Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: Yankee Rose by David Lee Roth (1986, directed by Peter Angelus and David Lee Roth)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You might not guess it from the music video but Yankee Rose was actually David Lee Roth’s tribute to the Statue of Liberty, which was going through major renovations for the 100th anniversary of its dedication when this song was released.

(Check out Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins if you want a close-up look at what was happening to the Statue at the time.)

Of course, Roth knew what sold on MTV so the music video doesn’t feature the Statue.  Instead, it features Roth’s trademark humor, showmanship, and sexual innuendo.  In typical Roth fashion, it also starts out with a comedy sketch that would probably get the video taken down if it were released today.  Perhaps more than any other frontman, Roth is someone who truly epitomizes an era.

Roth directed this video, along with Peter Angelus.  Angelus also plays the sleazy playboy who appears at the start of the video.

Enjoy!

Hold ‘Em Yale (1935, directed by Sidney Lanfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Georgie, the Chaser (Cesar Romero) is a con artist who works for a low-level gangster named Sunshine Joe (William Frawley).  When Georgie reads about an heiress named Clarice van Cleve (Patricia Ellis) who impulsively falls in love with any man wearing a uniform, Georgie pretends to be a member of the Foreign Legion and tracks her down.  Georgie thinks that Clarice’s father will pay him off, just as he’s paid off all of her other suitors.  Instead, Clarice’s father disinherits her and Clarice ends up living at Georgie’s place, along with his other criminal associates (Andy Devine, Warren Hymer, and George E. Stone).

Georgie reacts by getting out of town, leaving Clarice behind with his good-natured gang.  However, even the gang gets tired of Clarice insisting that they dress up for dinner and that they all get a good night’s sleep.  After Sunshine Joe cheats them out of their money, the remaining criminals head to the Yale-Harvard football game, hoping to win some bets and to set Clarice up with the player that her father wants her to marry, studious benchwarmer Hector Wilmot (Buster Crabbe).

Just a little over an hour long, Hold ‘Em Yale is actually a pretty amusing movie.  It was based on a short story by Damon Runyon and all of the characters are familiar Runyon types, streetwise but good-natured criminals who enjoy drinking and gambling and the film gets a lot of laughs out of their reactions to Clarice’s attempts to civilize them.  Patricia Ellis is great as the ditzy Clarice and this film provides a chance to see Buster Crabbe playing a character who isn’t a natural-born athlete for once.  It’s a minor film but worth watching for the cast and the snappy dialogue.  Who would have guessed a good movie could be built around Ivy League football?

 

Jungle Siren (1942, directed by Sam Newfield)

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Captain Gary Hart (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekick, Sgt. Mike Jenkins (Paul Bryar), are sent to the jungles of Africa, where Nazi infiltrators are encouraging Chief Selangi (Jess Lee Brooks) to side with the Third Reich and allow them to set up a base.  In their effort to stop the Nazis, Hart and Jenkins are aided by Kuhlaya (Ann Corio), a woman whose parents were killed by Selangi and who now lives in the jungle with a chimpanzee and a doctor (Milton Kibbee) who serves as her protector.  Kuhlaya carries a bow and arrow, which she used to battle the Nazis.  Hart and Jenkins have actual guns and probably could have ended the Nazi plot early just by using them as soon as they arrived but then the movie couldn’t be stretched to 68 minutes.

This is a pretty bad Poverty Row film, memorable just for Crabbe’s typically earnest and athletic performance and the presence of Ann Corio, who was a famous stripper in the 40s who tried to transition into films after Mayor La Guardia ordered the closure of New York’s burlesque houses.  Corio had legs for miles but she was a terrible actress.  At one point, Mike Jenkins says that if he keeps exercising, “I’ll have a physique like Buster Crabbe!”  That’s about as clever as this slow-moving film gets.

