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42ND
STREET FOREVER, VOL. 5: ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA
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U.S.A.
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2009
Featuring
Charlton Heston, Sonny Chiba
Nancy
Kwan , Franco Nero
Sid Haig,
Anne Randall
Leslie Uggams, Lee Majors
Color, B&W |
99 Minutes |
Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
Synapse Films
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42ND
STREET FOREVER, VOL. 5
(Reviewed)
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Still
available!
42ND STREET FOREVER: XXX-TREME
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Review
by
Rod Barnett
Film:8
DVD:8
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fifth volume of Synapse's series of trailer collections is a great
example of how to keep a good thing going. The previous four DVDs
centered on trailers that would've been seen in a grindhouse theater
on 42nd Street in New York at some time in the 1970s or '80s.
Those discs did a great job of recreating the grimy feel of the
rundown joints that'd play anything for an audience that may or
may not give a damn what was on the screen. This time out the
company decided to enlist the aid of some new people, calling
the folks that run the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas to ask
them to become part of the show. The Alamo is a unique movie theater
in that it's also a full bar and restaurant operated by real movie
fans with a taste for the strange and outrageous. Famous for years
as the place to experience movie marathons, genre-themed nights,
screenings of vintage exploitation films and guest appearances
from hundreds of filmmakers and stars, the place looms large over
cult film fandom. Over the past ten years of seeking out 35mm
prints of any kind of bizarre cinema the Alamo has put together
a huge archive of trailers to show the stunned and often surprised
crowds before the main modern day features. There have even been
several all night 'trailer-a-thons' showing nothing but hours
of trailers from all over the world to a happy audience. Synapse
has worked with the owner and the film programmers of the Alamo
to select some of the wildest of this vast collection and have
restored them for DVD as a recreation of one of those long nights
of trailer after trailer after trailer... and have tossed in a
few bonuses as well. |
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The
disc begins with one of those great vintage public service ads
that attempted to explain clearly what the MPAA movie ratings
system means and how to use it. This is one of the most entertaining
of its type, simply because it's done by "Chuck" Heston
(as he introduces himself). Dating from the early '70s and filmed
on a tennis court, Chuck smoothly explains what it's all about
with an emphasis firmly on parental responsibility. Heston was
always a smooth, charming actor and his charisma shines even in
this bit of throwaway ephemera. It's so fun to watch him slickly
run through his lines that you almost don’t notice just how bad
a player the fellow on the court behind him is —
I don’t think the guy knew which end of his racket to swing at
the balls whizzing past his head. |
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The
trailers are once again divided into broad genre groupings and
we start with martial arts action movies. First up is A
Life of Ninja and it looks like a blast. I'm not sure when
female mud wrestling became part of ninja training but I'm all
for it. The movie avoids sexism charges by having its deadly shower
scene involve a nude man attacked by a female ninja while slow
motion is used to "expose all the ninja secrets". Wow.
Sting of the Dragon Master is more
female martial arts action from the early '70s but looks less
interesting. The Bodyguard is the
well known Sonny Chiba vehicle made to capitalize on the success
of 1974's The Street Fighter. The
trailer describes it as "a vicious massacre of bloody revenge"
and the bits shown here certainly seem to back up that assertion.
Viva Chiba indeed! Mad Monkey Kung
Fu is a Shaw Brothers film that invites you to "step
beyond kung fu" and demonstrates three different "monkey"
styles of martial arts. It looks like a lot of fun but the 3 Stooges-style
humor doesn't appeal to me. Wonder Women
is a Philippines-made film that tries to throw everything an exploitation
movie could possibly contain on the screen: nudity, sword violence,
shotgun battles, chases and even slo-mo cockfighting. Toss in
stars Nancy Kwan and Ross Hagen and you've got yourself a ready
made party. Lucky
Seven
is a Hong Kong film that's one part Little Rascals comedy short
and one part mean-spirited kung fu actioner. The trailer employs
just about every kind of juvenile humor imaginable and even though
the fights between kids and adults look very well choreographed
I can't picture ever watching the whole movie. |
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After
a short promo informing theater patrons that the theater is "scientifically
air conditioned" we have the nearly wordless trailer for
the Franco Nero movie The Shark Hunter.
I've seen this preview before and from the evidence onscreen I
have no idea what the film is about other than hunting sharks,
but it was directed by Enzo Castellari so I'd love to check it
out. The next group of previews revolve around sex movies and
begins with nature documentary Birds Do
It, Bees Do It. The movie purports to be a frank look at
animal sexual activity and looks to be quite pretty and arty.
On the other hand Bert I. Gordon's Let's
Do It is a cheesy sex comedy from 1983 with a trailer that
doesn't make it stand out from that crowd at all. How far Mr.
BIG fell! Chatterbox is the legendary
'bad' movie about a young woman whose vagina suddenly develops
a voice of its own. The organ has a lot to say and embarks on
a singing career much to her host's chagrin. It looks to be just
a slightly raunchy showbiz comedy with a novel/ridiculous central
conceit. I wouldn't mind seeing it just because of its reputation.
