Music Video of the Day: 4th of July by X (1987, dir. ???)


It was either this, or Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It. I figured I might not have a good excuse to feature a video from X any other way while the other is easy to post for any day that can be associated with civil rights and/or independence. It’s interesting that a band known for emerging from the L.A. punk rock scene with songs like Johnny Hit and Run Paulene would go on to do a bluesy rock song like this. Then again, The Replacements went from songs like Johnny’s Gonna Die to Achin’ To Be, so maybe it isn’t so weird after all. When you take out the very 80s effects, you get a simple video of them performing to a small audience while fireworks go off. I like the relative darkness of the video because it adds to the idea that they are performing at a place where fireworks are going off with reflections cast upon them and the walls. It also adds to the intimacy of the performance. Look for the ‘X’ that appears in his eye at the very beginning of the video before they show the one on the ceiling.

Edit: I’ve since found out that editor Glenn Morgan edited this music video.

Music Video of the Day: It’s My Life by No Doubt (2003, dir. David LaChapelle)


Yesterday we looked at the Talk Talk version of the song It’s My Life. This time around No Doubt and director David LaChapelle stuck with the theme of the lyrics, but instead put it into a darker context. It screams 2002’s Best Picture winner Chicago all over it. It also has a fair amount of film noir elements in it except it’s the guys who are the ones who do her in rather than the other way around as it appears throughout the video. At least that’s the way it comes across at the end whether they some how arranged the appearance of their deaths or are looking at her execution from the afterlife. I can’t help but think some of the song and the video is the way it is because of Stefani’s relationship with the band and Gavin Rossdale at this time. That stuff certainly showed up in other videos and songs from the band going all the way back to Don’t Speak. But that’s for another day.

Music Video of the Day: It’s My Life by Talk Talk (1984, dir. Tim Pope)


Even by 1984, artists and the directors of their videos were rebelling against lip-syncing in them. That’s why you don’t see the lead singer doing that here. Sometimes even black bars go over his mouth to emphasize this fact while the video is primarily made up of nature footage. This discontinuity of image and sound was another example of early experimentation in music videos. There is another version of this video as well that apparently has them lip-synched, but doing other things to still make fun of the process. People of my generation learned of this song obviously because of tomorrow’s Music Video of the Day. Also, some may know it from the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories soundtrack. Although, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City used their song Life’s What You Make It instead. Their hit songs seem to be rather positive and empowering. No doubt that’s why tomorrow’s post exists.

Music Video of the Day: Subdivisions by Rush (1982, dir. Grant Lough)


Seeing as it is Canada Day, I thought I would go with some of the best known Canadian musicians. This also happens to be one of my favorite songs by Rush and a good video that goes with its’ message of societal pressures to conform. I love how it opens with the slow synthesizer, then goes into a zooming out aerial shot like you are taking off into the song and the video. Then it ends on a Game Over screen from the game Tempest. Old arcade games make great analogies for unwinnable situations that everyone thinks can be accomplished if they try hard enough.

Music Video of the Day: Tarzan Boy by Baltimora (1985, dir. ???)


Why Tarzan Boy you might be asking yourself. Sure it’s fun. Sure it’s catchy. But as soon as it’s over you forget about it. That’s the point. At the time of writing this, the music video has been on YouTube since November 2nd, 2005. That’s only about 7 months after the very first YouTube video was uploaded for a current total of about 10 years. Also, it kind of fits to end LGBT month. So, enjoy this catchy fun Andy Warhol inspired music video of the 1980s.

Late Night Cable Movie Review: Wicked Deeds (2016, dir. Seth Kieffer)


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Wicked Deeds is much like Carnal Wishes (2015) in that it takes a familiar film noir and/or noirish elements and adds explicit sex. However, unlike Carnal Wishes, it screws up in my opinion. Also, I doubt that my review of Wicked Deeds will end up being a part of a political scandal like it was when Ted Cruz pulled that attack ad of his. She didn’t even have a sex scene in the movie, but only made a cameo appearance at the end of the film. That didn’t stop the law firm Rick Santorum once worked for from paying a visit to my review.

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I’m not really surprised that somebody at K&L Gates looked at my review. What I am surprised at is that I didn’t do any hacking to get that image. I was looking at our site’s stat section when I saw a weird URL so I clicked on it. What should have just been an internal network message from some sort of edge router to the person coming to my review from a computer at the firm was actually at a publicly accessible URL. I’ve seen this one other time on another one of my late night cable reviews. I don’t know why ScanSafe thought this was a good idea.

I also don’t know why the filmmakers of Wicked Deeds thought it was a good idea to take an otherwise decent porno noir and extend the sex scenes so long that any pacing is broken. At least they were kind enough to give me a title card that I didn’t have to black box in any way.

