4. Werewolves on Wheels
Surprisingly, I didn't have anything to do on a Friday night [ahem], so Tim came over for some movies. Brad would be showing up for the second half of the double feature. After watching CM Punk shave a nice young lady's head, to induct her into his straight edge lifestyle and ordering the pizzas, we popped 70s cult favorite, Werewolves on Wheels into the DVD player. Clearly cashing in on the popularity of Easy Rider, W.O.W. throws our unlovable gang of bikers (The Devil's Advocates), into the world of Satanic cults. Not realizing they've been cursed, and unwilling to listen to the mystical compatriot, Tarot, they continue on their way, overlooking the mysterious deaths amongst their ranks. Although kind of light on the werewolves and kind of heavy on the wheels, it's a fun little "trip" (Get it? Bikers use drugs...uh...) of bad editing, weird camera angles, and bad special effects. At points, it comes off like a ham-fisted art house flick meets the midnight movie, but it works. It entertains, and that's all it's supposed to do, right?
While killing time, waiting on Brad, we checked out the trailers on the disk and found one for The Losers, a Vietnam-era biker flick meets rescue mission, but more on that below. We decided we needed to track down the film, based solely on the trailer.
5. The Losers aka Nam's Angels
After telling Brad all about The Losers and how "WE NEED TO SEE IT", he informs us that it was sitting mere inches away from us the whole evening. As a strange coincidence, he had borrowed if from a coworker a few weeks ago and hadn't gotten around to watching the damn thing. He produces the VHS tape from a pile on the coffee table and we pop it in the VCR. The tape had seen better days, but it was watchable. The film on the other hand was a bit...um...rough. As is often the case, the trailer showed almost all the good parts, and those parts all happened about 85 minutes into the 90 minute film. A rag tag gang of bikers/soldiers are brought in on a mission to rescue an American POW. Released at the peak of the Vietnam conflict (1970), the film didn't pull any punches, even alluding to America's illegal bombings in Cambodia. Unfortunately, the band of bikers (again, the Devil's Advocates, weird), aren't really that likable, so it's kind of hard to care when they are getting screwed over. Unfortunately, I think we were victims of the trailer, this time. If I had watched this cold, I probably would have been all over it, but I over-hyped myself. Not that I disliked the flick, it just wasn't the over-the-top chaos I was expecting.
6. Futureworld
Impact OnDemand might be my favorite thing about having cable. It's one of the Free Movie channels from the OnDemand menu and features dozens of grimy action flicks every month. Sci-fi, sexploitation, blaxploitation, trash, grindhouse, sleazy comedy. Good stuff, and much more likely to have something interesting than FearNet it seems. Anyway, they must have purchased the rights to all of the American International Films, because they've always got tons of them listed. Today, I decided to check out Future World. I'm familiar with he franchise, remembering the Westworld box from visiting the video store as a kid. Somehow, I'd never seen either movie, which is a shame. From what I can tell (what they told me in the movie), one of the robots in futuristic amusement park Westworld went crazy, killed some people, and got the whole place shut down. They spent billions to get everything back on track and are reopening, but there is a sinister plot to take over the world by replacing high ranking international politicians. Pretty wild. Gotta track down a copy of Westworld now...hmm.
Up next, I'm gonna do a car chase block, I think. It will probably be Death Proof, Two-Lane Blacktop, and Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, because I have them lying around. I'll have to see if I can track down Vanishing Point, White Line Fever or Gone in 60 Seconds.
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