Danish Sex Acts is exactly what the title suggests it is
— a skin flick about sex. I do hope the film isn't in slow motion
like the entire trailer. Group Marriage
is one of those movies that could only have come from the 1970s.
Three couples live together in one big house and decide to all
get married to each other. Of course, square society doesn't understand
and eventually divorce enters the picture. All that we get for
Violated is a teaser with a voice-over
and text crawl telling us that the film is "so horrific that
we can only tell you about it". Worked on me! Caged
Virgins is the American retitling of Jean Rollin's strange
horror tale Requiem for a Vampire.
It's the story of two young girls trapped in a haunted chateau
packed with nudity, sex and big-fanged vampires. I quite like
the movie and this trailer even has a brief shot of the amazing
image of a bat hanging from the public hair of a female vamp.
Incredible what you could get away with in France, huh? |
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After
an ad for BBQ sandwich meat we move into the science fiction section
of the collection. Message from Space
is a Japanese Star Wars rip-off with
Vic Morrow as the hero. It looks supremely silly and the one time
I tried to watch the film years ago I fell asleep (but I have
to admit the trailer is great). The Terrornauts
is a British SF effort from 1967 that looks typically low budget
for a film that feels the need to tout that its "in color"
right beneath the title. Mind Warp
is an alternate title for the Roger Corman-produced Galaxy
of Terror. An amazing piece of post-Alien
horror, it mines that film's tone but adds some mystical BS all
its own. Part of the appeal is a wild cast (Eddie Albert, Erin
Moran, Sid Haig, Ray Walston, Zalman King) and an infamous alien
rape scene. You have been warned. Rounding out the short sci-fi
grouping is the teaser for the abysmal Megaforce
(1982). If ever a film stank, this one does — and the trailer
shows you a few of the reasons. This turkey used to play on infinite
repeat on HBO in my youth and I'm pretty sure the movie screens
in Hell run it nightly. |
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Next
are some action movie previews led by Zebra
Force, about a team of extralegal vigilantes taking on
the Mob. Blazing Battle is an Indonesian
war film that appears to a dead serious take on the evils of Japanese
imperialism and looks like it might actually be a good movie.
(Even the cheesy model plane crashes look cool.) James
Tout: Operation O.N.E. is a spy spoof that plays with the
Bond films and includes several winking nods to the Connery movies,
right down to the theme song that parrots Goldfinger's
perfectly. Strangely, the trailer is not in English although subtitles
are included to help out. International
Secret Police stars Chiba before he was "Sonny"
but the film looks to be as much fun as the ones he would make
later in his career, with lots of running, fighting and explosions.
(The onscreen English needed a proof-read before being added to
the image!) Machine Gun McCain is
an Italian-made crime film with one hell of a cast: John Cassavetes
is McCain, a convict just released from prison, Peter Falk is
mob boss gone legit running a Las Vegas Casino and Britt Ekland
is the girl McCain marries. The trailer doesn't give much info
away about the plot or even how the characters know each other
but it looks fantastic. Stacey is
a female private eye not afraid of bad guys or of parading around
nude to get her job done. The trailer doesn't tell you much about
the movie but it looks like great '70s exploitation. Lightning
Bolt is a spy film about a quip-tossing American agent
(Anthony Eisley, The
Mighty Gorga) investigating missiles destroyed by a megalomaniac
billionaire — paging Mr. Bond! Mission Thunderbolt
appears to be a tale of professional assassins in Asia but it's
hard to tell amid the action. This trailer gets points for shamelessly
stealing music from Pink Floyd's The Wall. |
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The
following collection is of comedic movies beginning with 3
Supermen in the West. This is one of a series of Italian
slapstick comedies that place three costumed 'superheroes' in
various genres and allowing hilarity to ensue. Or not. Since most
of the gags involve comedic sped-up action set to funny music
or fight scenes with strategically hidden trampolines your laugh
meter may read this differently than mine. Pretty
Maids All in a Row is a Roger Vadim drama about a sexually
promiscuous high school teacher (Rock Hudson) caught up in an
investigation of a student murder on campus. I've wanted to see
this curiosity for years and with a cast that includes Telly Savalas,
Roddy McDowell and Angie Dickenson, can you blame me? The teaser
trailer for Putney Swope is an entertaining
musical interlude that sells young interracial romance as natural
and beautiful — surely a message not widely accepted in 1969.
