It sure is a hard life or Larry Barnes. He’s had a rough time living with an insanely sexy wife Erica, who so happens to be a witch who practices black magic. After failing to curse one of Larry’s business rivals, Larry and Erica clash causing Erica to fall to her death. After casting out his other very sexy female lover and Erica’s sister Maria, she threatens to make his life miserable for causing the death of Erica. After moving on, Amelia, the wife of Larry’s rival is still very bitter and angry about her husband being confined to a wheelchair. Intent on causing hell for Larry, she gives Larry’s new very sexy girlfriend Carol a medallion that Amelia uses as a means of taking control of Carol.
Author Archives: Felix Vasquez
The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974): 2-Disc Special Edition [Blu-ray/DVD]
With how light hearted and sexual “The Cheerleaders” movie series is, I’m surprised how dramatic Jack Hill’s sequel “The Swinging Cheerleaders” is. It has its sexually charged moments, but it’s very much a sterner dramedy about a group of beautiful cheerleaders walking in to trouble. As a means of writing an article for a University paper, young Kate joins the local cheerleading squad in hopes of finding some sort of scandal for publishing. When the local coach and school dean becomes involved with gamblers and gangsters to rig football games, events go from bad to worse when Kate decides to alert the squad.
Meanwhile the other cheerleaders on the squad are dealing with their own problems and personal turmoil. There’s the beautiful Andrea, who is tricked in to becoming a part of a gang bang after refusing to sleep with her boyfriend to keep her virginity, and young Lisa who learns the hard way that the man she’s dating is involved with another woman. From there the movie jumps back and forth through various sub-plots and culminates in to the ultimate central plot where the football team and cheerleaders learn about the illegal gambling and decide to take matters in to their own hands.
“The Swinging Cheerleaders” is more of a drama than a comedy, but has a slew of really entertaining and fun moments, including when one of the football players decides to avenge young Kate, and the climactic battle between football players and crooked cops that ensue in a warehouse. The legendary Jack Hill’s direction is very much evident in the film, displaying his unique sense of pacing, his great use of the limited budget, and his keen understanding of the youth of the period and its penchant for rebellion. “The Swinging Cheerleaders” is a tonal shift in the series, but a damn fine drama comedy with a great sense of humor.
Featured from Arrow Video is a brand new restoration, offering up a crisp new version of the film. The new release comes in both DVD and Blu-Ray presentations, along with a reversible sleeve, and a neat collector’s booklet which include liner notes, vintage articles about the film, and full color stills with all of the cheerleaders present.
Among the extras, there’s a great nineteen minute Q&A with director Jack Hill, and actors Colleen Camp and the beautiful Rosanne Katon (my favorite of the cheerleaders!) recorded at the New Beverly Cinema in 2007. There’s an audio commentary with writer-director Jack Hill which was recorded specifically for the Arrow Video release, and a brand new interview with director Jack Hill. Finally, there are two archive interviews with cinematographer Alfred Taylor, and another archive interview with Jack Hill and Johnny Legend. Finally, there a small series of TV spots for the film.
Bulldog (2016)
Sean is the definition of a self fulfilled prophecy. He’s a young man without a family, without a culture, and without much of an identity whose found that adapting other identities hasn’t worked for him nor has hating other identities, either. He doesn’t really find much to identify with his own culture, and can’t stand the current country he’s in. One especially poignant moment finds Sean being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This creates significant tension when he begins going to school and is mocked by some classmates for his Asian heritage.
This quickly becomes a point of anger since he can’t really relate to being Asian, thus some avenues are closed due to his race, already. Sean is a young man who has very little ambition and has become the result of the terrible death of his brother, which broke apart his family. Surely, they may not have been perfect before the movie began, but Sean at least had a foundation. Now with his mother committed to gambling, and his father drowning in his own company, Sean is consistently told he’s a punk and thug.
Without anyone to really guide him, and inviting all the wrong elements, Sean is at a point where he has no choice but to submit to his anger and frustration. Benjamin Tran’s drama is a compelling and unique take on the loss of culture and ambition and how lack of identity can cause confusion in someone in a foreign culture with its own ideas about growing up and earning respect. The cast give strong performances all around, including Vin Kridakorn who conveys the sense of confusion and frustration with his character well. “Bulldog” is a remarkable short drama and one I wouldn’t mind seeing turned in to a feature film someday soon.
