Archive for the '"Beach Blanket Babylon"' Category

The DVD world

No doubt you’ve noticed:

Besides showcasing recent films, the DVD industry has become a dumping ground for bad movies and relics, aka classics.

The spate of awfulness - mostly straight-to-video drek or low-budget big-screen junk - continues next week with the release “Perfect Creature.”

It’s a vampire movie I watched two weeks ago and had to put on a second time the other day to remember the story. (I only watched parts the second time; that was more than enough, and I’m a fan of the genre.)

The in-part-one-brain-part, out-another-part aspect is a symptom of bad-movie-watching. With a little memory trolling, you call recall the basics - re. “perfect Creatures,” I remembered “vampires” and nothing else.

Dry as parchment, the story’s set in a futuristic England that resembles the Victorian era.

Genetic fooling-around resulted in a race of vampires known as The Brethren whose members have watched over humans for 300 years, inventing vaccines and sugar-free Twinkies (kidding about the Twinkies).

When genetic tampering turns one vampire into a killer of humans - for the first time in the history of the two races’ coexistence - the vamp’s brother, also a vamp, works with human police, including a somber lead investigator played by Saffron Burrows, to bring him down before he does mass damage, the specifics of which I don’t remember.

Not that it matters.

“The Hills Have Eyes II,” also out next Tuesday, received a decent big-screen run, evidently because some audiences enjoy seeing disfigured humans pull bloody intestines out of their victims and treat them like large spaghetti noodles.

The dining happens during the first 10-12 minutes of the DVD, give or take a burst of gore. ’nuff said.

Out this week from the senior set is the “Frankie & Annette MGM Movie Legends Collection,” a set of eight Annette Funicello and Franki Avalon - or Annette and Fabian - beach party, ski party and hot-rod party movies from the ’60s. A couple have plots.

“Beach Blanket Bingo” and “Beach Party” inspired the campy, long-running “Beach Blanket Babylon” show in SF - and for good reason.

The films helped define “camp.” They’re fun, they’re hokey, they’re about teens and young 20s having partying and flirting with music and dancing and the occasional campy villain.

One or two for the movies are worth a watch for the froth - but eight is overkill.

Next week on the senior circuit: “Showgirls: Fully Exposed Edition” (female drifter arrives in Vegas, becomes dancer, spouts melodramatic dialogue poorly) and “The Happy Hooker Collection,” about the woman who was a harbinger to Heidi Fleiss and the Washington, D.C., madam currently raising eyebrows and other body parts.

“The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Second Season” is also due out, though God knows why.

Posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007
Under: "Beach Blanket Babylon", "Showgirls", Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, dvd | No Comments »