The movie begins like slasher movies do. Except instead of someone getting killed, two people have sex. The two people are a married couple. She is named Kira (Anna Morna). Luckily, we are getting An Erotic Tale of Ms. Dracula (2014) Anna Morna rather than Lolita from Interstellar Space (2014) Anna Morna. The husband is Roy (Chad White). He too was in both An Erotic Tale of Ms. Dracula and Lolita from Interstellar Space. You may remember him as playing Van Helsing. I will give the sex scenes in this movie one thing. They tend to be more intimate and erotic, then the usual stuff you see. That’s why I don’t mind this opening sex scene so much, but them reusing the length of this scene for all of them, becomes a problem. This sex scene should have been the longest to establish intimacy between the married couple, while the later sex scenes should have gotten shorter and shorter to go along with the building of suspense in the film.

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Something else to mention here is that this is another one of these that was shot by Lex Lynne Smith. So, no matter what, it is well shot for these movies. Usually that’s something you say almost as an insult to a film, but after seeing some of these shot on video sex late night cable movies like Monster of the Nudist Colony (2013), I mean it genuinely.

After they are finished, we get a scene almost like the one from Carnal Wishes. At the end of the married couple’s sex scene he just got up and left for a late night meeting. Here, we find out that he is going out of town to do some survey work. She kind of wants to come along, but he tells her that they both know she doesn’t like the jungle heat. She brings up that the hotel probably has a nice spa so that he has an excuse to bring up that he finally heard back from the handyman who is going to fix their spa. It’s not only part of the setup for the film, but also an obvious reference to the stereotype that all porn begins with a woman inviting over a pizza deliveryman for sex. She also mentions that she would feel more comfortable if she had a gun in the house also as a setup for something later in the film. He says absolutely not, and that having guns in the house means it’s just an accident waiting to happen. Funny how some these porno films seem to have more progressive politics than a lot of mainstream cinema.

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Anyways, you can see that there is a gun in the house. It’s in his night table, but even having watched the whole film, I still don’t know if it was a gun he or she was keeping in secret. She wakes up to find that not only has her husband left a rose on his pillow for her, but the handyman named Derrick (Ryan McLane) has arrived. You may remember Ryan McLane as the toughest scientist to convert in Vixens from Venus (2016).

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She goes back inside the house and receives a mysterious phone call asking her who the killer was in the first Friday the 13th movie. That, or something about telling her that her husband needs to stay out of Mexico. She tries to get in touch with him, but no such luck. She calls her sister-in-law Rose (Chanel Preston). She comes over to try and calm her down. I don’t know where you might know Chanel Preston from, but she did play Marilyn Chambers in Night at the Erotic Museum (2015). That reminds me that I will have to get around to reviewing Behind the Green Door (1972). Not because it was a landmark film of the genre, but because an early childhood friend of mine was the daughter of parents who managed the Mitchell brother’s empire. Neither of us was told by our parents till we were older.

Kira goes to take a shower or something and comes back to find this.

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It’s another joke about the whole pizza deliveryman cliche. This is also where the film starts to get strange because Kira talks with her sister shortly afterwards and she denies it ever happened. At this point, Kira just chalks it up to her sister being embarrassed to have hooked up with a handyman she has never met before. But the weirdness doesn’t stop here. It only grows. I think it’s safe to say that the film is going for the Gaslight (1944) type thing here. It’s not really a spoiler because I am going to explain the whole thing anyways.

After talking with her sister, Kira lies down and appears to go to sleep. Then we are treated to a sex scene between her and the handyman. Interestingly, she wakes up suddenly from it in her bed rather than on the couch where she was lying down before the scene started or at the pool where the scene occurred. It goes without saying that she still can’t reach her husband.

Sis continues to try and calm her down, which is precisely why she invites her friend Tracy over so that actress Silvia Saige can get her fifth acting credit on IMDb. Once again, it’s a sex scene that goes on way too long. It’s there because it’s another thing that Kira needs to witness to further push her into a perceived insanity when everyone acts like it didn’t happen.

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Even the pictures/video she takes with her not-iPhone will end up magically disappearing later on. After that scene finally ends, we get a reappearance of Mister New Jersey Show Me State from Scared Topless (2015). That being Billy Chappell making an appearance as another handyman there to fix the spa. He even has a text that he claims was sent by Kira to him.

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Kira finds that the pictures are missing and everyone denies anything she has seen. She goes up to bed, which apparently means the couch where her husband appears out of nowhere.

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The scene of course goes on too long again. The next morning she finds the rose on his pillow, but when she gets Roy on the phone he says he’s still in Mexico. Kira’s sister is very concerned and brings in a doctor played by Robert Baldwin.

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It’s not likely, but you may have seen Baldwin in something like the Fred Olen Ray film Illicit Dreams 2 (1998). As you can see, he is very concerned for Kira. Again, she goes to sleep and again, she is visited for another sexual encounter. This time it’s the original handyman.

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This is when things really start to spin out of control. I say that because even my iPad decided this scene needed a Dutch tilt.

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Kira confronts the handyman about taking advantage of her while she was drugged by the doctor. She cuts him with a knife and he flees. She then tells her sister that she thinks she might have been raped. Then the handyman comes downstairs and doesn’t remember any of it. In fact, he’s not even cut.

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Kira kicks both her sister and the handyman out of the house, but finds blood on the floor. She comes into her living room to head upstairs and sees the other handyman with Tracy.

