Willie Dynamite
When I ask people the pressing question, “Which Children’s Television Workshop actor gives the best performance as a pimp in a motion picture?” nine times out of ten, the answer I get is, “Morgan ‘Easy Reader’ Freeman’s Oscar-nominated performance as Fast Black in 1987′s Street Smart, of course” (one time out of ten, I have to explain that Rita Moreno did not play a pimp in West Side Story).
In either case, the answer is wrong. The correct answer is Roscoe Orman (a.k.a. Gordon from Sesame Street) as the …

Before Easy Rider changed the way Hollywood looked at 1960s youth culture, filmmakers–most of whom were senior citizens at the time–created bizarre works that tried to capture what kids were into. Enter The Swinger (1966), starring Ann-Margret and Tony (“The Finder of Lost Loves”) Franciosa and directed by George Sidney, who was responsible for some of the great musicals of the ’50s and ’60s, including Viva Las Vegas. This movie tries so hard to be subversive and risque, yet, like most such movies of the period, its message is ultimately …

When watching as many cult movies as I do, I get a tiny frisson of pleasure from the frequent appearance of certain character actors who made their careers in low budget movies. Case in point, this week’s movie, Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), starring William Smith.

Jim Brown, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Dick Butkus, Bubba Smith, Howie Long, Brian Bosworth–the National Football League has been the cradle of action stars for decades, more than any other sport. And nowhere is that more apparent than in this week’s film, The Black 6, starring six of the best NFL players from 1973: the 49ers’ Gene Washington, the Vikings’ Carl Eller, the Dolphins’ Mercury Morris, the Steelers’ Mean Joe Greene, the Lions’ Lem Barney, and the Chiefs’ Willie Lanier.
The Black 6 is basically yet another remake of Seven …

I often like to play a mental game with movie history that I call “What If ___________ Were Star Wars,” where I try to imagine what that history would be like if a certain movie had the same level of popularity and creative or financial influence as Star Wars.  With Peter Yates’s 1976 masterpiece about private ambulance drivers in Los Angeles, Mother, Jugs & Speed, we get a sense of what movies would be like if Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H had been the most popular and influential movie of all time.
In …

Last week’s film, The Oscar, represents a common type of cult film: the bad movie that reaches such a sublime level of awfulness that it transcends its quality and achieves a level of entertainment on its own. (I hesitate to use the common phrase “so bad it’s good” because I don’t think these movies ever become “good” by any measure of quality–they are still bad movies, but they do become entertaining in their own special way).  These are the types of movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and they …

Since Oscar season is in full bloom, I thought it would be a good idea to examine one of Hollywood’s attempts to dramatize the dog-eat-dog world that exists behind the scenes of the Academy Awards.
That film, The Oscar (1966), defines irony: a film about the highest achievement in American cinema also happens to be one of the worst movies that Hollywood has ever produced. But it is also truly glorious in its overwritten, overacted awfulness. Starring Steven Boyd, Tony Bennett (in his one and only film role), and Elke Sommer, …