4 Shots From 4 Films: Executive Produced by George Harrison

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

4 Shots From 4 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 would have been the 77th birthday of my favorite members of the Beatles (not to mention The Traveling Wilburys), George Harrison. Harrison died far too young but he left behind a legacy of music that is celebrated to this day and will still be celebrated long after the rest of us have moved on.

While everyone knows George from his music, what is often forgotten is that Harrison is also often credited with helping to revive the British film industry. After the break-up of the Beatles, Harrison partnered with Denis O’Brien and formed HandMade Films. At a time when British cinema was struggling both financially and artistically, Harrison served as executive producer for some of the best films to come out of the British film industry. Harrison championed many talented British directors and he used his clout to get many otherwise difficult project produced. It’s fair to say that, if not for his support, the members of Monty Python would never have been able to make the then-controversial Life of Brian, which is now widely regarded as one of the best British comedies ever made.

Today, on his birthday, here are four shots of four films executive produced by George Harrison.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979, directed by Terry Jones)

The Missionary (1982, directed by Richard Loncraine)

A Private Function (1984, directed by Malcolm Mowbray)

Withnail and I (1987, directed by Bruce Robinson)

Music Video of the Day: Safe Home by Anthrax (2003, directed by Robert Carlsen)

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

“You have always been my safe home.”

Yes, that is Keanu Reeves walking down a highway medium while Anthrax performs the song in this video. What is Keanu doing there? He was a long-time fan of Anthrax and he just happened to be available when this video was being shot. This video came out while Reeves was still riding high from The Matrix films and it is easy to imagine Neo wandering about aimlessly. It’s much more difficult to imagine the same thing happening to John Wick, who always has a destination in mind.

Other than the movie star cameo, this is a no frills video from Anthrax, one that lets the music do the talking. I’m not a huge Anthrax fan but I always appreciate relatively direct videos like this.

This is James Hetfield’s favorite Anthrax song.

Enjoy!

The Baron and the Kid (1984, directed by Gary Nelson)

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Ever wonder what The Color of Money would have been like if it starred Johnny Cash and featured less Eric Clapton but more country and western on the soundtrack? The Baron and the Kid is here to satisfy your curiosity.

Johnny Cash is Will Addington, better known as The Baron. Back in the day, The Baron was the meanest and the most ruthless pool hustler around. He’d cheat people out of their money without even giving it a second thought. He drank. He doped. He womanized. He abused his wife, Dee Dee (June Carter Cash). After the Baron became the 9-ball world champion, Dee Dee left him and the Baron changed his ways. Now, years later, he only plays exhibition games for charity and the strongest thing that he drinks is grapefruit juice.

When a young hustler who calls himself the Cajun Kid (Greg Webb) challenges the Baron to a game, the Baron wins easily but he still recognizes that the Kid has a natural talent. When the Cajun Kid attempts to put up his mother’s wedding ring as stakes for another game, the Baron recognizes the ring as the one that Dee Dee used to wear on her finger. After talking to Dee Dee, the Baron discovers that the Kid is actually his son.

The Baron takes the Kid under his wing, hoping to train him to become a champion while, at the same time, getting to know his son. The Kid proves to be a difficult student. He’s cocky and, like the Baron did in his youth, he has a temper. He also has a manager, a good-for-nothing con artist named Jack Steamer (Darren McGavin). Steamer doesn’t want to lose the money that the Kid brings in and he plots to to keep him away from his father. The Baron, though, is determined to prevent the Kid from making the same mistakes that he made. However, when the Baron and the Kid both find themselves competing in the same championship, the Baron finds himself being tempted by his old demons.

The Baron and the Kid is okay for a made-for-tv movie. It’s predictable but Johnny Cash has such a formidable screen presence that it doesn’t matter that he was sometimes a stiff actor. The Baron’s past of booze and drugs mirrors Cash’s own past and when Cash, as the Baron, talks about how he’s trying to keep the Kid from making the sames mistakes, there’s little doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. Some of the pool sequences are creatively shot and Richard Roundtree has a great cameo as a cocaine dealer named Frosty. There’s nothing surprising about The Baron and the Kid but fans of Cash and the game of pool should enjoy it.

Music Video Of The Day: Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry (1991, directed by Paul Elledge)

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Needless to say, that’s the famous Gibby Haynes providing the vocals on Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hotrod. Gibby recorded the vocals while he was in Chicago, doing the first Lollapooloza tour. Ministry’s Al Jourgensen told Songfacts, “Gibby came down completely drunk off his ass. He couldn’t even sit on a stool, let alone sing. I mean, he was wasted. He fell off the stool about 10 times during the recording of that vocal. He made no sense and it was just gibberish. So I spent two weeks editing tape of what he did, thinking it still was better than what I was thinking of doing with the song.”

Fortunately, Gibby’s vocals saved both the song and probably the future of the band. Ministry had already been given an advance of $750,000 to make an album. According to Jourgensen, the band spent all the money on drugs and ended up with only this song to show for all of their efforts. In an attempt to at least get some of their money back, Warner Bros. released the song as a single and it quickly shot up the charts. For a while, at least, it was Warner Bros’s top selling-single of all time. As a result, Ministry got another advance of $750,000 and this time, they actually used the money to make an album.

