August 9, 2005

DVD Late Show. Wow, has ever a review column been so aptly named? I'm certainly living up to the "Late" part of the title, aren't I? It's been how long since I last posted a column?

My schedule's been a nightmare recently, as I've been struggling with a deadline on a graphic novel script. It's left me little time to work on any other writing, never mind for watching movies. Not a good excuse, I'll gladly admit, but it's the only one I have.

Anyway, I didn't want to leave you folks hanging another week – you've been patient enough as it is – so I'm going to mix a couple of new reviews in with a few previously-written articles recycled from my personal website, and… SHAZAM! – we have a new column. Some of the older releases mentioned below may be a little difficult to find, but can be tracked down online.

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Anchor Bay has released several versions now of THE BEASTMASTER (1982). Director Don Coscarelli's follow-up to the surreal sci-fi/horror flick PHANTASM was this medium-budget sword & sorcery adventure, one of several to hit drive-in and multiplex screens back in the early Eighties in the wake of Arnold's CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

While THE BEASTMASTER made little impact on the big screen, it went on to a highly successful cable and home video run. There were periods where THE BEASTMASTER was seemingly on TV at least once a week, and an entire generation of fantasy fans sat glass-eyed in front of the tube watching it endlessly on video. It's spawned two direct-to video sequels and a syndicated television series. Me, I always preferred THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER. Go figure.

But to be fair, until picking up this disc, I don't think I ever saw THE BEASTMASTER. Not all the way through in one sitting, anyway. Sure, bits & pieces, here and there, but when I sat down to watch this THX mastered, widescreen presentation from Anchor Bay, I realized that there were a lot of scenes I didn't remember at all. When it was done, I began to understand some of its enduring appeal.

Dar (Marc Singer; V), the "unborn" son of a great king, is spirited away in infancy in order to save him from an evil priest, Maax. He grows to adulthood unaware of his royal heritage, and, due to the bizarre circumstances of his birth, with the preternatural ability to psychically communicate with animals. When his adopted family is killed by Maax's soldiers years later, he sets out on a mission of vengeance, adopting a group of animal assistants on the way: two ferrets, a "black" tiger, and a hawk. Eventually, he's aided in his revenge by a beautiful slave girl (Tanya Roberts; CHARLIE'S ANGELS, SHEENA) a warrior (John Amos; GOOD TIMES, DIE HARD 2) and a young boy (Josh Milrad).

The charismatic Singer makes an appropriately buff barbarian hero, flexing his muscles in a variety of well-staged action scenes, while Roberts is luscious eye-candy, making her first appearance topless in a secluded pool. John Amos brings great dignity and a solid physical presence to his role, while Rip Torn chews the scenery enthusiastically as evil priest Maax, equipped with a beak-like false nose. The animals are all quite impressive, and photography and special effects are all top-notch. There's also some refreshingly-gruesome 80's monster and gore make-ups for the gorehounds in the crowd.

What really saves the movie, though, is that Coscarelli and his cast resist the temptation to camp it up. There's an honesty and sincerity to the performances that is unusual in films of this type. It's a straightforward Good versus Evil tale, that honors all the conventions of heroic fantasy without ever sneering at them. It's a pleasant change-of-pace, and the film benefits greatly from the approach.

Anchor Bay continues to treat their cult and B-movie releases with more respect and greater attention than most major studios do to their A-film blockbusters. Aside from the aforementioned THX re-mastering given to the 1982 film (which looks and sounds great), the disc also includes a plethora of entertaining bonus features. There's an entertaining and informative audio commentary by director Coscarelli and co-writer/producer Paul Pepperman, behind-the-scenes home movie footage, a huge gallery of pre-production art, posters and production stills, and talent bios. There's also an Easter Egg hidden feature that will appeal to all red-blooded young males: a series of bloopers that involve unplanned exposure of Tanya Roberts' ample charms.

If you're one of the many fans of the film, buying this disc – or the more recent special edition – is a no-brainer. The film hasn't looked or sounded this good since it's run in the theaters – and probably not even then. If you're not one of the movie's legion of fans – I wasn't – then you might want to rent it and give it a shot. It ain't Shakespeare, but it's fun.

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Speaking of fun, it was great seeing Rutger Hauer again in BATMAN BEGINS and SIN CITY, and it brought back memories of when the Rut was first making his mark on American B-Movies, back in the 80's. Rut started out strong in Hollywood, appearing in A-list productions like BLADE RUNNER and LADYHAWKE, but it didn't take long for him to slide down to the exploitation studios. Sure, the movies were cheaper and goofier, but they kept him working, and I remember many of those flicks fondly.

