Coffy

Coffy (1973)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jack Hill

Starring: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui, Sid Haig

From: American International Pictures

Here is a famous blaxplotation film; there’s a genre that I know about but haven’t seen too many films from. So, seeing that this would be on late last night on MGMHD, I knew I would have to check it out.

Overall, this was trashy fun. Grier plays a nurse who has a younger sister that almost passes away due to OD’ing on the smack. She’s upset at seeing the effects of drug use on young black people so she decides to get revenge on the drug dealer, and oh yes she does so in a memorable fashion. That’s just in the opening minutes. She’s then remorseful for what she did, and she confides that in both a politician boyfriend (Bradshaw) and a cop friend (William Elliott); well, she and the cop friend get attacked by masked men involved in the drug trade, he severely, and she finally has had enough and she goes on the warpath. From there, you see such things as items hidden in her hair, a big butch lesbian, catfights… oh, and nudity, plenty of nudity, both from Grier and many of the ladies in the cast. Even today with her age, Pam is an attractive lady, but back in the early 70’s, she was hot, and also amply endowed. The movie makes sure to show her topless rather frequently; not to be shallow, but I certainly didn’t complain about this obvious exploitation; I mean, after all it was released by AIP, so it’s almost expected from them.

However, this isn’t trash that has no merit to it. Rather, it’s a lot of fun and it has a genuinely entertaining and engrossing story. You have a strong female lead and an anti-drug message, which were both rather uncommon in blaxploitation, at least at the time. You have memorable bad guys and rather violent scenes (more than one of which involves a car doing something that you normally wouldn’t expect to see). You have memorable villains, like a big bald-headed guy with a foreign accent (Haig). So, it’s not difficult to see why it became an unexpected hit when it was first released; the nudity didn’t hurt, I’m sure, but the other stuff was a big help. That’s why they made Foxy Brown shortly after this; that’s something I need to see one of these days.

Oh, and after seeing this, I noticed that more than one part of this reminded me a lot of Black Dynamite. There’s the expected stereotypes from the genre, like the big hair, the loud clothes, the jive talkin’, the large cars (although there’s also a classic Mustang and an early 70’s Corvette; both looked great. The pimp’s outfits (he was played by DoQui, who was a police officer in Robocop and he’s far different here than in that role) were comically great in this day and age.

So, if you enjoy this genre and haven’t seen it yet, you really should. I’ll be back next weekend.

Samson vs. The Vampire Women (Santo vs. las mujeres vampiro)

Samson vs. The Vampire Women (1962)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Alfonso Corona Blake

Starring: El Santo, Lorena Velazquez, Maria Duval, Jaime Fernandez

From: Filmadora Panamerica

I’ve talked about a horror film from Sweden and a drama from Japan on here. Now here’s a film from Mexico and it’s infamous for several reasons. It is a movie starring legendary luchador (Mexican wrestler) El Santo. It was dubbed into English and played in theatres in America and they called him Samson, for whatever reason. And, it gained fame in the 90’s when it was on the great Mystery Science Theater 3000. I haven’t seen that episode, but I figured it would make sense for my first-ever viewing of a Santo movie to be his most famous one, at least in the United States. Inspiration for this was flipping across the channels late one night earlier this month, and there was a Spanish channel which was playing a Santo movie from the early 70’s. I don’t remember which one it was, but I saw a few minutes of it and it was goofy fun.

He ended up starring in 50 movies, believe it or not, and from what I understand, they’re cheesy and they’re like older B-movies from the States; you can’t help but enjoy them, though. I’ve heard it said that Santo in Mexico was like Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan in the U.S. He was more popular than Hogan was , even at his most famous. Being the star of a long-time comic book and it being that particular country and time would contribute to his popularity.

Also, I have to note that I saw this movie in Spanish, even though I don’t speak it and don’t even remember too much of it from the classes I took in that language back in high school. Hey, why not? It’s not like dialogue is something to really worry about in this kind of film.