As for the video, it’s all about car culture. Paul Elledge also directed two videos for Anthrax.

Enjoy!

Knockout (2011, directed by Anne Wheeler)

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

15 year-old Matthew Miller (Daniel Magder) is the grandson of a great boxer and would love to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps but his mother (Janet Kidder) would rather that Matthew become a doctor or a lawyer. Looking at Matthew, who is out-of-shape and wears glasses, it is hard not to think that his mother might have the right idea.

When Matthew transfers to a new school, he’s picked on by a group of bullies led by Hector (Jaren Brandt Bartlett). Matthew is lucky enough to find a group of fellow outcasts to hang out with but he still feels like something is missing from his high school experience. He decides to break his mother’s heart and join the school’s boxing club. The only problem is that Matthew doesn’t know how to throw a punch and Hector is the school’s boxing champion.

It’s a good thing that Dan, the school’s janitor, is both an ex-boxer and that he happens to be played by Stone Cold Steve Austin. Dan could have been a champion but he retired from professional boxing because he grew tired of the sport’s violent nature. Now, he’s just a high school janitor who looks out for the bullied and the oppressed. Dan takes Matthew under his wing and teaches Matthew not only how to throw a punch but how to take one as well.

One of the things that I loved about this movie is that whenever Dan would see Matthew being picked on and he would tell the bullies to stop, the bullies would laugh and say something like, “You’re just the janitor!” or “Shouldn’t you be mopping something up?” Yes, Dan is just the janitor but he still looks like Steve Austin. I don’t think even the worst teenage bully is going to look at someone who could obviously crush him without breaking a sweat and say, “Why don’t you take out the trash!?” When Dan steps up and tosses one of the bullies away from Matthew, everyone is shocked but again, haven’t they looked at him? He’s Steve Austin. He’s huge!

If you can suspend your skepticism about anyone outside of professional wrestling talking smack to Steve Austin, Knockout is a predictable but likable movie with a big heart. Nothing, and I mean nothing, about this movie will take you by surprise. But the actors are all good and the film wins points from me for having Matthew fall for one of his fellow outcasts instead of having him trying to win over a cheerleader-type. Plus, you got Steve Austin doing what he does best. That’s pretty cool.

Music Video of the Day: Hungry by Lita Ford (1990, directed by Jesse Dylan)

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Here are the lyrics to Lita Ford’s Hungry:

My nylons are melting down my legs
Your heart is pounding at my throat
I can’t catch my breath
I lost it when your fingertips
Ran down my back and up my neck
Your kiss makes me feel like this
I’m so hungry for your sex
I’m so hungry for your sex
I got an appetite for love tonight
I wanna taste your sweet thing
I wanna feel the sting of your sex, of your sex
My body all painted lipstick red
We ripped the sheets right off the bed
My fingernails left fiery trails
Across your back, oh, tell me baby
How’d you like that little pussycat scratch
I’m so hungry for your sex
I’m so hungry for your sex
I got an appetite for love tonight
I wanna taste your sweet thing
I wanna feel the sting of your sex, of your sex
I’m so hungry for your sex
I’m so hungry for your sex
I’m so hungry for your sex
I got an appetite for love tonight
I wanna taste your sweet thing
I wanna feel the sting of your sex, of your sex
I’m so hungry for your…

I’m not sure how you go from those lyrics to Alice in Wonderland, though Wonderland in this video is portrayed as being a very dark place. While Alice explores, Lita Ford writhes in a shallow pool of water. How it all links up is anyone’s guess.

This video was directed by Jesse Dylan, who also did videos for Lenny Kravitz and 3rd Bass.

Enjoy!

Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen (1988, directed by Lenny Wong)

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

If you ever wanted to see Tim Allen snap, “Fuck you!” at a room full of yuppies, Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen might be for you.

Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen was a stand-up comedy concert film, featuring 12 comedians who all “worked blue.” In the 80s, that meant a lot of cursing and a lot of jokes about oral sex and setting farts on fire. Some of the jokes are funny but, as far as being dirty, not a single comic on the stage comes anywhere as close to being as filthy as Bob Saget was in The Aristocrats. Today, Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen is best-known for featuring early appearances from not only Tim Allen but also Chris Rock, Jackie Martling, and Bill Hicks. The audience goes crazy when Hicks is introduced and Hicks does his trademark act, pacing the stage while smoking a cigarette and encouraging everyone to not shoot the John Lennons of the world but instead the assholes who sit at a stoplight with their right turn signal blinking. At the time that this film was shot, Chris Rock was all of 21 but he already knew how to take over and control a stage. Rock effortlessly goes from talking about little old white ladies dialing 9-1 whenever they see him on the street to the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign to the difficulty of living at home with a mother who regularly throws away his dirty magazines.

Some of the jokes are funnier than others. When you’re watching 12 comedians making jokes from the vantage point of 32 years in the future, it is to be expected that the end results might seem uneven. Since this was filmed in 1988, there’s a lot of dated jokes about cocaine, AIDS, the Olympics, and Ronald Reagan. The jokes that seem to work the best are the ones about men being immature and women getting sick of them, which just proves that universal truths never go out of fashion.

