WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2011.
With his birthday falling on March 27th, actor, writer and director Quentin Tarantino plans to celebrate the month of his birth at New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, the same theater he saved from becoming just another Supercuts. The theater’s calendar for March includes a number of exploitation classics, some animated movies that Walt Disney would never have even thought of making, and several other films which are not currently available on DVD. Many of these cinematic experiences are very rare, and it is highly unlikely you will see them anywhere else.
Tarantino ended up making a surprise appearance at the New Beverly on March 1st, 2011 to introduce the first double feature of his month of programming: “Crack House” and “Redneck Miller.” Now “Crack House” was one of the myriad releases from Cannon Films during the 1980’s, and it follows young lovers Rick and Melissa whose relationship gets torn apart when Rick’s brother gets shot to death by a rival gang, and Rick quickly rejoins the gang he left for a better life to avenge his brother’s senseless murder. Of course, this all goes awry when Rick gets sent to prison while Melissa falls in with a drug dealer and gets hooked on crack cocaine.
Tarantino described “Crack House” as being very, very special to him as it came out in 1989, the very last year in which exploitation movies played in movie houses. From when he was young, he talked about making a list each year of the ten best exploitation movies that came out, and among his top picks was George A. Romero’s “Day of The Dead.” “Crack House” got the very last exploitation movie of the year award from Tarantino before these lists were rendered obsolete.
With exploitation movies, Tarantino said we were all attracted to them through their “50’s-ness of juvenile delinquentness.” Basically, these films were the bad boys of cinema, the ones which didn’t follow the rules nor did they ever apologize for being trashy entertainment. From the 1950’s onward, exploitation cinema succeeded in reflecting the juvenile delinquents of each passing decade. But when it came to the 1980’s, these same movies suddenly became unwatchable because, as Tarantino correctly pointed out:
“The 80’s were one fucked up decade!”
But “Crack House” is one of those rare 80’s exploitation flicks which does get better as it goes along. Even Tarantino admitted how shocked he was to find he actually “gave a fuck” about these characters who might seem like stereotypical bad boys to everyone else. The “Pulp Fiction” director also acknowledged the terrific “guest star” cast which included Richard Roundtree (the original Shaft) as a no-nonsense cop, and all-time football great Jim Brown as a vicious drug kingpin.
Tarantino’s brand of March Madness at the New Beverly will culminate in a week long showing of “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.” This is the combined version of both films into one single movie which screened at the Cannes Film Festival and has never been seen before in the United States. At four hours long, there was no way New Beverly was just going to show it two nights of the week! However, as I write this, all advance tickets for each night are now sold out (NOOOOO!!!). Your best bet is to get to the theater really early in the hopes you can get in through the standby line.
In any event, here’s to a month of great, unabashed entertainment at the New Beverly Cinema!
WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally back in 2012.
I was lucky enough to check out Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie “Django Unchained” at New Beverly Cinema, the same movie theater he bought and kept from going out of business. It was being shown in 35mm instead of a digital print at other theaters because Tarantino is still a big fan of film, and the New Beverly is known for showing movies in 35mm because that’s exactly what the owners and patrons like best.
One of the real treats of seeing “Django Unchained” at New Beverly Cinema is instead of getting coming attractions for 2013 movies, we instead get to watch movie trailers from the past. These ones were especially campy and represent the kind of movies Hollywood no longer makes, and I wondered if the trailers being shown before “Django Unchained” inspired this particular Tarantino film in some way. Many of the prints of movies and trailers shown at the New Beverly tend to come from Tarantino’s own personal collection, so even if they didn’t inspire this movie of his, then they must have been ones he loves watching over and over.
Let’s take a look.
“The Arena”
This exploitation film from 1974, one which clearly was inspired by “Spartacus,” stars Pam Grier and Margaret Markov as female gladiators who have been enslaved in Rome and are forced to fight for their freedom. The trailer proved to be hilarious as the acting is over the top, and the narrator embellishes the more explicit elements of this movie by saying how the Romans “enslaved the most sensuous women to titillate the perverted pleasures of the Roman public” and how the main characters are “beautiful unchained women” whose bodies are “shaped into superb fighting equipment.” There’s also a bit of nudity and blood on display, the kinds of things you almost never see in a movie trailer today unless it is a red band trailer being shown for restricted audiences only.
Still, it’s great to see Grier here whom Tarantino cast in his movie “Jackie Brown,” and it is said she and Markov did all their own fights and stunts in “The Arena.” We should all known by now that Grier is as tough as the characters she has played in dozens of movies, and seeing her take on the Romans makes this one worth a look.
