May
13
The Last Shark (L’ultimo Squalo)
Filed Under Action, Movies, Unknown | 2 Comments
| The Last Shark (L’ultimo Squalo) |
|
| Year | 1981 |
| Director | Enzo G. Castellari |
| Actors | Vic Morrow James Franciscus Giancarlo Prete |
| Disc Layers | 1 |
| Source | Unknown |
| Image Quality | Fair |
Somehow this movie manages to be a complete rip-off of Jaws, while capturing none of the excitement that made Jaws such a great film. All the stock characters are here: a handsome guy who wants to prevent the deaths of swimmers, windsurfers, and teenagers, an egotistical guy in a suit who refuses to close the beach, and a fisherman doing his best Robert Shaw imitation. There is very little plot other than the shark attacking various people in short, surprisingly gore-free scenes.
The Last Shark is so clearly a redux of Jaws that, in some countries, it was billed as a Jaws sequel. In the United States, Universal successfully had it pulled from theaters.
After an incredibly cheesy opening, the music is pretty good - typical of 1980s Italian horror and action films with heavy synthesizers and tension-building bass lines. Not John Williams, but reminiscent of the work of Claudio Simonetti and other great Italian composers.
On the copy I have, the letterboxed picture is a little bit jittery, which can be annoying, but the image is not muddy. It has non-removable, non-English subtitles, but they’re white and easy to ignore.
Also known as: Great White, The Last Jaws
.
Apr
26
Bottle Rocket (1994 short film)
Filed Under Short Films, Unknown | Leave a Comment
| Bottle Rocket (1994 short film) |
|
| Year | 1994 |
| Director | Wes Anderson |
| Actors | Owen Wilson Luke Wilson Robert Musgrave |
| Disc Layers | 1 |
| Source | Unknown |
| Image Quality | Fair |
Clocking in at a brief 13 minutes, this short film would later be developed into the masterpiece of the same name, launching Wes Anderson and the Owens brothers into super-stardom. Here, more than ever, their talent is on display as the dialogue and delivery shine through the grainy, black and white, hand-held image.
Watching this film, it seems as if the feature script was already written, then pared down to its basics for the short. It shares much of its dialogue with the feature, and two years later, many of the scenes would be refilmed almost identically - with a modest, but much larger budget.
A great treat for fans.
Apr
29
Logan’s Run: The TV Series
Filed Under Science Fiction, TV Shows, Unknown | Leave a Comment
| Logan’s Run: The TV Series | |
| Year | 1977 |
| Director | various |
| Actors | Gregory Harrison Heather Menzies Donald Moffat Randy Powell |
| Disc Layers | 1 x 3 discs |
| Source | unknown |
| Image Quality | Very Good |
Logan’s Run is one of the classics of 70s science fiction - a combination utopian/dystopian portrait of a future society in which everyone lives inside a shopping mall, travels easily from location to location via public transportation, enjoys liberated free love, and voluntarily dies at the age of 30 as part of a government-run population control. Although the original novel produced two sequels (written to take advantage of the movie’s popularity), the movie never saw a sequel - but it did produce a quality, but short-lived series of the same name.
Logan’s Run: The TV Series follows the logical continuation of the movie if Logan and Jessica had continued running rather than return to Dome City to overthrown the system. They quickly pick up a companion, an android named Rem, and the three go about encountering various unusual groups of survivors who live in the wasteland outside the city - all the while followed closely by the sandman Francis.
Like other science fiction series of the 1970s, Logan’s Run is very episodic - every story begins and end within the time frame of the episode. Their conflict with Francis runs throughout the series’ 14 episodes, but it’s usually just a background plotline or a reason to increase the danger of an episode. The stories usually strive for the psychological and sociological exploration that was done so well on Star Trek , but they fail to reach such heights.
The series is surprisingly entertaining, however, and fans of the movie and 70s sci-fi should enjoy it. Though some episodes lag during the second act, they usually pay off in the end. Gadgets, hovercrafts, and other low budget futuristic devices abound, the interactions between the characters are sometimes intentionally humorous, and flimsy temporary sets provide a sterile future without dust.
I picked up this set at a comic convention - a great place to get cruddy-looking DVDs - and was surprised to find that the video quality of this set is extremely high. I can’t imagine that an official DVD release (which doesn’t exist) would look any better. The image is sharp and the compression is done really well, especially considering that each single-layer disc contains more than 3 hours.