Anyhow, the plot, gained from watching the film and reading stuff online-this site is a very nice source-is that Satan (only seen in silhouette) awakens some vampire girls and their vampire henchmen (none of whom look like Edward Cullen, by the way) and one girl (I’ll call her The Straw That Stirs The Drink, or TSTSTD) is able to transform into a hot chick with nice cleavage after saying some syllables in front of the moonlight. She then awakens the henchmen and they morph into their younger selves. Their goal is to find a random woman and have her become the new vampire queen, as the current queen is slotted to become Satan’s queen in Hell! See what I mean about the plot and the dialogue not really mattering?

Anyway, Santo is contacted to save the day, but not before he wrestles a Lucha tag match; it wasn’t my cup of tea, but I’ll get to that later. Also, you get to see TSTSTD use a Judo chop to take out an adversary. They get blood and that revives the current Vampire queen, and yep she’s another attractive dame with nice cleavage. From there, stuff happens (the link I provided in the preceding block of text delivers a pretty nice breakdown of the plot in their page on this film) and while Santo wrestles in the ring more than anything else, I guess you can’t carp too loudly about it.

So, I am a wrestling fan who doesn’t really enjoy the pure Lucha style and its idiosyncrasies (nothing against the wrestlers, though), but I still managed to enjoy this motion picture. Sure, you have to turn off your brain (for example, a henchman does the switcheroo with a luchador and he puts on a mask to wrestle Santo in the ring, and the henchman that's been dead for a few hundred years knows how to wrestle the Lucha style with Santo) and sunlight being the downfall of the villains more than anything else; that said, the hero drives a pretty sweet Jaguar, and to give away the ending*, Santo takes a torch of fire and burns the vampire ladies, who try to hide from him in their coffins. That's pretty bad-ass!

* Hey, so what if I spoil it?

It's not for everyone, but if you enjoy cheeseball films and pro wrestling, then this should be satisfactory for your tastes. The Spanish version can be easily found online via YouTube, as can several other Santo movies, which I'll try to watch at least one more of one of these days. I'll be back by the weekend with a new review.

Complications

Well, my plans ended up changing and I have to make this post today instead of a review. I was thinking of watching something the past few days, but I ended up spending time at the local Blockbuster that is only a few minutes from where I live. Well, Thursday night I drove by there and saw that they were closing down. I do realize that there’s another Blockbuster in my city (located a few miles north of where I live) but it’s more inconvenient to start going there, and plus I have enough stuff to watch at home, not to mention real-life stuff, so it’ll be some time before I start going to the Blockbuster up the road. Also, I realize that many Blockbusters are closing down across the country as illegal downloads and Netflix are the new hot things, and maybe one of these days I’ll actually get a Netflix account.

Anyhow, since they were now closing down, I went there Friday to pick up some stuff for cheap, and that’s exactly what I did. I won’t give a list of all that I got, but it was a nice haul based off of what they still had there. They won’t be closing down for a few weeks so I may go back later to see if they are offering anything for *really* cheap.

I’ll be back by late tomorrow night and this time I will have a review up. I’m not sure which film it is yet, but I’ll think of something.

Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jo) (1957)

Runtime: 110 minutes

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo

From: Toho (yes, they made more than Godzilla films)

Yep, a foreign film this time around, and one from the legendary Akira Kurosawa, who’d celebrate his 100th birthday this month if he was still alive. Now, believe it or not, before this flick, I had only seen one other film from him. It was in ’07, I think, when I rented Ran from the local Blockbuster. It’s not bad by any means but the praise for it as one of the best out of the entire 80’s… I did not think that way at all. I thought it was overlong myself, although it at least had a very nice commentary from a Kurosawa buff which explained how he filmed it and all that, and plus it had nice colors so it looked pretty cool.

Ran ended up being influenced heavily by King Lear; Kurosawa must have been a Shakespeare fan as Throne of Blood was a reworking of Macbeth (a play I never have red before, believe it or not, even though I know its plot; at least I read King Lear back in high school).