Norman, Is That You? is a Redd Foxx
vehicle in which he tries to come to terms with his grown son
being homosexual. Although it looks like a comedy and moves like
a comedy I wasn't laughing very much at the dated antics in the
preview. Even Pearl Bailey as Foxx's wife wasn't doing much for
me. |
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Next
are two movies from the 'Redneck Action' category that demonstrate
the two extremes the sub-genre swung between. Redneck
County relates the sad tale of a famous black singing celebrity
vacationing in the country by herself and running afoul of the
locals. Leslie Uggams plays the singer and, as the trailer makes
clear, she eventually exacts vengeance in some cruel ways. Any
movie with Ms. Uggams, Shelly Winters and Slim Pickens as a racist
sheriff is a must see in my book. Moonrunners
is a classic good ol’ boy movie that quite obviously was the template
for redneck TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. There can be
no doubt as the film is about southern moonshiners, car chases
and dynamite-tipped arrows with no less than Waylon Jennings narrating
and providing the music. I hope the producers of this film got
a nice check from the TV show. |
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A
few science fiction/fantasy clips pop up (after an advert for
"Flavo" Shrimp Rolls), with the best being The
Fabulous World of Jules Verne. A fascinating black & white
film that makes extensive use of "Mystimation", a stop-motion
animation method used to create the underwater effects. The film
has what looks to be an intentionally cartoonish effects style
that really catches the eye. You've not seen anything quite like
it and I wish the film were more easily available. The
Magic Christmas Tree is a painfully amateurish-looking
family film about a talking tree that I cannot imagine sitting
through sober. Ditto Pinocchio's Birthday
Party, which has live actors on poorly rendered stage sets
and painted backdrops relating poorly animated fairy tales. The
Magic Kite features a boy whisked away to China by a genie.
It's G-rated silliness but the Beijing travelogue footage looks
great. The Secret of the Magic Island
is about "a storybook land of enchantment" which means
it's about a place where animals act like humans... You know,
going to carnivals, cooking pies and drinking to excess. The villain
of this lame-looking thing is a "space monkey" which
almost makes it look better than I bet it is. |
In
the final stretch we have a trio of low-rent adventure pics
topped with a dollop of exploitative horror. "Johnny
Kissmuller Jr." headlines the egregious plagiarism of
Karzan, Master of the Jungle. Charles
B. Pierce's The Norseman is a wonderfully bad
Viking film with Lee (Six Million Dollar Man) Majors
as the star and several NFL players as his crew. It's the first
Viking vs. American Indians movie I'm aware of but it wouldn't
be the last. Majors doesn't make a very convincing leader of
berserk fighters but the sight of Jack Elam playing at being
some kind of mystic seer is worth a lot of laughs. Sorceress
is a '80s sword & sorcery film with twin girls trained as magician
warriors battling an evil wizard. It looks incredibly cheesy
and I must see it! The trailer actually name checks Dungeons
& Dragons. Terror in the Wax Museum
from 1973 is an all-star period piece with Ray Milland, John
Carradine, Elsa (Bride
of Frankenstein) Lanchester, Maurice Evans, Brodrick
Crawford and a half dozen other past-their-prime actors. I have
no idea if the film is any good with its 'wax figures coming
to life to stalk victims' story but I'd love to find out. The
Manson Murders purports to show the infamous 1969 murder
spree as it really happened but the conspicuously low budget
look makes me doubt that. The Devil Within
Her is a film I've been mixing up with a different movie
from the mid-1970s for years. I guess this is natural since
its another in the long line of Rosemary's
Baby rip-offs with the added interest of being crossed
with elements of The
Exorcist for good measure. That it stars Joan Collins
as the mother-to-be and Donald Pleasence as a threatening presence
adds to my desire to check it out. Last, and some would say
least, is Slaughter Rock, a relic
from the 1980s about four dead rockers imprisoned on Alcatraz
island but now somehow haunting a group of teenagers. Said kids
venture to the shut down prison to purge the ghosts all to the
tune of Devo music. This thing looks so bad it might be required
viewing.
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The
DVD is remastered and is enhanced for widescreen TVs showing each
trailer in its correct aspect ratio. Of course, some of these
previews look better than others but that's to be expected with
vintage elements of this type; scratches, dirt and missing frames
crop up regularly. For me it just adds to the charm. Once again
the Synapse team have added a commentary track for the run of
the trailers but this time out it's handled by The Alamo's owner
Tim League and head programmers Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson.
These three have clearly personally chosen these trailers and
when one of their entries comes onscreen that person speaks up
with information. Often the info relates to the film in question
but sometimes they have a story to relate involving showing the
trailer at The Alamo. This is a great track full of interesting
tidbits and funny stories that made me look at some of the trailers
much more closely. I might never have spotted that little kung
fu girl in Lucky Seven slamming face
first into the concrete floor without their mention of it. I know
I shouldn't laugh but it's in slow motion and looks hysterical.
There
is one more extra on the disc, a 30-minute documentary about the
Alamo Drafthouse that has the three commentators tell the history
of the theater, explain its mission and show how they operate
the place. It's an innocuous piece that most folks won't watch
more than once but I’m glad it was offered.
Overall
this is another home run for the folks at Synapse. I can't wait
for Volume 6.
10/01/09 |
| NOTE
This DVD encountered legal issues — involving the Alamo Drafthouse
Theater, not Synapse Films — just prior to its announced
Sept. 29, 2009 release. Per Synapse's Don May, this matter has
been resolved and the disc will now street on October 27th. |
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