Days of Thunder, low budget Canadian style...
I just got a stack of new Blue Underground DVDs in a sort of fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck way. (Don't ask.) Blue Underground is probably, if not my favorite DVD distributor out there, then a solid second. (Anchor Bay is still first, but BU is catching up). I got:
Larry Cohen's Bone, a sort of pseudo-Blaxploitation effort with Yahpet Kotto as a criminal who invades a white Beverly Hills couple's estate and makes them face the lies and illusions in their life(or so the box says.) Larry Cohen is the man responsible for unleashing It's Alive, Q The Winged Serpent, and oddly enough, Phone Booth on the world.
A trio of Jess Franco films is next. Eugenie is DeSade filtered though the 1960s, and features Christopher Lee, obviously slumming for a paycheck as he did through much of the late 60's and early 70's. It purports to be erotic, but the trailer makes it out to be more of the European near-porn of the time. The Girl From Rio is a whacked out Barbarella ripoff that is allegedly based on characters created by Sax Rohmer, the creator of Fu Manchu. George Sanders is the one slumming in this one. The box promises eye-popping nudity and torture. We'll see about that. The third movie also features Christopher Lee, slumming again. The Bloody Judge is one of several 1700's-era evil-witchhunter-torturing-virgins pictures that haunted the bottom half of double bills in the late sixties, and even Lee is quoted on the box as saying the film features "scenes of extraordinary depravity". Hey, anything for a paycheck, right?
Baba Yaga, also known as Kiss Me, Kill Me, is based on a comic book by legendary Italian adult comic artist Guido Crepax, and is about witches and murder and lesbianism and S&M. This one also promises eye-popping erotic extras, and we'll see about that also.
Sergio Corbucci's Django, a classic spaghetti western starring Franco Nero that spawned over 50 unofficial sequels. Chances are, if you saw a 70's Italian western not starring Clint Eastwood, it was a retitled Django sequel. Anchor Bay had had this one out in the late 90's, but BU found a copy of the original camera negative that had been in a Rome film vault for three decades. I can't recommend this movie enough if you like spaghetti westerns.
Salon Kitty is a strange animal. Directed by Tinto Brass, the poor bastard who has to carry the director's credit on Caligula for all eternity, the movie purports to be a true story about a Nazi brothel in 1939. Long available in various heavily censored versions, BU has released an elaborate 2 disc effort with 2 doucmentaries and DVD-Rom features, and featuring the complete unedited version of the movie from Brass' own personal print. It's bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.
And last, but far from least, is the film described by today's post title. Fast Company is a pretty standard, nothing special racing picture starring John Saxon and William Smith. It's a movie of the type that you would have seen on HBO or The Movie Channel around 1983 or so. It's about a drag racer(Smith) at odds with his sponsor's representative(Saxon) over his getting old and wanting to win races. At one point, Saxon upbraids Smith's mechanic for trying to win so hard that their ride blows up. "Winning costs the company too much," he tells the mechanic. "The important thing is keeping him running just enough so that they(the fans) still like him, and buy our product." Saxon is pretty much a cookie cutter bad guy, who resorts to sabotage to get what he wants, and ultimately pays the price. It's a decent enough film, but would hardly be the sort of film that deserves the treatment BU is giving it, but for one thing.
It's directed by David Cronenberg. Filmed between Rabid and The Brood, it was Cronenberg's attempt to make a more straightforward film that might get him some recognition, and therefore some money. But because of a distribution snafu, it was barely released in the US and has been virtually unavailable since 1979. Cronenberg considers it one of the most important films of his career, though I'm hardpressed to see why. (Once I listen to the commentary track, perhaps I'll understand why.) The disc features a funny 11 minute interview with Saxon and Smith and an interesting interview with DP Mark Irwin, who discusses shooting on a shoestring with Cronenberg and his subsequent work with the director. BU has also included a second disc that features Cronenberg's first two films, Stereo, and Crimes of the Future, which I have not watched yet, but supposedly show the beginnings of Cronenberg's obsessions with technology and the human body.
Overall not a bad haul. If you're interested in these movies, you can go here and look at BU's site, which is somewhat NSFW, but contains ordering info, trailers, and previews for virtually all of their releases. I recommend The Final Countdown, George Romero's The Crazies, and Dead and Buried, a classic early 80's slasher flick from the guys that wrote Alien. BU is close to passing Anchor Bay as the premier cult DVD distributor.
