Street (2015, directed by Bradford May)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

After witnessing a fight between two criminals and a young man in a convenience store, Ozzy (Shashawnee Hall) decides to track the man down. Ozzy owns a gym and he thinks that the man could be one of the next great MMA fighters. When Ozzy finds Remo Street (Casper Smart), he offers Remo a job at his gym. Street will just be cleaning up the place and serving as a sparring partner but he’ll also get to train for free. Street agrees.

Street almost immediately runs afoul Ozzy’s main fighter, Greg (John Brickner). Greg is the son of the gum’s co-owner, James (Gregory Fawcett), a gambling addict who is in debt to the Russian mob. (Those same Russian mobsters are also forcing Street to fight in an underground fight club.) Greg does not appreciate that way that Street looks at his sister, Jasmine (Kate Miner). After Greg injures his usual sparring partner, Ozzy gives the job to Street. Greg and Street have to train hard because the championship is coming up.

Though it may take place in the world of MMA, Street is a typical boxing film and it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. The fight scenes should be the highlight of the movie but they are so poorly edited that it’s hard to keep track of who is fighting who or who is winning. The final fight, which should have been the film’s crowning moment, feels like an anti-climax. The best boxing films emphasize the strategy and the training that the fighter uses to defeat his opponent but, in Street, we don’t even get to know who the fighters are or what their strengths are. Casper Smart gives a likable performance in the title role but Street never scores a knockout.

Music Video of the Day: Fly to the Angels by Slaughter (1990, directed by John Shea)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

The music video for this power ballad opens with a reminder that it’s good to be a star. Then the action moves from black-and-white color to let us know that Slaughter is still a sensitive band, one that can still performer in an airplane hangar after facing hundreds of record store groupies.

This video was directed by Jim Shea, who has worked with almost everyone from the 80s forward. He also directed the video for The Bangles’s cover of Hazy Shade of Winter and has worked with Martika, Winger, Brad Paisley, Barbra Streisand, John Fogerty, and others.

Enjoy!

Great Moments In Television History #34: The Hosts of Real People Say “Get High On Yourself!”

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In the fall of 1981, producer Robert Evans and NBC collaborated on Get High On Yourself week. For one week, the network featured its stars encouraging viewers to “Get High On Yourself!:” It all led up to a Get High On Yourself special, which Evans supervised as a part of the community service to which he was sentenced after he was caught getting high on cocaine.

In this clip, the hosts of an early reality show called Real People encourage viewers to “get high on yourself.” Of the hosts, Fred Willard was probably the only one who wasn’t high when this was filmed. Seen today, it’s impossible to watch this without feeling like Willard is doing a bit in an unreleased Christopher Guest movie.

Previous Moments In Television History:

Spaceballs (1987, directed by Mel Brooks)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

President Skroob (Mel Brooks), the evil and incompetent leader of Planet Spaceball, has squandered all of the air on his planet and is planning on stealing the atmosphere of the planet Druida. To pull this off, he arranges for the idiotic Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) to marry Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), the princess of Druida. (All together now: “She doesn’t look Druish.”) Vespa and her droid, Dot Matrix (voice by Joan Rivers), flee Druida with Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) in pursuit.

In debt to the intergalactic gangster, Pizza the Hut (voiced by Dom DeLuise), a mercenary named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his associate, the man-dog hypbrid Barf (John Candy), accept a contract from Vespa’s father (Dick Van Patten) to track down his daughter. They take off in their space Winnebago to bring Vespa home. Though they start only interested in money, Lone Star and Barf come to learn about love, freedom, and a mystical power known as the Schwartz. (“No, the Schwartz!”)

Back when I was growing up and just being able to have HBO made you the coolest guy on the block, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies. I watched it every time that it came on cable. As usual with Mel Brooks, there were a lot of double entendres that went over my young head but there was also enough goofy humor that I could laugh at what was going on. I could quote all the lines. I laughed whenever Rick Moranis showed up in his Darth Vader-costume. I laughed at John Candy’s facial expressions. I laughed when Mel Brooks showed up as Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda. Pizza the Hut? That’s hilarious when you’re a kid!

