You have just hopped off the subway at Times Square and dodged a run in with the Baseball Furies and the Turnbull AC's while managing not to drop your hotdog you've carried with you since getting on the train at Coney Island.
You stop in to a store to pick up a bottle of MD2020 and a copy of Fangoria before heading on down 42nd Street to catch a triple feature. You fight off advances from bums, hookers and lowlifes while scanning the sheer number of billboards jostling for your attention outside the movie theaters crammed tight on to 42nd Street. Across the way a board for a triple feature catches your eye. You cross the road while avoiding a man pushing a clothes hanger full of dry cleaning arguing with a couple of cops.
Arriving at the box office, you push your way to the counter between a guy that looks like Bo Diddley, and a stockbroker down on his luck. "...but this is a Rouchefoucauld! The thinnest water-resistant watch in the world. Singularly unique, sculptured in design, hand-crafted in Switzerland, and water resistant to three atmospheres. This is the sports watch of the '80s. Six thousand, nine hundred and fifty five dollars retail! It tells time simultaneously in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome, and Gstaad!" you cannot help but hear him exclaim.
"In New York it's worth fifty bucks" says the guy that looks a lot like Bo Diddley.
You're at the counter. "Triple feature? Five bucks." says the assistant. You hand over your five big ones and step forward in to the dark abyss, occasionally lit by the mediocre glow of faulty, flickering red and magenta neon. The air is rotten with the stench of sweat, stale cigarettes and cigar smoke. The floor is littered with discarded gum, flattened boxes of Dots and Good n Plenty among the discarded sports pages from the New York Post (and something about Star Wars, though it's a photo of Ronald Reagan next to the headline, not Mark Hamill ).
A janitor scurries past you, soaked in a heady cologne cocktail of Blue Stratos, stale cigarettes and bleach. With the seats offically having been hosed down, you find a seat and settle down. The cinema lights dim and the first feature begins to play...
What's playing at your dream grindhouse theatre? Pick 3 films you would watch back to back in your fantasy triple feature. Perhaps even recreate the experience at home?! Minus the hookers, bums, lowlives and boxes of Good n Plenty.
My dream triple feature would be:
The Last Chase
Ultimate post-apocalyptic speed-riddled thrills, chills.....AND SPILLS! Starring Lee Majors and Burgess Meredith!
Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave
My absolute favourite Bruceploitation film! This one has everything, and it's completely absurd! I know where a set of negatives for this film are sitting waiting to be preserved. I just wish someone would go and get them and restore them. So sad...
Speed Driver
LONG overdue a 2K or 4K scan. One of Fabio Testi's finest flicks in my very humble opinion. Sadly overlooked by almost everyone in the entire universe. I'll have to settle for my French SECAM VHS and hyperrare Japanese VHS tapes of such a wonderful film. While gazing longingly at the original lobby poster I imported from a cinema clearance in Palermo. A tremendous film to round off a sub-par triple feature.
There's so many that I would love to add to the list. What about you? What's playing at your grindhouse?
Oh yeah, I remember you mentioning The Last Chase at some point.
I'd probably go with Terminus, an odd post-apocalyptic dystopian Franco-German co-production featuring Jürgen Prochonow, the kid from Robocop 2 and Karen Allen.
My next film would be arguably the "best" Bruceploitation movie, Game of Death 2, which came from the producers of the early Jackie Chan classics, Ng See-Yuen and Yuen Woo-Ping and even stars Hwang Jang Lee, a famous Korean martial arts villain actor.
It took me a while to settle on the third movie, and I was thinking about going with Lucio Fulci's The Beyond or maybe one of the other Italian post-apocalypse films riffing on Escape From New York, Mad Max and The Warriors, but instead decided to go with The Solo Voyage, truly an oddity in the annals of cinema - the only commando action film ever made in the USSR!
Nice selections! Game of Death II I have the Criterion version. Personally I prefer the first film but it's still good Bruceploitation.
Terminus looks good. That's now on my watchlist along with the last film you chose too. I'd probably enjoy watching that last film in German with no subtitles.
Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita!