This was also the first time I’ve seen a Toshiro Mifune film* so that was a treat. As for recapping the plot, I won’t, as it follows the original Macbeth pretty closely.

• I do know that the characters he has played has inspired many people/characters in American film/culture, including Star Wars, and he was the first person George Lucas wanted to play Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Instead, I’ll mention that it was nicely filmed. It was in a foggy setting and you get a bunch of that, along with some pretty country scenery. “Atmospheric” doesn’t begin to describe it. I hear that the acting is in the Noh style, which is more theatrical and exaggerated, but I quickly got used to it. The costumes are rather interesting, but I’m sure pretty accurate to the medieval Japanese setting. At times frame wipes are used to transition between scenes; if you don’t know what that is, remember what was used in the original Star Wars to transition between scenes; obviously Lucas was inspired by that also.

So, it may not be for all modern audiences but I happened to enjoy it a lot as it’s great filmmaking. Not to sound like a film snob or anything, but I enjoyed how it was filmed and that sort of filmmaking is a big part of why this is praised by so many people. In fact, I may end up seeing Ran again, because this time I may appreciate it more. Most of his movies are playing on Tuesdays this month on Turner Classic Movies, which is how I was able to record and then watch this. I’ll record some more stuff this month and eventually I’ll get around to watching them, if not necessarily reviewing them here.

Oh, and Yamada played a great Lady Macbeth equivalent. She's monotone but it makes her chilling. Mifune was also great at being Macbeth himself. And the ending... I won't give it away but it's something you won't forget and it's all legit rather than anything that is staged or made safe. Toshiro is one brave man for being in that ending and being fine.

I'll be back in a week's time with at least one new review.

Lucas

Lucas (1986)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: David Seltzer

Starring: Corey Haim (RIP), Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Jeremy Piven

From: 20th Century Fox

I wasn’t planning on writing about this next, but early Wednesday afternoon I heard the news about Corey Haim passing away due to-shock of shocks-an OD, yet another Hollywood casualty. It happens far too often for a former famous face to experience a downturn and due to not being able to handle that, they turn to drugs and it ends in arrests, embarrassment, and too frequently, a sad sad end. Instead of worrying about that sad stuff, let’s talk about an entertaining film from the 80’s concerning teenagers but it’s not a sex comedy or a juvenile tripe-fest. Rather, this is a smart film about how teenage life is like.

It concerns the title character (Haim), a very smart (yet awkward) 14 year old nerd who is so smart he’s ahead a grade or two and is in high school already. He gets treated like crap due to him being different, something that I know far too well. Anyhow, it’s the summer and one day he meets the new girl in town, the older Maggie (Green), and they become friends during the long break from school. But, Lucas would like to be more than friends with Maggie… she doesn’t reciprocate and instead just wants to be pals. That causes conflict. Meanwhile, Cappie (Sheen) is a jock but he turns out to be a good guy (insert your own jokes concerning Sheen’s off the screen troubles); he and Lucas get along as Cappie was sick and Lucas gave him his schoolwork after each day of academic studies. The jock has a GF (Thorne-Smith) but he ends up falling for Maggie, as hey, she’s a nice-looking redhead-and she still is, by the way-and even though she and him try to be nice to Lucas about it, he gets jealous eyes and as he’s a dorky teen, he acts like a dick. From there…

I won’t spoil the rest but I will tell you that it’s a drama with comedic moments (Lucas feuds with a pair of jock bullies, one of whom is played by Piven; for some reason, it seems like he gets typecast as the douche character; Lucas mouths off to those guys in a humorous manner, resulting in the expected consequences) and it is filled with many nice scenes and even though it can be dialogue-heavy at times, it’s all good and engrossing. Plus, you get to see the debut of Winona Ryder, another person who had trouble later in life but it’s mundane compared to some of the others in the cast. This nice movie about teenage life is easy to find, so if it sound interesting to you, I clearly recommend checking this out.

