We didn’t have spring this year in New York, where it went from 10 degrees to 99 degrees in a day. So we’ve been doing some fall cleaning at TC to coincide with the various chores Im doing in my own home (stripping, sanding, and repainting ceiling = as much fun as watching <i>The White Gorilla</i>).
Shrimp Chips, Jet Set Cinema, and The Hell of 50 Movie Pack now actually feature a table of contents so you can see what we’ve reviewed. Who woulda thought of such a device? While making TOCs is dull work, it did have its moments in Hell of 50 Movie Pack when I would read something and think, “I have no memory of watching this film at all.” And then I just laughed myself silly remembering that I spent part of my life watching a movie about a guy driving around a sass talking sentient AI monster truck.
And though it’s not an official part of the silent film roundtable, so as to avoid muscling in on Ken’s territory…
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
One of the most lauded directors of the twentieth Century was Fritz Lang, and many of his films are considered the finest examples of cinema ever created. Lang’s masterpiece, Metropolis has been in the headlines quite a bit recently after a complete print of the film was found in Buenos Aires. Prior to this though, Lang directed another of his triumph’s, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler. Unlike Metropolis, which was a flop, and was subsequently butchered, Dr. Mabuse was a massive hit. It could be considered The Lord Of The Rings of it’s day. There was a huge advertising campaign leading up to the film’s release. Norbert Jacques’ novel, on which the film was based, was serialised for magazines, and the novel was released twice in hardback and paperback. There was a great deal of public awareness about the Mabuse character.
and because I’m always looking for an excuse to post pics of bikini nuns in rollerskates, Project VHS continues with…
Roller Blade
You know what I love? I love that “post apocalyptic rollerskating movie” isn’t a description of a movie, but instead of an entire genre. Granted it’s a genre created almost entirely by a single man, but when the man is dedicated and prolific enough, suddenly you have a whole section in the old time video store with sun-bleached VHS boxes on the shelves dedicated to movies where chicks on rollerskates gingerly navigate the rubble-strewn parking lots of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, which is invariably going to be referred to as Lost Angeles, as it has been in so many of the crappy direct to video post-apoc films from the 1980s. That genre-creating, film making machine was Donald G. Jackson, and it is thanks entirely to him that we have the post-apocalypse rollerskating genre comprised of films like Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force, The Rollerblade 7 and its inexplicably large number of sequels, and something called Rollergator, which is probably a different movie than the one I write in my head when I hear the name Rollergator.
That some of Bollywood’s worst sins have been committed in the name of nepotism is a fact which anyone who has borne witness to Karisma Kapoor’s early career can sadly attest to. For the Hindi film industry’s directors, stars and producers, dynasty building seems to be a top order of business, right alongside the practice of their chosen craft. For a fearsome reminder of this, one need look no further than Raj Kumar Kohli’s 2002 film Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, as terrible a monument to a father’s love for his son as has ever been erected. I recently found myself trying to defend it, arguing that, while the film was indeed searingly bad, it was also very entertaining, a fact which I felt should place it above other Bollywood films that were comparably bad but also boring. On second thought, though, I had to reconsider that opinion.
The latest American actor to take a “working vacation” in Britain in the boxed set of Hammer noir films I’ve been working through is Lloyd Bridges, and I’ll thank you not to look up any of my grade school teachers and point ouf to them the convoluted grammar of this sentence. Convolutions, by the way, are what arise in 
In 1975, exploitation film master Roger Corman produced one of his very best films. Combining a wicked sense of campy humor, a healthy dose of violence, and an angry satirical edge, Death Race 2000 was the best things to bear Corman’s name since Corman himself was directing cool horror films based on Edgar Allan Poe stories for AIP. Always keen to make a buck, Corman immediately set about creating another vehicle-based futuristic fling. He would do his best to make people think it was related in some way to Death Race 2000 by calling the new film Deathsport and casting David Carradine in the lead. But the similarities end there, and while Death Race 2000 is a genuinely good, enjoyable, and even smart film, Deathsport is an incompetent piece of junk. Predictably, I do not own Death Race 2000 and have only seen it once. I do, however, own Deathsport in two different formats now and have watched it at least half a dozen times.
Yes, I made it, I’m here and with hours to spare. Hours, I tell you!
I can claim some expertise in the juvenile-oriented direct-to-video fare produced in Romania through the late ’90s (and just into the 21st century) by any combination of Full Moon Studios, PulsePounders!, Kushner-Locke, Inc., Castel Film, and CanaRom Productions. So sit up and take notice when I say that