Video Eyeball

Friday Night Double Feature at the Drive-In • The Astounding She-Monster and Female Trouble

The Astounding She-Monster
aka Mysterious Invader
1958/ 60 minutes, b&w
Image Entertainment
Not Rated

Cast • Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey
Writer • Frank Hall
Director • Ronnie Ashcroft

Female Trouble 
1974/ 95 minutes
New Line Home Entertainment
X

Cast • Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pierce, Cookie Mueller
Writer • John Waters
Director • John Waters

The Astounding She-Monster
TEXTBOOK DRIVE-IN science fiction. A pair of goons (led by veteran serial badman Kenne Duncan) kidnap an heiress and hightail it to a remote cabin owned by a geologist (the always-dependable Robert Clarke). Unbeknownst to them, a UFO has crashed nearby, and its occupant (the astounding stripper Shirley Kilpatrick), a silver-suited space vixen with a lethal touch, is on the prowl. Miz She-Monster dispatches most of the cast (and a few woodland creatures) before meeting her match in Clarke; however, if you can’t predict the stinger ending, please trade in your comic book collection immediately.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Detour

Detour
1945/ 69 minutes, b&w
Alpha Video
Not Rated

Cast • Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Edmund MacDonald, Claudia Drake, Tim Ryan
Writers • Martin Goldsmith
Director • Edgar G. Ulmer

EDGAR ULMER'S NOTORIOUS film trés noir has a serious cult following today. Al Roberts (Tom Neal), one of cinema’s biggest losers, recounts in flashback what happened when he hitched from New York to L.A. to see his fiancée. His story begins when he’s picked up by Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald), who explains the scratches on his face as being the result of his advances toward a female hitch-hiker. When Haskell accidentally dies en route, Roberts panics and ditches his body, then steals Haskell’s clothes and wallet to assume his identity. Roberts then picks up Vera (Ann Savage), a skank-from-hell who turns out to be the hitcher who fought off Haskell, so she knows that Roberts isn’t who he claims to be. MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Tanner '88

Tanner '88
1988/ 2 discs
Criterion Collection
Not Rated

Cast • Michael Murphy, Pamela Reed, Cynthia Nixon, Kevin J. O'Connor, Veronica Cartwright, Daniel Jenkins, Jim Fyfe
Writers • Gary Trudeau
Director • Robert Altman

IN THE FIRST EPISODE of Robert Altman's 10-part SOV made-for-cable series, Tanner '88, we are introduced to Presidential candidate Jack Tanner (Murphy) through a news interview — the camera isn't actually on him, but on an image of him on a monitor. Here we learn of Tanner's background: he's a liberal Democrat, an Air Force brat (born in Pearl Harbor!), has lived on the east coast, left coast, midwest, was a congressman who dropped out of politics for a while when his daughter, Alex (Nixon), was seriously ill, and he holds a Ph.D. Writer Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury") and Altman create the dream candidate for Democrats — and they put him smack in the middle of the actual race in 1988, doing everything from noshing with Bruce Babbitt to shaking hands with Bob Dole.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Lover Come Back

Lover Come Back
1961/ 107 minutes 
Universal
NOT RATED

Cast • Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Jack Oakie, Ann B. Davis, Jack Albertson, Donna Douglas
Writers • Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning
Director • Delbert Mann

LABEL DORIS DAY "the eternal virgin" if you want, but don't say the same about her naughty party joke movies. And don’t claim Doris’ characters were virgins merely because they were uptight—she was often willing  enough to jump in the pool if she felt it was an attractvely shaped pool with fresh chlorinated water. Truth is, Doris was a virgin because of her hats. Her hats are so dreadful that a true man of style could never look past them—imagine being seen with them! At the supper club! The automat! The beach! The seduction of such an indignant woman topped with uproariously funny hats could only be the act of a bemused practical joker. MORE AFTER THE JUMP 

DVD of the Day • The Gladiators

The Gladiators
1969/ 90 minutes 
New Yorker Films
NOT RATED

Cast • Arthur Pentelow, Frederick Danner, Hans Bendrik, Daniel harle, Hans Berger, Rosario Gianetti, Tim Yum, Kenneth Lo, Bjorn Franzen
Writers • Nicholas Gosling, Peter Watkins
Director • Peter Watkins

THE GLADIATORS (GLADIATORERNA), the most elusive of English director Peter Watkins' first cluster of films, was among the first to be released on DVD in the U.S. As in Culloden, The War Game and Privilege before it and Punishment Park after it, Watkins toys with the documentary format in his 1969 drama/satire, giving us a "what if?" premise set in the near future that provocatively comments on international society as it was right then.  MORE BELOW

