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#1
Bad Movies / Re: RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie...
Last post by LilCerberus - Today at 09:45:02 PM
Tonight's Stinker
Hells Angels on Wheels(1967)
https://youtu.be/K_TspgXRbMg?si=be_rocIUpMKVFYfF

Hell's Angels cruise around San Francisco, cause some trouble, the pull up to a gas station, where Jack Nicholson works as an attendant.... He gets fired after mouthing off at an impatient customer who doesn't like being one pump over from bikers.... He later shows up at their hangout, where he get in it with one of the Angels when they break his headlamp.... The leader (Adam Roark) breaks it up & offers him a new headlamp if he follows them, to a rumble.... Afterwards, he falls for one of the girls, but she's not into monogamy....
Following a gratingly long party scene, the Angels decide to make Jack a perspective member....

Lots of riding & rumbles, with very little time put into story development....
Failed to sit through this one as a kid, & quickly remembered why.....
#2
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Memes n' stuff of the day
Last post by Rev. Powell - Today at 08:09:07 PM
#3
Good Movies / Re: Recent Viewings, Part 2
Last post by FatFreddysCat - Today at 06:37:44 PM
"Rat Skates: Born in the Basement" (2007)
Founding Overkill drummer turned indie filmmaker Lee "Rat Skates" Kundrat takes viewers back in time to the start of not only his band, but of the early 80s Thrash Metal explosion in general, via vintage video clips and photos from his personal archives. I've seen this one a bunch of times over the years and it's still a fun trip down mosh pit memory lane.
#4
Bad Movies / Re: 100 Historical Movies in O...
Last post by Rev. Powell - Today at 06:24:24 PM
Bump for someone else.
#5
Rev- I read a book about the attempt to corner the gold market by a couple of hucksters. Grant was unwittingly part of it, but eventually ended it by releasing US gold reserves.
#6
Sad news. I know he'd been in hospice care for a while. It was a shame that his family had to ask for donations to help support him in his final days.
#7
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcBHHwotjDu/   Sadistic and campy "Stepfather" clip starring Taye Diggs, who is apparently some sort of person.

Tubi originals continue to outperform.
#8
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Random Statements About So...
Last post by Alex - Today at 03:54:33 PM
Saw a link for a film called Kong Vs Giant Cock. I decided not to click on it just in case it turned out to be exactly what I was expecting.

#9
Television / Re: tv series with no story ar...
Last post by Alex - Today at 03:51:36 PM
I've not watched them all, but the Dr Who episodes I have seen seem to have dumped the longer running story lines they had when I was a kid for a more monster of the week approach.

Pretty much any cop show I've seen. They might have the occasional theme that pops up a couple of times but no grand story line running through them (NCIS etc, although again I only see the occasional episode so I could be missing things).
#10
Good Movies / Re: Recent Viewings, Part 2
Last post by M.10rda - Today at 02:39:55 PM
HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM! (1933):
Long-winded as I tend to be, in order to encapsulate this film I will defer now to quoting a 4.5/5 Letterboxd review from "Important Cinema Club" & "Michael & Us" co-host Will Sloan:

>>>"Harry Langdon is a leftist street cleaner and pedant who dreams of a worker's revolution. Al Jolson (the hero) is a hobo anarchist whose only militant political belief is a hatred of work in all its forms. Frank "The Wizard of Oz" Morgan is the mayor, who is basically a liberal {...} Jolson, "the mayor of Central Park," cultivates within the park an egalitarian utopia. About two-thirds of the way in, Jolson gets a taste of the high life, and his African American best-buddy has suddenly become his butler. We instantly understand that this will not do. From the height of the Depression, this is about as close as you're going to get to an American studio movie with "good politics." Al Jolson is a delight here. If you only watch one Al Jolson movie, for god's sake make it this one and not one of the others."<<<

Okay, I enjoy both podcasts even though sometimes I part ways w/ Sloan's critical opinion on flicks and (bizarrely often, as I am also a Leftist) I find his political readings staggeringly daft. (Ex. Canadian Sloan and his "M&U" partner spent five years telling listeners that Joe Biden, of whom I was not a Big Fan, was equally as bad as Donald Trump and that USAmericans might just as well vote for Trump - uh, thanks Will, hope that's worked out as well for your country as for ours.) That's the case a bit w/ HALLELUJAH as well - a Depression-era studio film spotlighting a hero who romanticizes poverty and a priori rejects the necessity for labor seems almost as tone-deaf as another Depression-era studio film (like say THE RICH ARE ALWAYS WITH US from 1932) that celebrates wealth and altogether ignores poverty or hardscrabble labor. Langdon's character "Egghead" is an honest-enough New Deal social democrat but I dunno what makes Morgan's Mayor a "Liberal" in Sloan's eyes... basically all we know about him is he's a wealthy drunk who plays the piano, dines in luxury, and can barely be bothered to show up to ceremonial appearances. (Perhaps the fact he doesn't have Jolson arrested on sight makes him "Liberal"?) Most worryingly, the film's depiction of the large ensemble of Central Park bums that surround Jolson and Langdon goes beyond satirical into the terrain of stochastic propaganda: these guys become an angry mob when they find out that Jolson and Langdon have found a "one thousand dollar bill" (apparently these used to exist!) in Langdon's sanitation can, and they literally put Jolson on trial (w/ a potential death penalty!) when they find out he's considering accepting a job from Mayor Morgan. To whom besides self-proclaimed leftist Will Sloan would this portrayal of unemployed homeless Americans constitute "good politics" - the ghosts of Rush Limbaugh, Margaret Thatcher, Grover Cleveland?  :buggedout:

All that said... I did enjoy this movie! Failed silent-era effete mime Langdon gets to use his voice here and - turns out when you can hear him instead of just look at him, he's funny! About half the film is scored and written by Rodgers and Hart and sung or delivered in recite  by the cast... which is very fun and like nothing I've seen in an old movie - it ain't a (lame) Eddy/MacDonald operetta, and it ain't a comedy w/ songs shoehorned in artificially every 15 minutes... the singing (or proto-rapping) actually moves the story along and develops the conflicts among the bums. Unfortunately the other half of the film is a dull (and music-less) love triangle plot - but there is some entertainment to glean from Madge Evans, the gorgeous female lead who (hilariously) is caught between Frank Morgan (who looks here like a cross between Boris Karloff and Gale Gordon as "Mr. Wilson II") and Al Jolson (who looks like a balding Mandy Patinkin who's been struck repeatedly in the face w/ a cooking iron).

Notorious blackface-ethusiast Jolson is not nearly as punchable here as I'd expected him to be (for one thing, he foregoes all shoe-polish)...    3/5    ...But I will take Sloan's advice and make this my sole Jolson film.