CineFile Video

Plot outline: A pulpy, stylish thriller about a Mafia hit man who falls for the mother of the two-year-old witness to one of his contract slayings.

Writer-director Larry Cohen is drunk on cinema, which would explain why a great deal of his movies are so hazy. “Perfect Strangers” abounds with boozy, staggering energy, whipping along at a brisk pace, without any time for you, the viewer, to ever say to yourself “Gee, wasn’t that plot point majorly retarded!” Aiding and abetting in this glorious mess are a few original songs by Michael Minard, who also did the music for Cohen’s “Special Effects” (which also came out in 1984 right alongside “Perfect Strangers”.) Might I point out that these songs are similarly, uh…well, you’ll soon get the idea.

Michael Minard - I’m A Shadow On The Walls of The City (MP3)
Michael Minard - Mama, Look What The Big City’s Doin’ To Your Little Boy (MP3)
Dwight Dixon - end credits music (MP3)

Blood And Concrete: A Love Story

We know that Jennifer Beals can dance, as evidenced in — well, “Flashdance”, of course, but did you know that she could also croon? “Blood And Concrete” is an oddity from that great period of American independent film, the pre-Tarantino/post-Soderbergh late ’80s/early ’90s where quirkiness wasn’t simply just a required means to an end, a period that also includes “Motorama”, “Rubin and Ed” and “Sonny Boy”.

Jennifer Beals - “One Girl In A Million” (MP3)

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege

It’s hard to defend this film, so I won’t bother. I know it’s total shit, but for an inexplicable reason I have a soft spot for the backwards, drooling simpleton of a franchise known as “Police Academy”. This clip perfectly explains why; here we have Lt. Hightower (Bubba Smith) and the mousey Sgt. Hooks (Marion Ramsey) questioning a coupla street performer MCs about the whereabouts of a suspect…or something. The MCs respond in rhyme, so Hightower and Hooks reply back…in rhyme…or something. The rhythm and timing of the way the sequence is edited is so poor that none of the four actors in the scene are on beat for more than a few seconds at any given moment.

“Police Academy 6″ interrogration rap (MP3)

Private Duty Nurses

George Armitage (”Grosse Point Blank”, “Miami Blues”) wrote and the directed this above-average sexploitationer for Roger Corman in ‘71 as a quick sequel to Corman’s enormously successful “The Student Nurses” (1970). It’s full of the usual catty bickering and sexcapades one would expect from a bunch of young women in the nursing profession, but during a “party” sequence, there’s also this snappy foot-stomper by an uncredited rock band…

“How’s That Treatin’ Yer Mouth, Babe?” (MP3)

I’ve gone back and forth over the years on what I think about Robert Altman’s film musical version of “Popeye”. It used to be a childhood cable TV favorite of mine, but having seen it recently on DVD, I’m convinced that it sucks bigtime. The usual steam with which Altman’s work chugs along is mostly petered out here, with hardly any laugh-out-loud moments to show for the cast’s efforts. Whatever you think of the film, it’s impossible to deny the giddy feeling one gets when hearing Harry Nilsson’s original songs from it (P.T. Anderson, you could say, is the soundtrack’s biggest fan, having used the Shelley Duvall song “He Needs Me” throughout his own film “Punch-Drunk Love”.)

The LP never made the leap on the CD format, and Nilsson’s demos for the material, recorded in a drunken haze on location in Malta during the film’s shoot, have never surfaced in any official form. In many ways I prefer the soundtrack version, but the strange buried vocal mix of the final product occasionally is overshadowed by Nilsson’s heartwrenching yet off-the-cuff performances, as in the beautiful track “Din’ We.”

cast of the film - “Popeye” soundtrack LP (ZIP file)
Harry Nilsson - “Popeye” soundtrack demos (ZIP file)

Here’s another one from the soon-to-be-gone 7 Black Notes archives that we’re proud to re-post. The site’s propriator, Nate Thompson, wrote:

“In this amped-up successor to Tommy, Roger Daltrey stars as the popular composer whose bedroom conquests and long-running feud with Richard Wagner turn into opulent setpieces involving vampirism, a fascist Frankenstein monster stomping around with a machine gun, Ringo Starr as the Pope, and an organ-powered rocketship filled with scantily-clad women. Your average biopic this ain’t. The soundtrack adapts several famous Liszt themes and climaxes with the rousing “Peace at Last,” presented here in both its album and extended movie versions. Russell and Wakeman later reteamed in the mid-’80s for another classically-influenced score, “Crimes of Passion”, which is far more readily available.”