“Spice World” and My Spice Girls Experience
Has it been twenty years already? Time just flies. I am not afraid to admit to you that once upon a time I was a big Spice Girls fan. What do you expect? I was just going in to my teens, my hormones were firing off at all pistols, and here were five incredibly beautiful and sexy British women singing entertaining and fun pop songs. I was the victim being led by sirens for a few years there.
X-Rated Alley: Sex Roulette (1977), The Little Blue Box (1979)
Impulse Pictures graces vintage porn collectors with newly restored versions of some of the rarest adult films ever released, offering digital remasters from the original 35mm materials. “Sex Roulette” from director Alan Vydra was heavily edited and censored for years, and Impulse provides the long cut this time around. If you’re really in to an adult movie centered on an elderly man and an African American dwarf getting in to all kinds of sexually aggressive adventures, then you might like “Sex Roulette.”
The Shallows (2016)
Jaume Collet-Serra‘s survival thriller feels like a movie that was written in 1980 and just now saw the light of day as a vehicle for Blake Lively. It doesn’t have any of the beaming self importance of “Open Water” or “127 Hours,” which makes it a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Lively is gorgeous and charming as American tourist Nancy Adams, a medical student still reeling from the death of her mother after a long losing battle with cancer. Taking a hiatus from work and all of her responsibilities, she travels to Mexico to relax and surf on the beach. While waiting for some waves, she’s attacked by a massive shark that knocks her off of her board, and leaves her to plunge in to the tide where she cuts her leg open, hobbling any and all efforts to swim back to shore.
A Home of Our Own (1993) [Blu-Ray]
Director Tony Bill’s “A Home of Our Own” is one of the more underrated dramas about the pursuit of the American Dream. While the 1993 family drama about poverty in the early twentieth century isn’t perfect, it does a damn fine job of portraying the consistent pit falls of poverty, and often times it’s tough to really charge forward when life is so relentlessly unfair. “A Home of Our Own” strives for inspiration and positivity despite falling occasionally in to painfully depressing material, and is a very good drama that places the brilliant Kathy Bates front and center.
Something of a second hand “Grapes of Wrath,” Bates plays the fierce widowed matriarch of the Lacey clan Frances, who has had enough of living in Los Angeles and slumming it in an apartment building. After getting fired from her factory job for reporting sexual harassment, Frances decides she wants to uproot her family and seek her fortune with her own property in the form of her dream house. The events aren’t as ideal as she pictures, as the narrator Shayne (played as a young man by Edward Furlong) chronicles how tough it was to trek across country and deal with having to become the man of the house. There’s the family squeezing in to a beat up car, sharing a big jug of Kool Aid, and Shayne’s declaration “For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we ate nothing but egg salad sandwiches.
I never ate one again, and hadn’t since.” Frances, with a quick tongue and using her children as bartering tools, manages to talk her way in to buying a skeleton for a potential house, which she begins to build with her long suffering children. Along the way they befriend land owner Mr. Moon, a tough Asian man who begins slowly taking a shine toward the family, all the while Shayne struggles with poverty, and having to endure being handed responsibility he never asked for. Furlong is very good in the role as Shayne, a young man given major responsibility who has a tough time finding his place in the family. Too often he’s given the tasks of an adult by Frances who then punishes him like a child, and this creates an eventual rift and surefire tension between him and mom Frances.
Once Frances begins meeting a new man and begins dating, the tension is dialed up as Shayne begins to resent her, prompting a family feud. Frances is at once an idealist and a realist, who wants to pursue her idea of the American dream, but has no interest in accepting charity or pity. This results in a lot of interesting sub-plots, including her trip to a church second hand store, as well as a scene where the local reverend attempts to deliver presents to the children during Christmas Eve. While I’m not a huge fan of the pat happy ending, “A Home Of Our Own” is a compelling and entertaining drama about the lower class and trying to achieve the American dream in an unfair world, as well as the power of the bonds of family.
Despite the movie finally being on Blu-Ray, this is a bare bones release with not even the original trailer from the 1993 movie. All there is is a small catalogue from Olive Films.