As is typical of jungle films that were made in the 40s, the “tribesmen” are pretty much treated as if they’re interchangeable and the only one who is given a personality is the evil Selangi.  Several of them are killed over the course of the movie, not because they were doing anything wrong but just because they were in the wrong place.  (The most egregious example is an innocent native who ends up with one of Kuhlaya’s arrows in his back because he was unfortunate enough to step in front of Selangi at the last moment.)  No one, our heroes included, really seems to care about them or their future.  Even by the standards of the era, Jungle Siren feels extremely condescending and prejudiced in its portrayal of the natives.  The idea that the Nazis, with their Aryan obsession, would ever team up with Chief Selangi is just one of the film’s problems.

Director Sam Newfield was responsible for some entertaining and cheap westerns.  I’ve reviewed a few of them.  He should have stayed out the jungle.

I Come In Peace (1990, directed by Craig R. Baxley)

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“I come in peace.”

“And you go in pieces.”

How have I not reviewed this one yet?

Dolph Lundgren is Jack Crain, a Houston cop who teams up with FBI agent Larry Smith (Brian Benben) to investigate who is killing criminals in H-town.  The killer is a drug dealer but not your everyday drug dealer.  He’s an alien named Talec (Matthias Hues) and he’s figured out how to say “I come in peace,” but the rest of the English language is beyond him.  “I come in peace,” turns out to be the scariest phrase you can hear when you’re being pursued by a white-haired, intergalactic mass murderer.  His targets include Jesse Vint and Michael J. Pollard.  This terminator wannabe is after character actors!

On the second-tier action stars of the 90s, Lundgren was the one who could actually act.  Van Damme could actually do all the acrobatic stunts his characters did but he couldn’t show emotion like Lundgren.  Steven Seagal seemed like he could handle himself in a fight but he lacked Lundgren’s self-aware humor.  Lundgren plays Jack as almost being a parody of the type of hard-boiled cop who is always getting yelled at by the commissioner for wasting the city’s money.  Brian Benben is remembered, by some, as the star of HBO’s Dream On, the sitcom that convinced a generation of young men that there’s nothing women love more than obscure pop cultural obsessions.  Benben is actually pretty funny in I Come In Peace.  He’s the everyman who can’t believe he’s having to deal with an intergalactic drug dealer.  Good heroes need a good villain and Matthias Hues is just right as the drug dealing alien who literally doesn’t know what he’s saying.

If you want to see a Terminator rip-off with nonstop action, a memorable villain, frequently (and intentionally) funny dialogue, an Al Leong cameo, and Dolph Lundgren as a hero who pushes people around just because he feels like it, I Come In Peace is the movie for you!

Prisoner of War (1954, directed by Andrew Marton)

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The setting is the Korean War.  After getting information that American POWs are being tortured and brainwashed in North Korean prisoner-of-war camps, Major Hale (Harry Morgan) assigns Webb Sloane (Ronald Reagan) to go undercover.  After parachuting behind enemy lines, Webb spots a group of POWs being marched through the snow and joins the group.  From the minute that Webb joins the march, he begins to observe war crimes.  The death march itself, with the POWs being forced to move in freezing weather, is itself a war crime.  At the POW camp, Webb discovers the presence of an arrogant Soviet interrogator (Oscar Homolka) and a routine designed to break the POWs down until their ready to betray their native country.  Some POWS, like Captain Stanton (Steve Forrest), refuse to break.  Others, like cowardly Jesse Treadman (Dewey Martin), break all too quickly.  Webb sends the information back to Hale and eventually tries to make his escape.

It’s not terrible.  That the North Koreans and, later, the North Vietnamese tortured their POWs and forced some of them to denounce America is a matter of the historical record and, for a 1954 film, Prisoner of War doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the torture that POWs were often subjected too.  Of all of Reagan’s film, Prisoner of War had the strongest anti-communist message, though Reagan himself feels miscast as a hard-boiled secret agent.  (Reagan’s affability comes through even in a film set in a POW camp.)  Sending someone undercover into a prisoner of war camp and then hoping that they’ll find a way to escape doesn’t sound like the most efficient way to determine if the Geneva Convention is being violated.

