Music Video of the Day: (She’s) Sexy & 17 by Stray Cats (1983, dir. Ian Leech)

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I remember back in the mid-90s catching an episode of Regis and Kathy, which my mom watched regularly. They had an unusual musical guest that day. It was Squirrel Nut Zippers playing Hell. I had no idea where the hell this was coming from. You have to bear in mind that by about 1996, my music was over with. I was around for the four horseman of the musical apocalypse sure. I saw NSYNC perform at my high school with a recorded applause. But all that said, the music that I took to heart was over with by then. I nearly burst out laughing when Ivanka Trump said she was a Millennial the other night. Anything that came after was something distinctly different to me. Just like Hell was distinctly different than anything made by Nirvana, The Offspring, and Green Day to name a few. Even when I went to Tower Records, they had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about the album. Of course this all changed when the mini-swing revival of the mid-90s kicked into high gear. I think it’s fair to say that The Brian Setzer Orchestra was spearheading the short-lived movement.

A few years later after this brief seemingly out of nowhere revival happened, I was in Lake Tahoe, CA with my parents. We were lucky because we got to see Brian Setzer perform. It wasn’t with the full orchestra. That was a little disappointing, but it was pretty awesome to see such a good guitarist return to his rockabilly roots that are all over this early 1980s Stray Cats song. The music video doesn’t feature dancing in the same way that all the other videos I will spotlight this week do, but I love the band, song, and I did just finish watching four of Lifetime’s “at 17” movies.

In this video we have a square classroom transformed through the power of a camera cut, and the band protesting in class. Once they look ready to take on Glenn Ford in Blackboard Jungle (1955), they are off to sing, play, and dance. There isn’t really anything to bring up seeing as it is relatively simple. They do a good job of pulling you in and making you want to dance along because those parents just don’t understand.

As for the girl, she’s sexy, kind of reminds me of Benatar, and is most certainly not 17 seeing as we basically see her butt naked.

Rock This Town and Stray Cat Strut are awesome, but I love this one too. I can imagine this being one of those music videos that not only reintroduced kids to the roots of rock, but had them dancing in front of their televisions.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Love Is A Battlefield by Pat Benatar (1983, dir. Bob Giraldi)

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

This is one of those music videos like Take On Me by a-ha where I ask myself what the heck am I going to add. Regardless, I’ll try.

The three big things in this music video are narrative, spoken dialogue, and many sets.

This short film could have been released back in the 1910s and it would have fit structurally as an early example of short form narrative filmmaking. The film takes us from Pat being kicked out of her home, working at a seedy nightclub, and then heading back on the road after she leads a dancing revolt against a nasty boss. It’s noteworthy that she never goes home. Go ahead and put aside the girl power part of it that we will see again in a much better form later on, and focus on that this was sent into people’s homes many times a day. Instead of screams of “leave me alone” turning into something violent, the music video offers a non-violent solution to its’ audience.

The second thing is the spoken dialogue. We take that for granted now. I mean we looked at Weezer’s Buddy Holly a ways back, and it’s loaded with it. However, back then, it was brand spanking new with this music video. Before Love Is A Battlefield, that simply did not exist in music videos.

The third thing is very simple. Going along perfect with the 5+ minute length music video, it also used numerous sets, and cut back and forth between them. It’s not something to be overlooked when watching this music video.

I’m sure I will find plenty of innovation as I move into more recent music videos, but just like early cinema, it’s always fascinating to see early music videos as they tried all sorts of different things. Especially when the song that is playing is merely a recent incarnation of an ancient art form. An ancient art form simply mixed with an art form that by 1983 had been around for about 95 years. The first 30 or so of those devoted to making films like this. Sometimes they were even focused around a performance of a song such as several films that Alice Guy made.

At the end of the day, they didn’t call it music television for no special reason. I’ve seen TV stations that play nothing but music. MTV took what was largely used as a replacement for a live performance on a music show, and did what early cinema did when they moved from Queen Elizabeth in 1912 where you can literally see the dust coming off of Sarah Bernhardt’s costume cause it was seen as just canned theater to something that in 2016 isn’t even seen as separate from the songs. Ask any parents with kids, and they’ll tell you they don’t buy music. They simple AirPlay music from their computer or other device to the TV. I do this myself, and I was born the year this music video came out.

Film Review: Deep Jaws (1976, dir. Perry Dell)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

First things first.

