Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)
Runtime: 93 minutes
“Directed” by: James Nguyen
“Starring”: Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Janae Caster, Colton Osborne, Adam Sessa
From: Moviehead Pictures
Yep, I finally got around to this, and it rep is not undeserved:
What a perfect movie to talk about on (American) Thanksgiving, this gigantic cinematic turkey. Its toxic reputation is well-deserved and the two dollar special effects that are worthy of lulz is not the only reason this is so loathed.
The overall message of being pro-environment and humanity's pollution F'ing up the Earth is always a good one, but it's hidden in this atrocious piece of crap. The first half of the movie is two goofballs (Rod and Nathalie) meeting cute and falling in love; both are improbably successful... she gets a Victoria's Secret gig and he makes millions of dollars from an improbable sale of the low-rent company he works for to Oracle. That first half just about put me to sleep, and you only see the birds once. The second half, their constant attacks never stop being a knee-slapper due to how awful the effects look.
Everything about this movie aside from its message is wrong: the acting, overall direction, editing, sound mixing (there is often silence or the audio just goes quiet between characters talking to each other in a conversation), logic, the film's timeline, pacing, continuity... it really is as amazingly putrid as you've heard. Not to spout out a hoary cliché but the movie is better seen than described, as how inept the entire production is cannot be fully conveyed with only words, as the right words have not been yet invented to properly describe this experience.
There is a lot to laugh at with this film, although I'll say The Room is funnier and more baffling as an all-time bad movie experience. That said, I won't spoil most of the best bits, but I will bring up the LOL statement of Rod's Ford Mustang being “a plug-in hybrid”, as the iconic sports car has never been close to being a hybrid. There is also the brass balls move of the movie advertising and crediting Tippi Hedren as having a role when all it is... it's a few seconds of stock footage from some film that is on a TV in the middle of one scene.
I have seen the trailer for its sequel, and it appears to be what typically happens with motion pictures like this: the filmmakers are now in on the joke and thus them being terrible on purpose just won't be as entertaining or fun.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Mean Streets
Mean Streets (1973)
Runtime: 110 minutes
Directed by: Scorsese, of course
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus
From: Warner Bros.
Yesterday I saw a pair of films... the first was a revisit of the average movie known as Red Sky; yeah, it was one of the Rachael Leigh Cook joints I've seen before. At least she got a free trip to St. Petersburg, Russia out of the whole deal. The second was this:
There should be more poolroom brawls set to Please Mr. Postman.
I had only seen this once, before I started reviewing movies online... it had to be at least a decade ago. Thus, I figured I need to talk about more Scorsese here anyhow and it playing on TCM last night meant that this was the right time, right place for me. That initial movie I more liked the movie than loved it and alas, this opinion has not changed the second go-around.
The general idea is fine of following around a young man (Keitel) who has a loan shark uncle yet due to Catholic guilt-this already became a Scorsese trademark-is unsure if he wants to follow in his family footsteps. Meanwhile, he has a loose cannon friend (DeNiro) who causes problems and he has a girlfriend who is ostracized because she has epilepsy. If only I could have cared more about the story or the characters...
I can still say that this is good and that is nothing to sneeze at. This is clearly a low-budget effort, pretty gritty with naturalistic lighting (some scenes are bathed in red and it makes for a great image) and intimate camerawork. Even back then Scorsese knew how to create a quality soundtrack-there are some old Italian songs and-shock of shocks-The Rolling Stones but otherwise it's old R&B, including the original version of Please Mr. Postman by The Marvelettes that is heard during a rough and tumble donnybrook in a pool hall; what a juxtaposition that was.
Of course its biggest asset aside from having a director that would later become a legend is the two leads who are great actors and one became a legend himself. That for certain helped me watch this even if I don't love Mean Streets like many do.
Runtime: 110 minutes
Directed by: Scorsese, of course
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus
From: Warner Bros.
Yesterday I saw a pair of films... the first was a revisit of the average movie known as Red Sky; yeah, it was one of the Rachael Leigh Cook joints I've seen before. At least she got a free trip to St. Petersburg, Russia out of the whole deal. The second was this:
There should be more poolroom brawls set to Please Mr. Postman.
