New Years Evil

This one is timely! Good times when Dion Conflict presented this a few years at the Royal and handed out noise makers, instructing us to use them evey time we heard the word "Evil!" A hoot! Dion - still have your print?

what evil does at Christmas...

Okay, a little late with this posting, but look what I found when looking for a trailer for CHRISTMAS EVIL - an ad for a Spanish cable station...

Cops Vs. Thugs!

"Gangsters and cops are the same. They both respect codes and laws. They were drop-outs who couldn’t get good jobs."

the quoteable kinski...

Happy Holidays! We'd like to offer you a Christmas present to you from the cinema staff here at Popcorn and Sticky Floors. Seventy-seven, yes, count 'em, - 77 Klaus Kinski quotes! Christmas dinner painfully slow and dull? Then zip things up by dishing out Kinski quotes! Some truly golden choices here, including:

"I sell myself for the highest price. Exactly like a prostitute. There is no difference."

"I am like a wild animal who is behind bars. I need air! I need space!"

"I am not the Jesus of the official church tolerated by those in power. I am not your superstar."

"I am your fairy tale. Your dream. Your wishes and desires, and I am your thirst and your hunger and your food and your drink."

"I just come from Tokyo, Hong Kong, long flight, I am exhausted. "

"I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago; not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter. All of these exist in me."

"I make movies for money, exclusively for money."

"I never said money is freedom! I said money buys freedom. BUYS! What does that mean, money is freedom? This is ridiculous: Money is freedom. It means nothing."

hill vs kinski

Just found this clip (in Italian) on youtube of the opening fight between Klaus Kinski and Terrance Hill in A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE...

my new fave spaghetti of the hour...

One evening when I was in Barcelona this past October, I hung out with some friends at an apartment and one of the guys popped on a dvd of A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE (aka Un Genio, Due Compari, Un Pollo), a Terrence Hill (MY NAME IS NOBDY, TRINITY) Italian western comedy starring Patrick McGoohan (!) as the baddie, Quebecois (aka French Canadian) pop singer Robert Charlebois (in France at this point, Charlebous was an outlandish figure in a Montreal Canadiens hockey sweater who sang to the accompaniment of a jazz-rock group, becoming a novelty in French pop music) as the half Indian bumbler, the sweet actress Miou Miou, and Klaus Kinski as the oppenent in the introduction to Hill's character! Supposedly the opening sequence had been shot by Sergio Leone, but either way, we were all hooked! Fast and funny with a Morricone score I had never heard!

Plus there is a chase scene that I think proves the influence of Hill comedies on Jackie Chan besides the usually referenced Buster Keaton.

As per usual, the film is not available through any legit North American sources. We watched the Spanish release on dvd. Why the bias against Italian Westerns on this continent? Here is a link over at Shobary's Spaghetti Westerns for more pics and info on the film. There are some decent companies like Wild East releasing spaghetti westerns on NA dvdand for more info go to A Fistful of DVDs, a database of releases.

Ennio Face!

Next year's Academy Awards telecast just became worth watching - they're giving Ennio Morricone an honorary Oscar! He was nominated five times but never won. You know they're going to get Eastwood to present it to him.

No Glove, No Love

Mind-boggling lyrics for the opening titles of the John Saxon/Rosey Grier revenge film The Glove!

and on the subject of posters...

Just stumbled across Posterwire, a blog on posters that has some interesting postings:

- The Weinstein Company decision to run a contest to design a Factory Girl movie poster, the downloadable contest kit, and more accurate simulation of the film poster design process...

- 50 Cent is accusing Hollywood of double standards after seeing the new James Bond holding a gun in posters for Casino Royale - a year after billboards of him sporting a weapon caused a furore

- a link heavy posting leading to all kinds of glorious images of film posters where the key art subject matter are the many creatures (and monsters) found in the "wild kingdom"

Will make a point of keeping an eye out for updates on this site in the future.

nasty time two...

Going to make you work for this one. Check out the new poster for HOSTEL 2 and the teaser trailer for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. Not adding any opinions on those films, just observing marketing trends...

my Keach post

Seeing Jesse's post about the dynamic pairing of Roger Moore and Stacey Keach brought THE DION BROTHERS aka THE GRAVY TRAIN to mind. I had a copy of this on VHS but don't know where it went to. A smartly scripted working class crime caper film, BROTHERS is an under rated gem. Recently screened at The Best of the QT Fest (and read more about that event here and here), there has been some new buzz about this film scripted by Terrence Malick and directed by Jack Starrett had a great grindhouse track record (RACE WITH THE DEVIL, THE LOSERS, CLEOPATRA JONES) and also did episodes of "The Dukes of Hazzard", the 1978 series "Big Bob Johnson and His Fantastic Speed Circus" (starring Charles Napier and George 'Buck' Flower!), "Starsky and Hutch", the short lived TV spin off "Beyond Westworld", in addition to doing acting in "The A-Team", "Hunter", "Knight Rider", "Hill Street Blues", BLAZING SADDLES and even RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD.


No trailer for the film online, but check out this great monologue by the Keachster in the opening credits and a fun little bathtub scene.

Bondsploitation

I had a Moore-gasm when I stumbled across this - the trailer for The Executioners, starring the wimpiest of the Bonds, Roger Moore, cashing in on his action movie success by starring in this raunchy Italian action film, with Stacy Keach as his sidekick no less! Watch and learn...


Why didn't Roger do any of the voices on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas?

"Sorcerers...Come Out To Play-yayy!"

This goes out to all you Warriors trailer fans... (I feel like that all-night DJ... nowhere to run, nowhere to hide...)

The trailer for William Friedkin's seventies remake of The Wages of Fear starring Roy Scheider; in retrospect, perhaps the wrong guy to be given the keys to a truck full of nitro.

cinema of the damned!

Got these fine snaps sent to me from director Jonathan King, the man who brought the world the gruesomely funny BLACK SHEEP. These were from one of the cinemas at the San Sebastian Horror and Fantasy Film Festival which was terrorized by his bloodthirsty flock! However the film premiered in Toronto and you can check out video coverage of the sheep on red carpet here.

(click to enlarge)

The Nutty Projector

Jerry Lewis was a filmmaking visionary in the sixties. Besides pioneering the use of video assist on sets (and what sets they were), he launched a chain of movie theatres!

Jerry Lewis Cinemas (or The National Cinema Corporation) were franchise operations, almost like a fast-food chain business model - small screening rooms (between 100 and 350 seats) and push-button technology for both the projection and concessions. Ads for the company boasted "an entire theater can be operated by as few as two persons." and the low overhead against potential box office and concession sales were very attractive selling points.

But Lewis imposed an inviolate condition on the chain dictating only PG and G-rated fare would be screened. It was Lewis' attempt to stem what he perceived to be the tide of degeneracy in movies in the late sixties. Predictably, within a couple of years his cinema chain was starved for content. Many theatres closed and many others of course became XXX theatres, resulting in legal battles between National Cinema Corporation and its theatre owners.

I saw one of the remaining Jerry Lewis Cinemas in suburban Buffalo in 1988 - it looked shut down but it was open, showing second-run titles at discount prices.

(photo source)