Chuck Heston week was really last week. However, last Friday was April Fool's Day so I felt I had to post the April Fool's Day ad. So, better late than never, here's an awesome triple feature ad featuring another Heston classic, Omega Man. Omega Man was an adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend.
Also on this advertisement you'll see an ad for Disney's Pinocchio which turned 31 in 1971. On the bottom you'll see the movie Evel Knievel starring George Hamilton as the titular daredevil. Evel Knievel was a biographical movie about the daredevil filmed primarily in his hometown of Butte, Montana. It should not be confused with the unbelievably awesome Viva Knievel! movie from 1977 that starred the real life Evel Knievel.
Over on Strange Kid's Club I talk about some of the DVDs released this week. Included is a compilation of four Michael J Fox comedies. They are all pretty good so I thought I'd finish out the week with ads for all Michael J Fox movies.
Here's an ad for a great little Michael J Fox movie called The Frighteners. It was written and directed by none other than Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson. It's much darker than your typical Fox movie. Fox plays an architect whose wife is killed. The trauma leaves him with the ability to see and talk to the dead. He works with three ghosts as a "Psychic Investigator". Fox sends the ghosts to haunt houses which he then cons people into having him remove the spirits...for a price. Fox's character then discovers that some evil spirit is killing people and only he can see who will be next.
This movie is darkly funny. I really enjoy it. Fox is great in this. There is also a great cameo by R Lee Ermey who pretty much reprises his role from Full Metal Jacket (but as a ghost). The most fun performance, though, is by "The Reanimator" himself, Jeffrey Combs. Combs plays Milton Dammers. Dammers is an undercover agent sent to pin the string of killings on Fox's character. However, Dammers just came off an assignment where he was undercover with a cult and his behavior is...erratic, to say the least. This movie is really good. If you haven't seen it, check it out.
Doc Hollywood is more along the lines of your typical Fox movie. I still enjoy it, though. It's got a great cast with Fox like Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda, George Hamilton, Julie Warner and Bernard Hughes. Fox plays a doctor on his way to his dream job in California. He crashes his car in Grady, SC and becomes stranded while his car is fixed. "City boy in the country" humor ensues.
Finishing western week with a double feature of movie ads.
Duel in the Sun from 1946 (this ad, however, is from a re-release in 1954) stars Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Walter Huston, Lionel Barrymore, Butterfly McQueen and Harry Carey (not that Harry Carey). Jennifer Jones plays half-breed Pearl Chavez who moves to a distant relative's ranch in Texas after her father is hanged for killing her unfaithful mother and lover. At the ranch, Pearl butts heads with the ranch owner and scandalously entertains the attentions of his womanizing younger son, Lewt. The movie garnered the nickname "Lust in the Dust" for it's highly sexualized characterizations of Pearl and Lewt's relationship.
This movie was produced and sometimes directed by David O Selznik. He envisioned it as a big budget, hugely epic western in the same vein as his previous Gone with the Wind. He got his way as production delays and the hiring/firing of 7 different directors caused the movie's run time to balloon up to 26 hours and the production cost to reach a then unheard of $6 million.
Lust in the Dust from 1985 was a cheesy comedy western. It starred Tab Hunter, Divine and Cesar Romero. John Waters was originally asked to direct but he turned it down because he didn't write the script. The movie took its title from Duel in the Sun's tongue-in-cheek production nickname. The movie is about a bunch of unscrupulous characters searching for buried treasure in the old west.
Take a look at the hilarious taglines in this ad. Ninfa: The hooker with the chest of gold.Hardcase Williams: They called him garbage wrapped in human skin. I think those get across the tone of the movie quite nicely.
If you look under Lust in the Dust, you'll see also playing is Rustler's Rhapsody, which is another comedy western and one of my favorites. However, I didn't get to that ad this week. Some other time.
Today is Double Feature Friday so I'm looking at two movie adaptations for two very popular fighting games.
This is an ad for Street Fighter from 1994. It starred Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia (in his final peformance) as Major Bison. Also starring was Ming-Na as Chun-Li and Kylie Minogue as Cammy. The movie is notoriously over the top and bad, but fun to watch. Despite the notorious awfulness of this movie, it actually earned triple the cost to make it. Van Damme tried for years to make a sequel but when the property changed over to 20th Century Fox, they rebooted the franchise with The Legend of Chun-Li in 2009. Which is also notoriously bad and considered a worse movie than the original.
Street Fighter was written and directed by Steven E. de Souza. Mr de Souza wrote the screenplays for Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Commando, Running Man as well as episodes of the TV shows Knight Rider, The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman. That sounds awesome, which makes you wonder how this guy could have written this horrible Street Fighter movie. Well, Mr de Souza also wrote Jumping Jack Flash with Whoopi Goldberg, Beverly Hills Cop III, Hudson Hawk, The Flintstones and Judge Dredd. So that's how.
Here's an ad for the Mortal Kombat movie adaptation from 1995. Jean Claude Van Damme was actually offered the role of Johnny Cage in this movie, but turned it down to play Guile in Street Fighter. Linden Ashby would replace Van Damme. Also in the movie were Christopher Lambert, Bridgett Wilson and Robin Shou who played Liu Kang. Robin Shou would reprise his role in the Mortal Kombat sequel, Annihilation. Shou would then jump franchises and play a character in the Street Fighter reboot, The Legend of Chun-Li in 2009.
I missed Monday, guys, so I'm giving you a double header to conclude Charles Bronson week. Both movies star Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin.
Here is our first Bronson/Marvin coupling in 1967's The Dirty Dozen, one of the greatest action movies of all time. A no nonsense major (Lee Marvin) recruits a group of military prisoners with life sentences for a suicide mission. The film also stars Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy and Telly Savalas.
This second ad is for 1981's Death Hunt. This movie was Hollywood's depiction of the largest manhunt in Canadian history.
