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Valley of the Dolls (Spec)
:Description:Lured by their dreams of fame and fortune, three ambitious young women enter the world of show business and discover how easy it is to sink into a celebrity nightmare of ego, alcohol and 'pills' - the beloved 'dolls.' A prim New Englander (Barbara Parkins) unexpectedly skyrockets from her job as secretary in a talent agency to a glamorous TV model. A determined singer (Patty Duke) finds that Hollywood success can also spell self-destruction. And a beautiful sex symbol (Sharon Tate) is torn between the ...
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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 for having long hair. Nicholson won an ...
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Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
:Description:When three female rock'n'rollers travel to Hollywood to claim an inheritance, they meet up with a kinky music promoter who turns them on to a whole new scene. At first, all seems very exciting and the naïve trio becomes submerged in his dangerous tinseltown underworld-before they discover his true motives. :You either love Russ Meyer's garishly sexist movies about bodacious babes and priapic men or you find them utterly disgusting. The response to his work is that clear-cut. This film, which features a screenplay by ...
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King of Hearts
: :This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by its residents in the face of ...
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Under the Boardwalk
: :This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by its residents in the face of ...
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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 doesn't so much lead to an examination ...
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Showgirls
: :When Goldie Hawn recommended Elizabeth Berkley for a small role in First Wives Club, she publicly stated that Berkley deserved the opportunity to redeem herself after starring in the ridiculous Showgirls. That says it all: this sleazy, stupid movie, which mixes soft pornography with the clichés of backstage dramas, is the kind of project an aspiring actress would have to put well behind her to keep a career going (though costar Gina Gershon certainly benefited from her, uh, exposure in the film). Berkley plays a ...
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Saturday Night Fever
: essential video:Saturday Night Fever is one of those movies that comes along and seems to change the cultural temperature in a flash. After the movie's release in 1977, disco ruled the dance floors, and a blow-dried member of a TV-sitcom ensemble became the hottest star in the country. For all that, the story is conventional: a 19-year-old Italian-American from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (John Travolta), works in a humble paint store and lives with his family. After dark, he becomes the polyester-clad stallion of the ...
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Wild One
: essential video:This is the original motorcycle movie, starring Marlon Brando as the brooding leader of a biker gang that invades a small town. The film always looked like one of those synthetic Hollywood ideas of subculture life in the 1950s, which means it looks even more artificial today. But it is an actor's piece more than anything, and toward that end Brando's performance really is an important one in the context of his revolutionary reinvention of film acting during that decade. Directed by Lásló ...
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Saturday Night Fever, PG version
: essential video:Saturday Night Fever is one of those movies that comes along and seems to change the cultural temperature in a flash. After the movie's release in 1977, disco ruled the dance floors, and a blow-dried member of a TV-sitcom ensemble became the hottest star in the country. For all that, the story is conventional: a 19-year-old Italian-American from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (John Travolta), works in a humble paint store and lives with his family. After dark, he becomes the polyester-clad stallion of the ...
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