Larry Cohen's Bone, a sort of pseudo-Blaxploitation effort with Yahpet Kotto as a criminal who invades a white Beverly Hills couple's estate and makes them face the lies and illusions in their life(or so the box says.) Larry Cohen is the man responsible for unleashing It's Alive, Q The Winged Serpent, and oddly enough, Phone Booth on the world.
A trio of Jess Franco films is next. Eugenie is DeSade filtered though the 1960s, and features Christopher Lee, obviously slumming for a paycheck as he did through much of the late 60's and early 70's. It purports to be erotic, but the trailer makes it out to be more of the European near-porn of the time. The Girl From Rio is a whacked out Barbarella ripoff that is allegedly based on characters created by Sax Rohmer, the creator of Fu Manchu. George Sanders is the one slumming in this one. The box promises eye-popping nudity and torture. We'll see about that. The third movie also features Christopher Lee, slumming again. The Bloody Judge is one of several 1700's-era evil-witchhunter-torturing-virgins pictures that haunted the bottom half of double bills in the late sixties, and even Lee is quoted on the box as saying the film features "scenes of extraordinary depravity". Hey, anything for a paycheck, right?
Baba Yaga, also known as Kiss Me, Kill Me, is based on a comic book by legendary Italian adult comic artist Guido Crepax, and is about witches and murder and lesbianism and S&M. This one also promises eye-popping erotic extras, and we'll see about that also.
Sergio Corbucci's Django, a classic spaghetti western starring Franco Nero that spawned over 50 unofficial sequels. Chances are, if you saw a 70's Italian western not starring Clint Eastwood, it was a retitled Django sequel. Anchor Bay had had this one out in the late 90's, but BU found a copy of the original camera negative that had been in a Rome film vault for three decades. I can't recommend this movie enough if you like spaghetti westerns.
Salon Kitty is a strange animal. Directed by Tinto Brass, the poor bastard who has to carry the director's credit on Caligula for all eternity, the movie purports to be a true story about a Nazi brothel in 1939. Long available in various heavily censored versions, BU has released an elaborate 2 disc effort with 2 doucmentaries and DVD-Rom features, and featuring the complete unedited version of the movie from Brass' own personal print. It's bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.
And last, but far from least, is the film described by today's post title. Fast Company is a pretty standard, nothing special racing picture starring John Saxon and William Smith. It's a movie of the type that you would have seen on HBO or The Movie Channel around 1983 or so. It's about a drag racer(Smith) at odds with his sponsor's representative(Saxon) over his getting old and wanting to win races. At one point, Saxon upbraids Smith's mechanic for trying to win so hard that their ride blows up. "Winning costs the company too much," he tells the mechanic. "The important thing is keeping him running just enough so that they(the fans) still like him, and buy our product." Saxon is pretty much a cookie cutter bad guy, who resorts to sabotage to get what he wants, and ultimately pays the price. It's a decent enough film, but would hardly be the sort of film that deserves the treatment BU is giving it, but for one thing.
It's directed by David Cronenberg. Filmed between Rabid and The Brood, it was Cronenberg's attempt to make a more straightforward film that might get him some recognition, and therefore some money. But because of a distribution snafu, it was barely released in the US and has been virtually unavailable since 1979. Cronenberg considers it one of the most important films of his career, though I'm hardpressed to see why. (Once I listen to the commentary track, perhaps I'll understand why.) The disc features a funny 11 minute interview with Saxon and Smith and an interesting interview with DP Mark Irwin, who discusses shooting on a shoestring with Cronenberg and his subsequent work with the director. BU has also included a second disc that features Cronenberg's first two films, Stereo, and Crimes of the Future, which I have not watched yet, but supposedly show the beginnings of Cronenberg's obsessions with technology and the human body.
Overall not a bad haul. If you're interested in these movies, you can go here and look at BU's site, which is somewhat NSFW, but contains ordering info, trailers, and previews for virtually all of their releases. I recommend The Final Countdown, George Romero's The Crazies, and Dead and Buried, a classic early 80's slasher flick from the guys that wrote Alien. BU is close to passing Anchor Bay as the premier cult DVD distributor.
posted by Jon M. at
8:07 PM
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