The Phynx

The Phynx (1970)

Runtime: 86 minutes (not 81 as most sources claim)

Directed by: Lee H. Katzin

“Starring”: Michael D. Miller, Ray Chippeway, Dennis Larden, Lonny Stevens, plus an astounding array of cameos

From: Warner Brothers

First off, I don’t have any Oscar comments as I didn’t really pay attention to the show too closely, except congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker for winning Oscars, as (without seeing too many of the nominees) it’s well-deserved. It’ll now get more of an audience than I thought it would at the time. I mean, I did not expect it to win Academy Awards, but it’s great that it did. Now onto something that is very far from the stratosphere of the Academy Awards…

If I’d tell you that there was a movie which included cameos from the likes of Jay Silverheels (the guy who played Tonto on The Lone Ranger TV show), Dick Clark, Richard Pryor, pro boxer Joe Louis, James Brown, 30’s Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller, and Col. Sanders (!), you’d think that I would be ribbing you.

Well, I’m not.

This movie was actually filmed, it was released by a major studio, and yet it has never even made it to VHS, let alone DVD or any other format. So, how did I find it? I won’t get into it, but I know it went to TV and the copy I acquired is of a TV broadcast of the film.

This was during the period of time when Hollywood tried to appeal to the counterculture that was prevalent at the time, and they made movies that are generally considered to be awful; the ones I’ve seen besides this are the bizarre Myra Breckenridge and the awful attempt at humor known as Skidoo, which is one of the worst comedies I’ve ever seen due to the fact that it’s entirely laughless. But, I’ll talk about that film at another time. All three of these have in common the fact that it has old veterans trying to be “hip” by appearing in something designed for the pot and tab-ingesting youths of the day, and well, it didn’t work.

Here’s a brief yet detailed description of the film, but here’s what I have to say about it: I didn’t think it was THAT bad! It’s like your parents trying to make a movie which reflects the Internet/Facebook/Twitter/YouTube culture. It just doesn’t work. BUT, it at least has amusing moments/lines (more than one or two, in fact), the plot isn’t incomprehensible, the song are at least ok, and while I don’t even know if this is a satire or what, it certainly isn’t one of the all-time worst, by any means.

Sure, it should’ve been a lot funnier and better with the kind of cast that they somehow were able to pull together, and apparently it was both a cash-in to appeal to the tab-ingesting youths and a satire against those same youths; there’s also strange plotting and at times it really drags. Still, compared to the similar Myra and Skidoo, it’s so silly, you can’t get too mad at it (even during the boring stretches, the dumb moments, and thinking about stuff like why Pryor’s cameo only lasts about 10 seconds and he doesn’t say anything funny at all). Myra was released on DVD in 2004 and Skidoo was put up by someone via bootleg onto a site a few years ago (which is how I saw it) then shown on TCM underground 2 years ago, but yet I'll be shocked if this ever gets any sort of public showing. That's disappointing, if only because it'd be a rather strange curio, it (may) show that it's not one of the worst of all-time, and yeah, to have a good chuckle at some of the ridiculous fashion of the time period.

Plus, to me it's rather frightening to look at the plot (a manufactured group of random people put together who really aren't all that talented musically... although I'm not sure if that was what this movie was going for; they certainly were aping The Monkees... and sorry for the bad pun) and think about how it is *so* relevant in current times with the popular music scene, boy bands, people like Britney becoming popular, goofs like Tila Tequila and Paris Hilton releasing songs/albums and yeah, it's dare I say ahead of its time in pointing that out.

I wouldn't really recommend putting in a lot of effort to find it unless you have odd tastes like me. However, you can watch the first few minutes of it here, which is pretty much the extent of streaming video footage you can find.

I'll be back with more traditional fair soon.

