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Cheerleaders Wild Weekend

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The thing about ‘70s exploitation movies is they could get away with pretty much anything as long as there was the requisite amount of boobs, blood or action.  Which led to a whole lot of films that didn’t just  break  the mold, they never bothered to conform in the first place. This burst of creativity might have been luck, thievery or a complete accident but the result is the same: movies sold to the lowest common denominator that often wind up being more interesting than the mainstream titles they were competing against. Cheerleaders Wild Weekend  (1979) involves a bus full of precocious teenage girls hijacked on its way to the state championship by a trio of ex-professional football players. Demanding two million dollars as ransom, the bad guys are sorely tempted to take advantage of their hostages, all from rival schools. But when the girls realize that teamwork is the only way out of the situation, they hatch a plan to get home… and  get some payback....
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Yokohama BJ Blues

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The master shot is a lost art.  Back in the ‘50s, when movies were competing with the rise of television, audiences were treated to vast landscapes and artfully composed scenes utilizing every inch of the widescreen frame…while most directors  today  don’t have the patience to sit on one shot for more than three seconds.  So watching  Yokohama BJ Blues  (1981), a noir-styled throwback made up almost exclusively of long takes, long lenses and lengthy exchanges of hardboiled dialogue, is like slowing down your cinematic pulse to a rhythm from another era. BJ himself (Yusaku Matsuda) is a part-time blues singer who moonlights as a private investigator to pay the bills. But when his best friend is murdered, the case becomes a personal vendetta to find the murderer, rekindle an old flame and rescue a client’s son who’s fallen in with the wrong crowd.  In true noir fashion, the good guys and bad guys aren’t so clear cut and BJ must play all th...
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Men of War

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Example #242 in movies that sound too crazy to exist:   Men of War , starring Dolph Lundren as “Nick the Swede” who, with his team of misfit soldiers, invades a small island in Thailand to  persuade  the natives to sign away their mineral rights. Add in a cartoonish rival merc villain, alluring native girls plus a canoe full of ammunition and you’ve got a familiar recipe for a forgettable direct-to-video mid-90’s action entry.  Only this  Seven Samurai  rehash happens to be written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Sayles. Haunted by his past but addicted to the excitement, Nick (Lundgren) decides to get back into the game when his old mentor recommends him for a new gig.  After recruiting his team and adding a new member along the way (Catherine Bell of  JAG ), the realization hits that he’s fighting for the wrong side. Outnumbered and outgunned, Nick and the natives make one last stand to protect their island paradise from the ...
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The Addiction 4K UHD

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In the films of Abel Ferrara, there are hunters and there is prey.  And his best work follows characters in transition between the two. 1995’s  The Addiction  is what some might call an unconventional vampire movie.  Although it adheres to two of the most familiar conventions - an aversion to sunlight and a thirst for human blood – Ferrara’s undead are also beset by philosophical questions of free will and other existential crises. It seems immortality raises the stakes on what makes life worth living in general. Kathy (Lili Taylor) is on the cusp of completing her doctoral thesis in philosophy at NYU when she is bitten on the neck by a seductive stranger (Annabella Sciorra).  Suddenly her scholarly obsession with death becomes a physical reality as she wanders the streets searching for victims  and  some sort of meaning in her new undead existence.  Schooled by a vampire elder (Christopher Walken), Kathy comes to an educationa...
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The Last Video Store

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The Last Video Store  (2023) knows its audience.  It’s a film for cinema nerds and nostalgia junkies.  A film for people who know the difference between  Cannibal Holocaust  and  Cannibal Apocalypse .  For people who treasure their Blu-ray slipcovers and movie tie-in fast food glassware. But most of all it’s for people who are self-aware enough to know that their celluloid obsessions aren’t above being made fun of now and again. After returning a bizarre VHS tape to a back-alley video store, Nyla (Yaayaa Adams) and store-owner Kevin (Kevin Martin) are beset by aliens, serial killers and actions stars come to life via an inexplicable NTSC portal.  Kevin’s knowledge of trash cinema comes in handy as the duo must find a way to disconnect this  Videonomicon  before they’re trapped forever in B movie hell!   The concept isn’t exactly unique.  Terror brought forth from our televisions has been a staple since...
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Shawscope: Volume 3

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Tis the season for box sets.  And for physical media collectors there’s nothing more satisfying than 14 movies in handsome packaging arranged and curated for their cinematic significance.   Shawscope Volume 3  is the next installment in Arrow’s series of Shaw Brothers titles this time veering away from kung-fu towards a more wuxia focused assemblage of films ranging from the ‘60s to the ‘80s.   With a set this size it’s hard to put together a timely review that encompasses   everything , but it kicks off with one of the more significant entries from the beloved studio:   The One-Armed Swordsman   (1967), the only title to receive a 4K restoration while the other thirteen are given the 2K treatment.     Lifting the premise of its handicapped hero from the Japanese   Zatoichi   series, director Cheh Chang weaves a love story in between his action scenes, crafting a beautifully set-bound origin story that spawned two sequels ...
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The Block Island Sound

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Coastal horror  isn’t really a thing.  I just made it up.  But genre films set on the edge of the ocean have a distinct vibe all their own.  2009’s  The Beach House  or Mike Flanagan’s  Midnight Mass  (2021) are just a couple of recent examples that take advantage of that threatening expanse of open water to isolate its characters with almost existential terror.  And the McManus Brothers’  The Block Island Sound  (2020) is an excellent low-budget companion piece, lifting more than a few ideas from  The X-Files  to craft a clever extraterrestrial-influenced family drama born out of the deep. Siblings Harry and Audry are at odds over what to do with their father, who has been making mysterious nighttime boat trips with no recollection of the event.  After finding him washed up on the beach, Harry’s begins having the same mental blackouts accompanied by powerful visions ordering him to provide “s...
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