-mean-spirited, deeply misogynistic Wild Riders, a bikesploitation flick that positively oozes ill will toward the fairer sex and does its best to make tragic heroes out of a pair of thieves, rapists, and murderers. As is so often the case with movies we look at around here, they sure don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and maybe that’s not always such a bad thing —

Consider : the “action” here starts with two obviously fucked-in-the head bikers (our titular “Wild Riders”), whose names we later learn are Pete (the comparably “suave” one, played to the hilt by Arell Blanton) and Stick (the scruffy one, played by Alex Rocco in the same year he’d take his legendary turn as Moe Green in The Godfather), not only raping some luckless lass, but then proceeding to nail her to a fucking tree, an act so outlandish and beyond the pale that it proves to be too much even for the outlaw Florida cycle club they’re riding with, with the end result being that the gang gives ‘em the boot and Pete and Stick make tracks for sunny California (which is where the supposed “Florida” scenes were shot, anyway).

Our psychopathic twosome doesn’t waste too much time getting to know the lay of the (La-La) land once out west, deciding almost immediately to go have some — ahem! — “fun” at the snazzy Hollywood Hills home of a good-looking young lady they spy laying out by her pool. It turns out the aforementioned mistress of the house, buxom brunette Rona (Elizabeth Knowles) , who likes to live on the wild side a bit, is sharing her semi-palatial digs for a few days with her equally-buxom, but frankly kinda repressed, red-headed gal pal Laure (I know, I know — it looks like there should be an “i” in her name, but there isn’t — oh, and she’s played by Sherry Bain) while her apparently-not-all-that-missed hubby, an accomplished cellist, is away. If  all that sounds to you like a sure-fire set-up for disaster —well, you’re right.

Pete manages to smooth-talk his way into Rona’s pool, then her house, then her bed, but things don’t go so well for semi-retarded dirtball Stick and Laure, and when she insults his manhood, he ends up raping her in rather savage fashion.  To her credit, she doesn’t take this indignity laying down (no pun intended, honestly) and after informing Rona what her new house “guests” are really like, Pete flips his lid and decides to get just as rough as his buddy. An odyssey of home-ransacking, hostage-taking, and violent sexual assault soon unfolds — and then things get really weird.

Despite his rather sudden and violent about-face, Rona actually finds herself falling in love with Pete (hey, actor Arell Blanton did, in fact, sing this movie’s low-grade folk-ish theme song, so maybe he’s got other hidden “talents,” as well), and Kanter most definitely plays up some kind of pseudo-sympathetic angle vis-a-vis his thoroughly sadistic protagonists, to the point that what when the cello-wielding man of the house makes his return , finds what’s happened to his home and his honey (and her friend), and uses his instrument to exact murderous revenge on the interlopers, we’re actually supposed to feel, well — kinda sorry for them!

I’m sure, at this point, that this all sounds, as the title for this review would imply, like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda have wandered into Wes Craven’s classic The Last House On The Left, but this movie actually came out a year before Krug and his fucked-up family changed cinematic history forever. Am I saying Craven copied Kanter in any way, shape, or form? Probably not — it’s been well-established that Bergman’s The Virgin Spring was the thematic progenitor for Last House, and we’re definitely supposed to sympathize with the victims and their grief-stricken paretnts in both those films rather than their attackers, but the timing is quite interesting, to say the least.

Still, to be perfectly honest, that strange historical parallel is probably about the only reason I can think of to recommend that anyone sit through Wild Riders. This is some thoroughly unpleasant stuff, and the “just a good ol’ boy, never meanin’ no harm” angle that Kanter plays is only compounded in its offensiveness when he has one of his victims end up having her hear stolen by her victimizer. I’m normally the first guy in the room to enjoy it when all conventions of good taste and morality are thrown out the window (the less enlightened might go so far as to celebrate this film’s “political incorrectness,” but there’s nothing noble about bucking the supposed “PC” status quo when we’re talking about rape, for Christ’s sake), but this one was a little much even for me. Sure, later fare like I Spit On Your Grave is much more graphic and brutal, but at least Meir Zarchi had enough sense to know who the villains were in his film.

What the hell, though — if you’re curious, Wild Riders is available on DVD from Mill Creek as part of their three-DVD, 12-movie Savage Cinema collection, where’s it’s presented with a nice-looking widescreen transfer, good mono sound, and no extras. This set’s pretty heavy on biker fare in general, so all in all it’s a solid purchase — especially given its well-under-$10 price point — but honestly, this particular flick is only worth taking in for its value as a historical curiosity, and is repugnant enough to probably  make even the most die-hard Tea Party supporter and/or Fox “news” viewer thankful for at least some social progress.