Rick Wakeman - “Lisztomania” soundtrack LP (ZIP file)

Plot outline: Biker wars between black and white gangs. The Serpents, a gang of white bikers, discover that they have been infiltrated by a member of the Choppers (a real black motorcycle gang hired for the film) who is passing for white. An all-out war erupts between the two gangs.

This ultra-gritty and foolhardy biker flick has only a handful of interesting moments, and is full of the usual sub-genre cliches — BUT — randomly stuck in the middle of the film is a montage of one of the main characters riding his chopper through the streets of Los Angeles, set to the absolute lamest acoustic hippie ballad known to man. Upon seeing the film with former Cinefile owner Ed a number of years ago, we had to rewind the scene and play it over several times, just to make sure that the lyrics to the song was actually what we heard.

The Black Angels - “The Cigarette Song” (MP3)

Plot outline: While facing the stress of his play being produced on Broadway, a playwright (Al Pacino) deals with having to raise his sons, his stepdaughters and his sons’ friend.

I’m gonna guess that Pacino’s agent, after having his client star in the ultra-lurid “Cruising”, thought it best for Al’s career if the actor were to suddenly leap from exploitation to family-friendly fare. Whatever the case may be, “Author, Author” is the height of ’80s cinematic banality, and Pacino’s participation in it is more shocking than anything shown on-screen during “Cruising”. The greatest insult may be the film’s end credits song, “Coming Home To You”, which is “sung” by Michael Franks; upon listening to this song, you get the distinct impression that Mr. Franks had never uttered a note in his life before stepping in front of the mic to record it, for it is just a wretched, wretched performance. The lyrics don’t help, either. I do enjoy those wildly out-of-place disco drum pad noises that wander in from time to time, though –

Author, Author - “Coming Home To You” (MP3)

Do you know why this movie is shit upon so much? I don’t. It’s actually both funny and entertaining. In it, Jeffrey Jones gives the most fevered, frenetic and brilliant performance of his career, and Tim Robbins also checks in, portraying the first of what would be several great “goofy” roles for him throughout the ’80s (see also “Tapeheads”, “Bull Durham”, “Erik The Viking” and “Cadillac Man”.) Also, the special effects are pretty top-notch.

So why does “Howard The Duck” have such a terrible reputation? Perhaps it’s because George Lucas’ name was attached to it as producer, and everyone was expecting another “Star Wars”/”Indiana Jones”-like spectaulcar, but instead got a huge mouthful of duck jokes. Or perhaps it’s the only PG-rated film ever to have multiple jokes about beastiality. Bad Movie Planet sums it up like this:

“The ‘Howard The Duck’ from the comics was a witty, satirical character that had strange adventures with even stranger foes (the Kidney Lady, Dr. Bong, Status Quo). This movie wasn’t witty….the jokes all boiled down to ‘Hey! He’s a duck! Get it!?’. Man, there’s only one or two times that’s going to funny…and even then it ain’t that funny.”

Okay, so maybe the movie does suck after all. Here’s the soundtrack by John Barry and Thomas Dolby.

“Howard The Duck” soundtrack (ZIP file)

From Nate Thompson’s now-defunct soundtrack blog 7 Black Notes:

“After officially buying Cannon Films from its British founders in 1979, Menaham Golan stepped behind the camera again for a colorful, widescreen musical spectacular, shot in Germany with a bizarre international cast including newbie Catherine Mary Stewart (’Night of the Comet’), future BBC staple Grace Kennedy, Joss Ackland (’Lethal Weapon 2′), and the wonderfully hammy Vladek Sheybal (’From Russia with Love’) as Mr. Boogalow, a satanic record producer who controls the world of pop culture in the futuristic year of 1994. The end result, ‘The Apple’, appalled audiences worldwide with its glam-rock fusion of biblical symbolism, dirty disco, and dieties descending from the sky in pimpmobiles, though it has more recently become a perpetual revival house and midnight movie favorite. The, uh, unique songs are the brainchild of Israeli popster Coby Recht and American composer George S. Clinton (who also appears onscreen as a mind-controlled reporter), later known for much bigger titles like ‘Austin Powers’, ‘Wild Things’ and ‘Mortal Kombat’. ‘Xanadu’ ain’t got nothin’ on this one, baby.”

Before it enjoyed its current midnight-movie revival and late night cable TV status, “The Apple” languished on Cinefile’s “Modern Musicals” shelf, thoroughly unwatched until one day, former Cinefile employee Cris noticed its colorful cover box, and popped it in, unaware of what he was in store for. Needless to say, he was instantly bowled over, and he proceeded to hound every last co-worker until we’d all seen it. I quickly became infatuated with the film’s jaw-dropping lyrics and faux futuristic inanities, and cobbled together an ad hoc soundtrack CD by ripping the audio from our old VHS rental tape. Eventually we tracked down an LP copy of the official version, probably the only album to have ever been released by Cannon Records! In comparing the two, I was disappointed by the LP version’s tendency to bathe every note of every song in a torrent of phase and flange effects, whereas in the video version, those effects are almost completely invisible. Also, the LP version does not contain every song, bit of extraneous dialogue or extended music cue that the video version does.

