Daily Archives: January 5, 2022

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Strike Commando (dir by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“American,” a young Vietnamese refugee says to Sgt. Mike Ransom, “tell me about Disneyland.”

Ransom tells him all about Disneyland, a magical place where, according to Rasom, the trees are made of ice cream and genies pop out of lamps.  Ransom breaks down in tears, sobbing as he realizes that his friend will never get to experience Disneyland firsthand.

Years later, Ransom is in Manila, blowing up a former American military officer who gave aid to the communists.  “DIE!  DIE!” Ransom shrilly yells as the man literally explodes in front of him.  And while the man may not have been one of the good guys and he did a lot of bad things during the Vietnam War, it’s hard not to feel that Ransom’s attitude would get him banned from Disneyland.  Not even the ghost hitchhikers at the Haunted Mansion would want to accept a ride from the “Die!  Die!” guy.

That Mike Ransom, he’s a complicated man.  As played by Reb Brown, he’s also at the center of the 1987 Italian film, Strike Commando.  As you can probably guess from the film’s title, he’s the leader of an elite squad of soldiers, a team of strike commandoes who are determined to lead America to victory during the Vietnam War.  We’re continually told that Ransom is the best, though we don’t see much of evidence of it.  He’s the type of commando who specializes in sneaking behind enemy lines and hitting the communists before they even realize he’s there but he’s so bulky and loud that it’s hard to imagine that he’s ever been able to successful sneak around anywhere.  He has a particularly bad habit of shrilly screaming every word that he says.  Even when he’s not telling people to die, he’s yelling.  He’s like the athletic coach from Hell.

In fact, as I watched Strike Commando, I started to wonder what it would be like to live next door to someone like Mike Ransom.

“Hi, Mike, are you doing okay?”

“I’M DOING GREAT!  GREAT!  GREAT!”

“Any plans for the day?”

“I’M MOWING THE LAWN!  MOWING!  MOWING!  MOWING!”

“I think I’ve got some mail for you that accidentally left in my mailbox….”

“THE POSTAL SERVICE LIED!  LIED!  LIED!  LIED!”

At first, living next door to Mike Ransom would probably be entertaining but I imagine it would get kind of boring after a while.  Yelling can be an effective way to express yourself but it loses its power if that’s the only thing you ever do.  The same can be said for Strike Commando as a film.  It gets off to a good start, with several extremely over-the-top action sequences and, of course, Mike telling a little refugee child about Disneyland.  But the second half of the film, which involves Mike being held in a POW camp and meeting a fearsome Russian torturer named Jakoda, drags a bit because there’s only so much time you can listen to Ransom yell before you start to tune him out.  It doesn’t help that the second half of the film features some particularly nasty torture scenes.  Still, it is somewhat redeemed by a scene where the Viet Cong attempt to force Ransom to broadcast a propaganda message over their radio station.  “KEEP FIGHTING!” Ransom yells into the microphone.  Hell yeah! You tell ’em, Ransom!

Strike Commando was directed by Bruno Mattei, an Italian exploitation filmmaker who was never one to just turn things up to ten when he could turn them up to 11 instead.  Strike Commando was obviously meant to capitalize on the success of the Rambo films.  In typical Mattei fashion, the action is over-the-top, nonstop, and more than a little silly.  Mattei was never shied away from embracing excess and Strike Commando has everything that you would expect from one of his war films: lots of stuff blowing up, heavy-handed use of slow motion, and plenty of grainy stock footage.  You have to admire Mattei’s dedication to always finding something for Reb Brown to yell about.

Patreon Preview Week : “A Superhero Comic Book” By Ina Parsons

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

To wrap things up on my Patreon preview week here, I present a recent review of a VERY unique project —

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Domino — and I’m sure this is true for all the readers of this site who also buy books from them either “on the regular” or occasionally — is that once in awhile proprietor Austin English somehow gets ahold of something that utterly defies not only categorization, but even description. And while on the surface, at least, Ina Parsons’ A SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK would seem to do neither, given that its title clearly states both what it is AND what sort of genre category it fits into, let’s face it : appearances can be deceiving.