If there are any local ordinances or community standards that make it possible for you to not watch this movie, then observe them. Feel free to read my review though. Not only because it will put you off wanting to see this as I know you all do, but you’ll get to see how Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Spider-Man could all end up in a fake porno spoof. The weirdest thing about watching this movie is that along with Water Power (1977), people were so AMERICA! in 1976 that both an enema rape porn and this, prominently featured the Bicentennial and American Flag. Let’s dive into this!

The movie starts off with just what you would expect: sex.

These two are banging in a projection booth while people working for-I kid you not-Uranus studios are trying to watch footage that has been shot for The Night Mt. Rushmore Broke Wind. Ugh! That’s the level of jokes you are in for if you watch this movie. One of the characters soon says: “He’s got the thing upside down and ass backwards.” Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016) with its running joke about burping the worm was more mature than this garbage.

Let’s introduce are main characters:

That’s attacked by spray tan.

That’s a slime ball. His real name is PG as in parental guidance. I’m sorry, but Goldengirl came out in 1979 and had breasts the main character talked to, and it was rated PG. Earlier 90s movies had bare ass all the time, and they were still rated PG. The Odd Couple II came out in 1998 and had them not only calling each other “shitheads”, but had an explicit oral sex joke. It was rated PG-13. Good Burger came out one year prior in 1997. It had tons of sexual innuendo including numerous allusions to oral sex via egg rolls and was rated PG.

Somehow, one year after Deep Jaws, the talking vagina movie Chatterbox! would receive an R-rating. Guess that was more of an honorary rating. This movie is unrated cause it has a few shots of penises. Apparently that was a big deal back in 1976? This was well before Lars Von Trier and Gaspar Noé decided to exploit porn to try and remain relevant. That, and exploit Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Black Love (1971). Why is that a thing? Then again, why is Deep Jaws a thing?

That’s a woman who I’m not sure how they got to be in this.

That’s an old guy who looks like he belongs in an episode of Soap. I never figured out why he is holding a teddy bear. He does it throughout the film.

I’m just going to call him Dumbass even though they always call him Junior. He’s Spray Tan’s kid. It’s courtesy of him that superheroes will appear in the film via his T-Shirts.

You want to see the movie they are looking at onscreen?

I saw this and thought they were watching a 70s version of Space Zombie Bingo!!! (1993).

Here is the appearance of Captain America. Disappointing after seeing Matt Salinger decapitate someone with his shield.

They keep cutting away to the projection booth sex as if we are getting something out of it. We aren’t. That kind of thing will be repeated many times over throughout the film. I can’t tell you how boring it is to hear these people talk on top of constantly cutting away to the sex. The movie only gets worse from here on out. This opening scene just happens to be particularly painful. How painful? This painful.

He gets threatened to have his “ass out of Uranus.” Then it just abruptly cuts to the worst of 1970’s interior design.

This phone call goes on forever. It has something do to with the President of the United States. Who cares? I didn’t. I just kept thinking this guy was reading off of cue cards above him.

Now we get a whining scene between some woman and PG. Again, like most of the film. Who the hell cares? This film adds some running time onto itself here by having some flashbacks to the projection booth sex scene because we need to repeat that footage. Yuck!

Now we meet the guy from the opening sex scene

At least I’m pretty sure. No matter, because TITS!

I will try to spare you the number of times these ladies pop out just to show off their breasts. Just trust me that they wear out their welcome. All six of them. Although, one of them can do the breast equivalent of making one ear pop up and down. That’s something I guess.

Now lady who I can’t believe is in the movie comes in carrying empty toilet paper rolls. He needs TP for Uranus. I would say his bunghole, but the ladies come out and stick something else in there at some point.

I am taking you through this step by step because the stupidity on display is amazing. We haven’t even gotten to the gay guy who runs after Dumbass to measure the length of his penis. That’s a thing that happens in this film.

Now PG sits out by the pool just so they can show more tits and ass. Acting 1; T&A about a 5. Yes, I did put that there because there is a porno spoof of A Chorus Line out there, but sadly my copy doesn’t have subtitles.

Now the lady who shouldn’t be there has a discussion with this guy about how they should make a porno like Deep Throat (1971). Apparently, this means cutting away to a very fake blow job scene that I guess is a recreation of something from Deep Throat. I haven’t watched it yet. Then it cuts back to them to see him eating her out while she’s upside down against a window. Cause of course she is.

If you are thinking this movie is a bunch of bull when it comes to being a porno/sexploitation film, then it agrees with you because a literal bull’s head shows up now.

Where does this lead? To a third rate Giancarlo Giannini from Seven Beauties (1975) for another random sex scene.