So, not long ago I ordered a copy of WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE (1987), the Gary Sherman-directed B-movie sequel to the 50's TV Western of the same name. Hauer (with a huge platinum blond mullet) plays Nick Randall, great-grandson of Steve McQueen's TV bounty hunter character, Josh Randall. Nick is an ex-CIA agent turned bounty hunter (guess it runs in the family) in Los Angeles.

When a Middle Eastern terrorist bomber (quite effectively played by KISS front man Gene Simmons) hits L.A., Nick's hired by one of his Agency buddies (Robert Guillaume, BENSON) to bring the bomber in.

A better-than-average late-Eighties actioner with a bit of extra effort spent on giving the characters some depth, WANTED features great performances by Hauer, Simmons, Guillaume and THE X-FILES' Jerry Hardin, and is capped off with a delightful B-movie punchline. Another cool gag in the flick is that Simmons' first target is a packed Los Angeles movie theater showing RAMBO!

The pace falters here and there, and there's not a lot of the big stunt sequences we expect in today's capital-A action films, but I just plain like these old 80's shoot 'em up flicks from studios like New World and Cannon. Your mileage may vary, but I dug it.

Anchor Bay provides another flawless, pristine transfer from the New World library, and the otherwise bare-bones disc includes the theatrical trailer and the teaser trailer.

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Since we're talking about bare-bones action discs, let's take a look at the recently released Lee Marvin cult classic, PRIME CUT (1972). Now, like Michael Madsen in RESERVOIR DOGS, I'm a huge Lee Marvin fan – I love him in everything from CAT BALLOU to THE DELTA FORCE – but I'd never managed to see this unheralded Seventies pulp potboiler until Paramount released this new disc from their vaults.

What a great, sick, twisted little film. It's amazing that this was a major studio release. Ahh, the Seventies...

Eternally gruff Lee Marvin plays Nick Devlin, a freelance tough guy and sometime enforcer for the Chicago Irish mob. They send him to Kansas City because the local crimeboss, Mary Ann (a youngish Gene Hackman), hasn't been paying them his share of his earnings. He owes them a half-million, and they want Devlin to get him to pay up or shut him down completely.

Mary Ann's a true monster. He runs a meat packing plant and also runs a white slavery business, raising young girls in an orphanage and then selling them off as if they were cattle. His hot dog-loving brother, Weenie (Gregory Walcott of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) is a borderline psycho, who disposes of Mary Ann's enemies by grinding them up into sausage.

Devlin shows up and finds Mary Ann uncooperative. He rescues one of the girls, Poppy (a stunningly gorgeous Sissy Spacek in her first feature role), from the slave pens, and before long, he's making a one-man commando assault on Mary Ann's ranch.

PRIME CUT is a great, perverted little action exercise from underrated director Michael Ritchie (THE BAD NEWS BEARS, FLETCH). While the tone of the entire film is ironic and somewhat satirical, it works beautifully as a brutally violent crime thriller as well. Marvin and Hackman are excellent in their roles, with Marvin being allowed to display a little more humanity than is usual in his tough guy roles – he even smiles a few times. Walcott, as the thuggish Weenie, is also great – you really come to despise the guy. And Spacek's a big surprise. Aside from how unexpectedly lovely she is, she also plays her part with an unaffected innocence that never seems forced or artificial.

Paramount's DVD is an utterly a bare-bones affair – there's nothing on it but an anamorphic widescreen transfer and a new 5.1 sound mix. Nonetheless, it looks gorgeous, it's a great movie, and it's highly recommended.

Which brings us to some other "prime cuts"…

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A wildly hysterical T&A horror comedy from cult exploitation director Fred Olen Ray, HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (1988) is one of those rare ultra-low-budget sexploitation flicks that actually deserves its status as a camp classic. It's full of beautiful naked girls, deliberately lame dialogue, and cartoonish gore. Basically, if you like the title, you'll probably dig the movie.

A down-and-out L.A. private eye with the remarkably clever sobriquet of Jack Chandler (well-played in a tongue-in-cheek manner by Jay Richardson), is hired to find a missing young woman (Eighties Scream Queen Linnea Quigley). His search leads him to the titular streetwalkers ("They charge an arm and a leg!"), members of – and I kid you not – an ancient Egyptian chainsaw-worshipping cult. In a nice touch, the high priest of the cult is played (rather blandly) by Gunnar Hansen, who originated the character of "Leatherface" in the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Highlights of this one-time late night cable staple include delightfully bad Private Eye voice-overs ("The kid talked like a frosted flake, but she had the nicest set of knockers I'd seen in a long time."), a buxom hooker who lovingly covers her treasured Elvis memorabilia in plastic sheeting before taking a chainsaw to her unsuspecting john, topless fire-eating (!), and the climactic "ritual virgin dance of the double chainsaws."