It seems like whenever you watch a comedy concert film from the 80s, you have to ask yourself whether or not these comedians would be able to perform on a college campus today. (Chris Rock, for instance, has said that he refuses to perform on campus because students are too sensitive.) Bill Hicks would get kicked off stage for daring to light up a cigarette and Jackie Martling would probably cause a riot. As for the rest of the performers, their acts in this film are frequently more profane than controversial. For the most part, though, they’re still funny and that’s the important thing.

Music Video of the Day: Lord of the Flies by Iron Maiden (1995, directed by ????)

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Lord of the Flies is based on William Golding’s famous book about a group of school children who get stranded on a deserted island and turn into savages. The lyrics are a literal interpretation of the book’s plot:

I don’t care for this world anymore
I just want to live my own fantasy
Fate has brought us to these shores
What was meant to be is now happening

I’ve found that I like this living in danger
Living on edge it makes feel as one
Who cares now what’s right or wrong,
it’s reality
Killing so we survive
Wherever we may roam
Wherever we may hide
We’ve got to get away

I don’t want existence to end
We must prepare ourselves for the elements
I just want to feel like we’re strong
We don’t need a code of morality

I like all the mixed emotion and anger
It brings out the animal the power you can feel
And feeling so high on this much adrenalin
Excited but scary to believe what we’ve become

Saints and sinners
Something within us
We are lord of flies

Saints and sinners
Something willing us
To be lord of the flies

The video was shot while Iron Maiden was touring the Holy Land and it’s a typical no frills Iron Maiden production. One thing that I’ve respected about bands like Iron Maiden is that the majority of their music videos are just clips of the band performing. They don’t need to do anything fancy to hold your attention. They just get out there on stage and play the Hell out of every song.

Enjoy!

Cinemax Friday: Killing Streets (1991, directed by Stephen Cornwell)

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Most of the time, late night Cinemax was dominated by noirish films starring Shannon Tweed but, occasionally, the network did slip in a low-budget action flick. Killing Streets is a typical example of one of those films.

A Marine named Craig Brandt (Michael Pare) has disappeared in Beirut so his twin brother Chris (also played by Michael Pare) flies all the way over from Dayton, Ohio to search for him. Even though everyone says that Craig’s dead, Chris knows that it isn’t true because, as a twin, he and Craig have a psychic connection. It turns out, of course, that Chris is right. Craig is being held prisoner by terrorist leader Abdel (Alon Aboutboul). Chris is determined to rescue Craig, even though Charles (Lorenzo Lamas), an official at the American embassy, orders him to leave the country. Chris may just be a high school basketball coach but that doesn’t stop him from going all Jack Bauer on every terrorist that he meets. With the help of diplomat Sandra Ross (Jennifer Runyon) and Gilad (Gabi Amrani), the Middle East’s most helpful taxi driver, Chris sets out to rescue his brother.

When I started watching Killing Streets, I was excited because, according to the opening credits, it starred Lorenzo Lamas and it was produced by Menahem Golan. Unfortunately, for the most of the movie, Lamas doesn’t get to do much other than bark out orders in one of the least convincing Southern accents that I’ve ever heard. Instead, the first part of the movie is all about Michael Pare. Michael Pare usually isn’t capable of showing enough emotion to be convincing as one character. Now, imagine him playing two characters. While one Michael Pare is walking around Beirut and searching for clues, the other Michael Pare is sitting in a cell and getting beaten and, since they both always have the same blank expression on their face, the only way you can tell which Michael Pare is which is by paying attention to who has more blood on them. The whole time, you just want Lorenzo Lamas to show up and start showing off his Renegade skills but instead, he’s stuck telling one of the Michael Pares that he better get on the next plane back home.

Luckily, towards the end of the movie, the two Michael Pares team up with Lorenzo Lamas and they spend about ten minutes shooting guns and blowing stuff up and doing all of the other things that we want to see happen in a film like this. It just takes a while to get there and while Menahem Golan may have produced this film, he didn’t direct it so, even though the ending is exciting, most people will probably lose interest before they get there. As far as action films about rescuing hostages in the Middle East are concerned, this is no Delta Force.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Sam Peckinpah Edition

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

95 years ago today, Sam Peckinpah was born in Fresno, California. He went on to become one of the most influential and most self-destructive directors of all time. Peckinpah was as legendary for his combative personality and his behind-the-scenes conflicts with the studios as he was for his talent.

Even after he revolutionized the western with The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah often struggled to get work and, when he died at the too young age of 59, it was after years of being neglected by the same industry that had once embraced him. Fortunately, a new generation of filmmakers discovered and appreciated Peckinpah’s work and have kept Mad Sam’s legacy going today. Directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez owe a huge debt to him. (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood particularly felt as if it was suffused with the spirit of Peckinpah.) Whenever you see someone getting shot in slow motion or a group of old timers (whether they’re criminals or cowboys) getting ready to take a final stand, you’re seeing the influence of Sam Peckinpah.

In honor of Sam Peckinpah, here are:

4 Shots from 4 Films