The only highlight of this scene is that he drinks from a literal bottle of Spanish Flies.

This guy works for the studio and is looking for the next Garbo. By that he means Christina Lindberg. Don’t know who she is? She was in Anita: Swedish Nymphet (1975) with Stellan Skarsgård that was later remade by Lars Von Trier as Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 & 2 (2013).

There is also a pretty terrible song that plays during this scene, but at least it’s better than the Johnny Wet Pants song that makes the HBO/Cinemax/Showtime circuit. That song is terrible! So is the one about lesbians they play from time to time. If you feel I’m going on and on now, then good. That’s to give you an idea of how long this sex scene drags on.

Once you’ve listened to Guns ‘N Roses’ Paradise City and The End by The Doors, then the scene is over and there’s The Incredible Hulk. “You can’t let them close Uranus. It’s gonna be mine someday,” says Junior to his spray tan mom.

Now they get a call from the State Department to film a “simulated version of the Russian-American outer space hook-up.” No idea what that means, but they are given a million dollars to do it thanks to Kissinger. What do they do? They decide to embezzle the money by simply making a cheap porno. I’m not a fan of gay stereotypes, but I like this guy’s idea to make it a gay porn involving a homosexual shark and mermen. This comes after they agree that a “sexaster” movie is the way to go. They then go off to search for Miss Deep Jaws by not actually doing anything at the moment.

I say that because they cut back to the other guy who is having a fake blow job. Then we come back to put this plan together after watching a lady play the clarinet naked. Their idea is all well and good, but I was really hoping they would address what is clearly a lost painting of Manos behind them.

Some things happen now…sort of…not really. We cut back to the sex from earlier because it was just so interesting that it needed to continue. It’s still better than Love (2015). At least this film tells me it’s garbage rather than shoving Godard onscreen text in my face and telling me it’s a masterpiece.

Back at the studio, the lady that is too good for this movie is reading a script. We get a bizarre underwater sequence as a result.

I think that’s all I can show without having any clue as to what does and does not need black boxing. Anyways, now we get a fine American discussing how he does not want to do something softcore, but maybe they can pretend they will, then actually film a hardcore porn.

Meanwhile, more sex and awful dialog that isn’t necessary to hear or talk about. In fact, the rest of the movie isn’t necessary to exist. That’s the last 45 minutes or so of the movie I’m referring to here.

Oh, yeah. Dumbass comes in dressed as Hamlet.

To watch this, or watch Gums (1976) instead. I’ll find out soon enough whether anyone should watch either of them. Dumbass does get cast in the film as the male lead because what other purpose could he possibly serve in this movie otherwise.

Meanwhile, that foreign guy tries to eat a girl out or something. Then before you know it, he rides off on his bike like he’s Italian Batman.

There’s some mix up about the casting now. At least the film knows we don’t care, so it brings out tits and the ladies attached to them to kill time.

He has a thermometer stuck up his butt here too I think. Now for the long awaiting appearance from Thor.

This is when the movie just goes on autopilot if autopilot was a program written by a grade schooler. It bounces around till it comes literally crashing into a pool at the end. With that in mind, here’s the second appearance of The Hulk.

Yes, there was sex in there too. Moving on. I like this All American’s idea.

He thinks they should take the women’s lib. approach and make the film a lesbian porn. You have to admit that if you’re in his situation, then that’s not a bad solution. It works on late night cable. The girl on girl scenes are obviously much easier to film.

Meanwhile, Mother Goose.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Some construction work goes on now for the space capsule that they are going to splash into the pool to make up for a lack of a cum shot. That’s a sentence I wrote. They clearly needed more American flags on the set.

Dumbass shows up and has a fake big penis in his shorts that the gay stereotype takes notice of before going off to pick up Miss Deep Jaws at the airport. He has some problems here. Let’s just say that Miss Deep Jaws doesn’t get that no means no.

On the plus side, he can assure them they have found the right girl for the role before running off to find Dumbass in order to measure his penis.

During this the movie Gums appears to be going on in the pool, but nothing is ever made of it. Gums being the Jaws porno spoof with a mermaid that gives blow jobs to death. Just more pointless padding in a film that is already pointless. How pointless? This sex scene being inserted in while Miss Deep Jaws harasses the gay stereotype is a fine example.

Also, I lied earlier about the lack of AMERICA! because we find out dumbasses big dick was a Captain America sock all along.

More things happen before we finally get that appearance of Spider-Man who I’m sure is honored to be here.

This walking around and talking by the pool goes on for about another 10 minutes, but then they finally drop the “space capsule” in the pool.