Advice if you want to watch The Last Chase, get it on VHS. The DVD is now OOP and very expensive but Code Red made a mess of it so don't waste your money. The VHS can be picked up for between.€20 and €80 if you get lucky. It doesn't come up often unfortunately. The US VHS pops up more often than the PAL one.
Speed Driver is stupidly rare and only on VHS. I found the French VHS in a village classified adverts section in France somewhere. The Japanese VHS I've only seen one copy for sale in the last 5 years on YAJ and that was €300. I got extremely lucky and found mine in the UK by sheer luck and paid an undisclosed sum.
It may have appeared since, I've not looked for a while. Tremendous film though. 100% mediocre!
Nice selections! Game of Death II I have the Criterion version. Personally I prefer the first film but it's still good Bruceploitation.
Terminus looks good. That's now on my watchlist along with the last film you chose too.
I thought the original Game of Death committed the ultimate sin of cinema by being kind of boring. The fight scenes are good but there's no justification for the rest of the movie; GoD2 is really trashy but it's way more entertaining because the fight scenes are great but all the story-driven scenes are so absurd that they're entertaining for all the wrong reasons. I do find it odd that Criterion didn't include the Chinese language version of it; for some reason, the old Fortune Star release also had only the English dub, despite being a Hong Kong release! I guess I'll have to stick with the old UK DVD from Hong Kong Legends. I do prefer the dubbed version though, because it adds new scenes that elevate the experience.
Terminus also seems to elude an english-friendly DVD release; there's one with French and German audio but no subtitles. I've thought about picking up the old Finnish VHS tape I used to own since it doesn't seem to go for too much. There's also a Finnish VHS of that last movie which I think is in Russian; there is a Russian DVD release but again it has no subtitles. My ideal release of it would be the Russian language version but without the Lektor for the parts where English is spoken instead (and as I understand it, that's quite a bit).
Hahaa, I just remembered that on the DVD release for Thriller: A Cruel Picture, one of the trailers included on it was actually a double bill trailer for said film (under another alternate title, Hooker's Revenge) along with Photographer's Model in true 42nd St style!
You have just hopped off the subway at Times Square and dodged a run in with the Baseball Furies and the Turnbull AC's while managing not to drop your hotdog you've carried with you since getting on the train at Coney Island.
er, I wouldn't trust that hot dog anymore, you've been holding onto it for about an hour before you took a bite, give it up and get a new one
er, I wouldn't trust that hot dog anymore, you've been holding onto it for about an hour before you took a bite, give it up and get a new one
Ey yo, I'm walkin here! I'm walkin' here!
As a visitor to Noo Yowk on several occasions over the years (and a Mets fan for nearly 35 years , by choice) I can safely say their dogs have yet to give me a case of the two bob bits! Besides, if I want another one alls I gotta do is find the nearest storm drain in an abatoire, beat an egg and mould whatevers in there together. Heat it up for a minute or two and disco, a new dog!
Hahaa, I just remembered that on the DVD release for Thriller: A Cruel Picture, one of the trailers included on it was actually a double bill trailer for said film (under another alternate title, Hooker's Revenge) along with Photographer's Model in true 42nd St style!
That looks epic! I need to track it down. Is it only on DVD or is there a Blu available?
I am a bit annoyed with myself that I put Lee Majors before arguably one of the best films ever made (so good I own 3 copies of it on VHS). The multi-award winning hyperfilm from Tony Zarindast. It can play another day when the projectionist inevitably falls asleep watching The Last Chase and melts the reels.
The spectacular. The incredible. The unstoppable...
Hahaa, I just remembered that on the DVD release for Thriller: A Cruel Picture, one of the trailers included on it was actually a double bill trailer for said film (under another alternate title, Hooker's Revenge) along with Photographer's Model in true 42nd St style!
That looks epic! I need to track it down. Is it only on DVD or is there a Blu available?
So far I haven't been able to find anything about it being on blu-ray.
If you do want to get it, you can go with the cheaper "yellow" cover version from Synapse Films. The only thing added in the "uncut limited edition" red cover release are the more explicit sex scenes and they were culled from different film elements than the main film. Plus they don't really add much to the film.
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Thanks list
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