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Billy Jack
: :This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy Jack's way of doing things and that of the school's founder (Delores Taylor), but their tension doesn't so much lead to an examination of principles as it leads to an excuse ...
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Crow
:Description:Catch the explosive, action-packed hit that thrilled moviegoers and dazzled critics everywhere! Brandon Lee (RAPID FIRE) plays Eric Draven, a young rock guitarist who, along with his fiancee, is brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals. Exactly one year after his death, Eric returns -- watched over by a hypnotic crow -- to seek revenge, battling the evil crime lord and his band of urban thugs, who must answer for their crimes. Loaded with intense, nonstop action and a hot #1 hit soundtrack, THE CROW delivers exhilarating, fast-paced entertainment! essential video:The ...
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Caged Heat
: :The greatest women-in-prison film ever made, Caged Heat takes the traditional sex-and-violence formula of gorgeous babes behind bars, gratuitous nudity, and degradation at the hands of beastly guards and a corrupt system, and transforms it into rebel burst of grrrl power. Jonathan Demme's directorial debut, made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the glory days of 1970s drive-in moviemaking, wedges his message of empowerment in between the showers and the shock treatments. Russ Meyer alumnus Erica Gavin stars with tough cookie Juanita Brown as they lead the brassy set of cellblock babes ...
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Easy Rider
: essential video:Two cool guys head out on motorcycles in search of... well, America, but they'll settle for sex and drugs and rock & roll. There's plenty of each as Captain America (Peter Fonda) and paranoid Billy (Dennis Hopper) encounter a commune, convert a small-town drunk (Jack Nicholson) to the Grin Reefer, pick up two pretty lilies of the alley, Karen Black and Toni Basil (who hit the pop charts in the '80s--check out 'Mickey'), and get shot for having long hair. Nicholson won an Oscar nomination and Best Supporting Actor nods from ...
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Big Doll House
: :Director Jack Hill, a protégé of the original schlockmeister, Roger Corman, knew his way around a low budget and a shocking subject. Women-in-prison films were nothing new in 1971, but The Big Doll House had it all--sex, violence, nudity, a sadistic guard, and a sexually frustrated warden--and served it up with an abundance of cheapjack energy and tongue-in-cheek humor. The beauty of Hill's movies lay in the way they could appeal not only to the hordes who would go see them at drive-ins but also to the true trash-cinema fans who could appreciate ...
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Up in Smoke
: :Cheech & Chong's first cannabis comedy is also their best, a souvenir from the more carefree days before 'Just Say No,' when people did not feel so defensive about inhaling. In 1978, the prevailing spirit was more like 'Just Say Blow.' Even New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael liked it (the movie, that is), adding that it was 'an exploitation slapstick comedy, rather than a family picture, such as Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety--which means that it's dirtier, wilder, and sillier.' The story has to do with bumbling potheads Cheech & Chong searching ...
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The Final Programme
: :Cheech & Chong's first cannabis comedy is also their best, a souvenir from the more carefree days before 'Just Say No,' when people did not feel so defensive about inhaling. In 1978, the prevailing spirit was more like 'Just Say Blow.' Even New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael liked it (the movie, that is), adding that it was 'an exploitation slapstick comedy, rather than a family picture, such as Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety--which means that it's dirtier, wilder, and sillier.' The story has to do with bumbling potheads Cheech & Chong searching ...
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Big Bird Cage
: :Pam Grier and Sid Haig stole the show in Jack Hill's Filipino-women-in-prison hit The Big Doll House, and they pretty much power this superior action-packed semi-sequel as a South American Bonnie-and-Clyde team. The revolutionaries with mercenary hearts decide to liberate the inmates of a jungle women's prison at the urging of their lonely army of single men. All the conventions are there--scantily clad women, a deranged warden (so evil he kicks a puppy in his first scene!), catfights, the occasional kinky punishment, and of course all those showers. But Hill softens the usual ...
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Big Bad Mama
: :Angie Dickinson stars as a bank-robbing matriarch in this 1974 Roger Corman production, often described as a knock-off of Bonnie and Clyde. (As if that makes any difference regarding the worth of the film--which is pretty good.) Set in Great Depression-era Texas, the story finds Dickinson's desirable and poor character driven to crime, along with her two daughters (Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee), all of whom use sex to distract or drive men into culpability. The film, directed by Steve Carver, is pure Corman formula: fast-moving, violent, gritty, adorned with nudity, and yet solidly ...
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Shaft (1971)
: essential video:Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks seems fond of certain detective genre clichés (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office ...
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