And movie! Or whatever this was before the blood red credits run and an actual theme song using the title plays. Oh, it’s bad as well.

In summary, it’s a horrible movie to have to sit through. In plot summary: they wanted to make a porn, but couldn’t really for some reason, so they thought they would get clever by making a movie about their very situation. It turned out like this movie. However, God bless America because only in the United States could you show this kind of garbage in theaters even in the 1970s.p

4 Shots From 4 Films (Sigh): Every Young Woman’s Battle (2014), The Creation Adventure Team: Six Short Days, One Big Adventure (2002), Let Me Die A Woman (1977), If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

There are so many movies/videos that I am sitting on. Some I have seen, and some I only know because I have seen a review of them, but I do have a copy of them. I thought I would share four of the real crazy ones. If nothing else, just in case I never get to them.

Every Young Woman’s Battle (2014)

I actually have a partial review of this written. It’s been sitting in the drafts section since April. The reason is that there is just so much crazy that the review is going to be really long. The video is a speech given by Shannon Ethridge to a small room of middle-aged Asian women and one guy basically telling them that your husband is not the one who is going to satisfy your “emotional needs.” That’s what Jesus is for in a marriage. So, it’s kind of like War Room (2015), but a whole lot crazier.

How crazy? First, she opens up the lecture by telling us she is passionate about sexual purity because she has AIDS. Visual AIDS! Then she shows pictures of her family. She goes on to tell us about the time she came to her husband and told him he wasn’t satisfying her “emotional needs.” I put them in quotes because she will make it clear she means sexual needs along with the emotional component. So, how does her husband respond to this? He says he could line up all the men in Dallas outside her door, but it wouldn’t be enough for her. That’s right. He offered to arrange a Debbie Does Dallas (1978) gang bang for her. That’s just one example of the crazy, and how this is really sad for Ethridge at the same time.

The Creation Adventure Team: Six Short Days, One Big Adventure (2002, dir. Cathy Henderson)

An apple on the end of an arrow gets shot into the nose of a dinosaur in the Garden of Eden. Do I need to say more? This is a video that was meant to teach creationism to kids, but actually winds up making everyone alive ashamed to be part of the human race regardless of what they believe. Oh, and it has a sequel where they explain the whole dinosaur situation in creationism.

Let Me Die A Woman (1977, dir. Doris Wishman)

In the transploitation mondo “documentary” Let Me Die A Woman (1977) they felt it was necessary that we see what happens when you have sex too soon after having bottom surgery. It’s very important that we see it, and can’t just be told. How else do you do this scene, but to have the trans woman have sex with a cab driver played by no less then Deep Throat (1972) pornographic superstar Harry Rheems. He says, “Thanks, lady,” which is immediately followed by her noticing blood on the sheets in between her legs before quickly grabbing the phone. It then cuts back to Rheems who seems happy about the situation before leaving the room. That shot above is from when he tells her “thanks”. We learn from the “doctor” of this movie right afterwards that what she had was “sex impatience”. Apparently, sometimes you just have to have Harry Rheems’ dick in you.

That’s not all this movie shows either. We have the graphic bottom surgery scenes, the dick chopping off scene, the maintaining your new vagina with a dildo-like object scene, and more!

If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971, dir. Ron Ormond)

This is one I have only seen a review of, but I do have a copy of it. The film is basically a cross between a Christian and Communist scare film. This is from the end of the Communist part of the movie. At the end, there is just a little kid left. He won’t give up his belief in Jesus, so the Communist solider pulls out a machete, chops off his head, and throws it off into a field. That’s it right there. This from a director who survived a plane crash and decided to stop making exploitation films to make Christian scare films instead. As Brad Jones (The Cinema Snob) said: “He never really stopped making exploitation films. He just made sure to mention Jesus in all of the them.”

What’s great is that the first film and the last one here actually have a connection to each other. In If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (1971) there is a scene where Communists are apparently going to teach boys about the seven erotic zones of passion in every woman. Of course they cut away from that because that situation doesn’t exist. In Every Young Woman’s Battle, Ethridge says the devil perverted sexuality seven different ways or seven different times in the Bible. That’s where that 1970’s Christian scare film got that from.

Music Video of the Day: Rosanna by Toto (1982, dir. Steve Barron)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Unless Lisa has changed her mind (very possible), she is currently posting dance scenes that she loves this week. I like coordinating a theme around a week or a month like we do here sometimes at Through The Shattered Lens. That’s why I am going to post six videos this week that feature dancing. I am starting with Toto’s Rosanna.