I had only seen this once, before I started reviewing movies online... it had to be at least a decade ago. Thus, I figured I need to talk about more Scorsese here anyhow and it playing on TCM last night meant that this was the right time, right place for me. That initial movie I more liked the movie than loved it and alas, this opinion has not changed the second go-around.
The general idea is fine of following around a young man (Keitel) who has a loan shark uncle yet due to Catholic guilt-this already became a Scorsese trademark-is unsure if he wants to follow in his family footsteps. Meanwhile, he has a loose cannon friend (DeNiro) who causes problems and he has a girlfriend who is ostracized because she has epilepsy. If only I could have cared more about the story or the characters...
I can still say that this is good and that is nothing to sneeze at. This is clearly a low-budget effort, pretty gritty with naturalistic lighting (some scenes are bathed in red and it makes for a great image) and intimate camerawork. Even back then Scorsese knew how to create a quality soundtrack-there are some old Italian songs and-shock of shocks-The Rolling Stones but otherwise it's old R&B, including the original version of Please Mr. Postman by The Marvelettes that is heard during a rough and tumble donnybrook in a pool hall; what a juxtaposition that was.
Of course its biggest asset aside from having a director that would later become a legend is the two leads who are great actors and one became a legend himself. That for certain helped me watch this even if I don't love Mean Streets like many do.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Wheels On Meals
Wheels on Meals (Kuai Can Che) (1984
Runtime: 104 minutes
Directed by: Sammo Hung
Starring: Jackie Chan, Biao Yuen, Sammo Hung, Lola Forner, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez
From: Golden Harvest
Really, it has been too long since I've watched any Jackie Chan:
Runtime: 104 minutes
Directed by: Sammo Hung
Starring: Jackie Chan, Biao Yuen, Sammo Hung, Lola Forner, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez
From: Golden Harvest
Really, it has been too long since I've watched any Jackie Chan:
You know, Jackie Chan and Biao Yuen were ahead of the curve with the whole food truck phenomenon.
It came a few weeks later but I am finally tipping my cap to the late Raymond Chow by watching something from the Golden Harvest studio. They proved to be a viable competitor to Shaw Brothers and launched the careers of legends like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung... not to mention being involved with the Cannonball Run movies and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. This is one of the more famous efforts involving both Chan and Hung... and has a fight that is still legendary today.
The setting of Spain is different for one of these movies and provides a unique flavor. Chan and Yuen are cousins who operate a food truck, proving they were years ahead of their time; plus, it was a sweet yellow Mitsubishi van. They run into a pickpocket named Sylvia and are smitten with her... understandable to me as she was former Miss Spain Lola Forner and is a very attractive woman. People are after her and not just because she's a pickpocket. Meanwhile, Sammo Hung is a sleuth (hilariously named MOBY) who is hired by a mysterious Englishman to look for someone. Needless to say, these plots intersect.
At times this is goofy and this does not have the most accurate portrayal of mental illness you'll ever see... that said, this is a very good martial arts movie. There are plenty of laughs along the way (including some bits straight out of The Three Stooges) and the first half of the film only has a little action-instead the story and characters are set up. The second half has plenty of memorable action beats, and the finale in the castle is tremendous, even if it ends abruptly. Chan's fight with pro karate fighter Benny “The Jet” Urquidez is still cited among the best martial arts battles ever captured in a film, and for good reason. Yuen also has a memorable fight with Keith Vitali and even Hung has a cool fencing duel.
The version that is for free on Prime is dubbed and I laughed at how the voices used sound nothing like the actual actors; I was at least charmed by it and this is a must-see for all martial arts fans.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Modern Problems
Runtime: 93 minutes
Directed by: Ken Shapiro
Starring: Chevy Chase,
Patti D'Arbanville, Mary Kay Place, Brian Doyle-Murray, Dabney
Coleman
From: 20th
Century Fox
Boy, does this have some problems that are modern now more than they were in '81:
You know, I am sure that in real life
Chevy Chase snorted some of the “demon powder”! I don't mean to make any
libelous statements and any book about the history of Saturday Night
Live has not been read by me, but as he was an original cast member, I
will just presume he used plenty of drugs at the time.
