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Wednesday, April 2, 2025

STREETS OF BLOOD -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 6/30/09

 

"Are we even cops anymore?"
"We're past that, brother."

Val Kilmer's character, Det. Andy Devereaux, is referring to the fact that he and his fellow cops in STREETS OF BLOOD (2009) have ventured far beyond the bounds of acceptable police procedure in their quest to stem the rising tide of drug-related crime in the hurricane-ravaged Big Easy. 

 But seeing that Kilmer, Sharon Stone, and Michael Biehn are appearing in this tacky, low-grade potboiler, the question he's answering might as well have been "Are we even movie stars anymore?"

Somehow, though, once I got past the possibility that this was going to be a classy, top-notch movie and lowered my expectations accordingly, I actually started to enjoy it. It's fast-moving, action-packed, and rather colorful in its depiction of the dark underbelly of New Orleans, with plenty of sleazy sex and violence to give it that neo-grindhouse appeal. Big names aside, it's not all that different from the cheap, direct-to-video action flicks I used to rent from hole-in-the-wall video stores back in the 80s.

Val Kilmer is an actor I like in just about anything, so I cut him some slack here even though he isn't all that successful at making me think he's from anywhere near Louisiana. As Andy Devereaux, a hardboiled narc trying to live up to his hero-cop father's legacy, he's a true blue cop even though he'll bend the hell out of the rules to make a bust.  

Curtis "Fifty Cent" Jackson plays his partner, Stan, a family man having trouble making ends meet and feeling the temptation to pocket some of the stacks of drug money they come across. Jackson seems more comfortable playing gangstas than cops, but he does a pretty good job here even though he could still use a few more acting lessons.

Andy and Stan often butt heads with Pepe (Jose Pablo Cantillo) and Barney (Brian Presley), two really out-of-control cops who like to kill bad guys, take their cash, do their drugs, and screw their girlfriends. But the two disparate duos find themselves working together when FBI agent Brown (Michael Biehn) launches an investigation that threatens to bring them all down just as they're starting to close in on the biggest drug gang in the city, the Latin Kings, run by a stone cold killer named Chamorro (Luis Rolon).

While all this is going on, a police psychologist named Nina (Sharon Stone) is conducting interviews with the main cops in order to find out why they have such a penchant for extreme violence, including Andy's four lethal shootings in three years ("I'm a good shot," he tells her). Stone comes off like a cross between Daisy Duke on 'ludes and a slow-drawlin' Mae West, with one of the worst southern accents in film history--I live about sixty miles from where this was filmed, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who talks like her. What, did she base her entire performance on a "Deputy Dawg" cartoon she saw when she was a kid? Anyway, she's just plain awful here, but it's kinda funny so that might actually be a plus.

The action scenes are somewhat artlessly staged, the photography looks like the cameramen were hopping around barefoot on a hot sidewalk, and the editing is less than exquisite. Those minor quibbles aside, however, the movie still manages to be exciting and fun to watch. Some scenes even generate a certain raw power, such as Kilmer's blow-up during an interrogation scene with Biehn and a trigger-happy exchange between Pepe and Barney and a pimpin' lowlife named Ray Delacroix (Davi Jay) who turns out to be working with the DEA. Several of the snappy dialogue scenes crackle with tension. Jose Pablo Cantillo is a standout as Pepe, and Biehn, as usual, turns in a solid performance. The post-Katrina flood sequence is atmospheric, while good use is made of locations in and around the city of Shreveport.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is bonus-less except for the film's trailer and English subtitles for the hard-of-hearing. The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen image and Dolby Surround 5.1 are good.

Technically, STREETS OF BLOOD is a pretty slapdash affair, but that didn't keep me from enjoying it. I even watched it again and liked it better the second time because I knew what to expect and what not to expect. Even when the surprise ending was entirely unbelievable, I just accepted it as part of the film's cheapo charm. And when it was over, I almost felt like I needed to rewind the tape, pop it out of the VCR, and get it back to the mom-and-pop video store where I rented it in time to avoid a late fee. After dubbing a copy, of course.


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Scary Monster Transformation Scenes (video)




Scary Monster Transformation Scenes

Mad Monster (1942)
Return of the Vampire (1944)
The Neanderthal Man (1953)
The Werewolf (1956)
The Vampire (1957)
I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)
Fury of the Wolfman (1972)

Read our reviews of "Return of the Vampire" , "The Vampire", and "Neanderthal Man" 


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!




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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Horse-Laugh Scream in "Werewolf Of London" (1935) (video)




In 1935, Valerie Hobson was featured in both "Bride of Frankenstein"...

...and "Werewolf of London."

She's quite lovely, although in one close-up in "Werewolf of London"...

...she displays her patented "horse-laugh" scream face.


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!