As you may have noticed, this is another one of these done by director Steve Barron. So far we have seen him direct music videos for The Human League in 1983 and a-ha in 1985. In 1982 he took Toto, who is probably best known for songs like Africa and Hold The Line, and brought us this mixture of Cynthia Rhodes doing her thing, West Side Story (1961), and Toto looking like they are on a darker looking version of the set that Stray Cats used in Stray Cat Strut.

The music video is similar to Whitesnake’s 1987 version of Here I Go Again. By that I mean they filmed some of Toto’s performance, but it’s really Cynthia Rhodes who shines as the West Side Story lady dancing in a red dress. My favorite part is at about the three minute mark of the video when it goes into pure instrumental and she lifts her leg up completely straight into the air against the chain link fence. Another nice moment is around the two minute mark when we are looking at a closeup shot of the lead singer’s face. In one shot of his face, we can see Rhodes dancing in the background, and the other time see the gang members walking towards him.

It also happens to be a great song by a group that certainly doesn’t get the same love as their songs such as Africa and Hold The Line. You can probably still talk to teenagers today who will not know the name of the group or the title of the song, but they will remember hearing that song about “I blessed the rains down in Africa” or “I touched the rains down in Africa” they heard on the radio at some point.

One final thing is that you might not know Cynthia Rhodes. She played Penny Johnson in Dirty Dancing (1987). She was also in the critical failure of a sequel to Saturday Night Fever (1977) called Staying Alive (1983). In other words, I think it’s safe to say that being in Runaway (1984) was the real reason she ultimately wound up giving up her career to be a full-time mother as IMDb says she did. She would also show up in at least two other videos done by her then husband Richard Marx. That, and she is a well-known dancer of the period in general.

This is also one of those music videos where we know more than just the director. Paul Flattery produced this music video. We will see him again and again.

It’s an excellent music video for an excellent song, and I hope you enjoy it.

Music Video of the Day: Never Say Never by Romeo Void (1983, dir. ???)

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Sticking with obscure, I give you Never Say Never by Romeo Void. It’s another one that I only know of because of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. We’ll probably get to every song on there except some of the Latin Jazz. Yes, I do know that there are more obscure music videos than this one such as Ah Leah by Donnie Iris and Johnny Are You Queer? by Josie Cotton, but those are for other days.

First off, I put 1983, but there seems to be disagreement between the two big music video databases, VEVO, and Wikipedia. IMVDb says that it’s from 1981. Mvdbase says it’s from 1983. VEVO says 1981. I’m going ahead with 1983. The reason is that Wikipedia says the song was recorded in December of 1981, then released in January of 1982. I also get the distinct impression that this is a band that would initially say no way to MTV, but then change their tune when they realized MTV would take anything as long as you were white. They really were that desperate early on. People tend to forget that, but MTV was a fledgling network. How fledgling? They don’t start playing the song until a minute and five seconds into a four minute and thirty-seven second video. I can see them saying, “Oh, you mean we can also get creative visually around our song, and you really don’t have a problem with it? In that case, never say never, and sign us up.”

There is no director listed anywhere that I can find, but two directors come to mind. Those being Jim Jarmusch and Jim McBride. McBride even directed the remake of Breathless (1983). The beginning of this video sure reminds me of the original. The guy in the video even dies like Jean-Paul Belmondo did in the original Breathless (1960). The music video also screams early French New Wave. He also directed Great Balls of Fire! (1989) and in 2000 did the feature length VH1 original movie Meatloaf: To Hell and Back. So, if I have to make a guess here. This was possibly directed by Jim McBride.

I love this video. I think that no film should be left behind, but I love it when a music video takes advantage of the visual medium instead of just playing the song in front of a camera.

Also, is that Keanu Reeves in there? I doubt it, but you never know. I mean Courtney Cox is in Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen, so why not? Plus, I’m not that familiar with the members of the band. In fact, this is the one and only song by Romeo Void I have ever heard in my life.

I can’t possibly imagine this being in anything but this extra dark black and white. I also can’t imagine them drawing you more into their performance even if they cutaway from time to time to other things. No doubt No Doubt got some of their style from Romeo Void. The sexual tension between the lead singer and the band is all over this thing like it is in No Doubt music videos.

