The Hard Road (1970)

A cautionary tale. At 17, Sherman Oaks high schooler Pam Banner has a baby out of wedlock. The baby is adopted, but Pam's too embarrassed to go back to school, so her dad gets her a job as the receptionist for a talent agent. A rock star takes her to a party, seduces and abandons her; that starts a spiral of partying, free love, and drug use. Pam becomes friends with Jeannie, a hooker who supports Jimmy, a useless druggie. Soon the three of them are living together, and Jimmy seems appealing to Pam. She's missing work more and more often, Jeannie wants out of the life, Jimmy is going through withdrawal, and Pam is in the middle of a maelstrom. Is there any exit for Pam?

The film begins with a pregnant 17 year-old (Pam) in the back seat of her parents' car. She is driven to a hospital or health clinic and they begin talking to her about her plans for the baby. At this point, a guy dressed like a doctor (but who obviously isn't as he mispronounces some of the words) talks--giving a dry lecture about pregnancy. This is NOT integrated into plot--just an interruption in the movie. Then, once the guy is finished, it returns back to the story and you see Pam about to give birth. Then, the baby pops out and she smiles. The narrator then tells us that that's the last she ever saw of the baby--it was soon adopted by strangers.

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Drama,

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Candy (1968)

In 1969, Christian Marquand directed this all-star adaptation of Terry Southern's novel of the same name, Candy. Southern had a string of hits around this time, including The Magic Christian, Barbarella and of course Easy Rider, all of which were obviously turned into feature films. But Candy? The big screen version of Candy is something special indeed…

Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin) is a beautiful who spends her days attending high school. She lives at home with her father, a history teacher (John Astin). Candy's life takes an unusual turn when a Welsh poet with a taste for hooch named McPhisto (Richard Burton) shows up at school to deliver a speech. Candy, more than a little naïve, is easily talked into riding along with McPhisto in his limousine that takes them back to her place for a rather strange set piece wherein he dry humps a mannequin and she winds up fooling around with the family gardener, Emmanuel (Ringo Starr).

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Drama,

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Massacre Mafia Style (1978)

For longtime fans of Grindhouse cinema, the trailer for Duke Mitchell's Massacre Mafia Style is a real beloved treasure. Speaking personally, I can say that ever since I first saw it, it's been one of my all time favorites. One thing I always wanted to know after seeing it was whether the actual film lived up to the trailers iconic outrageousness. Well, after viewing the film now for the first time (thanks to a friend sending me a DVD-R copy of it), I am very happy to say that Massacre Mafia Style (aka The Executioner) is a really solid, entertaining, emotional low-budget mafia film.
The main man behind it all was Duke Mitchell, who film geeks may know from movies like Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), which he co-starred in with his then comedy partner Sammy Petrillo. Mitchell and Petrillo were actually an act that was a direct rip-off of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. Mitchell was the suave Dean Martin clone and Sammy Petrillo was the boy-monkey Lewis wannabe. They were later sued as a result. In the late 1970s, Mitchell produced, wrote and directed two mafia genre films, Massacre Mafia Style and Gone With The Pope which was never completed before Mitchell's death in 1981, but thanks to the folks at Grindhouse Releasing, the film hopefully will be seeing the light of day on DVD in the near future.

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1978, Crime, Drama, Italy, Suspence, Thriller,

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Running Hot / Hot Target (DVD)

Its the Dangeorus Beauties Doule bill! Both for the first time digitally remastered from the original vault elements!

First up, RUNNING HOT (1984)! Acclaimed actor Eric Stoltz (Mask, Pulp Fiction) stars in this volatile tale of star-crossed lovers in a last ditch escape from the law. A stripper (Monica Carrico) watches the trial of a younger man (Stoltz) accused of murdering his father. As she falls in love with his tragic image, she writes love letters to him in prison. When the object of her obsession shows up at her doorstep, having made a bloody escape, she joins him in a perilous, passionate run for their lives from a sadistic cop (Stuart Margolin, TV's Rockford Files).

In the tradition of Badlands and True Romance this thrilling 1984 film is a rare gem directed by award winning director Mark Griffiths, and from the producer of the popular TV show The O.C... Now see the cult classic from a brand new 16x9 master in HD from the original camera negatives first time anywhere!

Next up, HOT TARGET (1985)! At first glance, Christine Webber (Simone Griffeth, Death Race 2000) would seem to be a woman who has everything. A wife of a successful NZ businessman, she is beautiful, sophisticated, stylish - the perfect wife and mother. But scratch the surface and see that Christine is also a Woman trapped by the very "perfection" of her life.

Watch this film in wqidescreen on DVD, from a brand new master from the original IP, first time anywhere!