Later, I thought of re-recording the video version when “The Apple” finally came out on DVD, but decided against it. I guess I like that thick layer of tape hiss too much; it reminds me of that bygone era when VHS was king! Here, we offer both versions for download. You decide which one you like best.

“The Apple”, VHS audio version (ZIP file)
“The Apple”, LP version (ZIP file)

The Kingdom

Lars von Trier’s Danish television miniseries reaches the “Twin Peaks”-like peak of weirdness, standing out as possibly one of the most warped things to have ever been broadcast on network television anywhere. 99% of all the action takes place in the neurosurgical ward of Denmark’s biggest hospital, and while the overall tone of the series is quite disturbing, the mood at the head of each episode is momentarily broken by the opening credits sequence and its accompanying militaristic theme song —

“The Kingdom” opening credits theme (MP3)

Alien

Jerry Goldsmith’s spidery, frigid orchestral score for “Alien” is the perfect compliment to what’s rightly considered one of the most powerful films in both the sci-fi and horror genres — but it’s difficult to piece together just what music cues from the “Alien” soundtrack LP actually appear in the film itself. On the subject, Wikipedia sez:

“Director Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings became quite attached to several of the cues they used for the temporary track while cutting the movie. As a result they moved around much of Goldsmith’s score and had many sequences rescored. (Interviews on the ‘Quadrilogy’ DVD release of this film document the viewpoints of Goldsmith, Rawlings and Scott in regard to this situation and why it occurred.) Two cues from Goldsmith’s earlier score for ‘Freud’ appear in the film, and a section of Howard Hanson’s second symphony, ‘The Romantic,’ replaced the end credits. As a result, Goldsmith’s original soundtrack LP represented more the original score he wrote than what ended up appearing in the film.”

In any case, the one mystery credit, when it comes to the music of “Alien”, is who scored the film’s theatrical trailer? Judging by Goldsmith’s work elsewhere on sci-fi films like “Logan’s Run” and “Outland”, it’s quite possible he did it, but there seems to be little info available on the subject.

“Alien” theatrical trailer (MP3)

Murphy’s Law

I always love it when a singer or band mentions their own name in song lyrics — Bo Diddley is the king of this practice — but it’s an extra special treat to hear a movie theme song that repeatedly uses its own name. In this case, we have the end credits theme to the ‘85 Charles Bronson crime drama “Murphy’s Law”, in which once again, Bronson plays, um — Bronson. Here, the theme of the film is sung by Bronson’s co-star Kathleen Wilhoite. These lyrics have to be heard to be believed, but yet, the logic of them seems typical for a Golan-Globus production.

“Murphy’s Law” theme song (MP3)

Death Promise

What is there to say about ’70s kung fu cinema that hasn’t already been said — except that it’s nearly impossible to stop watching any picture that opens with a piece of audio like this! As they say in the song itself, “That’s a promise! That’s a promise…”

“Death Promise” opening theme (MP3)

Plot outline: Peter O’Toole is Jack, a man who is cured of his belief that he is God, only to turn into Jack the Ripper. The movie, an indictment of Britain’s class system, peers behind the closed doors of English aristocracy and deals with everything from sadistic sarcasm to insanity to black comedy… as well as a touch of the Hollywood musical.

This lengthy and willfully incoherent slab of weirdness features O’Toole doing a handful of vaudeville-type numbers, the highlight of which is “The Varsity Drag”. At times both whimsical and terrfying, due to what I think is a spot-on representation of the the depravity of aristocracy, these songs are effective punctuation throughout the film. This vinyl rip of the LP, unfortunately, is not track-listed; it is only two tracks, a Side A and a Side B.

Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk sez:

“‘The Ruling Class’ sneaked onto the scene as one of those off-the-wall things that hipsters said you had to see, even if they couldn’t explain it. (My two friends and I at a Westwood screening seemed to be the only people in the audience not smoking dope.) A combination of sophomoric sub-Monty Python jokes and bizarre Lewis Carroll-like speeches, this is basically a drawing-room comedy on acid.

There are laughs. Peter O’Toole’s manic delivery sells his gibberish lines in much the desperate but effective manner of ‘What’s New Pussycat?’. He’s very likeable as the lost-lamb Jesus, and terrifying as the bloodless-faced Jack of the final reel.”

“The Ruling Class” soundtrack LP (ZIP file)