I recently rewatched the film. Revisiting it was a lesson in how your memory can trick you. I could still quote most of the lines with reasonable accuracy but nothing was quite the way I remembered it. Rick Moranis and John Candy were still hilarious and, being older, I could better appreciated the frustration felt by George Wyner’s Colonel Sandurz. I also realized what a good performance Bill Pullman gave as Lone Star. While everyone else mugged for the camera, Pullman played his role straight.

I also discovered that a lot of the scenes that I remembered as being hilarious were actually just mildly amusing. Mel Brooks was always hit-and-miss as a director, the type who would toss everything and the kitchen sink into his films. Spaceballs has a lot of hilarious scenes but it’s obvious that Brooks didn’t have the same affection for the source material as he did with Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or even High Anxiety. Brooks is poking fun at Star Wars because it’s popular but he doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings, one way or the other, about George Lucas’s space epic.

I still laughed, though. Even if Spaceballs wasn’t the masterpiece that I remembered it being, I still enjoyed rewatching it. The jokes that hit were funny enough to make up for the ones that missed. Even with his weaker films, Mel Brooks is a national treasure.

Great Moments In Comic Book History #36: Marvel Publishes Star Wars #1

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

As strange as it seems now, the Star Wars comic book series nearly didn’t happen.

In 1975, while Star Wars was still in pre-production, George Lucas approached DC Comics and offered them the chance to adapt his upcoming film into a comic book. When DC turned Lucas down, Lucasfilm’s publicity supervisor, Charles Lippincott, Jr., took the project to Marvel Comics.

At first, Stan Lee turned down the project because he didn’t want to commit to a series before the film itself had been completed. (Again, as strange as it sees now, Star Wars was not originally expected to become the commercial hit that it did.) Lippincott, still trying to set up a series somewhere, then tried to recruit Roy Thomas to write it. After he was allowed to look at a production sketch of the Cantina scene, Thomas realizes that Star Wars was tailor-made for a comic book adaptation. Thomas arranged for Lippincott to get a second meeting with Stan Lee and, this time, the comic book adaptation was greenlit.

Allowed to look at an early draft of the script and also to visit the set during shooting, writer Roy Thomas and artist Howard Chaykin collaborated on a six-issue adaptation of the movie. The series actually came out before the film. The first issue was released on April 12th, a full month before the movie was released into theaters. Along with Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, the comic book series play a huge role in publicizing a film that many were expecting to be dismissed as just being a B-movie for kids.

Because no one expected the film or the comic book series to be a huge success, Marvel was able to negotiate a very favorable contract with Lucasfilm, one that Marvel almost complete artistic control over the comic and which also allowed Marvel to use the Star Wars character with no royalty payments until the series sold 100,000 issues. When the success of the film led to the comic book become the industry’s top seller from 1977 through 1979, the financial windfall saved Marvel from having to file for bankruptcy.

For many future Star Wars fans, their first exposure to characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader came in April of 1977 when they looked at the magazine rack in their local store and saw the now-iconic cover of Star Wars #1.

After reading about how Luke came to own to droids with a secret, readers could then turn to the back cover and learn how to improve their jump shot.

Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:

Music Video of the Day: Johnny B. Goode by Judas Priest (1988, directed by Wayne Isham)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1988, Judas Priest became one of the many bands that have covered this classic tune from Chuck Berry. Their version reached number 64 on the UK Singles chart.

This video was directed by Wayne Isham, who worked with everyone who was anyone in the 80s and 90s.

Enjoy!

Sudden Death (1977, directed by Eddie Romero)

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

Ed Neilson (Ken Metcalf) is a business executive who just wants to spend the weekend grilling with his family but then a bunch of gunmen show up and, in a surprisingly violent sequence that even shows children being shot in slow motion, massacre his entire family.

Ed barely survives and begs his old friend, a former CIA agent named Duke Smith (Robert Conrad), to find out who murdered his family. Duke would rather hang out on the beach with his wife (Aline Samson) and daughter (Nancy Conrad) and he refuses to help Ed. But then Ed gets blown up in his car and Duke and his former partner (Felton Perry) come out of retirement to get justice. Duke’s investigation leads to a corrupt businessman (Thayer David), a murderous government official (John Ashley, who also produced), and a ruthless hitman (Don Stroud).

