42nd Street Forever: Vol. 5: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (2009)

As most of you know I've been starting to get into the bizarre world of B-movie cinema. Up till now I've been choosing most of my movies based usually on certain B-move actresses I like, a few times I've chosen based on cool film posters (which isn't a good idea as I've warned you all before). This time around I thought it might be a good idea to find some films based on trailers, so I rented this collection of B-movie trailers in hopes of finding some rare gems. What I found was some real crap!

B-movies are like taffy (or a tasty shrimp roll perhaps?), watch a few in moderation for some corny over-the-top entertainment but if you start popping them in like crazy one after the other you're going to get sick. That's how I felt after watching this collection of over 40 trailers, sick. Now for times sake and more importantly sanity's sake I didn't actually watch all of them in their entirety, I spent 30 minutes and gingerly skipped through a lot of them due to the fact they were so awful or so sleazy that I couldn't in all good conscience watch them. But in all that mess I was able to find a couple interesting films that you one day might see reviewed on this blog, and then a few others I'll never watch but are worth mentioning due to how outrageous they are.

First the collection kicks off with Charlton Heston explaining the rating system of movies to parents in the time when PG-13 was not yet a rating, a little nostalgic. The first trailer up is A Life Of Ninja which looked so incredibly corny and incredibly enjoyable that I quickly had high hopes for this collection, unfortunately those hopes quickly plummeted from there on out. Following was a slew of really awful trailers all center around martial arts, and the first real unbelievable trailer for a film entitled Birds Do It, Bees Do It.

Can you guess what this film was about? Well it was a about the mating habits of animals, with a tagline that truly cracked me up, "Due to the explicit nature of this film, it will never be shown on television. Because it is an important family experience we urge you to see it with your children." It's too explicit to show on TV but you ought to take the whole family to the theater to see it anyways! That really got me, check the trailer out at the end of the review. Ironically Birds Do It, Bees Do It kicks off the handful of sex comedy trailers one being the most bizarre entitled Chatterbox, the story of a woman who discovers her lady part can not only talk but sing, literally I'm not using any innuendo here, and it won't shut up! Following that is a few explicit trailers I skipped past and a handful of really bad science fiction trailers to arrive at the collections most interesting section, the Eurospy films.

Kicking off the spy films is James Tont Operazione U.N.O. a complete and utter Italian ripoff of Goldfinger all the way down to the theme song, even the characters have an uncanny resemblance to those in the film especially Goldfinger. This version seems to be a little more slapstick comedy based and is the only film on the collection I really have to see. I have found a copy but sadly it's completely in Italian and with no subtitles so it seems I'll have to make due, but it shouldn't be too hard seeing the film looks to be a near exact copy (I've uploaded the trailer to YouTube, check it out at the end of the review). Next is a film entitled Stacey, supposedly a film about a female James Bond type character who goes around sleeping with men and taking down the bad guys, starring Playmate Anne Randall, might be one worth checking out.

Following that is a couple other spy films possibly worth viewing and the final interesting film in the collection Pretty Maids All In A Row, about a football coach who is so good he's allowed to get away with the murder of girls at the school. It's got an all-star cast including Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, Roddy McDowall and even Scotty himself James Doohan. After that the collection hits rock bottom with ironically some of the worst trailers being for children films. These are so horrifically bad that I think they were created by a bunch of guys who were high. The Magic Christmas Tree, about a talking Christmas tree which also includes a good witch, a giant and the capturing of Santa Clause? Sounds like a great holiday film to me.

Overall, I'm not at all recommending renting this collection, I was able to find a few films I might check out at some point, but most of the trailers are so bad any normal person will begin to feel sick after about 20 minutes of watching them, I know I was. After viewing this I honestly believe American B-movie cinema is probably the bottom of the barrel in the genre, so I think I'll be sticking with Euro spy and horror films for the most part.

3/10