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This is a perfect example of why this film ultimately doesn’t work. This should immediately lead to her going upstairs to discover this.

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This scene should also be followed immediately by her passing out and falling down the stairs, which then leads us to our dramatic reveal and ending. But in both cases, they lead to long sex scenes. It completely ruins the suspenseful atmosphere that should be present in this part of the film. It leads me to believe that on the one hand they wanted to do this Gaslight style story, but on the other hand they were obligated to have a certain number of sex scenes that were required to be of a certain length. It’s like watching an action movie where foot or car chases go on so long that you are no longer caught up in the moment. Too bad cause I like the ending.

It turns out that the husband and the sister-in-law arranged this whole thing to drive Kira crazy. The doctor even performed ECT on her. The idea was that the only way Roy could get around the prenup that Kira’s brother had him sign was to get her committed.

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But what about that gun from earlier?

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Cut to black, and we hear gunshots.

If they had just trimmed down the sex scenes so that they moved from long and intimate to short almost glimpses as her mind spiraled more out of control, then this could have been one of the best of these I’ve seen so far. Sadly, it doesn’t do that. It’s one of these films that I call a missed opportunity.

Music Video of the Day: Puttin’ on the Ritz by Taco (1984, dir. Jean-Pierre Berckmans)


I know I am probably in the minority, but I prefer Taco’s version over the Fred Astaire version. Fred Astaire’s version makes me think “dancehall”. That doesn’t seem to fit for me. Taco’s version evokes images of high fashion, which is what I think of when hear the lyrics of Puttin’ on the Ritz.

As for the video, I think they did a great job of juxtaposing the images of high fashion the music brings to mind with the world on the outside of the Fred and Ginger Art Deco palaces of the 1930s. Someone I knew who blogs about classic films once referred to the video as Occupy the Ritz. This is the uncensored version that includes the blackface number as reference to the blackface number in Swing Time (1936). I especially love how in the end, both Taco and the other well to do people become ghosts.

4 Shots From 4 Films (Pierre Kirby): Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988), Dressed to Fire (1988), Hunting Express (1988), Zombie vs. Ninja (1989)


Maybe one of these days I’ll actually get around to reviewing all the films of Pierre Kirby. But for now, here’s four iconic and varied examples of his work as the world’s most obscure action star whose career was cut very short.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988, dir. Godfrey Ho)

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988, dir. Godfrey Ho)

We remember Kirby one-liners like, “What a useless guy,” but usually not the names of the characters he played. Realistically, there is only one character’s name that people consistently remember. That’s because of his James Bond introduction in that shot above: Fast, Ted Fast.

Dressed to Fire (1988, dir. Phillip Ko)

Dressed to Fire (1988, dir. Godfrey Ho)

Pierre Kirby crying. There’s nothing else that needs to be said. Even in his 9 movie career, Kirby showed that he could probably have played just about any role.

Hunting Express (1988, dir. Phillip Ko)

Hunting Express (1988, dir. Phillip Ko)

Pierre Kirby as the villain. It’s the one and only time he did this, but he did it well. Those good looks and smile could just as easily be paired with evil as Sergio Leone did with Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Little bit of additional trivia. The film that Thunder of Gigantic Serpent spliced Pierre Kirby into actual used not only the theme from The Terminator (1984), but Morricone’s main theme to Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) for its’ tragic end.

Zombie vs. Ninja (1989, dir. Godfrey Ho)

Zombie vs. Ninja (1989, dir. Godfrey Ho)

Despite the fact that Kirby certainly played other roles, he is most remembered as the ninja who wanders the endless forest battling other multi-colored ninjas.

Music Video of the Day: Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins (1996, dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)


One of the most common arguments I’ve seen about why music videos aren’t actually films is that they are just advertisements for a song. Right now Gary has just finished reading that sentence and is digging out his copy of Dewar’s-It’s Scotch (1898), Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee (1930), and other examples that destroy the illusion that even ads aren’t films. I think The Smashing Pumpkins video for Tonight, Tonight is one of the finest examples of why that argument is a bunch of BS. Why? Because it’s a remake of Georges Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon (1902). Even IMDb Data Editors agreed with me when I submitted it as such about a year ago. Tom Kenny and Jill Talley play the man and woman who go through their incredible journey. One that ends with them even being rescued by the S.S. Méliès. Not only have more people probably seen short films since the launch of MTV then since the pre-1915 days of cinema, but this video introduced many kids to Georges Méliès long before Martin Scorsese did with Hugo (2011).

Music Video of the Day: Don’t Answer Me by The Alan Parson’s Project (1984, dir. D.J. Webster)


Just like when you watch early cinema, you can see that they were innovating in music videos shortly after the launch of MTV. With famed comic book artist Michael Kaluta at the helm, they used cel animation, stop-motion, and claymation to create the video. It’s a nice throwback to the Old Hollywood days of Humphrey Bogart and Dick Tracy complete with a reference to A Trip To The Moon (1902).

By the way, thanks Lisa for the encouragement to not throw out this idea to spotlight a music video from time to time this morning.