As for “demon powder” in context of this film, the most famous moment of Modern Problems was in the finale when Nell Carter (her character is from Haiti so OF COURSE she knows voodoo) tries to perform a ritual on Chase in order to banish his newfound telekinetic powers, which includes spreading white powder around his bed. In response, Chevy speaks like Donald Duck and snorts it up like someone in the original season of SNL would inhale some cocaine! As for the overall plot: Chase is a schlub who works at as an air traffic controller, drives a crappy Lancia Beta-soon after this movie came out Lancia left the United States-and he has nuclear waste from a tanker truck spill on him... don't ask. Chevy uses these powers to try and win back his girlfriend (Patti D'Arbanville). Of course, he lost her because he was the possessive type and somehow, that doesn't seem quite as charming or amusing in late 2018...
Chase's character does come off as a jerk and well, at least that's a not a stretch for him. For me, the other main players are more enjoyable, whether it's D'Arbanville, Brian Doyle-Murray as a Vietnam vet who is like Lt. Dan and is in a wheelchair or Mary Kay Place as Chase's ex-wife or Carter or the true highlight, Dabney Coleman playing a truly Dabney Coleman 80's character: a successful person who is an arrogant A-hole... he could do that SO well and did so, in plenty of movies. For me they were more enjoyable than a lead character where you wonder just why exactly the lead girl is still in love with him, especially after he shows everyone his powers. Maybe she enjoyed the sight of Chase in tiny basketball shorts... we get TWO scenes of that, while only one of Coleman's bare ass.
Naturally there are sight gags in a film like this and there is also physical humor and some amusing one-liners. Enough of it at least made me chuckle where I can say this was OK. In addition, I was relieved the scene set in a “gay nightclub” where most of the guys wear leather... that it wasn't as grossly offensive as it could have been.
As for “demon powder” in context of this film, the most famous moment of Modern Problems was in the finale when Nell Carter (her character is from Haiti so OF COURSE she knows voodoo) tries to perform a ritual on Chase in order to banish his newfound telekinetic powers, which includes spreading white powder around his bed. In response, Chevy speaks like Donald Duck and snorts it up like someone in the original season of SNL would inhale some cocaine! As for the overall plot: Chase is a schlub who works at as an air traffic controller, drives a crappy Lancia Beta-soon after this movie came out Lancia left the United States-and he has nuclear waste from a tanker truck spill on him... don't ask. Chevy uses these powers to try and win back his girlfriend (Patti D'Arbanville). Of course, he lost her because he was the possessive type and somehow, that doesn't seem quite as charming or amusing in late 2018...
Chase's character does come off as a jerk and well, at least that's a not a stretch for him. For me, the other main players are more enjoyable, whether it's D'Arbanville, Brian Doyle-Murray as a Vietnam vet who is like Lt. Dan and is in a wheelchair or Mary Kay Place as Chase's ex-wife or Carter or the true highlight, Dabney Coleman playing a truly Dabney Coleman 80's character: a successful person who is an arrogant A-hole... he could do that SO well and did so, in plenty of movies. For me they were more enjoyable than a lead character where you wonder just why exactly the lead girl is still in love with him, especially after he shows everyone his powers. Maybe she enjoyed the sight of Chase in tiny basketball shorts... we get TWO scenes of that, while only one of Coleman's bare ass.
Naturally there are sight gags in a film like this and there is also physical humor and some amusing one-liners. Enough of it at least made me chuckle where I can say this was OK. In addition, I was relieved the scene set in a “gay nightclub” where most of the guys wear leather... that it wasn't as grossly offensive as it could have been.
Billy Jack
Runtime: 114 minutes
Directed by: Tom Laughlin
Starring: Tom Laughlin,
Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Victor Izay, Julie Webb
From: National Student
Film Corporation
Now I am caught up with
everything I've seen lately and have not talked about here before.