One last thing to mention. It is censored. They cut out the word “fuck”. Kind of interesting that it’s there. That means it originally aired that way, much like Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa originally aired with the word “retard” in it. It is fascinating, and sad how much more censorship happy we’ve become over the years. I don’t really mind “retard” not being there, but put the “fuck” back into a song that has a chorus that says: “I might like you better if we slept together”. At least we have access to older stuff like this, so it isn’t lost even if the VEVO versions get censored. Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Your Love by The Outfield (1986, dir. John Jopson)

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I must admit that at times I do pick out music videos or films to write about simply because I know that they will get hits. Despite that, I do tend to gravitate to things that at least other people aren’t talking about, but watch en masse. Today isn’t one of those days. This happens to be one of my favorite songs, that once again, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s soundtrack introduced me to.

The first and most obvious thing is the lead singer is a little person. At a time when they were either Ewoks, Leprechauns, Trolls, and/or Sorcerers on the big screen, we had Tony Lewis belting out songs like Your Love on MTV being broadcast into people’s homes. That’s something a lot of people who are anti-music video forget. These short films brought so much culture to people that they would have been ignorant of were it not for their existence.

Now, to be fair, we also had Phil Fondacaro in Troll (1986) delivering a surprisingly good performance when he was not in costume. But we aren’t here to talk Harry Potter today.

Aside from the size of the lead singer, and them playing that up, I like that this video has four layers of capturing reality built into it. The first is the plan vanilla flavored “have the band stand on a stage and play”. It’s been done to death, and would be repeated in one form or another again and again for decades without any foreseeable end.

The second is when we step behind the scenes of that video and see the camera, crane, and crew shooting that plain vanilla flavored video. We saw that in something like I Ran (So Far Away) by A Flock Of Seagulls as well. It’s the self-reflexive version of what we are looking at.

The third is that throughout this video there is a painting motif to the whole thing. This appears in the backgrounds. Sometimes paint literally is put across the frame. Then there is the girl who is presumedly painting a portrait of Tony as he sings. This is when the video has now stepped from the fantasy of the performance to the reality of the shooting of the video to the fantasy of representing something as a painting.

Then the video goes for one more when it returns the video back to reality once again by pulling the camera out to the street threw the previous layers to show the girl leaving the studio with the painting. It’s a very drab and boring shot to end on with some blue paint that runs down the frame till it cuts to black.

I love that none of these four different places are cleanly segmented from each other. An example is when we see the guitarist leave the stage to go over and look in on the girl doing the painting.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I doubt it. One, it is an 1980s video when they really seemed to get creative. Also, this is one of those videos where we know more than just the director. According to IMVDb, Glenn Lazzaro edited the video. He’s worked on his fair share of music videos and other films. Karen Bellone produced the video and seems to have done that for several music videos. Likely both Lazzaro and Bellone have directed or worked on more music videos that are just not properly documented.

I haven’t really strongly mentioned it before, but IMDb really does want submissions of music videos. These are highly undocumented short films that could keep me going till the day I died, and I still would barely get out of the 1980s. Even with Internet Music Video Database and mvdbase, this stuff is still full of holes, and belongs in the central repository that is IMDb.

That said, Mvdbase turns up a bunch more videos for all three of the people I mentioned. I had completely forgotten about that database and will be going back to clean up some of my previous entries. So, submit!

Music Video of the Day: I Ran by A Flock Of Seagulls (1982, dir. Tony van den Ende)

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I did a second video by prolific music video director Steve Barron yesterday. Today I thought I would do one by a different prolific director of music videos that we haven’t hit yet. The song I Ran of course is about as well known as You Spin Me Round (Like A Record). There’s no need to discuss that here. Especially not when there is a fascinating music video to focus on.

There are four parts to this video for me:

1. The video was intended as a homage to the album cover for Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s album (No Pussyfooting).

2. The cameras are clearly visible in the mirrors. They aren’t in the original album cover, so I’m assuming they either were rushed, or they did it on purpose. I’m going with it being done on purpose. Just like a music video that deliberately doesn’t have the band members lip sync, this is an interesting way for the video to be self-reflexive. In this case, you are literally seeing the video you are watching being made right before your eyes. Or, to look at it in another way, you are seeing the band unable to escape the camera as a tie-in with the theme of the song.

3. Probably the best known experimental film that director Chantal Akerman made was La Chambre (1972). It was mostly comprised of a series of 360 degree pans showing us the interior of a room along with Akerman herself on a bed. One of the two parts of this video takes that idea of using those 360 degree pans, but instead attaches the group to the pan, so that once again, they can’t escape the camera. I have to wonder if he was thinking of her film.

4. While people remember the 360 sequences the best, there are the hallway portions as well. Those play into the theme of the song in that the band can’t escape the ladies, but also because of the way those ladies move. It’s almost as if they are high fashion zombies. Zombies being the monster that will inevitably catch up to you no matter how far, or how long you run.