The film features a dog who is found by one of the POWs.  Don’t get attached.

Street Fighter (1994, directed by Stephen E. de Souza)

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What does the M. stand for in M. Bison?

Originally, it was supposed to stand for Mike but my theory is that it stands for Marvelous because how else can you describe Raul Julia’s performance as the villain of Street Fighter?  Julia was dying of stomach cancer when he played Bison, a condition reflected by his gaunt appearance.  But Julia still obviously threw himself into every scene, delivering every melodramatic line as if it was the most important piece of dialogue that he had ever been trusted with delivering.  As a film, Street Fighter is an overedited mess that features one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s worst performances.  Raul Julia saves it, though.  He gets some of the worst lines and transforms them into the best lines through sheer determination.  That man could have read the phone book and made it interesting.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is Col. Guile in this early video game adaptation.  This isn’t one of Van Damme’s better performances.  He doesn’t really play the Guile from the game.  Instead, he’s just Van Damme with a blue beret and an American flag on his bicep.  Far better are Damian Chapa as Ken and Bryon Mann as Ryu, even though neither gets to do as much as a fan of the game would want them to.  Ming-Na Wen is a promising Chun Li but, instead of focusing on her fighting skill, the movie gets bogged down in trying to set her up for a sequel that would never come.  Are you a fan of Cammy?  Don’t get excited because all Kylie Minogue does is ask Guile if he’s okay.  I did like Wes Studi as Sagat and Gregg Rainwater and Peter Tuiasosopo as T. Hawk and Honda but it still feels like only Raul Julia gives a performance that can compete with the video game version of his character.

There were four editors credited for Street Fighter and maybe that explains why the fights are a mess and the plot is impossible to follow.  It’s a video game adaptation and I don’t demand much but I would like to know who is winning each fight.  The film’s visual scheme, meant to duplicate the look of the game, showed some promise but the editing gave the movie a frantic feel that made it difficult to really appreciate the production design.

There’s never really been a good Street Fighter film but I still think it could happen with the right cast and crew.  If Mortal Kombat could (eventually) be turned into a decent movie, why not Street Fighter?  I still don’t think anyone will ever top Raul Julia as M. Bison, though.  Raul Julia made you believe in Pax Bisonica!

“And peace will reign and all humanity will bow to me in humble gratitude.” — M. Bison

Dead Or Alive (1944, directed by Elmer Cifton)

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In this Poverty Row western, the Texas Rangers, a trio of western do-gooders who appeared in a handful of films, are sent to a small town to stop the Yackey Gang, led by the town’s saloon keeper (Ray Bennett).

The Texas Rangers are led by Tex Haines (Tex Ritter), who is known as the Idaho Kid despite apparently being from Texas.  Tex goes undercover as a lawyer and tries to rally the community to stand up the Yackey Gang.  Tex also sings some songs because he’s a singing cowboy along with being a cowboy who can hold his own in bar brawl.  Maybe if he didn’t sing so much, there wouldn’t be as many brawls.  Dave Wyatt (Dave O’Brien) is the younger Ranger who goes undercover and joins that Yackey Gang.  Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkinson) is the comic relief, who loses a lot of money at Yackey’s casino but only to help Dave maintain his cover.  The film was an obvious rush job and the plot is far more difficult to follow than any 54-minute film should be.  The kids at the matinee probably enjoyed it, though.  It delivers exactly what fans of the old B-westerns expect, including Charles King as yet another villain.

Tex Ritter, who appeared in a lot of these films, was also the father of actor John Ritter.  In 1970, long after the days of the poverty row westerns, Tex Ritter ran for the Senate in Tennessee but he lost the primary.  If he had won, he would have been the Republican candidate against Al Gore’s father.  That would have been a battle for the ages.