What an improbable success this movie was, at least if you look at it
from a modern perspective:
You know, Tom Laughlin was the Steven
Seagal of his day. I am not talking about all the controversy
surrounding Seagal and how he is now buddies with Putin and or how it's
now pretty clear he has sexually harassed many different women for a
number of years. Rather, I am talking about how both were white dudes
who felt a kinship with Native Americans, showed off a particular
martial art that was unique to film at the time, loved the environment,
and had a pacifist approach even though their characters kicked a lot of
ass and yeah, people would get killed.
Here is an article by Nathan Rabin where he talks about the first three movies involving the Billy Jack character and how weird it all is while viewed through a modern lens. I'll copy and paste part of it in order to describe all the different elements of this film that are smushed together:
“It’s most logical to conceive of Billy Jack as a dream-movie accidentally created by a spiritually confused, LSD-addled 19-year-old who fell asleep in the early 1970s while watching a weird, humorless movie about a half-Native American/half-Caucasian warrior who does not want to fight, because he’s too good—both in the sense of being a singularly skilled one-man killing machine, and in subscribing to a higher moral and ideological cause than his bloodthirsty brothers-in-arms. And yet he’s pushed by circumstances into dramatically kicking ass, over and over.
Said 19-year-old would drift off early on and awake to find himself watching a town-hall meeting where the generational divide is being loudly debated by staid figures of the establishment and agitated, weirdly wholesome hippie types. After more dosing, the 19-year-old is watching a young Howard Hesseman illustrate beginner improvisation techniques and the philosophy of provocative street theater to someone on a local talk show. The next awakening finds the TV devoted to an earnest blonde moppet stridently singing an anti-war song, and then a song about a “Rainbow Made Of Children” in a voice quivering with righteous indignation.
The 19-year-old decides to go outside and attempt to purge the confusing jumble of images and messages from his head, but first, he catches intriguing, perplexing flashes of two more television programs—one a PBS documentary on alternative forms of schooling, and the other on Native American spirituality. It’s understandable why he’s confused: It’s not as if vigilante crime movies naturally segue into demonstrations of improvisational comedy technique and then into rage-filled acoustic musical interludes. Yet Billy Jack contains all of the above.”
The general plot is that Billy Jack lives on a Native American reservation which houses an “alternative” school where people of all types live at... really, it's a hippie hangout. The locals of the nearby town do not appreciate those “long-haired weirdos” so they face constant harassment, including from law enforcement. They try to make peace (which results in by far the worst part of the movie, which is all the time spent on the youths and the townspeople doing improv with each other... Lord was that interminable) but it doesn't work out.
This is a sanitized, idealized version of what a hippie commune would be (no drugs or sex!) yet I am not surprised that a young movie-going audience would love a character who dug nature, was a pacifist & supported a hippie way of life. In late 2018, this film is a mess, but I am sure it was a “right place, right time” scenario for this becoming such a hit, and what an unusual path it took: the studio changed from AIP to 20th Century Fox to Warner Bros., whom released it in '71 and it made some money... only for Laughlin to sue in order to release it himself as he wanted to do the then-strange method of giving this a wide release. He won and in '73 this made a LOT of money when he put it out again independently. I suppose we have him to thank-or blame-for wide releases now becoming the way to put out most movies.
I won't rip on the acting, even though sometimes it isn't too good; the same goes for the overall filmmaking. Poor Delores Taylor-Laughlin's wife-was not originally going to be the female lead but the lead girl from The Born Losers was supposed to return, only to drop out. Taylor reluctantly did it even though she had never acted before, and she had to do some heavy dramatic scenes. I just discovered she had Alzheimer's for years and passed away this past spring.
As I have the two sequels to this on disc I will have to watch them another day; after the insanity of this movie, I probably did need a break from seeing The Trial of Billy Jack, which I understand is even more self-indulgent and pure unfiltered Laughlin... you probably would already think “self-indulgence” once I inform you that motion picture is almost THREE hours long. Anyhow, what a time capsule this turned out to be.
Here is an article by Nathan Rabin where he talks about the first three movies involving the Billy Jack character and how weird it all is while viewed through a modern lens. I'll copy and paste part of it in order to describe all the different elements of this film that are smushed together:
“It’s most logical to conceive of Billy Jack as a dream-movie accidentally created by a spiritually confused, LSD-addled 19-year-old who fell asleep in the early 1970s while watching a weird, humorless movie about a half-Native American/half-Caucasian warrior who does not want to fight, because he’s too good—both in the sense of being a singularly skilled one-man killing machine, and in subscribing to a higher moral and ideological cause than his bloodthirsty brothers-in-arms. And yet he’s pushed by circumstances into dramatically kicking ass, over and over.
Said 19-year-old would drift off early on and awake to find himself watching a town-hall meeting where the generational divide is being loudly debated by staid figures of the establishment and agitated, weirdly wholesome hippie types. After more dosing, the 19-year-old is watching a young Howard Hesseman illustrate beginner improvisation techniques and the philosophy of provocative street theater to someone on a local talk show. The next awakening finds the TV devoted to an earnest blonde moppet stridently singing an anti-war song, and then a song about a “Rainbow Made Of Children” in a voice quivering with righteous indignation.
The 19-year-old decides to go outside and attempt to purge the confusing jumble of images and messages from his head, but first, he catches intriguing, perplexing flashes of two more television programs—one a PBS documentary on alternative forms of schooling, and the other on Native American spirituality. It’s understandable why he’s confused: It’s not as if vigilante crime movies naturally segue into demonstrations of improvisational comedy technique and then into rage-filled acoustic musical interludes. Yet Billy Jack contains all of the above.”
The general plot is that Billy Jack lives on a Native American reservation which houses an “alternative” school where people of all types live at... really, it's a hippie hangout. The locals of the nearby town do not appreciate those “long-haired weirdos” so they face constant harassment, including from law enforcement. They try to make peace (which results in by far the worst part of the movie, which is all the time spent on the youths and the townspeople doing improv with each other... Lord was that interminable) but it doesn't work out.
This is a sanitized, idealized version of what a hippie commune would be (no drugs or sex!) yet I am not surprised that a young movie-going audience would love a character who dug nature, was a pacifist & supported a hippie way of life. In late 2018, this film is a mess, but I am sure it was a “right place, right time” scenario for this becoming such a hit, and what an unusual path it took: the studio changed from AIP to 20th Century Fox to Warner Bros., whom released it in '71 and it made some money... only for Laughlin to sue in order to release it himself as he wanted to do the then-strange method of giving this a wide release. He won and in '73 this made a LOT of money when he put it out again independently. I suppose we have him to thank-or blame-for wide releases now becoming the way to put out most movies.
I won't rip on the acting, even though sometimes it isn't too good; the same goes for the overall filmmaking. Poor Delores Taylor-Laughlin's wife-was not originally going to be the female lead but the lead girl from The Born Losers was supposed to return, only to drop out. Taylor reluctantly did it even though she had never acted before, and she had to do some heavy dramatic scenes. I just discovered she had Alzheimer's for years and passed away this past spring.
As I have the two sequels to this on disc I will have to watch them another day; after the insanity of this movie, I probably did need a break from seeing The Trial of Billy Jack, which I understand is even more self-indulgent and pure unfiltered Laughlin... you probably would already think “self-indulgence” once I inform you that motion picture is almost THREE hours long. Anyhow, what a time capsule this turned out to be.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
All The President's Men
All the President's Men (1976)
Runtime: 138 minutes
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman,
From: Warner Bros.
I explain why I saw this movie below... if you don't realize who wrote the screenplay:
Yesterday's death of legendary screenwriter William Goldman received a surprising-but thankfully-strong reaction from the online community due to the number of classic films he wrote; I also saw elsewhere that he offered help for a number of films over the years-the example I saw was that he convinced Demme to remove a scene from The Silence of the Lambs, and that resulted in the incredible fake-out scene during the final act. While Goldman was ultimately unhappy with director Alan J. Pakula's constant calls for rewrites, his adapting the book of the same name from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was one of his most famous-and best-jobs as a writer of screenplays.
This is a straightforward investigative story where the two Washington Post newspaper reporters investigate the case of an attempted burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which were located in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. They quickly realize something very fishy is going on; there are plenty of sources online that explain the whole mess far better than I can without me writing a thesis about it, but in short it was connected to Richard Nixon and his campaign for him to earn a second term as President of the United States; how ironic that the committee was known as the Committee to Re-Elect the President and they were actually known as CREEP. Anyhow, the end result was that Nixon resigned as President and ever since then, Americans have been more wary of the federal government.
