More Than Meets The Mogwai

Monday, April 30, 2007

So, this is what happened to Angel Eyes?

Picking up taped-off-television VHS at garage sales is always a dicey move if the tapes are unlabeled, but it sometimes proves to be a more than worthwhile pastime when you find 70s and 80s TV movies (perhaps by reputed former features director and later tele-auteur Paul Wendkos, which I have found in the past) that haven’t been commercially released.

This past weekend, after picking up more than a dozen of such tapes from the home of a WW II veteran (meaning innumerable war films, particularly those with military aircraft, leading me to believe that he was a pilot), I came across a number of Canadian television commercials for the Midas Muffler chain, featuring Lee Van Cleef in a caricature of his iconic Spaghetti Western persona. These date from the early 1980s, and although I haven’t uploaded this one myself to youtube, I may add the others later in the week. This ad is also noteworthy for co-starring George Kennedy, around the time of the Canadian co-produced DEATH SHIP (Alvin Rakoff, 1980, from a story by Jack Hill).

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

RIP - John Flynn


Less than a week after a tragic automobile accident claimed the life of Bob Clark and his 22-year-old son, Greencine Daily is reporting that John Flynn, director of 70s classics THE OUTFIT and ROLLING THUNDER (both of which are not on DVD), has passed away. All the more shocking is the fact that he recently made an appearance at the ongoing Grindhouse Film Festival in a retrospective screening of his ROLLING THUNDER.

Flynn hasn’t made a film since 2001, but in an interview with “Shock Cinema” magazine last year, he mentioned he was gearing up to direct a crime film that was to be his “Jean-Pierre Melville homage” (and to be shot in France); sadly, much like the slate of promising films Bob Clark was readying, it was not to be.

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

Grindhouse Gang

Allan Arkush, George Armitage, Lewis Teague, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Bob Clark (tragically, his last interview) and a mostly silent Richard Rush discuss all things GRINDHOUSE with Quentin Tarantino.

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