The director released HOOKERS on his own Retromedia DVD label, as part of the "Fred Olen Ray's Nite-Owl Theater" collection, a couple years ago. The disc includes an introduction, hosted by Ray himself, from his "palatial Hollywood mansion." He's joined by his wife, the buxom Ms. Kim, and a pair of starlets who play topless Twister while the director puffs away on a cigar and drinks a martini. The disk also includes a "Making Of…" featurette which includes videotaped interviews with scream queens Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer, the theatrical trailer for the film's brief drive-in run, and trailers for several of Ray's other movies (ANGEL EYES and FATAL JUSTICE).

The film itself is presented in a matted, widescreen aspect ratio, and while the image is a bit soft and there's a slight grain evident, this can be attributed to the film's shoestring budget. Overall, the presentation is fine, the extras are politically incorrect fun, and if this is the sort of movie you like (I do), you'll probably be quite happy with this DVD. It's out of print but well-worth hunting down.

As regular readers of this column might remember, I'm a big fan of MGM's Midnight Movie double feature discs. For B-movie buffs, the line has been a godsend, with exceptional transfers, some nice extras, and low, low prices. And, as I've mentioned before, with the recent purchase of MGM by Sony, the future of the line seems to be in the air. Rumor has it that the line may be discontinued after this Fall's last batch is released. If, like me, you'd like to see Sony keep the line going, click the link below and add your name to the list. Can't hurt, might help.

One of my favorite discs they've released is also the perfect Saturday afternoon adventure double feature: THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975) and THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977). These pre-JURASSIC PARK dino-adventures may lack the slick CGI saurians and rocket sled pace of today's special effects blockbusters, but they're chock-full of old style adventure, charismatic actors and matinee charm.

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For a few years in the early-to-mid-Seventies, producer John Dark and director Kevin Connor made a series of fantasy adventure movies based on and/or inspired by the works of pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan. These films (all starring beefy TV cowboy Doug McClure) were the aforementioned LAND and PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, AT THE EARTH'S CORE and WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS. (AT THE EARTH'S CORE was released by MGM as a single-movie disc a few years ago, and is supposed to be re-issued this Fall with WAR GODS OF THE DEEP, a Vincent Price fantasy.)

Produced by England's Amicus Studios, and released in the United States by American International Pictures, LAND is one of the last old-fashioned fantasy films produced before STAR WARS came along and re-defined the genre forever.

Doug McClure (you may remember him from such TV series as THE VIRGINIAN and movies like HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP and THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS), stars as Bowen Tyler, an American passenger on a British liner that is torpedoed by a German U-Boat during the first World War. When the U-boat surfaces, a handful of survivors, led by the gung ho American, manage to take control of the sub.

After McClure demands that the Germans take them to a neutral port, the two crews battle back and forth for command of the submarine until they somehow manage to get hopelessly lost. Just as supplies are about to run out, they come across the lost continent of Caprona, and discover that it is a world where evolution works differently, and dinosaurs still exist (along with cavemen).
The story is pure classic pulp, with plenty of hair-breadth escapes, fistfights, gun battles, volcanic explosions, and a great climax. There's plenty of rugged, two-fisted action, and a true sense of wonder to the film that should entertain all but the most thoroughly jaded.

Many of today's viewers may laugh at the puppet and mechanical dinosaurs (although the plesiosaur that attacks the submarine still looks pretty cool to me), and the make up on the Neanderthals is admittedly pretty shoddy. But the miniature work is excellent, the action scenes are well-staged, and while nobody's going to win an Oscar here, the performances by the cast of talented British character actors (especially Susan Penhaligon, who makes a delightful damsel in distress and Anthony Ainsley as the sinister Dietz) are just right for a movie like this.

LAND was one of my favorite adventure films when I was growing up, and I still enjoy it today.

THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, American International Pictures' sequel to LAND, was released in the Summer of 1977. A square-jawed aviator, played by Patrick Wayne, son of John, and star of the same year's SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER, leads an expedition to the prehistoric island of Caprona in search of adventurer Doug McClure, still marooned there after the events of the previous film. The expedition consists of Wayne, his mechanic (Shane Rimmer; THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), a female reporter (Sarah Douglas; SUPERMAN, SUPERMAN 2, BEASTMASTER 2), and a paleontologist (character actor Thorley Walters). After their biplane is forced down by an attacking pterodactyl, the adventurers discover a beautiful cavegirl (the gorgeous Dana Gillespie), who eventually leads them to Skull Mountain and the evil, samurai-like Nagas, who have McClure locked away in their skeleton-strewn dungeon.