Filmed in The Philippines and directed by Eddie Romero, Sudden Death is a violent and brutal thriller with a twisty the plot that is nearly impossible to follow. It seems like a lot of killing for no particular reason. The thing that sets Sudden Death apart from other action films is its willingness to violently kill off anyone, regardless of age, gender, or relative innocence. The 70s was a decade known for downbeat endings but, even by the standards of that decade, Sudden Death‘s ending is shockingly abrupt and bleak. In the lead role, Robert Conrad shows off the ruthless intensity that made him the most feared of all of the coaches on Battle of the Network Stars.

Originally, the sidekick role was offered to Jim Kelly. When Kelly dropped out, the role was given to the far more laid back Felton Perry. I think if Kelly had stayed with the film, it would probably be a cult classic today. Instead, it’s an obscurity that reminds us of how bleak even exploitation films were in the 70s.

Music Video of the Day: Iron Man by Black Sabbath (2000, directed by ????)

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

30 years after the song was first released and helped to define heavy metal for a generation, a live version of Iron Man was released, as a single, in 2000 and it brought Black Sabbath its first Grammy nomination. Appropriately, this video was made during the period of Osbourne’s first reunion with Black Sabbath. It was filmed over the course of two performances at the Birmingham NEC.

Two years after this video and the band’s first Grammy nomination, The Osbournes would premiere on MTV and, unfortunately in my opinion, Ozzy would become better known as a reality television participant than as a singer.

Enjoy!

Paper Lion (1968, directed by Alex March)

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

Writer George Plimpton (Alan Alda) is a Park Avenue sophisticate who practices “participatory” journalism. He has already written about pitching in an exhibition all-star game and getting knocked out by Sugar Ray Robinson. He is having trouble coming up with his next stunt until he goes to Central Park and plays a touch football game with his girlfriend Kate (Lauren Hutton) and his editor, Oscar (David Doyle). Oscar sees George throwing the ball and decides that George should write about going to a professional football team’s training camp as a player.

George, who fantasizes about throwing the game-winning touchdown, is enthusiastic. Most of the teams that George approaches are less enthusiastic but finally, the Detroit Lions agree to sign him as a quarterback. Once the other players realize that George is a writer and not a professional athlete, there’s a lot of resentment. As Guard John Gordy (playing himself) puts it, he could easily get injured while protecting an inexperienced quarterback like George. George can always go back to Park Avenue but, for the rest of the players, the game is their life and they don’t like the idea of some outsider coming in and treating it all like a joke. At first, only the fearsome defender Alex Karras (also playing himself) is willing to support George but eventually, George’s refusal to give up wins over the rest of the team. They even let him score a touchdown during practice.

When the preseason begins, George waits for his opportunity to take the field. How many yards can he lose in three plays?

Paper Lion is based on a true story. In 1963, George Plimpton did attending training camp and play a scrimmage for the Lions and he later wrote a book about the experience. The movie changes the time period from ’63 to ’67 so that all of the then-members of the Lions could play themselves. (Though Karras was a friend of Plimpton’s, he was actually suspended during the 1963 season and, unlike in the movie, never joined Plimpton on the practice field.) The film plays Plimpton’s football career largely for laughs, celebrating every guy’s fantasy of being a sports star while also showing why it’s probably best to leave the actual game to the professionals. Alan Alda doesn’t imitate Plimpton’s famous Mid-Atlantic accent but he does capture the excitement of a man getting to live out his fantasy.

Paper Lion was made with the full cooperation of the NFL and a good deal of the film’s final third is made up footage that was shot for an actual game. Seen today, it’s interesting to see how positively Paper Lion portrays both the game and its players and to contrast it with how the game is usually portrayed today. There’s no talk of steroids or fears of multiple concussions. All of the players are clean-cut, friendly, witty, and helpful. Even the training camp hazing is all done is good fun. Paper Lion introduces us to the nicest people in the world and they’re all football players!

Music Vide of the Day: Angry Again by Megadeth (1993, directed by Wayne Isham)

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

Megadeth’s Angry Again was a part of The Last Action Hero soundtrack, which was as acclaimed as the film itself was criticized. The song was a hit for Megadeth and the video, which featured scenes from the film mixed with the band performing, went into heavy rotation on MTV.

This video was directed by Wayne Isham, who directed several videos for Megadeth and just about every other band that was prominent during the 80s and the 90s. If you were in a famous band, you probably worked with Wayne Isham at least once.

Enjoy!