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Big Bad Mama
: :Angie Dickinson stars as a bank-robbing matriarch in this 1974 Roger Corman production, often described as a knock-off of Bonnie and Clyde. (As if that makes any difference regarding the worth of the film--which is pretty good.) Set in Great Depression-era Texas, the story finds Dickinson's desirable and poor character driven to crime, along with her two daughters (Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee), all of whom use sex to distract or drive men into culpability. The film, directed by ...
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Easy Rider
: essential video:Two cool guys head out on motorcycles in search of... well, America, but they'll settle for sex and drugs and rock & roll. There's plenty of each as Captain America (Peter Fonda) and paranoid Billy (Dennis Hopper) encounter a commune, convert a small-town drunk (Jack Nicholson) to the Grin Reefer, pick up two pretty lilies of the alley, Karen Black and Toni Basil (who hit the pop charts in the '80s--check out 'Mickey'), and get shot ...
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Big Doll House
: :Director Jack Hill, a protégé of the original schlockmeister, Roger Corman, knew his way around a low budget and a shocking subject. Women-in-prison films were nothing new in 1971, but The Big Doll House had it all--sex, violence, nudity, a sadistic guard, and a sexually frustrated warden--and served it up with an abundance of cheapjack energy and tongue-in-cheek humor. The beauty of Hill's movies lay in the way they could appeal not only to the hordes who would ...
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Up in Smoke
: :Cheech & Chong's first cannabis comedy is also their best, a souvenir from the more carefree days before 'Just Say No,' when people did not feel so defensive about inhaling. In 1978, the prevailing spirit was more like 'Just Say Blow.' Even New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael liked it (the movie, that is), adding that it was 'an exploitation slapstick comedy, rather than a family picture, such as Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety--which means that it's dirtier, ...
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Shaft
: essential video:Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks ...
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Jim Kelly: Black Samuran
: essential video:Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks ...
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Kitten with a Whip
: :Ann-Margret never actually touches a whip in this seedy jailbait drama of juvenile delinquents and square-john fall guys, but her slithery moves and schizophrenic mood swings are still enough to give anyone whiplash. The teen temptress makes her entrance skittering through an industrial park in nothing more than a baby-doll nightie as bongos pound away on the soundtrack. Taking refuge in the seemingly deserted house of political hopeful John Forsythe, she begins her torment of the man who ...
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Pit Stop (Ws Clam)
: :Cult director Jack Hill earned his reputation largely for his energetic exploitation classics: The Big Doll House, Coffy, Switchblade Sisters, and the mad black comedy Spider Baby. This edgy, tight racing drama, virtually unseen for years, is less flashy but more intense and assured than those quirky pictures, a well-written, solidly acted drama highlighted by dynamic racing scenes. Dick Davalos (James Dean's brother in East of Eden) is a curt, quiet street racer lured by conniving promoter Brian ...
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Billy Jack
: :This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy Jack's way of doing things and that of the school's founder (Delores Taylor), but their tension ...
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Women in Cages
: :This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy Jack's way of doing things and that of the school's founder (Delores Taylor), but their tension ...
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Diesel vehicles have nearly a 50-percent market share in Europe, thanks to tax incentives and diesel-friendly legislation across the EU. Diesels are so passé there that you can buy a BMW 730d and no one will think it odd that your luxury car burns oil. Pull up in a diesel 7-Series in America and people would leer at you like you've alighted from an amphibious vehicle reeking of saltwater and dead trout.