PEOPLE is a full-blooded, old-fashioned Saturday matinee adventure, with vicious cavemen, clunky (mechanical) dinosaurs, an evil Tor Johnson lookalike, volcanic eruptions, swordplay and plenty of heroic derring-do. As in SINBAD, Wayne makes an handsome, whitebread, hero, while Douglas, an underrated actress who's appeared in tons of fantasy films, makes the most of her spunky girl reporter role. Gillespie provides the eye-candy, and Walters and Rimmer provide solid support. McClure, who shows up late in the film, looks a little tired of these cut-rate lost world epics, but acquits himself adequately.

The production design and special effects have a charming, nostalgic cheesiness about them, with obvious matte paintings, miniatures and mechanical monsters adding to the cliffhanging fun. Although primitive by today's high-tech standards, I'll take this kind of hand-crafted filmmaking over today's CGI-dominated 3D toons any day. The photography is magnificent, making good use of the rugged, prehistoric-looking locations, and the score by John Scott is rousing, if a bit sparse.

MGM's disc includes trailers for each feature, and that's it. Both movies look great, are presented in their proper widescreen aspect ratio, and the original mono soundtracks are crisp, clear and devoid of background hiss. If you can still find it, it's a great deal for just a few bucks.

Now, if MGM would release WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS, my Dark/Connor/McClure collection would be complete!

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"I bet you think you know all about vampires," says antiheroine Lilith Silver (Eileen Daly) in her running voice-over. "Well believe me, you know fuck-all."

With RAZOR BLADE SMILE (1998), British filmmaker Jake West made an impressive, if not entirely successful, debut with his low budget horror-action film. Filled with great imagery and genuine wit, the film's biggest weakness is that it's too ambitious for its own good. Without the budget and resources to stage and shoot truly effective action sequences, climactic moments which should be adrenaline-pumping fall flat, leaving the viewer (or at least, this one) with a feeling of vague dissatisfaction.

The film begins with a black & white flashback to 150 years ago as a young woman rushes to the scene of a pistol duel between her unnamed lover and the sinister Sir Sethane Blake (Christopher Adamson). Too late to save her lover, she fires a bullet into Blake, to no apparent effect. However, Blake's second shoots the woman, mortally wounding her. Turns out Blake is a vampire, and grants the woman the gift (or curse) of eternal life.

After a dazzling CGI-enhanced title sequence reminiscent of recent James Bond films, we discover that the young woman, now going by the name Lilith Silver, survives in the present day as a professional assassin. Decked out in black latex fetish gear, looking like a cross between Emma Peel and Morticia Adams, Lilith carries out her executions with great panache and style, pumping bullets into her victims' necks to hide her fang marks. When not carrying out contract kills, she spends her hours among the Goth patrons of London's Transilvania bar, carrying on amusing conversations with the wannabe vamps unaware of the true bloodsucker in their midst.

The plot quickly becomes bogged down in a convoluted series of conspiracies and occult mumbo-jumbo, with Silver pursued by a Scotland Yard detective and marked for extermination by her own employers. Nothing we haven't seen before, and seen better. But what keeps your attention on the screen is the subtle wit of West's script, his imaginative visuals and camera tricks, and star Eileen Daly's macabre sensuality.

Daly, a sort of British Elvira, and spokesmodel for Redemption Video, is not your typical, characterless L.A. beauty. Instead, with her dark features and prominent cheekbones, she is reminiscent of cult heroine Barbara Steele, with an odd, unsettling sexiness. She is genuinely charismatic and infuses her line readings with an appealing undertone of irony.

The rest of the cast is mostly adequate, with the late David Warbeck making a cameo appearance as "Horror Movie Man." The erotic vampire elements are well handled (Lilith's lesbian seduction of a vampire wannabe is a standout scene) but the film falls down when it tries to emulate Hollywood action blockbusters.

The action sequences are staged in obvious homage to John Woo, but with "stunt people" who are so clearly untrained and blocking so amateurish, that the scenes are almost humorous. Another pivotal scene revolves around a HIGHLANDER-style swordfight performed by two actors who clearly don't even know how to hold the heavy weapons properly.

Nonetheless, if you're a fan of low-budget, independent filmmaking, you owe it to yourself to check out this movie. Made on a miniscule budget by a first-time writer-director, this film is more imaginative and ambitious than most mainstream studio releases, and does feature a memorable protagonist in Eileen Daly's Lilith Silver.

RAZOR BLADE SMILE was released on DVD from A-Pix Entertainment a couple years back. The non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is pretty good, but as the movie was shot on 16mm "short ends," the picture is often grainy, a defect inherent in the original film material. Sound is a clear 2.0 Dolby stereo mix. The disc includes a text article from Femme Fatales magazine and five trailers for other A-Pix horror releases. With some hunting around, you may still be able to find a copy.

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