Ironically, however, it’s the APPEARANCE of the three (to date) purported “comic books” in this series that’s the first thing to clue you in to the fact that there’s something very different going on here : roughly the size of maybe a kid’s hand, each “issue” consists of four heavy cardstock “pages” glued (I think, at any rate) inside even HEAVIER cardboard “covers” — we’re clearly talking, then, about genuinely HAND-MADE items here, with each “cover” and “back cover” consisting of reverse-image collage art and each interior image being a double-“page” spread that juxtaposes a provocative sentence fragment with, again, frankly mysterious collages, each of which uniformly evokes the look and feel of photographic negatives, albeit negatives shot through with intentionally garish color schemes.

 Hey, I TOLD YOU this shit was hard to describe — I really am doing my best, promise.

As for what’s “happening” in the “story,” it would appear that some human test subject or other is strapped down to a table and being “gifted” with super-powers of some sort by a shadowy group of doctors, and that said subject is both excited and terrified at the prospect, as one probably would be under the circumstances — whatever those circumstances, ya know, are. That’s all we know so far, and even THAT is up for debate. What ISN’T, however, is that this project has already redefined the parameters and possibilities of both genre fiction AND “chapbook”-formatted art.

In fairness, though, it had damn well BETTER break some new ground given the price tag attached to it : after all, each “issue” costs ten bucks. And while there’s no doubt the minute you look at one of these “comic books” that MORE than ten dollars’ worth of labor went into putting the whole thing together, that’s still a lot of money to spend on what is, at the end of the day, a small art object moreso than it is a “book” per se. All that being said, though, the real question here is : leaving aside what went into it, can you possibly get your money’s worth OUT of it?

That all depends, I suppose, on something we’ll call, for lack of a more readily-available term, the “appreciation factor.” If you derive personal satisfaction from immersing yourself within a highly personal and distinctive artistic vision the likes of which you’ll quite literally find NOWHERE else, then the answer is a very enthusiastic “yes.” But if you don’t have the time, inclination, or desire to grapple with this work on anything more than a liminal “surface” level (and absolutely no judgments here if this describes you — we all have our own individual tastes), then I can’t in good conscience recommend you buy these “comics.” They demand that you meet them on their own terms, and the very first of those terms is decoding precisely what the REST of the terms are. Certainties are few and far between here, it’s true, but while A SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK doesn’t fit any preconceived notions of WHAT superhero comic books are, there’s still no real question that it is EXACTLY what it bills itself as being.

I also think it’s reasonable to assume, even at this apparently-early stage, that this work roughly fits into the category of “superhero deconstruction” — something that’s been so done to death that I can easily understand why even reading those words would put somebody off. But it’s not deconstructing the superhero via narrative means alone. Visually, formally, even conceptually, Parsons is splitting the idea apart like Oppenheimer did with the atom. There’s no telling what will emerge from it — perhaps, at least in part, because there’s no telling where we are within the overall framework of the project right now — but it’s sure to be fascinating, regardless of whether or not it’s entirely decipherable.

If your interest in piqued, check out more by going over to http://dominobooks.org/superhero1.html

And if your interest is piqued by the preview content I’ve been presenting this week, please check out more by going over to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse

Patreon Preview Week : “Marshal Law : The Deluxe Edition” By Pat Mills And Kevin O’Neill

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Next up on our Patreon preview week is a representative example of an occasional series I have going on there called “Retro Comics Corner” where I take a break from reviewing contemporary comics to cast a critical eye on older stuff. If you fid it to your liking, please consider signing up for said Patreon, a link to which will follow this review.

What a long, strange trip it’s been for Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s MARSHAL LAW. Originally “green-lit” by Archie Goodwin, then-head honcho of Marvel’s creator-owned Epic Comics line, back in 1987 as a kind of “last word” on super-hero deconstruction, the creators followed Goodwin out the door when he left for DC, but opted not to join him there, instead throwing in their lot with short-lived British comics publishing venture Apocalypse (where Mills was put in charge of the equally-shot-lived TOXIC! anthology title) before returning the project back to these shores via Dark Horse. The eventual end of the comic (and the character) as a going concern didn’t mean Mills and O’Neill were done with their vagabond ways, though —

In 2010, Top Shelf announced that they had entered into an agreement with the pair to publish an omnibus collection of all of Marshal’s appearances, even his late-period crossovers with Erik Larsen’s SAVAGE DRAGON, Clive Barker’s PINHEAD, and Doug Mahnke’s THE MASK, but somehow that fell by the wayside, and when we finally DID get a “definitive” MARSHAL LAW book, it came in the form of DC’s 2013 MARSHAL LAW : THE DELUXE EDITION,  a snazzy hardcover that was notably WITHOUT the “team-up” comics which had originally been slated for inclusion. Methinks copyright issues are the primary reason that this supposedly “complete” collection isn’t, in fact, complete, but still — at nearly 500 pages, it’s at the very least a COMPREHENSIVE volume by anyone’s definition of the word.