Presumably most if not all the film was accurate to what actually happened; I know the basics were definitely correct; for me, I was always compelled by this story of Woodward and Bernstein working the story by jotting down notes, attempting to do interviews, working the phones, etc. It is such an unbelievable story the conspiracy for a President to commit all those illegal acts in order to ensure he would win a Presidential election, at least for a nerd like me I'll be greatly interested in seeing what happened. The production is of a very high quality; in addition, it's a treat seeing Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman act separately in various motion pictures-getting to see them together as the leads was tremendous. The cast was full of famous faces (including Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, only revealed decades later as Mark Felt) but the two leads were the standouts.
What happened with Watergate was a complex deal, as you'll discover if you look into it. Yet Goldman's script managed to make the story easy enough to follow where you are never lost as all the different pieces of that machine were shown. Those that enjoyed The Post definitely should check this out; Katharine Graham is name-dropped in one scene but Ben Bradlee (as played by Tom Hanks in that film, Jason Robards here) is a key supporting character in President's Men as the executive editor of the Washington Post. What a few years Bradlee had between being involved in that battle to make public The Pentagon Papers and defending two of his reporters and their shocking story of corruption at the highest level.
Oh, and if you loved Spotlight then you should check this out too as they share many similarities.
Runtime: 138 minutes
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman,
From: Warner Bros.
I explain why I saw this movie below... if you don't realize who wrote the screenplay:
Yesterday's death of legendary screenwriter William Goldman received a surprising-but thankfully-strong reaction from the online community due to the number of classic films he wrote; I also saw elsewhere that he offered help for a number of films over the years-the example I saw was that he convinced Demme to remove a scene from The Silence of the Lambs, and that resulted in the incredible fake-out scene during the final act. While Goldman was ultimately unhappy with director Alan J. Pakula's constant calls for rewrites, his adapting the book of the same name from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was one of his most famous-and best-jobs as a writer of screenplays.
This is a straightforward investigative story where the two Washington Post newspaper reporters investigate the case of an attempted burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which were located in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. They quickly realize something very fishy is going on; there are plenty of sources online that explain the whole mess far better than I can without me writing a thesis about it, but in short it was connected to Richard Nixon and his campaign for him to earn a second term as President of the United States; how ironic that the committee was known as the Committee to Re-Elect the President and they were actually known as CREEP. Anyhow, the end result was that Nixon resigned as President and ever since then, Americans have been more wary of the federal government.
Presumably most if not all the film was accurate to what actually happened; I know the basics were definitely correct; for me, I was always compelled by this story of Woodward and Bernstein working the story by jotting down notes, attempting to do interviews, working the phones, etc. It is such an unbelievable story the conspiracy for a President to commit all those illegal acts in order to ensure he would win a Presidential election, at least for a nerd like me I'll be greatly interested in seeing what happened. The production is of a very high quality; in addition, it's a treat seeing Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman act separately in various motion pictures-getting to see them together as the leads was tremendous. The cast was full of famous faces (including Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, only revealed decades later as Mark Felt) but the two leads were the standouts.
What happened with Watergate was a complex deal, as you'll discover if you look into it. Yet Goldman's script managed to make the story easy enough to follow where you are never lost as all the different pieces of that machine were shown. Those that enjoyed The Post definitely should check this out; Katharine Graham is name-dropped in one scene but Ben Bradlee (as played by Tom Hanks in that film, Jason Robards here) is a key supporting character in President's Men as the executive editor of the Washington Post. What a few years Bradlee had between being involved in that battle to make public The Pentagon Papers and defending two of his reporters and their shocking story of corruption at the highest level.
