So I'm always getting tv shows from the library on dvd and watching them to put me to sleep at night. I made the msitake of getting the first season of
Mad Men a couple of weeks ago. I say 'mistake' because I can't sleep while this show is on. I wasn't too sure at first, but by the season finale ("The Wheel"), I was hooked. I think some of the show's (very few) critics are correct in pointing out that this is a series that wants to have and eat it's cake. While it tends to go overboard on depicting old-school sexism, the show can be seen to be contributing to sexism the way it clearly "objectifies" its women. Frankly, I don't care. I can't figure out why, but this is a show that makes you think. Quite rare these days. While it doesn't appeal to the drive-in junky in me the way
Breaking Bad does, I think this may actually be the better of AMC's original two series (I haven't watched
The Killing yet. It'll be another one I get on board late, mostly because I'm rewatching the entire
Twin Peaks series at my brother's house on movie night so I don't need two running stories about a dead girl...)
Just a side note, in 2002 I was without regular work in L.A. I had to take jobs as an "extra" on tv shows. I was always cast as either a lawyer, politician, or cop or security guard. One of my first gigs was on a show with Sally Field called
The Court. Don't feel bad if you missed it, it was on for about six episodes. Anyway, the director singled me out to do a little bit with a young blonde actress where she walks into the courtroom and heads in the wrong direction, so I grab her and redirect her to where she's supposed to be. I remember that young lady quite well because she had big, round, gorgreous eyes and a hell of a body. I just learned, by watching
Mad Men (I'm on season two now) that the name of that young actress was/is Christina Hendricks. Oh well. Even back then she was way, way out of my league... (And I don't even believe in "leagues")
Photo courtesy of screenrant.com
This is the first review I wrote for Jimmy Callaway's series of blogs dealing with exploitation movies. I think it's a little choppy and there's at least one place where I wrote a sentence that flat out doesn't make sense. I wrote the review over winter break when the OCD got me hooked on watching early 80s slashers. People love The Burning and I'm sure will hate me for pointing out what I think is obvious-- It's a terrible movie and a terrible attempt by the Weinstein Bros. to deconstruct a genre right at the height of its popularity. With the benefit of time, I have decided I do not like The Prowler nearly as much as I did back in December. I rewatched it and realized it gets repetitive. The only impressive thing about it are the first three kills, which display some of Tom Savini's finest work. Upon seeing the footage that was cut from the original My Bloody Valentine (nine friggin' minutes!), I've decided the only slasher to come close to Friday the 13th or the godfather of slashers, Halloween, was, in fact, My Bloody Valentine. It wasn't quite as scary, but the atmosphere was great, the gore was fantastic and the blue-collar setting separated it from all the other Halloween imitations. The painful truth is, the slasher genre was nothing more than people trying to cash in on the success of Halloween. What none of the producers of the subsequent films understood was that Halloween worked due to suspense. The Prowler has moments that are suspenseful, but the sloppy plot construction takes away any power that suspense might have had. I think it's time to applaud John Carpenter for being the only member of the New Hollywood generation who could ever have replaced Alfred Hitchcock. Anyway, read the review if you like and leave a comment, even if you think I'm full of shit.