It’s also a DAMNED uneven one, truth be told. but the responsibility for that should be laid squarely on the shoulders of Mills and O’Neill themselves, who kept this concept going well beyond it’s “sell-by” date, with each outing delivering diminishing returns until all that was left was hollow self-parody. Make no mistake, though : the first MARSHAL LAW series, latterly sub-titled “Fear And Loathing,” is great fun and succeeds wildly in chiseling an epitaph on the entire concept of the super-hero in general. Sure, there’s a somewhat predictable mystery story shoehorned into the proceedings that revolves around one of the more painfully obvious “MacGuffins” you’re ever likely to come across, but that’s not REALLY what the comic was about, per se : rather, it was about Mills and O’Neill venting their spleen on super-heroes on a conceptual level, and on the hyper-violent “realistic” iterations of them that were polluting the comics landscape at the time in particular. Sure, it was self-indulgent to the point of being borderline-masturbatory, but that was the whole POINT. These two hated super-heroes, and even more than that hated what had BECOME of super-heroes, and they wanted to hammer that hatred home in a manner that mocked and ridiculed the genre’s excesses by dialing them up to 11. This is a narrow creative remit, to be sure, but they hit it out of the park.

Lost in all the hubbub, though, is the obvious debt the whole premise owed to JUDGE DREDD, with Marshal himself essentially being a stand-in for his more famous predecessor and the ruined post-apocalyptic hellscape of San Futuro functioning as Mills and O’Neill’s very own Mega-City One. Both protagonist and city were exceptionally well thought-out, however, it must be said, and very few exercises in “borrowed” world-building have anywhere near the effort put into them that this one did. No points for originality, then, but points APLENTY for execution.

Cracks in the firmament began to show pretty quickly after “Fear And Loathing,” though : when next we encountered Marshal, it was in a series of oversized one-offs that would pop up sporadically, with dead giveaways about the plots of each being baked right into the titles : “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan,” “Kingdom Of The Blind,” “The Hateful Dead,” and “Super Babylon” won’t leave anyone wondering what the hell is happening in the books themselves,  and it’s no exaggeration to say that each is  more concerned with upping the ante in terms of overall OTT-ness than they are about anything else. Kudos to O’Neill for clearly having a blast delineating all the carnage Mills could throw his way, but by the time of Marshal’s final solo adventure, the two-part “Secret Tribunal,” the comic was little more than a “greatest hits” pastiche forever seeking to re-capture some frisson of its faded glory. There was still a fair amount of stupid fun to be had for readers, sure, but even then most of that stupid fun came tinged with hollow reminders of just how fucking COOL this comic USED to be.

By the time this book ends, then, it’s honestly no stretch to say that you’ll be rather glad it’s over, but there are a smattering of extras on hand to make you feel good about the purchase, including a highly-detailed full color map of San Futuro, some “virgin” cover art, and a couple of early-version character sketches. None of this is earth-shaking stuff by any stretch, and my understanding is that much of it is “ported over” from an earlier Graphitti Designs collection of “Fear And Loathing” and “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan” that boasts much more in terms of backmatter (good luck finding that!), but again : this is all more than exhaustive enough for anyone other than the hardest of hard-core fans. Unless you happen to number yourself among that lot, then, the MAIN value to be had from this collection is twofold : it reminds you of just how apropos for its time the first MARSHAL LAW series was — and of how quickly the times passed poor old Marshal by. “Fear And Loathing” is certainly good enough to DESERVE to stand as a capstone on the entire concept of ultra-violent, “mature” super-hero revisionism, but the fact that it DOESN’T is at least partially down to Mills and O’Neill’s decision to keep the concept going beyond that point.

Want more? Then please give my Patreon a look by heading over to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse

Mohawk (1956, directed by Kurt Neumann)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the late 18th century, Boston socialite Cynthia Stanhope (Lori Nelson) travels to Fort Alden in upstate New York to visit her fiancé, a painter named Jonathan Adams (Scott Brady), who has been commissioned to paint the local scenery.  As soon as Cynthia and her mother arrive, they are shocked to discover that not only Jonathan has been painting pictures of the members of the Native local tribes but that he is also now flirting with a barmaid named Greta.  Greta is played by Allison Hayes so who can blame him?  Cynthia wants to return to their normal upper class life in Boston but Adams has fallen for the untamed wilderness of the frontier.

