>Wild Thing – I Think I Watched You
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Chopper is still the BMOC, holding the cops under his thumb and running the local vague drug/sex trades. There is a hilarious ‘pimp-lifestyle’ escort party scene set to a Michael McDonald-ish tune called ‘Business-Lady.’ Cue love story (yawn) – Jane, a social worker (Kathleen Quinlan) arrives by bus, to take over the local priest’s youth rehabilitation work at the safe house. She receives a rude welcome, as Chopper’s henchmen attempt to subdue and rape her. But she is saved by the mysterious Wild Thing, who kicks off the thugs and vanishes- in order to begin finger-painting her likeness on his loft wall (uh-oh.)
Wild Thing [VHS]
>It’s a shitstorm out there.
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Director: James B. Harris
Writers: James Ellroy (novel), James B. Harris (screenplay)
Starring: James Woods, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, Randi Brooks, Charles Haid etc.
Lloyd Hopkins, a hard-boiled American police detective is on the trail of a mass murderer who is victimizing women in Los Angeles. The pursuit leads him through a world that has become his own natural habitat – a nasty world of crime, drugs, prostitution and male hustlers where “innocence kills” and continued exposure corrupts. Paradoxically, it’s also a world of love, secret admirers, romantic feminist poets and modern chivalry (IMDB).
>Flash – I love you, but we’ve got 30 seconds to save the Universe!
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In the long and sordid history of comic film adaptations, this Dino De Laurentiis-produced oddity based on the 1930s action comic serial strips, doesn’t often rise to the top of the pack. But taken on its own, it is a weird achievement. In full disclosure, this was the first film I was allowed to see in the theater without my parents. Therefore the sci-fi S&M atmosphere must have seemed just that much dirtier. (I didn’t know about this yet.) And the marriage of awesomely grandiose Queen soundtrack (later sampled by Public Enemy) with ridiculous visuals like Hawkman gladiators attacking in flight just doesn’t get old. In its wooden acting (aside from Von Sydow’s seminal Ming the Merciless) and fetishistic camp sets/costumes, the movie’s true cousin is the infamous Barbarella. (also Dino’s baby)
>True Crime in Prime Time: Tarnished Angel
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>Corey Feldman shows off what he learned at the Never Land Ranch
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>All the chicken you can eat!
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ADD THIS CRAP TO YOUR NETFLIX
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thep07a-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000059H8L&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
>Revenge – a dish best served with a hook.
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*Flynn ~ revenge auteur? (See also Out for Justice review, natch.)
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thep07a-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=6303471617&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
>Worst Cop / Cyber-Dog buddy movie ever!
Director: Kim Manners
Writers: Michael Part, Steven E. de Souza
Starring: Chris Mulkey, Catherine Oxenberg, Dennis Haysbert, and Jerry Houser (as the voice of ‘Niner’)
A policeman and a female scientist team up to recover her latest creation, a cybernetic, crime-fighting dog. (IMDB)
The cop-dog buddy movie (Turner and Hooch, K-9, this dreck) is a much-maligned, underappreciated? genre of filmmaking magic that seems not to have made it into the new millennium. Perhaps there is a lost innocence in our willingness to believe our favorite stars (Hanks, Belushi etc.) and their quadrupedal best friends solving urban crimes in the era of suicide planes and biological warfare. But who better to sniff out dirty bombs than man’s best friend? Maybe we just need a gritty Bourne Identity-style techno-update. In the best cop-dog film, these canine pals become closer than a human partner, true confidantes that will take a bullet for ya and still hump your leg.
And then there’s this movie (speaking of dirty bombs, look out, ahem!). I didn’t have the good fortune to tune in from the very beginning. But when I did, I couldn’t look away. Mulkey (the abusive trucker husband of Shelley the waitress on ‘Twin Peaks’) plays a mulleted crude boozer LA cop in the Gibson/Russell vein (minus 75% personality) who is forced to partner with glamorous Euro cyber-scientist Catherine Oxenberg to get to the baddy weapons-smugglers that left his black human partner (Haysbert) in a coma.
When I tuned in, they were infiltrating a top-secret lab bunker in which the “K-9000” project sat in a mysterious box. Oxenberg explains it’s a special technology that involves microchip communication between specially-rigged ‘cyber-dogs’ and computer dispatchers. Only problem? During a shoot-out in the lab, the cyber-dog (a regular-looking German Shepherd) bursts out of his saran-wrap prematurely, and the cyberchip receiver somehow winds up in the loser cop’s head. (sorry-didn’t catch how).
http://www.u-tube.ru/upload/others/flvplayer.swf?20100927
So anyhoo, the cop wakes up holding a bottle of Jack in his beach cabana, with the dog staring at him inquisitively. He starts hearing voices – specifically a nebbishy Jewish voice-over asking him how he is feeling and if he would like help with his investigation. Holy shit! The dog is still talking to him, and his fucking mouth doesn’t move. (cyber-telepathy, natch) After the requisite throwing the bottle down and trying to sleep it off, the dog keeps hassling him (and won’t fetch balls, since it’s ‘canine’ brain area was removed for the chip.) Taking it in stride, it’s now a ‘Knight Rider’ deal and the cop reluctantly grows to rely on the dog’s techno-skills (like clearing an outside line on a payphone.)
It all winds up on Catalina Island (the fucking wine mixer!) where they track the baddy smugglers to the top of a tower and K-9000 pushes that Euro son-of-a-bitch right off to save Mulkey, dangling from the edge. Partner comes out of coma, Mulkey and Oxenberg recline on the beach, and K-9000 (in sunglasses) remembers how to fetch balls- and suck them. This film might have killed the cop-dog movie for good after all. Only time will tell?
>January, February – Think I’ll see where they’re going with this…
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>"This sorta thing happened before!"
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