Music Video of the Day: Encore, Thank You, Goodnight by Sammy Hagar (2025, directed by ZZ Satriani)

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When it comes to Van Halen, I will always prefer the music from the David Lee Roth days to what was produced by Sammy Hagar but that’s nothing against Hagar.  Sammy may not have had Diamond Dave’s showmanship (which was as important to Van Halen’s early success as Eddie’s virtuosity) but he was still a good front man who brought his own style to the band.  Sammy was and is one of the best in the business and, at 77 years old, he still rocks.

With Encore, Thank You, Goodnight, Sammy Hagar pays tribute to Eddie Van Halen and his time with the band.  Performing with Hagar are almost all of the members of Chickenfoot, including former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, making this video both a tribute to one of Hagar’s bands and a reunion of another.  (Of the Chickenfoot lineup, only drummer Chad Smith is missing.)

Enjoy!

I Killed Wild Bill Hickok (1956, directed by Richard Talmadge)

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Not that Wild Bill Hickok!

This low-budget western programmer tries to draw viewers in by using the name of an icon of the old west but it doesn’t take place in Deadwood, there’s no poker game, no dead man’s hand, and Wild Bill (Tom Brown) is presented as being a corrupt sheriff who works for evil businessman Jim Bailey (Denver Pyle).  Denver Pyle, we all know him best as Uncle Jesse on the Dukes of Hazzard.  He’s a bad guy here, the film’s Boss Hogg.

Our hero and the man who kills Wild Bill Hickok is a horse trader Johnny Rebel, who tells his story in flashback and who is often called “Mr. Rebel.”  Johnny Rebel is played by Johnny Carpenter, no relation to the director.  This Johnny Carpenter was a stunt man who took control of his career and wrote and played lead in a series of forgettable B-westerns, like this one.  Carpenter probably could have been quite the hero in the Poverty Row days, when fast-paced westerns were being released on a weekly basis and directors and actors knew exactly what a matinee audience wanted.  By the time I Killed Wild Bill Hickok came out, westerns had started to grow up.

There’s the usual amount of stock footage.  Director Richard Talmadge was himself a former stunt man so he does get a few good stunts into the last 15 minutes of the movie.  Before the final gun battle, this movie about Wild Bill Hickok is nowhere near wild enough.

 

Shadows of Death (1945, directed by Sam Newfield)

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After a railroad agent is murdered and his map of the future locations of the railroad is stolen, Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) rides into a frontier town and searches for the guilty party.  Fortunately, for Billy, his best Fuzzy Q. Jones is the mayor, the sheriff, and the town barber!  Unfortunately, local gunslinger Clay Kincaid (Eddie Hall) wants to make a name for himself by taking on the famous Billy Carson.  Corrupt businessman Landreau (Charles King) encourages Clay by lying to him and telling him that Bully is planning on stealing Clay’s girl, Babs (Dona Dax).

A standard Poverty Row western, Shadows of Death was made by the same crew and cast who were involved with most of Buster Crabbe’s Billy The Kid films.  I’m not sure if Billy Carson is meant to be the same character as Billy the Kid, though.  Billy the Kid always had bounty hunters after him but Billy Carson works for the railroad.  However, it would be strange if Fuzzy Q. Jones just happened to be the favored sidekick of two gunslingers who just happen to both be named Billy.  Along with Fuzzy’s vaudeville style comedy, one thing that audiences could always take for granted was that Charles King would play the villain in these movies and Frank Ellis would always be his henchman.  I always wonder if audiences in the 40s noticed that Charles King’s businessman and Frank Ellis’s gunslinger always returned from the dead with every B-western that came out.

My favorite scene in this one is Billy bursting into Landreau’s office, just for Landreau to say that he expects visitors to knock.  Billy pauses long enough to knock on the door before getting down to the business of frontier justice.