When Onida (Rita Gam), the daughter of Iroquois chief Kowanen (Ted de Corsia) is captured during a raid on the fort, Adams is assigned to escort her back to her tribe.  Leaving behind Cynthia and Greta, Adams falls in love with Onida over the course of the journey.  When he meets the Iroquois, he earns the respect of her father and the entire tribe when he agrees to paint the chief’s portrait.

Meanwhile, a haughty settler named Butler (John Hoyt) is trying to play the army and the Iroquois against each other, feeding both of them false information in an attempt to spark a war.  Butler is hoping that a war will lead to both sides wiping each other out so that he can once again have the valley to himself.  When it turns out that his words might not be enough to spark a war, Butler resorts to murder.  When Kowanen’s son is killed, the Iroquois prepare for war while Adams is framed for the crime and finds himself tied to a stake.

Mohawk is a standard B-western, with a plot that is largely lifted from John Ford’s Drums Along The Mohawk.  Unfortunately, Adams is about as sympathetic hero as you would expect someone manipulating three different women to be and, when it comes to depicting the Iroquois, Mohawk resorts to too many clichés.  This is one of those westerns where the Native characters speak broken English, even when they are just talking to each other.

Mohawk does have three things to recommend it.  Number one, John Hoyt was a master at playing haughty villains and Butler is easy to root against.  You will look forward to seeing him get his comeuppance.  Number two, Allison Hayes was a force of nature and that’s true even in this film, where she’s not given nearly enough to do.  Number three, one of Iroquois braves is played by Neville Brand.  A highly decorated World War II veteran, Brand built a long career playing tough guys.  In Mohawk, it only takes one look at Neville Brand to know that this isn’t someone you want to mess with.  Anyone watching would want to stay on Neville Brand’s good side.

Otherwise, Mohawk is forgettable.  Two years after it was released, Mohawk’s director Kurt Neumann, would be responsible for the much more memorable The Fly.

Book Review: Things I’ve Said But Probably Shouldn’t Have by Bruce Dern, with Christopher Fryer and Robert Crane

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bruce Dern is an interesting person.

He’s an actor, of course.  He spent a lot of his early career playing bad guys.  He was in a lot of biker films.  He killed John Wayne in a western.  Even Dern’s heroes were often unhinged in some way.  As he aged, he made the transition to becoming a character actor.  He still often plays characters who have their own individual way of looking at the world but now a Dern character is just as likely to be seen dispensing wisdom as he is to be seen killing people.

In real life, Bruce Dern was born into a socially prominent family.  (When Dern was born, his grandfather was serving as Secretary of War in FDR’s presidential cabinet.)  His godfather was Adlai Stevenson, who ran for president a handful of times.  Dern was a championship runner in high school.  When he was 20, he tried out for the Olympics.  In Hollywood, he appeared in both studio productions and independent films.  He was friends with everyone from Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper to John Wayne.  He worked for both Robert Evans and Roger Corman.  At the same time that Dern was playing drug-crazed bikers in Roger Corman movies, he was perhaps unique for being one of the few young actors in Hollywood who didn’t do drugs.  As he has commented in several interviews, he played Peter Fonda’s acid guru in The Trip despite the fact that he had never so much as even held a joint.

Bruce Dern is one of those actors who tends to show up in a lot of documentaries about Hollywood in the 60s and 70s.  If you read a book about that era, you can be sure that you’ll come across a lot of quotes from Dern.  Usually, Dern comes across as being both witty and straight-forward.  He’s an opinionated guy and he doesn’t hold much back.  It’s not surprising that he would be someone who many would want to interview.

Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have is Bruce Dern’s memoir and it’s just as quirky as you would expect it to be.  Now, I should make cleat that the book was published in 2007, which was a a few years before Bruce Dern made his comeback with the Oscar-nominated Nebraska.  It was also written before Dern became a member of the Quentin Tarantino stock company and was introduced to an entirely new generation of filmgoers.  At the time this memoir was published, Dern was a part of the Big Love cast and his last “big” movie was Monster, in which he had a small but memorable role.  Things I’ve Said…. was written before the “resurgence” of Dern’s career and, as such, there are certain parts of the book that almost feel like an elegy.  At times, it’s almost as if Dern is saying, “Okay, I was never as big as I should have been but I still had fun.”  Fortunately, films like Nebraska and others reminded people of just how good an actor Bruce Dern actually is and, even in his mid-80s, he’s a busy character actor.

