The 1980s are a difficult time to explain to people who weren’t there. For the 20th century, every decade had a distinctive look and feel, right up until the late ’90s when everything cultural started to have a whiff of nostalgia. One can look at only a few seconds of a film from the 20th century and be able to tell which decade it came from. Meanwhile, here in this rotten century, nothing seems to have changed since the early 2000s. Fashion, music, movies…there are new names, but a unique, stylistic identity to the times we live in has been lost.
Back to the ’80s. Then was the culmination of decades of change, and the overarching theme seemed to be garishness. Bright colors everywhere (except in the home, which remained stubbornly brown), music with strange sounding instruments, big hair, and, as today’s movie shows, outfits that are beginning to look as bizarre as powdered wigs and pantaloons.
From 1989 comes Alien Private Eye, written, produced, directed, and edited by Vik Rubenfeld. Shot in 1987, but stuck in a can until it obtained a VHS release, Alien Private Eye is another film rescued from the approaching abyss by Vinegar Syndrome, who cleaned it up and released a Blu-ray in 2022. And it’s good they did. Before they ran this flick through the ringer, the only way to watch it were degraded VHS transfers uploaded to the tubes, and those are barely watchable, with fuzzy picture and muddy sound. Continue reading “Alien Private Eye”
Once upon a time, way back in the mid-1970s, some guy in Dallas, Texas, by the name of Bobby Davis, had some dollars in his pocket and a dream. That dream: to write, direct, and produce a blaxploitation flick. He roamed the lounges of Dallas, wading into a sea of nylon and leisure suits in search of the talent he would need to make his vision a reality. Days, nay, weeks, of production pass, and Davis overcomes all of the obstacles which stand in the way of auteurs the world over, and he gets his film in the can. Now, it’s official. Bobby Davis is a filmmaker, forever more. In celebration, and aware that all great artists leave the scene at their peak, he leaves his affairs in order, climbs the Reunion Tower overlooking picturesque Interstate 35E, and hurls himself into the void.
1989 was a banner year for producers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi. After a falling out with Ronald Gilchrist at City Lights Entertainment, the two formed PM Entertainment and began cranking out wonderfully inept direct-to-video movies. They released seven movies that first year, and distributed two more. Three of those movies were ersatz neo-noir Los Angeles thrillers featuring Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, whom older readers will remember as Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Washington from Welcome Back, Kotter. The relationship with Hilton-Jacobs was so worthwhile, in fact, that PM tapped him to direct. Written alongside Raymond Martino and Merhi, Hilton-Jacobs helmed Angels of the City, the story of a sorority initiation gone wrong.