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1984, Crime, Drama, DVD, Films, Reviews, Thriller,

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Death Row Girls (Unrated DVD)

A man made hell turns into an earthly inferno as a female inmate in Japan's most notorious maximum-security prison wages a violent bid to survive while taking out as many of her captors as humanly possible.
It's called The Island, and it's an inescapable penitentiary populated by the most savage female criminals in all of Japan. But this isn't your typical prison, because once you go in, you never get out alive. Inmate 1316 is about to find out this grim truth the hard way, and she won't take the news lying down. Now, amidst a terrifying world of secret graveyards and mass executions, 1316 will use every weapon at her disposal - including her body - to fight back and make a daring escape. She's already been through hell, so she's got nothing to fear as she hacks, slashes, and blasts her way through the hordes of sadistic guards who would happily defile and dispatch her without a second thought. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

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Action, Adult, Asian, Drama, DVD,

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Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Series (40 Disc DVD Box Set)

Kick back and get comfortable with a laugh-filled, heaping of classic Mayberry DVD. The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Series 40-disc set includes all 249 episodes from the series' eight top-rated seasons on CBS. Starring Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor, Don Knotts as Deputy Barney Fife, Ron Howard as Opie and Frances Bavier as Aunt Bee, you'll enjoy down-home humor, comic escapades and a stellar cast of the most beloved comedies in the history of television.





SPECIAL FEATURES:
• "Danny Meets Andy Griffith: from season 7 of the television series Make Room for Daddy, also known as The Danny Thomas Show
• "Opie Joins the Marines," from season 2 of the television series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
• Return to Mayberry television movie
• Plus: Season 2 and season 3 discs feature original sponsor spots

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Comedy, Drama, TV,

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Deadlier Than the Male (1967)

British agent Bulldog Drummond is assigned to stop a master criminal who uses beautiful women to do his killings.
Classy production, solid plot, witty dialog, believable characters. When watching this film, one does not say, "Oh yeah, a 60's Bond take-off", as one does when watching perhaps "Our Man Flint" or "In Like Flint". Richard Johnson's Hugh Drummond is smooth, handsome and resourceful without being obnoxious or larger than life. Steve Carlson's Robert Drummond provides youthful energy without becoming a foil. Elke Sommer's Irma Eckman is irresistably gorgeous, intelligent, eloquent, and cold-as-ice deadly. Sylva Kocina's Penelope is kittenish, sensual and apologetic...even as she's torturing or killing a man. Nigel Green is a ruthless, cunning business man who has figured out how to get rivals out of his way; Kill them. The murders are clever, sexy and brutal but not campy.

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Adventure, Crime, Drama, Eurospy,

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Eyes Without A Face (1962)

At the very end of last year’s critical/cinephile favorite Holy Motors, there’s an inexplicable moment (within the context of the narrative, though the whole movie is pretty inexplicable) in which Edith Scob, playing the limo driver who’s been conveying Denis Lavant from one bizarre “appointment” to another, dons a blank-faced, alabaster mask and tells someone she’s coming home. That creepy mask pays homage to Scob’s role, over half a century earlier, in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without A Face,a singularly disturbing horror film that inspired everything from Michael Myers’ featureless mug in the Halloween series to Billy Idol’s hit single of the same name (in which backup vocals whisper the film’s original French title, Les Yeux Sans Visage). Unlike many genre efforts of decades past, this one has lost none of its potency over the years, mostly because it isn’t scary as much as it is unnerving. Its horror involves not the usual booga-booga, but the lengths to which desperate yet coldly rational people will go to achieve a grotesque goal.

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1962, Drama, Films, Horror, Reviews,

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Wild River 1960

With a touch of humanism and social conviction Wild River focuses on a TVA dam project that will evict a family (matriarch Van Fleet) and her significant number of black employees. Lee Remick, as well as being jaw-dropping stunning as a country lass, is a widowed daughter of said family and graces the screen with another of her magnificent performances. Montgomery Clift's character, Chuck Glover, has the unenviable job as the ministry employee who must shoo the tenants to vacate. Monty and Remick establish a relationship which helps convert Cliff to the side of the righteous. Kazan's build seems slower than the erratic pace of the plot but it is still superior Hollywood fare shot in magnificent cinemascope.
There is little to add to the eloquent appreciations of Wild River by other users. Still, I want to pay my tribute. My father took me to see the film when I was a little girl and it made such an impression on me I have been searching for it for years. Odd, since I remembered nothing of the plot, retaining only fleeting images of autumn colours, Lee

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1960, Drama, History, Romance,

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Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde (2003)

Dr. Jackie Stevenson is a Los Angeles based therapist and scientist who tries to invent a serum to separate the pure from the lustful side of the female psychosis. After she has an unsuccessful experiment with a female client named Martine, which drove her patient to insanity and to a mental hospital, Jackie tries part of the serum on herself and becomes her lustful alter ego Heidi Hyde; a voracious lesbian who prowls the streets of L.A. after dark looking for carnal pleasures. Things get more weird when "Heidi" picks up a young prostitute named Dawn for a one-night stand, and who begins to visit Jackie for therapy sessions as well. Soon the line between reality and illusion blurs and it leads to Jackie finding out that her husband is cheating on her with her maid Paula which leads "Heidi" to plan a revenge with Dawn's help. Is Dawn really what she appears to be?