As you would probably expect, Things I’ve Said is a bit of a quirky book.  If anything, it reads as if Dern just sat down beside you and started talking about his career.  It skips back and forth through time.  Just because a chapter begins by discussing one subject, there’s no guarantee that it’ll stick with that topic.  A chapter about his Oscar-nominated turn in Coming Home also contains his thoughts on Florence Henderson (“A Cloris Leachman type dame …. a real fox”) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Some of his best-known films are mentioned only in passing while others, like The The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, get an entire chapter’s worth.  He writes about how he came up with the perfect final line for Walter Hill’s The Driver and how he created his most memorable movie psycho, the blimp pilot in Black Sunday.  He writes about turning down roles that were offered by everyone from Woody Allen to Francis Ford Coppola to Bernardo Bertolucci.  (Coppola, Dern writes, offered him the role of Tom Hagen in The Godfather but just as a bargaining tactic to get Robert Duvall to reduce his salary demands.)  Dern writes about his friendship with Jack Nicholson and the other members of the Hollywood counter culture and how he always found himself competing with people like Nicholson and Scott Wilson for roles.  He also discusses how killing John Wayne in The Cowboys led to him receiving death threats and getting typecast as a villain.  Dern seems to be more annoyed by the typecasting than the threats.

It’s an enjoyable read.  Dern comes across as being a genuine eccentric but he’s the good type of eccentric as opposed to the type of eccentric who keeps dead animals in his basement.  He also comes across as being very confident.  He has no fear of saying that his performance saved certain movies.  But you know what?  Bruce Dern has saved a lot of movies.  So, if he’s a little bit overly sure of himself …. well, he’s the earned the right.

I’ve read a lot of bad actor memoirs and a lot of good actor memoirs.  Bruce Dern’s memoir is definitely one of the good ones.

AMV Of The Day: Gimme More (Kakegurui)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now seems like a good time for another AMV of the Day, especially one featuring music from Britney!

Anime: Kakegurui

Song: Gimme More (Britney Spears)

Creator: Apple Doe

(As always, please consider subscribing to this creator’s YouTube channel!)

Past AMVs of the Day

TV Review: Dexter: New Blood 1.9 “The Family Business” (dir by Sanford Bookstaver)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

We all knew that, at some point, Dexter would have to welcome Harrison into the family business.  It finally happened on this week’s episode of Dexter: New Blood.

Set on Christmas day (but, oddly enough, airing during the first week of January), the ninth episode of Dexter: New Blood found Dexter and Harrison finally bonding.  Dexter told Harrison the story of Wiggles the Clown though, at the insistence of Ghost Deb, Dexter said that he just told Wiggles to stop doing what he was doing.  Even when Dexter was telling the story, it was obvious that Harrison knew there was more to it than just Dexter giving a stern lecture.

Harrison also told Dexter that he had stabbed his friend and that he wasn’t the hero that everyone made him out to be.  Yeah, we all figured that out a while ago, Harrison!  Still, it was interesting to watch Harrison discover what the rest of us take for granted.  We’re so used to the idea of Dexter tracking down serial killers and murdering them that it’s easy to forget just how weird and traumatic it would be for someone to learn about it or witness it for the first time.  One of the big problems that I had with the final season of Dexter’s original run is that Deb never seemed to be truly shocked at the discovery that her brother was a serial killer.  Fortunately, the reboot did a better job with Harrison than the original did with Deb.

And yes, Harrison did learn the truth.  He and Dexter tracked down Kurt’s secret lair and saw Kurt’s “trophies.”  And when Harrison announced that Kurt needed to die, just the slightest smile came to Dexter’s lips.  Dexter managed to bring Harrison over to his side without actually having to confess to all of the people that he had killed.  Only after Harrison had announced that he was on board with the idea that some people deserved to die, did Dexter admit to killing Wiggles the Clown and Arthur Mitchell.

Kurt met his end in this episode.  Harrison watched as Dexter killed him and then, somewhat ominously, had a flashback to Rita’s murder.  Is Harrison going to realize that, for all of Dexter’s rationalizations, his father is a serial killer as well?  If Harrison truly buys into the code, then Dexter could be in some trouble.