“Boot Hill”
The trailer for this 1969 Italian Spaghetti Western runs four minutes long, much longer than the average movie trailer we see in theaters today. It stars Terence Hill as Cat Stevens, but the trailer’s narrator refers to him as “the man with no name.” It also stars football great Woody Strode as Thomas, a man who is quick with a gun and out for revenge over the death of his son. Together, these two help the inhabitants of a gold mining community which is being oppressed by a criminal organization.
This is another trailer which has a male narrator emphasizing the movie’s violence, and it’s fun to hear him say how “Boot Hill” is a town “where death comes quick,” “where death comes hard,” and where “death comes in two colors.” Seeing Hill and Strode walk into town all serious and without a smile on their faces brings to mind how Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz roll into town in “Django Unchained.”
“Boot Hill” was actually the last film in a trilogy of movies directed by Giuseppe Colizzi, and it was preceded by “God Forgives… I Don’t!” and “Aces High.”
“Mandingo”
This 1975 film was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Kyle Onstott, and it stars James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Lillian Hayman, former boxer Ken Norton and pro-wrestler Earl Maynard. It takes place in the 1840’s where a plantation owner trains one of his slaves to be a bare-knuckle fighter, and there are some brutal scenes of bare-knuckle fighting to be found in “Django Unchained.” It makes me wonder if Tarantino based the character of Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) on the ones played by Mason or King in “Mandingo.”
The narrator of this trailer describes “Mandingo” as being “the first true motion picture epic of the Old South,” but it’s a little hard to believe this as certain scenes appear to be very overwrought. The audience couldn’t help but laugh at the actress who told her lover “don’t kiss me yet, unless it’s just a cousin kiss” because the kiss which followed seems to be anything but a cousin kiss.
The movie version of “Mandingo” received a severe bashing from film critics like Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin and Richard Schickel, all of whom gave it their lowest rating. Tarantino, however, said it represents one of only two instances in the last few decades where “a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie” (the other being Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls”).
“…tick…tick…tick…”
Ralph Nelson’s 1970 movie stars another football great, Jim Brown, as Jimmy Price, a black police officer who has just been elected sheriff of a racially divided town in the American South. The fact he beat out the former Sheriff, a white man named John Little (George Kennedy), does not sit well with some of the townspeople. As the movie’s title and the endless ticking in the trailer indicates, the racial tensions will continue to rise until they boil over into a possibly fatal conflict.
“…tick…tick…tick…” has long since become a cult classic for its cutting-edge portrayal of racial tensions and its tense narrative, and of all the trailers shown before “Django Unchained” at New Beverly Cinema, this was the one the audience laughed at the least, if at all. It looks like it still holds up to this day regardless of the passing of time, and the way the white characters treat Jimmy doesn’t seem much different from the way Django is treated in “Django Unchained.” It’s especially cool to see Brown as a Sheriff because he has always had the appearance of someone who can clean up a town single-handedly.
“Take a Hard Ride”
This Western from 1975 also stars Jim Brown as Pike, a rugged trail boss and former criminal who promises Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews) he will successfully transport $86,000 across the border to a ranch in Sonora, Mexico. Pike is forced to team up with a dishonest gambler named Tyree (Fred Williamson) for this mission, and they are soon being pursued by the ruthless bounty hunter Kiefer (Lee Van Cleef) and the corrupt sheriff Kane (Barry Sullivan).
The trailer for “Take a Hard Ride” made it look like a movie I really want to check out. Like “Django Unchained,” it is a mix up of the Blaxploitation and western genres and features one of the best casts a movie like this could ever hope to have. Brown and Williamson have always proven to be ultimate bad asses in whatever movies they appear in, and I love how the trailer’s narrator describes Cleef’s character as being “as sly as a rattlesnake and twice as deadly.” It was also great watching the scene where the cowboys and their horses crash down a hill because now I know where the filmmakers of “Young Guns II” got the idea for a similar scene.
After watching all these trailers and “Django Unchained,” it becomes clearer to see where Tarantino took his cues from as a writer and director. It also shows how brilliant he is at taking all the elements and turning them into a movie which is uniquely his own and not just an uninspired homage that pales in comparison to the films it inspired. “Django Unchained” proved to be a lot of fun, and the trailers which preceded it are for movies which look to be just as entertaining.
The Ultimate Rabbit 