Oh, and if you loved Spotlight then you should check this out too as they share many similarities.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Born Losers
Runtime:
113 minutes
Directed
by: Tom Laughlin
Starring:
Tom Loughlin, Elizabeth James, Jeremy Slate, William Wellman Jr.,
Jack Starrett
From:
AIP
Monday night I revisited Scream 4; I am still meh on that movie. I was also meh on this film, and I explain why below:
If a girl isn't scared by seeing bikers sporting swastikas, perhaps
they should be once they see a quote from HEINRICH HIMMLER on the wall
of their hangout.
Tonight, TCM is showing all four of the Billy Jack movies. As I have those films on disc-I bought the set a few years ago but as I am me, I hadn't watched them yet-I figured it'd be easier to get this one out of the way while I had the opportunity to. I'll say more about the late Tom Laughlin as I talk about the other films, but I know that those films were pretty popular in the day. I mean, when it was announced in late 2013 that he had passed away, my parents talked to each other about it-they both immediately remembered who he was even though he vanished from the spotlight back before I was even born in the early 80's.
The plot: this is a biker film, a genre that was for certain in vogue at the time. They are the heels of this picture... in fact, they do a lot to make them pretty despicable. Besides being what would be known now as the “Alt-Right”, they cause a lot of mayhem, including sexual harassment and then harassing the victims & their families so they won't testify against the perps in trial. Standing against them is Billy Jack, a half Native American who was a Green Beret and is a loner who loves nature, knows Hapkido and has been involved with the rodeo before. No surprise that a character who did not trust banks would be liked by “the youth” and the counter-culture types. Anyhow, he protects one of the girls who was assaulted.
You'd suspect that Billy Jack would kick a lot of ass and whip all those Nazi bastards. Not exactly... Jack only uses his martial arts briefly and it's more about him getting his ass kicked. For all the buildup and all the atrocious things the bikers did, their comeuppance did feel like a letdown of sorts. Plus, this movie has some moments that I'll charitably call “questionable” and they were gross and I did not get much enjoyment out of their turns.
Now, the bikers were so over the top evil that I occasionally laughed at them and Billy Jack still had his badass moments so I can say that this was OK. But I am sure that an unfiltered Billy Jack with all of his idiosyncrasies (which is what made the character a hit in the 70's) will be on display in the other films and that will be more of a good time for me than this silly exploitation fare... where the Billy Jack character was literally dropped in so Laughlin could try and get his foot in the door and make the films he wanted to with that heroic persona.
Tonight, TCM is showing all four of the Billy Jack movies. As I have those films on disc-I bought the set a few years ago but as I am me, I hadn't watched them yet-I figured it'd be easier to get this one out of the way while I had the opportunity to. I'll say more about the late Tom Laughlin as I talk about the other films, but I know that those films were pretty popular in the day. I mean, when it was announced in late 2013 that he had passed away, my parents talked to each other about it-they both immediately remembered who he was even though he vanished from the spotlight back before I was even born in the early 80's.
The plot: this is a biker film, a genre that was for certain in vogue at the time. They are the heels of this picture... in fact, they do a lot to make them pretty despicable. Besides being what would be known now as the “Alt-Right”, they cause a lot of mayhem, including sexual harassment and then harassing the victims & their families so they won't testify against the perps in trial. Standing against them is Billy Jack, a half Native American who was a Green Beret and is a loner who loves nature, knows Hapkido and has been involved with the rodeo before. No surprise that a character who did not trust banks would be liked by “the youth” and the counter-culture types. Anyhow, he protects one of the girls who was assaulted.
You'd suspect that Billy Jack would kick a lot of ass and whip all those Nazi bastards. Not exactly... Jack only uses his martial arts briefly and it's more about him getting his ass kicked. For all the buildup and all the atrocious things the bikers did, their comeuppance did feel like a letdown of sorts. Plus, this movie has some moments that I'll charitably call “questionable” and they were gross and I did not get much enjoyment out of their turns.
Now, the bikers were so over the top evil that I occasionally laughed at them and Billy Jack still had his badass moments so I can say that this was OK. But I am sure that an unfiltered Billy Jack with all of his idiosyncrasies (which is what made the character a hit in the 70's) will be on display in the other films and that will be more of a good time for me than this silly exploitation fare... where the Billy Jack character was literally dropped in so Laughlin could try and get his foot in the door and make the films he wanted to with that heroic persona.
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