The late 1970s was a period in film comparable to the present day: Hollywood developed a fixation on geek culture, turning out comic book movies and remakes of older sci-fi productions, while Lucas and Spielberg created new versions of well-worn pulp forms. Part of the leading edge of this trend was Dino DeLaurentiis’ 1976 King Kong.

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The nifty indie outfit Synapse Films has released the grindhouse classic THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) in an extended (gorier) director’s cut as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Though the care and professionalism that the Michigan-based outfit has brought to bear since it was founded in 1996 have always been conspicuous in their obscure and cult film acquisitions, Synapse releases have really enjoyed an uptake in quality over the past year or so, making them indistinguishable — and often plainly superior — to big studio releases. READ MORE

One of the most iconic images to emerge from the cinema in the 1960s is the figure of a young Sue Lyon, peering over her sunglasses at a leering James Mason in Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA (1961). And I’m definitely not alone in my view. The Spanish genre director Eloy de la Iglesia must have agreed with me when he decided to cast Sue Lyon in his intriguing futuristic thriller, MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD (aka CLOCKWORK TERROR; 1973). Eloy de la Iglesia’s film has often been labeled a low-budget and poorly constructed Spanish knock-off of Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) and it’s easy to understand why. But its meta-referencing goes way beyond A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and tips its hat in equal measure to Kubrick’s LOLITA. In fact, MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD is really an homage to Kubrick himself and possibly one of the most interesting films released in Spain during the early ‘70s.

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In 1978, Animal House hit the screens and the terms “toga!” and “food fight!” entered the common parlance.    I saw it, and loved it, time and time again.  By 1983, five years into its release, I’d probably seen it twenty times.  Yep, twenty times.  Later, online,  I met Dennis Cozzalio, fellow Horror Dad and blogger par excellence (Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule) and found out he was in it.  Oh, it’s a brief appearance (you know that line of Delta House pledges where Pinto and Flounder get their names?  He’s in it!)  He was and is pretty proud of this fact and I don’t blame him.  It’s a classic comedy that has stood the test of time.   When my kids were young I thought, “One day they’ll watch this and find it just as funny.”  Then they grew up.  Worse, in the last year, the first of them has started college.  The effect?  Let’s just say that, increasingly, Dean Wormer has my sympathies.

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Under the cover of disrespectability, direct-to-video (DTV) action movies are quietly throttling their theatrical brethren. Despite having budgets one-tenth of studio spectacles, these DTV scrappers excel where it matters most: the craft of shooting a fight scene. As the enigmatic film critic/ex-con Outlaw Vern stated in his review of The Marine 2, “Some of us are starting to suspect that there’s been a switcheroo, that the DTV format – once designated as a 100% crap zone – has become the more reliable place to find good [English language] action movies.”

Inspired, I watched Assassination Games (2011, on DVD/Blu today), Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) and Ninja (2009), where tussles are filmed to showcase the athleticism of the leads. The threadbare Bulgarian sets are coherently mapped out in master shots, so the close-ups of fist-to-face never throw off the geography of a scene. The camera generally keeps the combatants’ bodies completely in the frame, emphasizing a physicality generally lost in contemporary Hollywood (Jason Statham excepted), in which fights are reduced to a blur of cuts before a hired goon collapses. David Bordwell has identified this rapidly edited style as “intensified continuity”, an amplification of classical style that he places as starting “after 1960 or thereabouts.” These DTVers still fall in Bordwell’s post-1960s rubric, with shot lengths shorter than the classical era, but they offer a more authentic intensity, returning to feats of athleticism over editing.

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Each month, my film-discussion group meets for a lively brunch to discuss a topic agreed on in the previous meeting. At the end of September, we will meet to talk about the films and careers of selected female directors. One of the films on the suggested viewing list is the early indie film Wanda, which will make its TCM debut this evening at 7pm CST/8pmEST. An uncompromising portrait of a working class woman born and raised in a Pennsylvania coal town, Wanda is the only film written and directed by actress Barbara Loden, who died of breast cancer in 1980.

Loden also starred in the title role as Wanda Goronski, whose choices in life are limited by her lack of education and economic opportunity. In her world, a woman’s only hope for a better life rests on the shoulders of a miner willing to marry her. But, it’s too late for Wanda, who has failed at marriage, so she lives on the fringes of an already marginalized region. In court to finalize her divorce, Wanda willingly gives up her two children to their father noting that they are better off with him. “I’m just no good,” she tells the judge. With no personal ties or job responsibilities, Wanda drifts with the wind, becoming further alienated from mainstream society with each misadventure. She goes with any man willing to pick up the tab, matter of factly putting up with their callousness and cruelty as though it were expected. Eventually, she stumbles across a thief in the process of robbing a beer joint, though she doesn’t realize the trouble she’s stepped into. Wanda joins the thief, whose name is Mr. Dennis, on the road for no other reason than she has no place else to go.

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“Why can’t they use top class killers? Guys who know their business. When one of the big boys gets caught, it’s the real panic and then they really get scared.” -

Rudy (Eddie Constantine) in HAIL, MAFIA (1965, AKA Je vous salue, mafia!)

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Last week in my griping about superhero origin stories, I promised to offer up my own origin story, the explanation of how I came to be the way I am today.  Every story has a beginning.  Mine, naturally enough, starts in childhood–

No.  That’s wrong.  Mine starts even earlier than that.  I began collecting movies before I was born.

I came by my passion honestly. My mother, growing up in the 1950s, saved her allowance up to buy this Bell and Howell 8mm movie projector:

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In honor of James Coburn’s birthday yesterday, and my own birthday tomorrow, I’m going to talk a bit about one of his more obscure projects – the Allied Artists thriller THE INTERNECINE PROJECT. I first heard about the film when it was included in John Willis’ Screen World 1975, as a foreign feature picked up for American distribution and I only saw it on Tuesday of this week… meaning that I had to wait 36 years to satisfy my curiosity.  It was worth it! READ MORE