It's Craptacular!: Las Vegas Movies

Monday, July 30, 2012

Las Vegas Movies

Here is a link to an article i wrote for the July 2012 issue of Desert Companion about films set in Las Vegas. Featuring best heist, best road trip and best high-roller experience with films like One From the Heart, Corvette Summer and Dark City.

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Shawscope!
The Shaw Brothers were the lords of Hong Kong action cinema. Dig the homicidal hardware and krautrock groove of Master of the Flying Guillotine or the Shaws' collaboration with Britain's Hammer house of horror, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.

Women in Warpaint
Truly, the 80s were eyeshadow's greatest decade. In Ladies & Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains, Diane Lane goes from reality TV star to punk rock star in a prescient flick that also stars members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols. In Liquid Sky, the gender-bending and utterly bored Anne Carlisle plays killer queen to the jaded East Village art scene.

Modern Grindhouse
A pair of flicks from the aughts that feel more like the days of the drive-in. In Drive Angry, the one and only Nicholas Cage kicks ass and crashes muscle cars in a race to save his grandbaby from Satan. In Shoot 'Em Up, Clive Fucking Owen deploys heavy artillery and dry wit to battle the mob.

Children's Shows Gone Wrong
Saturday morning was always creepy and now we know why. Shakes the Clown chronicles the black-humored adventures of an alcoholic clown. Death to Smoochy reveals the corrupt world of dopers and thieves inside those adorable furry costumes.

Urban Mutant Dystopia, Asian Style
Two visions of the semi-apocalyptic future, both with swords. In The Heroic Trio, three martial arts superheroines take on demon kings and zombies. Tokyo Gore Police is a world of cyborg mutants, regenerating monsters and multi-limbed perverts.

A Girl in Trouble
Two young divas take on the big city and lose, but are glamorous as hell while doing it. In Butterfield 8, we learn how you can look like Liz Taylor and live like Charles Bukowski. In Ciao! Manhattan, underground superstar Edie Sedgwick rises in New York's art scene, then bottoms out in Los Angeles.

Valleys of the Dolls
Jacqueline Susann's epic trash novel gets an epic trash movie in Valley of the Dolls, a tale of pill-popping excess from Hollywood to Broadway. Then boobie auteur Russ Meyer takes on the non-sequel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a Sunset Strip sex & drugs & rock n' roll freakout.

You Call This a Scientific Method?
When ten-year-old boys and madmen do science experiments, they should keep it to themselves. In Village of the Giants, little Ron Howard invents a growth serum that winds up in the hands of a bunch of local juvenile delinquents. The Brain That Wouldn't Die is what happens when a nutjob pseudo-Dr. Frankenstein accidentally decapitates his fiancee.

Bloody & Beautiful
There's no horror like vintage Italian horror, combining high style and violent death. Dario Argento's legendary Suspiria is a fairytale and a fashion spread, maggots and razor wire. Mario Bava's Blood & Black Lace goes even further into the fashionable, as a series of gruesome murders terrorize an Italian haute couture house.

Goth Moderne
Universal Horror was the apotheosis of art deco as a goth aesthetic. The Black Cat matches Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a tale of hypnotism, Satanism, paranoia and revenge. Dracula's Daughter is ostensibly a sequel to the Lugosi classic, but this elegant, bisexual female vampire seems more like a prequel to Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger.

Vintage NYC Sleaze
Explore the city at night from Soho nightclubs to Time Square dirty bookstores in Who Killed Teddy Bear? starring a creepy Sal Mineo working at Elaine Stritch's club. Continue the walk on the wild side with Satan in High Heels, in which a leather-clad lovely goes from carny stripper to cabaret crooner, breaking hearts and busting balls along the way.

Antiheroines
These movies make Joan Crawford look like Meredith Baxter Birney. Beyond the Forest features Bette Davis in a performance that's so over-the-top it veers into self-parody but also so utterly nihilistic it's stone cold punk. John Waters' Female Trouble turns the genre on its head, with that great interpreter of the feminine condition Divine going from teen mom to criminal icon.

Blaxploitation Surrealism
What happens when a ladies' motorcycle gang that dresses like Funkadelic tries to save Watts from a racist fried-chicken mogul? The wonderfully off-kilter Darktown Strutters, that's what. In Disco Godfather, Rudy Ray Moore fights "the wack," while never missing a roller boogie contest at his nightclub. I can dig it!

Violent, Weird & Totally Girly!
Two utterly bananas films explore the rage that lurks beneath fluffy pink femininity. Hausu mixes animation and live action in a dizzying tale of teenage fantasies gone bizarrely awry. Perfect Blue is a twisted anime that owes more to Hitchcock and Lynch than to Sailor Moon. It looks at fame, identity and, again, the blurring of reality and fantasy.

70s Musical Madness
Back when nightclubs were big, clothes were loud and Quaaludes were freely available. Phantom of the Paradise is a bit Faustian fable, a bit music-biz tell-all, over-the-top either way. Thank God It's Friday stars Donna Summer, the Commodores and a Casablanca/Motown soundtrack to tell the tale of one wild night at the disco.

Space Opera
We have seen the future and it is campy as fuck. Begin with the operatic Queen soundtrack, over-the-top set design and so-hammy-it's-bacon acting of Flash Gordon. Continue the chortling with Queen of Outer Space -- a piece of fifties foolishness whose set is encrusted with glitter and whose script is made of wood. But, hey, it's got Zsa Zsa Gabor!

Monday, July 30, 2012

Las Vegas Movies

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