Bustin' Down The Door

Bustin’ Down The Door (2008)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Jeremy Gosch

Starring: Wayne Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Mark Richards, Shaun Thomson, narrated by Edward Norton

From: Fresh & Smoked

Here is something that also falls into the obscure category, but this is much more modern. Now, I don’t really follow surfing at all and it’s not like I really fit into the culture, even though some of the clothing is cool, I enjoy being on the beach, and yeah, the rare times I get to see it, it’s neat to watch. Still, I have little knowledge of its history (looking here is one way to get an idea as to its heritage) so when I saw back in September of ’08 that Universal Citywalk would be showing this movie there I thought it’d be worthwhile to go, as I’m always a nonfiction fan and getting to learn something new about an interesting subject is a plus in my book.

Unfortunately I haven’t seen the film since the viewing on the big screen, but here is what I do remember about it. It is about several surfers (from Australia and South Africa) who travel to various places to surf in the 70’s. In the middle of that decade they so happened to make a big impact in Hawaii with their brash attitude and then later, their idea to make surfing more of a big business with large cash sums on the line. This kind of attitude rubbed the locals the wrong way and there’s serious conflict before the beef gets squashed. That’s the plot in a nutshell.

From what I remember, it was a very interesting story with real-life (rather than manufactured drama) twists and turns and all that. Plus, the old footage they had was very interesting to watch and yeah, the surfing stuff was entertaining. So, if you can find it on DVD and enjoy stuff like documentaries and the surfing scene, it’s worth seeing. Speaking of that, when I saw it on the big screen, I was the only person in attendance. Eh, oh well. Check back in a week’s time for at least one new review.

The Super Cops

The Super Cops (1974)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Gordon Parks

Starring: Ron Leibman, David Selby, Sheila Frazier, Pat Hingle

From: MGM

Here is a pretty obscure movie that I’ve heard about at various places for years now and it sounded interesting to me but I was never able to find it, as it has only gotten a pair of REALLY low-quality DVD releases in its history and it was even hard to find on DVD. One rumor for it being so hard to find is that the title characters are referred to a few times as Batman & Robin and well, that’s a copyrighted term and if you don’t know, the 60’s Batman show will probably never be officially released for reasons unclear (but speculated to be one of a few things) and for all anyone knows, similar things could be involved here. Or maybe it’s something else. I mean, I have no idea why MGM doesn’t have the rights to it anymore, for example.

Anyhow… this movie is based on a true story-that was a book before the movie-of a pair of detectives in New York City (David Greenberg and Robert Hantz) who rose through the ranks while being honest the entire time and dealing with a corrupt police department by doing things their way, no matter what. I don’t know if they ever ran into and dealt with Frank Serpico, who also fought against police corruption in the same city and at the same time, but at least that movie can easily be seen (and should be seen, too). While that is a straight-up drama, this is more a breezy drama with comedy throughout (along with some action).

The movie opens with real-life footage of Greenberg and Hantz and a police captain, after they got promoted for all the work they had done in combating against drugs. Then, the movie starts and you see how they began as they graduated from the academy and then start off working traffic, but they’re ambitious so they try to make their own drug busts, and they succeed, but that ruffles feathers and the normal corrupt order there, so they get in trouble and get sent to the dirt-worst precinct in the entire city. From there, you see them clash against the established guys in the precinct while they do eccentric things (such as Leibman getting to know a “lady of the night” (Frazier)) to fight against the drug scene, including taking down the main guys running that scene in the neighborhood.

The most noteworthy thing to state is that Life photographer turned director Parks (of Shaft fame) made this a very fast-paced film; no scenes are wasted and it goes by like a flash. Leibman (looking like Freddie Mercury!) and Selby do a great job with their roles, with Ron playing it crazy/manic and David being more subdued. The rest of the cast do fine in their roles too.

So, if you’re able to track it down (by ethical means or unethical means) and enjoy buddy cop films, you might enjoy this. While it’s not what you would call a great movie or anything and it’s not as good as the best buddy cop movies (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hrs., etc.; but, I’m sure it’s better than the new Cop Out), it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten to the abyss of movie history because of unknown reasons and MGM not even bothering to keep the rights to it.

By the way, it has to be said that the fate of Greenberg and Hantz after the movie was not so good. Was it a setup? I have no idea, but it’s a shame nonetheless.