It’s music videos like this that I love to look at because it’s obvious that a fair amount of thought went into crafting them.

Music Video of the Day: (Keep Feeling) Fascination by The Human League (1983, dir. Steve Barron)

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Two years before he directed a-ha’s Take on Me, Steve Barron directed this very simple music video for The Human League. He has a huge filmography when it comes to music videos from the late 1970s through the 1980s. We’ll see him again. He also directed some features such as the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and Coneheads (1993).

He did this video with it’s single color room, single color clothes, and single color outside that reminds one of conformity. It’s also a place that is located on a map, or a starting place or turning point for your life. I like how the lyrics of the song, and of course the gender non-conformity of Philip Oakey, contrast with the appearance of the room and the band. I don’t know about you, but I look at this video and can see this room transform into the pencil drawn one from Take on Me.

Oakey was known to even dress in matching outfits with female members of the band back then. He isn’t transgender or anything like that. He was just gender non-conforming.

The area you see as being orange was actually painted that way shortly before the house was demolished. The band’s scenes were filmed in a studio, which you can spot as the camera goes through the window. There is a tiny little bit that is easy to miss with the orange. Outside the house there are a couple of kids playing with a soccer ball. When one of the kids retrieves it from the orange outside of the house, his clothes suddenly change color to match.

This is another song that I discovered courtesy of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack.

Film Review: Fugitive at 17 (2012, dir. Jim Donovan)

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

It’s been awhile since I did any of those Amazon Prime Recommendation Worm posts. Anyone who has read them remembers that the posters that are made up for the indie foreign films are often ridiculously misleading. With that in mind, lets look at the disc and menu for this movie.

She does run right at the beginning of the movie. That’s about it. Oh, and there are no explosions in this film. Let’s take a look at the DVD menu.

Again, we have those hilarious explosions that don’t exist in the movie. Also, that isn’t her laptop that she pretends to use in the movie. I love the crosshairs because I’m nearly 100% positive that no one shoots at her. I’m also quite sure that there are never choppers used in pursuit of her.

What can we conclude here? That they put “Fugitive” in the title and tried to sell it as if it were The Fugitive (1993). Yes, there is a comparable scene to the beard cutting one in The Fugitive. At least the DVD and the menu are honest that actor Marie Avgeropoulos is nowhere near 17. She was actually 25 when she made this movie. However, they had a good reason for it that I will explain later, so let’s dive in.

After showing our main character Holly (Marie Avgeropoulos) run away into an alley for the title card, we cut to 24 hours earlier in Philadelphia. This is when we get introduced to Holly and her underwhelming laptop.

She has just installed a new OS so that “this puppy has more processing power than a brand-new computer.” It’s not BackTrack Linux running in a virtual machine that an actual hacker/pen-tester might use. Too bad. I was hoping they would at least have her do some war driving to find a WiFi network to use or set up a WiFi honeypot to capture the network traffic of the bad guy. Nope. She’ll just do bullshit.

Speaking of bullshit. Holly’s friend wants her to hack into the university she has applied to in order to see if she has been accepted. That means it’s time for Holly to show off her ability to look at screenshots inside of a browser and look intently as green text goes by her face.

Yes, it is a screenshot sitting on the computer’s local hard drive of a browser showing a college’s website that she is viewing in another browser. Now that text starts to roll by.

I love that she just instantly installs a backdoor. Not to give Tinfinger…I mean Blackhat (2015) too much credit, but at least Thor did a phishing attack to get the password to the system he wanted to break into. However, I do like this.

Somebody actually knows that deleting things like IDS and firewall logs on your way out is a good idea in order to cover your tracks. Credit where credit is due. Keeping with Accused at 17 and Stalked at 17, Holly’s friend invites her to a college party, which she agrees to attend.

Now we meet who I call Detective Padding (Christina Cox) and her son (Dylan Van Wylick). I call her that because while she is the one chasing Holly and will come to her rescue at the end, she only exists so that when they need to extend the runtime of the movie, they can cut to her.

Now it’s off to the party. That’s where we meet Dan (Daniel Rindress-Kay) over stealing WiFi from the factory next door to the party.

Holly pokes around on her cellphone and tells him to try MillerEmployeeGeneral. It’s not likely that would actually work, but those would be the first kind of passwords that you would try before you’d do more involved things. What I love about this whole thing is that they now show her cellphone screen that says she is on cellular, not WiFi.

