February 20, 2010
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby, Film Diaries - Roland, Film Diaries - Lara, Film Diaries - Stephanie, Film Diaries - Curt, Film Diaries - Erin G.
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1973 (USA / Philippines)
Director: Eddie Romero
Viewed: February 19, 2010
Format: DVD - MGM (2001)
The hallmarks of a sexy, scuzzy Women-in-Prison feature–including a gratuitous shower scene complete with frolicking, and hard-assed lesbian guards in ridiculously short shorts–are pretty much dispensed with in the first fifteen minutes of Black Mama, White Mama. What remains is an exploitation The Defiant Ones, as Pam Grier and Margaret Makov (the former a working girl, the latter a freedom fighter of some sort) scurry from one ludicrous set piece to another. This is a straight-up Z-movie guilty pleasure, just the sort thing one can imagine a teenage Quentin Tarantino devouring. It’s a shame director Romero was so enamored with tedious gunfights, as it gives him less time to indulge in the loathsome weirdness that is the film’s real appeal. The torch-bearer of BMWM’s oddities is undoubtedly genre fixture Sig Haig, as a creepy, strangely high-spirited bounty hunter in a Jim Croce ’stache, whose choice of wardrobe and automobile are best described as “Roy Rogers on LSD.” That’s him above. Just take a moment to savor that shirt. Truth be told, I spent the better part of this film trying to puzzle out where the hell it’s supposed to take place. The vague “island” setting seems, at different times, to be somewhere in Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, or Vietnam. Between the Spanish-speaking Asian gangsters and the stray police uniform patch with the word “Manila” stitched onto it, I eventually tumbled to the fact that we are, indeed, in the Philippines. Such is the way of cheap, sleazy films bound for grindhouses the world over.
February 20, 2010
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Roland, Film Diaries - Lara, Film Diaries - Stephanie, Film Diaries - Curt, Film Diaries - Erin G., Film Diaries - Nicole
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1973 (USA)
Director: Larry Cohen
Viewed: February 19, 2010
Format: DVD - MGM (2001)
Perhaps the most valuable lesson to be learned from Black Caesar is this: Do Not Fuck With Fred Williamson. Not only can the man take a bullet in the gut and keep on coming for your traitorous ass, he will, as the above screenshot demonstrates, beat you within an inch of your life with a shoe-shine kit. I had been aware of ex-football star Williamson primarily from Italian dreck like Warrior of the Lost World and his campy performance in From Dusk Till Dawn. Little did I know that he had a significant career as a blaxploitation leading man, a career that this film kicked off. Intriguingly, many of Black Caesar’s elements crop up in Scarface, and especially in Goodfellas (including that aforementioned shine-box, which a corrupt cop uses to humiliate Williamson before it is turned on him as a weapon). Do you think that DePalma or Scorsese would ever cop to cribbing slightly from the fellow who directed Q, It’s Alive, and The Stuff? And by the by, that James Brown soundtrack? Pure gold.
February 2, 2010
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby, Film Diaries - Roland, Film Diaries - Lara, Film Diaries - Erin G.
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1971 (USA / UK)
Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Viewed: January 31, 2009
Format: Netflix Instant Queue (via Playstation 3)
Vanishing Point definitely plays like a work from another era, in the worst and best sense. The “Can’t Drive 55″ spirit that the film seizes upon–which it shares with the much zanier The Cannonball Run–unfortunately dates the film as an artifact from an era when a national speed limit was a hot political button. That said, what’s most appealing about Vanishing Point is how eagerly and even joyously it strives to present a generous, oddball-ridden slice of early 1970s America. The on-location shooting lends it a documentary look and texture, but the characters are so deliberately out-there, it never feels remotely like realism. I mean, c’mon: the naked biker girl; the faith healers; the blind, black DJ in a shitheel desert town; the old rattlesnake catcher who turns up out of nowhere? Delicious stuff, if you can stand it. And for all the hurtling cars, this strangely-placed, slow-motion shot of a basket of snakes flying through the air is what most caught my eye.
I took a bit of a breather on the posting during January, but more reviews and other items will be coming soon.
October 31, 2009
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby, Film Diaries - Roland, Film Diaries - Erin G.
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1979 (UK / USA)
Director: Ridley Scott
Viewed: October 30, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print (Webster University Moore Auditorium)