I'm not going to lie and say this movie is good for anything for than softcore porn. One of my friends told me that this is not like most softcore flicks, because it actually has a good story. I don't happen to agree one bit. I could spend weeks dismantling this movie aesthetically. I understand it was shot on an extremely low-budget, but even skin flicks usually contain sets that are dressed up to appear like certain locations. The movie opens on a talk show set, and it literally just shows close-ups of the host and interviewee against an anonymous background. They don't even face each other and they're individually framed, not even hiding from the audience the fact that they shot each woman separately. I'm guessing they shot the whole movie with one video camera, because there are moments where you see a woman's body and her face in isolated shots, even though there were no body doubles involved. If there's anything good I can say about the movie aesthetically, it's that the acting is not bad. The actresses are actually fairly convincing.

I once saw Richard Roeper review an erotic foreign film, and he said that, "If I rave about a comedy because it makes me laugh, then I guess this movie makes me feel proud that I'm a man with 20/20 vision." The moral of that statement is that men are often afraid to admit something is erotic and a turn-on to them, with the risk of being called perverts. I'm not afraid to admit that this movie is very erotic, and it succeeds on that level. The first 30-minutes-or-so contains softcore oral sex scenes, which are obviously simulated and something laughable, but the rest of the movie really takes off. And just my good luck, 95 percent of the sex scenes involve girl-on-girl activity. That's right, no men involved. And I can honestly say that I found every actress in the movie attractive, especially the lead actress who looks even more sexy in glasses and a business suit. Unlike many girl-on-girl scenes, the actresses looked like they were really into what they were doing, and not like they're just anticipating reactions from the horny guys in the audience. 

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Drama, Erotic, Horror, Sci-Fi, Softcore,

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Handgun

Year: 1984
Duration: 01:39:23
Directed by: Tony Garnett
Actors: Karen Young, Clayton Day, Suzie Humphreys, Helena Humann
Language: English
Country: UK

Also known as: Deep in the Heart, Kathleen, Handgun – Der Waffennarr

Description:  This is a real gem that not only supplies the cheap thrills we’ve grown accustomed to with this genre but also raises some very thought provoking arguments for and against gun control. Karen Young is simply superb as the vengeance seeking Kathleen though she is far too smart and resourceful to simply be labelled “the victim” in this film. Her acting is extremely realistic as well as Clayton Day who plays a first class A grade creep  Larry  who thinks there is absolutely nothing wrong with raping a woman senseless on a first date and expects another trip down memory lane a week later. In the meantime our heroine has bought herself a  handgun and joined  Larry’s  gun club where she practises shooting at targets, presumably pretending they are testicles…

Review: The plot, which could be the basis for the usual speculative thriller about self-defense and counter-violence, is for the British director Tony Garnett’s just an excuse to create a kind of psychological research on the cult of weapons in American society. It is not known whether the director had in mind a reference to the great gun shooting scene in the film “Three Women” (1978) by Robert Altman. But his character is also transformed by taking first in the hands of a gun, gets firm, bitter, fierce in all his actions, eventually turning into almost the exact opposite of myself in the first half of the tape.

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Crime, Drama,

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Cola, Candy, Chocolate

Year:  1979
Duration: 01:18:00
Directed by: Sigi Rothemund (as Siggi Götz)
Actors:  Olivia Pascal, Philippe Ricci, Christine Zierl
Language: German
Country: West Germany

Also known as: Drei kesse Bienen auf den Philippinen, Forviklinger i Sydhavet

Description: A slapstick German comedy about a young woman, Gaby, who takes a trip to the Philippines after a fight with her boyfriend. On the way there, she meets Andreas and his girlfriend and becomes enthralled with Andreas, even though he is on his way to marry his girlfriend. All sorts of mishaps occur on the trip. A zany bunch of characters make up the story including the huge breasted girlfriend, her priest brother, an accident prone tourist, the gay hotel owner, the meddling chimp and many others. Gaby does everything she can to entice Andreas away from his girlfriend.

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Comedy, Drama,

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