Gangster Flick – Missile Test

Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son

Lounge crooner and self-styled King of Palm Springs, Duke Mitchell, was proud of his Italian heritage. After the Godfather flicks came out, Duke had some thoughts about the movies, and about how Italian-Americans are stereotyped in this country. So, he scrimped and saved, mortgaged and hustled, and made his very own mafia flick that was violent, preachy, cheap, and played into every single one of those negative stereotypes.

Written, produced, directed by, starring, and featuring songs sung by Duke Mitchell, Massacre Mafia Style tells the story of Mimi Miceli (Mitchell, credited under his birth name, Dominico Miceli). When Mimi was a teenager, his father, crime boss Don Mimi (Lorenzo Dardado), was deported back to Sicily, and the younger Mimi accompanied him. Now, he’s a grown man and a widower with a young son. The siren call of Los Angeles is ringing in his ears, so Mimi decides to head back to the States and make a name for himself as a gangster. He recruits childhood friend Jolly Rizzo (Vic Caesar), and the two begin their ascent by kidnapping and ransoming Chucky Tripoli (Louis Zito), who is the big guy in LA. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Speed Kills

Last week Missile Test heaped praise upon William Shatner, for his lifetime contribution to shitty cinema. This week features a different flavor of shitty movie actor — one whose star shined brightly in Hollywood, but whose latter career has been spent in direct-to-video schlock. Who could it be? Bruce Willis? Mel Gibson? Samuel L. Jackson? Morgan Freeman? Denzel Washington? All of those men, some with Academy hardware, have seen their careers drift away from the type of blockbusters that made them famous, but they are not the star of today’s reviewed film. Today’s film stars John Travolta, the one and only 21^st century shitty movie actor who can give Nicolas Cage a run for his money. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Speed Kills”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Samurai Cop

Samurai Cop, the 1991 stinker from writer/director/producer/editor Amir Shervan, has more shitty filmmaking moments than are possible to recount in any review of reasonable length. Here’s a sample:

Fight scenes and car chases have sped up footage to simulate quickness. It’s not subtle, either — approaching Benny Hill Show levels of speed.
A great deal of dialogue was recorded in post. That’s not unusual. But Shervan did many of the voices himself, dubbing the voices of stars and bit players, alike. That is unusual.
There are a lot of cops in this flick. Many of them wear uniforms. Some of those uniforms don’t have badges.
Star Mathew Karedas cut his glorious locks after principal shooting wrapped, but was called back months later for reshoots. Shervan put a ridiculous wig on his head with little regard to whether or not it looked right. It does not look right. In at least one scene, it briefly popped off of Karedas’s head.

Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Samurai Cop”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Truck Stop Women

Truck Stop Women movie poster What a relentless pile of exploitative schlock. They don’t make them like this, anymore. The combination of online mob outrage, and the actual progressive growth of our morals, makes a flick like this a difficult proposition in the 21^st century. Even watching this film, and a whole plethora of its contemporaries, can make a viewer feel a little squirrely, as if they were doing something wrong. This is one of those flicks that can make a person feel ashamed of being entertained. But, in for a penny, in for a pound. Truck Stop Women is wonderfully shitty.

From way back in 1974, Truck Stop Women tells the story of a truck stop/whorehouse in New Mexico, and its madam’s efforts to stave off mob competition. It’s a flick that wallows in its shittiness, from the low-rent country music soundtrack (all songs performed by Bobby Hart — my personal favorite track was Bullshippers), to its southern AND Italian stereotypes, to its bottom-of-the-barrel cast, and endless gratuitous nudity.

As gratuitous nudity goes, the nudity in this flick might be among the most gratuitous I’ve ever seen. Sure, much of the flick takes place in a whorehouse, and one would expect to see a few breasts here and there. But there’s a segment in this film that is basically a Bobby Hart music video montage, and some boob flashes made the cut. It’s the very definition of gratuitous, which dictionary.com has as “being without apparent reason, cause, or justification.” The breasts are everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. And they were glorious to behold. I write of the breasts not from some sanctimonious high ground, but because they are an essential and inescapable aspect of this shitty movie. There are so many bared breasts in this movie that a network TV cut would clock in at less than an hour. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Truck Stop Women”

Empty Balcony: Mr. Majestyk, or, Charles Bronson is Charles Bronson in Charles Bronson: The Movie

All Vince Majestyk (Charles Bronson) wants to do is get his melons in. But, ole Vinnie has an insatiable need to antagonize everyone he meets, resulting in some very bad people wanting him very dead.