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Monday, March 31, 2025

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER -- Movie Review by Porfle

 


Originally posted on 6/25/21

 

I've been a bad movie lover for so long, I can sit back and enjoy movies like FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER (1965) just as much as I would CITIZEN KANE or THE SOUND OF MUSIC, whereas your average normal person might find both their gag reflex and their flight instinct activated by the very sight of it.

I pity such people their inability to watch stuff like this with the same giddy delight I felt as I ordered the DVD from Amazon, knowing that when it arrived, I would be able to immerse myself in low budget, ineptly made, but wonderfully entertaining sci-fi goodness about aliens from Mars who have come to Earth to kidnap women as breeding stock to help repopulate their atomic war-ravaged planet.

As if that weren't enough, NASA scientist Dr. Adam Steele (venerable actor James "Jim" Karen in an early role) and his co-worker Karen (Nancy Marshall) have just made space travel safer for humans by creating an android astronaut, whom they've named "Colonel Frank Saunders" (Robert Reilly). 

 

 


 
Right after Frank is launched into space, the Martians shoot his rocket down, leaving the horribly disfigured humanoid robot roaming the countryside killing people a la "Frankenstein."

Not only am I not making any of that stuff up, but it's even nuttier than it sounds. The head Martians are played by former Playboy Playmate and Three Stooges co-star Marilyn Hanold (as "Princess Marcuzan") and familiar face Lou Cutell (LITTLE BIG MAN, PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE) as her second-in-command Dr. Nadir, a bald, white-skinned alien with pointed ears and a high camp sense of humor that kicks in whenever he's ordered to blow something up or shoot it down.

Their bargain-basement spaceship is also populated by a gaggle of henchmen whose spacesuits, confusingly, make them look like Earth astronauts. There's also a tall, brawny alien played by the great Bruce Glover (CHINATOWN, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, WALKING TALL), recognizable even under heavy makeup in his second movie role. He also plays the fearsome space monster of the title, who will indeed meet "Frankenstein" during the film's furious climax.

 

 


 
The story begins in Florida, where, at a press conference, we're treated to the sight of Frank rather comically going freeze-frame during a press conference and having to be hustled back to the lab for repairs by Adam and Karen.

Then we're whisked off to Puerto Rico after Frank's disfiguring crash, allowing the director to shoot a lengthy montage of the two scientists riding a dinky motor scooter along scenic motorways and beachfronts to the film's sappy and rather incongruous love theme, "To Have And To Hold" by The Distant Cousins.

While the two young lovers search for their runaway robo-astronaut, the Martians terrorize the countryside kidnapping bikini-clad women from beaches and pool parties, disintegrating any men who get in their way with sunlight-reflecting ray guns like the ones used in TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE.

 

 


 
Also like that film, this one is surprisingly well-edited, with a gradually quickening pace that leads to a fast-moving, exciting finale that sees the Martians attacked by our air force and Frank, his rational mind now restored, going mano-a-mano with that really cool space monster.

Just as Johnny Depp claims in ED WOOD that he could construct a whole movie out of stock footage, this one goes a long way toward doing just that by using tons of the stuff for any scenes involving either the military or NASA spacecraft (including much footage from Mercury launches and orbital photography). The final five frenetic minutes or so are evidence that the film's editor was having a ball putting this thing together, and it's infectious.

Granted, the shamelessly warped FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER would fit comfortably onto any list of the worst films ever made, but that doesn't keep it from being just as much fun as a lot of "good" movies that I could name. Maybe even more fun if, like me, you're just a tiny bit warped too. 



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Sunday, March 30, 2025

When The Universal Monsters Carried The Ladies (video)




Carrying the leading lady is a time-honored tradition among monsters.

Most of Universal's monsters got their chance, but not all.
Neither the Invisible Man nor the Wolf Man had the temperament for it.
The opportunity never presented itself to Karloff's "The Mummy" (1932).

Quasimodo (Lon Chaney, Sr.) carried Esmerelda in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923).

Bela Lugosi carried Helen Chandler in "Dracula" (1931).
Carlos Villarías carried Lupita Tovar in the Spanish version.

Kharis the Mummy carried Peggy Moran in "The Mummy's Hand" (1940)...
...and Elyse Knox in "The Mummy's Tomb" (1942)...
...and Ramsay Ames in "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944)...
...and Virginia Christine in "The Mummy's Curse" (1944).

The "Creature From the Black Lagoon" carried Julie Adams in 1954...
...and later Lori Nelson in "Revenge of the Creature."

Out of all his films, the Frankenstein Monster only got to do it once...
...when Bela Lugosi's stand-in Gil Perkins carried Ilona Massey in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943). 

I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it.  Thanks for watching!




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Saturday, March 29, 2025

The Frozen Grin Dude From "Frankenstein 1970" (1958) (video)

 


Publicist Mike is carrying a torch for starlet Carolyn. 

So he decides to pull the old "frozen grin" move on her. 

Amazingly, it fails.

Oh well...torch, scorch, unforch.

 

Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

 


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