A father and son living off the grid in a post-apocalyptic/post-wart situation soon find more and more outsiders coming closer and closer to their home. As decided by the father, they dispatch them one by one, until one day, the son sees a woman and cannot bring himself to follow his father’s others. After his father is wounded and he needs to find medicine, he finds her and meets her, leading to questioning everything he thought he knew.
On this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” we jump in the saddle and ride out into the B-Western horizon to celebrate the life of cowboy star Ken Maynard. Film historian Geno Cuddy is the guest on this episode.
It’s always thrilling when you can see the beginning of what you hope will be a long, seasoned career of filmmaking. Avalon Fast is a filmmaker that has immense promise, and it’s fascinating that she delivers a movie that’s so jarring and unnerving, and absolutely original. Director Fast has a great habit for making the audience uncomfortable, opening the film on a weird portrait of a woman in a honeycomb, and then contrasting it with the image of innocence with one of her characters lying along a serene field. From there, it only escalates.
BOOTLEG FILES 793: “Ouanga” (1936 horror film starring Fredi Washington).
LAST SEEN: On Vimeo.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On cheapjack public domain labels.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No one is rushing to get it into home entertainment release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: The film has been restored, but no one is rushing to put it out on Blu-ray.
Fredi Washington earned a degree of cinematic immortality for her startling performance as Peola, the light-skinned Black woman who is repeatedly thwarted in her attempts to transcend the racial barriers of Jim Crow America by passing for White in the 1934 classic “Imitation of Life.” This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime role for Washington, both in terms of the quality of role and the exposure it afforded her – at a time when Black women in Hollywood studios were either cast as maids or nightclub singers, Washington found no offers to score a dramatic encore.
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A man with a violent now living a very quiet life must reconsider his stance and reconnect with a long-buried part of himself when the stakes change.
I loved 1997, warts and all. It was a really rough, difficult, but fun, and exciting year for me, so I remember it for the good and bad. I can be accused of wearing rose colored glasses for 1997 and in a way you’d be correct, but I just had so much fun that year. Even being forced to attend Summer School wasn’t that bad, when all was said and done.
In either case, these are five of the worst films I saw in 1997.
How was 1997 for you?
It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty five years since 1997; while many people often cite it as a year of bad music (False), and bad movies (Falser), and bad Television (Falserer). I’s a year I am quite fond of (warts and all). It was my coming of age year. It was a year of massive change. 1997 is one of the first years I began my passion for movies, and one of the first times I’d ever really experienced the internet. Pretty much overnight, it went from an odd novelty for computer geeks to something literally everyone was taking notice of. I also discovered “Monstervision,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” Troma, and so much more that would influence my foray in to teendom.
That said, here are the five best films I saw in 1997. There were more than five that I planned to feature, but in the end these stood out most for me and had the most significance.