From 1974, Mr. Majestyk was directed by the prolific filmmaker Richard Fleischer, from a screenplay by none other than legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard. It’s also just about the perfect Charles Bronson flick. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Mr. Majestyk, or, Charles Bronson is Charles Bronson in Charles Bronson: The Movie”

Stallone Month: Get Carter (2000)

Get Carter, the 1971 gangster flick starring Michael Caine, is a classic. Get Carter, the 2000 gangster flick starring Sylverster Stallone, is not. Such is the way of things. The most difficult thing about watching this movie is knowing that a better alternative exists.

Directed by Stephen Kay from a screenplay by David McKenna, Get Carter is the second adaptation of Ted Lewis’s novel Jack’s Return Home. Sly stars as Jack Carter, a thug who collects outstanding debts for a Las Vegas crime boss. Jack returns home to Seattle after learning of the death of his brother, Ritchie. The death doesn’t seem to be on the up and up, so he decides to stick around and see what he can find out.

Everyone Jack meets, including Ritchie’s friends, colleagues, and spouse, want him to leave. No one wants a critical eye turned towards Ritchie’s death because, of course, he was murdered. In order to find out why, and to exact revenge, Jack must cut his way through Seattle’s underbelly. And it is a scuzzy place to be. One of the first people Jack confronts about Ritchie is Cyrus Paice (Mickey Rourke), a crime boss who makes some of his cash with underground pornography. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Get Carter (2000)”

Empty Balcony: The Raid 2

Despite how much I liked The Raid, my review of the film ended up being a little thin. That’s because, while there was much to recommend, the film was overwhelmed by its violence. It took all the hard work that went into the sets, the music, the costumes, even the acting of the leads, and rendered it subservient to the majesty of the violence. As it turns out, that’s because the only thing to survive writer/director Gareth Evans sprawling vision of crime, police corruption, and kickass martial arts, was the violence, owing to a budget that precluded any grand scope. The success of The Raid opened the taps more for the follow-up, and allowed Evans to explore in-depth themes that were forced to remain on the periphery in the first film. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Raid 2″

Empty Balcony: The Raid

A million bucks must go a long way in Indonesia. That’s all the money writer/director Gareth Evans had on hand to film The Raid (released in the U.S. as The Raid: Redemption). Despite that tiny budget, Evans constructed a spectacular action flick, packed so full of visual and auditory stimuli that just watching it can make a viewer feel a little drained by the end. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Raid”

The Empty Balcony: The Equalizer

Once upon a time there was television show called The Equalizer that ran on CBS. It was successful enough to last for four seasons and 88 episodes. I don’t know if that’s significant. Any show that runs on American network television for four years and 88 episodes is a success, but it’s not a smash. In fact, The Equalizer was and is somewhat of an anonymous show. It’s curious that in the age of remakes and reboots, someone in Hollywood chose to resurrect this show and make it a movie.

From last year, The Equalizer is an action film that tells the story of one man who systematically eliminates the entire Russian mafia operating in Boston. It’s an impressive display of murderous vengeance, I must say.

Denzel Washington is Robert McCall, an hourly schlub at a big box hardware store with a shady past. He lives a Spartan life in a one bedroom, and spends his sleepless nights drinking tea and reading classic literature at a local diner. There, he meets an underage hooker by the name of Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz). One night Alina runs afoul of her masters and ends up in intensive care. It was at this point that I thought I knew where the story was going. McCall had become a surrogate father to the young girl in sexual slavery. Mess with her, and one messes with McCall. She’s the classic damsel in distress. I pictured about an hour and a half of McCall chasing down some local hoods and what not. You know, movie by numbers. But I had heard good things about this movie. I had a hard time reconciling what I had heard with such a weak potential payoff. I shouldn’t have worried. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: The Equalizer”

The Empty Balcony: Thief

Thief, the debut feature film from writer/director Michael Mann, is a bit of a relic. The 1980s were a weird time, when the progressions of style were suddenly upended and everything went day-glo. Even music changed, utilizing the cost-effective yet grating sound of synthesizers. Michael Mann embraced this decade with gusto, finding a ready home in all the glitz and glamour. His style of filmmaking is so intertwined with the 1980s that I can’t figure out which informed the other. The style is a distinctive one that viewers can readily recognize. But it all had to start somewhere. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Thief”