Actually, Dexter might be in trouble regardless.  Angela appears to have figured out that Dexter killed the drug dealer.  And, at the end of this episode, she received a letter telling her that “Jim Lindsay Killed Matt Caldwell” and one of the titanium screws that was left behind after Dexter burned Matt’s body.  If Angela learns the truth, will she arrest Dexter or will she let him and Harrison go free?  Angela has sworn to uphold the law but Kurt also murdered Angela’s best friend.  And, as we learned on Sunday, Kurt also murdered Molly.  Angela might be tempted to let Dexter escape.  I guess we’ll find out next week.

It was an excellent episode, though I have to admit that I was really disappointed when Molly showed up as one of Kurt’s trophies.  When Molly first appeared, her character annoyed me but, as the season progressed, I came to appreciate both the character and Jamie Chung’s performance.  In many ways, she was the stand-in for the viewers.  It was hard not to feel that she deserved better than to be killed off-screen.  Indeed, considering that she knew that Kurt was probably a killer, you have to wonder how he managed to ever get to her in the first place.

Still, that aside, The Family Business was Dexter at its best.  The deliberate pace and the atmospheric direction all reminded of the classic early seasons of Dexter.  Michael C. Hall perfectly captured Dexter’s love of his work while Jack Alcott played Harrison with the right mix of fascination and fear.  Still, I have to wonder what the show’s end game is going to be.  Ghost Deb was pretty adamant about Dexter not bringing Harrison into the family business and Ghost Deb usually know what she’s talking about.

We’ll find out next week!

6 Shots From 6 Films: Special Robert Duvall Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we celebrate the 91st birthday of one of the finest American actors out there, Mr. Robert Duvall.  Ever since he made his film debut in 1962’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Duvall has been a regular presence in American cinema.  He’s an actor who has appeared in some of the best American films ever made (The Godfather, Network, Apocalypse Now, To Kill A Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and others) and he’s played a wide variety of characters.  He’s been everything from a lawyer to a cowboy to a network executive to a professional criminal to a cop and he’s never been less that convincing.  He’s got a filmography about which anyone would be jealous.  And, at an age when most actors have retired, Duvall is still working and taking the occasional part.

On a personal note, I have to say that, for someone who was born in California, raised in Maryland, and who started his career in New York, Robert Duvall is one of the few actors to have perfected both the Southern and the Southwestern accent.  Whenever I see him playing a Texan, I always have to remind myself that he’s not actually from around here.

In honor of Robert Duvall’s birthday, here are….

6 Shots From 6 Robert Duvall Films

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962, dir by Robert Mulligan, DP: Russell Harlan)

MASH (1970, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Harold E. Stine)

Apocalypse Now (1979, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Vittorio Storaro)

True Confessions (1981, dir by Ulu Grosbard, DP: Owen Roizman)

The Apostle (1997, dir by Robert Duvall, DP: Barry Markowitz)

The Judge (2014, dir by David Dobkin, DP: Janusz Kamiński)

Music Video of the Day: Night Fever by Bee Gees (1978, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Seeing as how I’ve spent the first few days of 2022 sharing music videos for danceable hits of the 70s, you had to know that I was eventually going to get to this one.  The name of the song is Night Fever and not, as is often incorrectly assumed, Saturday Night Fever.  Saturday Night Fever was the movie for which this song was recorded.  Night Fever indicates that the fever can hit any night, not just on a Saturday.

This video was apparently shot in 1978 but the Bee Gees didn’t release it until 2004.  I’m not sure why that is.  Perhaps all of the seedy motels gave the wrong impression about what the band was singing about.  Or maybe they just decided that John Travolta in that white suit was a better visual representation for what the Bee Gees were all about.  I will note that the same year this video was produced, the Bee Gees appeared in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band so, obviously, they weren’t too concerned with looking slightly silly.

The video was shot in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.  Supposedly, most of these motels have since been torn down.  That’s a shame as I think every resort town needs to have at least one strong row of seedy motels.  When my family lived in Colorado, we lived just a block away from some of the seediest motels known to man and whenever we would go back to visit our cousins in Colorado, I would always make it a point to see if the motels were still there.  They were.  They probably still are.  It’s been a while since I’ve been to Colorado.

Anyway, it’s a good song.  If it doesn’t make you want to dance, I don’t know what to say.  You may just not be a dancer.  But it’s never too late to learn!

Enjoy!