Grindhouse Classics : “Detroit 9000″

 

Arthur Marks has certainly been getting a lot of love around these parts lately, hasn’t he? Recently I more or less politely begged for a long-overdue reappraisal of his fine Pam Grier flick Friday Foster, and today I’m here to spread the good word about what is undoubtedly his absolute masterwork (a term regular readers of this site will know I don’t toss around loosely), 1973′s Detroit 9000.

Honestly, this is one of those movies I probably should have reviewed ages ago, but now’s as good a  time as any seeing as how Lionsgate has recently re-released it on DVD alongside The Mighty Peking Man and Jack Hill’s Swtichblade Sisters in a nifty little package called “Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures Triple Feature,” Tarantino having acquired the rights to all three titles back in the 1990s for the midnight screening/revival circuit. None of the films contain any extra features to speak of, but they do feature nicely remastered widescreen transfers and perfectly serviceable mono sound, and seeing as how the disc retails for under ten bucks from most online outlets — well, how many ways can you say “essential purchase?”

But enough with the free plug for Lionsgate product. What sets Detroit 9000 apart from much of the other blaxploitation fare of the time (a category which this flick may or may not actually fall into — it’s certainly debatable) is the intelligence and extra level of humanity and characterization that Marks, his fine cast, and screenwriter Orville H. Hampton inject into the proceedings. Sure, this is a pretty goddamn violent pressure-cooker of a flick, with uneasy police partners Lt. Danny Bassett (the legendary-in-my-book Alex Rocco) and Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) tasked with tracking down the armed masked men who ripped off $400,000 from a black-tie fundraiser for ethically-questionable African-American congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger), and okay, Scatman Crothers pops up along the way as — gosh, what a shocker — a crooked preacher-man, and fair enough, some bits of dialogue are “borrowed” directly from Dirty Harry, as is a heavy dose of atmosphere,  but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a slice of B-movie bad-ass-ness worth taking seriously.

 

For one thing, nobody here is a saint. Both leads are deeply flawed, all-too-human individuals, and Rocco and Rhodes turn in superb performances that bring out all the nuances in the script. This is an intelligent story delivered by intelligent performers with a firm grasp on the surprising subtlety inherent in the material. sure, the old “this is a conspiracy that reaches all the way to the top” angle was predictable even by 1973, but come on — would you honestly have it any other way? Some things become formulaic simply because — well, they work. And Detroit 9000 doesn’t just work, it works overtime, providing a very real sense of the intense political weight being brought to bear on these guys to crack this case open, and crack it open quickly. As long as they find an “acceptable” solution, of course —

And that means, of course, even more stress for our fallible-yet-intrepid twosome, since it’s a lead-pipe cinch that the answers they find aren’t going to be what the higher-ups want to hear. Rest assured, though — in a world where the good guy aren’t so great, the presumed bad guys aren’t necessarily so bad, either (even when they are, if you get my meaning), so definitely expect a few surprises along the way.

 

Marks, absolute master of pacing that he is, keeps things moving along at a very nice clip here, and there’s never a dull moment — the action scenes are explosive and fraught with drama and tension, but even the quieter moments aren’t so quiet as every word in every off-handed exchange does at least something to propel the main narrative forward. This is a very economical film (both metaphorically and, I’m sure, literally), and the always-resourceful Arthur doesn’t waste a frame. Run to the kitchen or bathroom and you’re guaranteed to miss something — good thing for that “pause” button.

 

Detroit’s a simmering powder keg of barely-subsumed racial tensions here, as well, and that only adds to the brooding-bordering-on-oppressive vibe that this film captures. Anything could happen at any moment — look at a guy the wrong way and things are gonna blow sky high. Any alliances formed are temporary, purely for the sake of expediency, and susceptible to fracture without a moment’s notice. Buckle up, folks — the road start out bumpy and it only gets bumpier. All of which is fun, of course, but it means you’ve gotta keep your wits about you, as well — and trust me, when the shit hits the fan at the end, you’ll be glad you did.

 

There’s no two ways about it, friends — Detroit 9000 (the title refers to a distress code on the police radio band, if you were wondering) is the real deal. There’s no slack in its act. It’s not afraid to get its hands dirty because they were never clean to begin with. Good times are fun and all, but they’re transitory, fleeting; the best times come with a price and force you to remember them, even when it’s inconvenient. This flick is a terrific piece of crime drama from start to finish, but it demands — and takes — its pound of flesh along the way. Get your ass off my blog and watch it right now.