Nothing can top “Logan’s Hacking Screen” from the Garage Sale Mystery series or almost every line from the hilariously bad Ex Machina (2015), but this is pretty funny.

Holly’s friend goes backstage with Spencer Oliphant (Casper Van Dien). He slips her some drugs. Unfortunately, she has an allergic reaction of sorts to the drugs that kills her. Fortunately, Holly’s pompadour sense goes off.

One thing leads to another, and we find out why they cast a 25 year-old.

When this film decides it’s time for Van Dien to get rough, he is quite rough with her. I’m sure they figured they’d play it safe by casting a 25 year-old rather than one who was only 18 or 19.

Because plot, she winds up getting accused of this whole thing since there was some sort of history of her stealing drugs using her imaginary hacking skills for her sick grandmother and those drugs winding up in the hands of her dead friend.

Now we get another example of her hacking skills. It just might blow your mind.

Detective Padding gets a call from her son who has dropped his cellphone in the toilet. She actually follows up those lines by asking him how he dropped it in the toilet. I would say that she got her knowledge of boyhood from the film Boyhood (2014), but that was still two years out. Regardless of the fact that she didn’t know her son was masturbating when the phone slipped from his hand, she tells him that they had to confiscate the sorbent along with the rest of the drugs they found. Just kidding, she doesn’t know what to do, so that’s why Holly tells him to remove the battery and the SIM card, clean it off, and then put it in rice, which will act as an absorbent like sorbent does. Of course, that does depend on the phone not having already shorted out. If you want to see a hilarious example of that, then look up the TWiT episode (not sure which show) where Leo Laporte decided to test this stuff you coated your phone in to make it waterproof by dropping it in a glass of water. You could see it short out right away. The best thing about that was that the Apple Genius he took the phone to had seen the episode.

Meanwhile, back in the film, they couldn’t afford a train, so they put her in a van to be transferred. She breaks free when the other prisoners are saved by friends who attack the van. That’s when she decides to recreate the beard cutting scene from The Fugitive. Except Holly doesn’t have a beard to cut, so she dyes her hair instead.

She also changes clothes and gets her fancy laptop. Now she decides that the place to start is to track down Dan from the party. That’s why she goes to the school website and types “Central University, Employee Log in” into the school site’s search box.

That gets her right into the student records. As bad as Blackhat was, at least somebody looked up actual Unix commands that Michael Mann could cut to closeup shots of all the time. Again though, credit where credit is due. Dan comes home and…

finds her in his place already. I love that he asks her how she got in. He got into the “Central University of Pennsylvania” how exactly? Sadly, they will basically say it was due to her ability to pick locks instead of her simply socially engineering someone into letting her in as a girlfriend.

Detective Padding and Holly’s mom try to pretend they are part of the story now before we cut to Dan and Holly as they try to track down Van Dien. It turns out that some guitar players grow out their nails. Van Dien’s long nails are the only thing she remembers strongly about him. When I played, I always kept them short like I do for typing. However, they’ll explain that when you are trying to perform something like Spanish Caravan by The Doors, then having all your fingers on one of your hands as picks is handy.

They figure out the name of a faculty member who teaches music. That means it’s time for Holly to get in contact with Detective Padding so that she can check him out after they are sure he has his nails grown out. It being Lifetime, she interrupts Padding’s son’s near his downward spiral into the world of Internet porn.

She is using something called Cloud Dial. I guess that’s Lifetime’s version of Skype. Holly eventually gets Padding on the line and it’s so cute how they try to have a Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones conversation, but we need to move on.

As always: Of course Holly quickly finds this teacher and he leads her right to Van Dien. Before paying him a visit, she decides to remind us of a scene from Sneakers (1992).

To get to her grandmother in the hospital, she pretends to be a singing telegram. It was better in Sneakers when they used several people to overwhelm the staff till one of them gave in and just buzzed in Robert Redford. This version does has Kate Drummond from the Flower Shop Mystery series at the desk though since this movie was filmed in Canada.

At this point, we can jump over a lot. Basically it’s a bunch of scenes to insure that we get the running time out to a feature film, and make sure Detective Padding and Grandma are still around.

It all comes down to a showdown between Detective Padding, Holly, and Van Dien. Van Dien loses. A quick party for Grandma is held before the movie ends abruptly. Then the first person who is credited is the “Financial Consultant”.

After that, it’s the standard “players” credits for these “at 17” movies.

Out of the four “at 17” movies I have watched recently, I think it’s a tie between Stalked at 17 and this one. That is if you must watch one of them that I have reviewed.