DVD of the Day • Cannonball

Cannonball
1976/ 94 minutes 
Blue Underground
PG-13

Cast • David Carradine, Veronica Hamel, Bill McKinney, Gerrit Graham, Mary Wornov, Archie Hahn, James Keach, Carl Gottlieb, Judy Canova, Dick Miller
Writers • Paul Bartel, Don Simpson
Director • Paul Bartel

ROGER CORMAN'S  Death Race 2000 ('75, also directed by Bartel) brought on a rash of ripoffs, and Cannonball is one of the first and best. David Carradine is Coy “Cannonball" Buckman, the leader of the pack in an illegal cross-country auto race. Sure it’s a rip-off, sure it’s brainless, but it’s a definitive drive-in car-chase flick that’s gonna make you want to tromp the gas pedal and burn rubber on the way home.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Cleopatra Jones

Cleopatra Jones
1973/ 89 minutes 
Warner
PG

Cast • Tamara Dobson, Shelley Winters, Brenda Sykes, Antonio Fargas, Dan Frazer, Bill McKinney, Bernie Casey, John Alderman, Don Cornelius, Frankie Crocker, Esther Rolle, Albert Popwell, Caro Kenyatta
Writer • Max Julien
Director • Jack Starrett

Actor Spotlight • SHELLEY WINTERS

VIDEO EYEBALL REALIZES  that when you mention Shelley Winters (1920-2006), you’re really talking about two people. On the one hand, you have the student of Lee Strasberg, contemporary of Brando and Montgomery Clift, two-time Oscar winner (for The Diary of Anne Frank, ‘59, and A Patch of Blue, ‘65), and star of such films as Night of the Hunter (‘55), Lolita (‘60), The Tenant (‘76) and more recently, Portrait of a Lady (‘96). But you’re also talking about the shrieking, wildy overacting Shelley Winters of countless insane talk show appearances and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (‘71), Tentacles (‘77), and more recently, Pauly Shore’s Jury Duty (‘95). With all due respect to the memory of Ms. Winters, it’s the latter who we’re reviewing here.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Kingpin

Kingpin
1996/ 110 minutes 
MGM
PG-13

Cast • Woody Harrelson, Bill Murray, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, Chris Elliott, Lin Shaye
Writers • Bobby Farrelly and Mort Nathan
Director • Peter Farrelly

YOU EXPECT HILARIOUS DIALOGUE from a Farrelly Brothers movie, but Kingpin actually has character development. That and some of the best use of rubber and hair since Planet of the Apes ('68). Woody Harrelson’s performance adds depth to Roy Munson — a new landmark on cinema’s landscape of losers — conveying pathos and even an underlying dignity…in a self-destructive kind of way.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Flight of the Navigator

Flight of the Navigator
1986/ 90 minutes 
Disney
PG

Cast • Joey Cramer, Paul Reubens, Veronica Cartwright, Cliff De Young, Sarah Jessica Parker, Howard Hesseman
Writers • Mark H. Baker, Michael Burton
Director • Randal Kleiser

DAVID FREEMAN (Joey Cramer), chasing after his obnoxious little brother, falls into a ravine and gets knocked unconscious when he is distracted by a strange noise. When he comes to and heads home, he finds another family lives there and that he has apparently been “away” for seven years (despite still being the same age). NASA soon suspects David has spent these years in the company of a previously unknown life form—witness, for example, the gigabytes of data the scientists are able to extract from his brain when they hook him up to a computer.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Across 110th Street

Across 110th Street
1972/ 102 minutes
MGM
R

Cast • Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Quinn, Tony Franciosa, Antonio Fargas, Richard Ward, Paul Benjamin, Gilbert Lewis, Gloria Hendry, George Di Cenzo, Burt Young
Writers • Luther Davis, based on the novel by Wally Ferris
Director • Barry Shear

THIS DEPRESSINGLY REALISTIC, ultra-violent police procedural is often wrongly labeled as blaxploitation, simply because of its predominantly (excellent) black cast, on-location Harlem setting, and soul-deep soundtrack by J.J. Johnson and Bobby Womack. Actually, it's a lot closer to the urban noir of the period such as Cool Breeze ('72), Badge 373 ('73) and Report To The Commissioner (which also stars Yaphet Kotto). Dropping his trademark sly grin, Kotto plays a by-the-books police lieutenant who clashes with old school hardass cop Anthony Quinn (who also produced the film) over the robbery and murder of some black and Italian mobsters.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP