Tomorrow night TCM Underground will be airing the surprisingly surreal and smart blaxploitation comedy, DARKTOWN STRUTTERS (1975). I hesitate to tag DARKTOWN STRUTTERS with a simplistic label like “blaxploitation” because it’s really a cult movie that deserves a category of its own. The film manages to combine just about every popular movie genre imaginable including classic westerns and musicals, biker films and revenge fantasies as well as science fiction into one of most unusual movies to come out of Hollywood in the early ‘70s. It lampoons stereotypical images of black Americans that populated earlier films but it’s still extremely relevant today.

DARKTOWN STRUTTERS was directed by William Witney and stars the beautiful and statuesque Trina Parks. In the film Trina plays the tough leader of a female biker gang who’s forced to save her mother and other prominent individuals in the black community when they become the victims of a creepy fast-food mogul and his Klan-like crew. Trina Parks only appeared in a handful of films during the ‘70s but she has continued to act, dance and sing on stage in various Broadway and off-Broadway shows and has appeared in popular Vegas productions. She’s currently working on a new one-woman show but she took some time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions about her acting career, including her work in DARKTOWN STRUTTERS and the popular James Bond film DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

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According to a recent report from the research group Screen Digest, DVD sales declined by 4.7% in 2008, and that Blu-Ray “barely made a dent in the missing revenue”. They conclude that the new format won’t spur “minimal sector growth” until 2010. It’s rapidly becoming clear that VOD (video on demand) will eventually become the dominant form of home entertainment. In a Wall Street Journal article about Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, it claims he is “is quickly trying to shift Netflix’s business — seeking to make more videos available online and cutting deals with electronics makers so consumers can play those movies on television sets.” Hastings sees the DVD by mail business to start declining in four years, and hence his deals to stream movies on the XBox and other set-top devices, like the Roku. Packaged discs will not disappear entirely, but will likely lose a large percentage of their market share.

The benefit to consumers in the short term…sales! I recently talked about my cherry-picking of Battleground from the demise of the Virgin Megastores in NYC, but this new downer of a report spurred me to check out what was left of DVD retailers in Manhattan. I waltzed into a small reseller on 14th Street, which was having a massive sale where you could purchase 2 discs for 10 dollars. I ended up with Wilson Yip’s Kill Zone (aka SPL), John Woo’s Hard Boiled, The Buster Keaton Collection from Columbia, and Gremlins 2 (a personal favorite)…all for a total of $20.

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