REVIEW: 42nd Street Forever: Blu-ray Edition (Blu-ray)
THE FILM:
I don’t know about you but one of the things I love most about the movie going experience are the trailers. I’m not referring to the commercials that seem to have taken over the past decade or so making the cinema feel… cheaper. I’m talking about the Trailers, Prevues (especially the Prevues!!) and Previews of Coming Attractions. Those 2-3 minute mini-movies that are solely designed to get you out-of-your-mind-enthusiastic and psyched up for the feature films they are promoting. Trailers from every era of filmmaking are simply a joy for me to behold. From the Wildly! Explosive! Sensational! Coming Soon to This Theater! inter-titles that defined trailers from the early era of Hollywood to every single one of the ten billion trailers from the 1970’s and 1980’s that began with Don LaFontaine saying “In a world…” movie trailers are just pure movie catnip for me; the distillation (and frequently all) of the best a movie has to offer, crammed into the space of a few minutes.
Now if you combine the wonderfully sensationalist promotional quality of a movie trailer with a hard core exploitation movie to be promoted? OMG! Instant movie nerd nirvana! And that is exactly what 42ND STREET FOREVER is, nearly four non-stop hours of pure exploitation movie trailer bliss. And these aren’t just regular movie trailers. No no no no no no. They REALLY don’t make them like these anymore (except when they are being spoofed like in GRINDHOUSE.) Sometimes long (in the space of 4-5 minutes long) and unabashedly unafraid to show you exactly what these movies have in store for you (from super bloody, over the top gore in horror movies to hard core sex in porn films and non-stop martial arts action in the kung-fu flicks), these are trailers that manage to show you just about everything a movie has to offer without feeling like they gave away the entire plot; an art form that seems to have vanished from current movie trailers.
42ND STREET FOREVER is a compilation of some 89 trailers to some of the greatest, sleaziest, weirdest and just plain fantastic exploitation films from the 1970’s and 1980’s. Pretty much all the major sub-genres are represented here by several trailers: blaxploitation, women-in-chains, slasher, biker, soft and hard core pornography, revenge, “shockumentary” and martial arts movies all have some gloriously lurid and sensationalist spots on this disc.
Here is the complete list of trailers in this set:
1. Black Samson
2. Savage!
3. Kenner
4. The Guy From Harlem
5. Welcome Home, Brother Charles
6. Boss Nigger
7. Honky
8. Sugar Hill
9. Rolling Thunder
10. Act of Vengeance
11. Ms. 45
12. They Call Her One Eye
13. Ginger
14. Savage Sisters
15. Chained Heat
16. Delinquent Schoolgirls
17. The Pom Pom Girls
18. The Teasers Go to Paris
19. The Teacher
20. College Girls
21. Street Girls
22. The Babysitter
23. Teenage Mother
24. I, A Mother
25. When Women Had Tails
26. The Curious Female
27. The Tale of the Dean’s Wife
28. The Minx
29. The Centerfold Girls
30. The Depraved
31. Invitation to Ruin
32. Helga
33. The Sun, the Place and the Girls
34. Fairytales
35. Flesh Gordon
36. Starcrash
37. Dark Star
38. The Raiders of Atlantis
39. Matango
40. The Green Slime
41. They Came from Beyond Space
42. The Deadly Spawn
43. The Dark
44. The Evil
45. The Evictors
46. The Undertaker and His Pals
47. The Devil’s Nightmare
48. Deadly Blessing
49. Rabid
50. Eye of the Cat
51. Mark of the Witch
52. I Dismember Mama/The Blood Splattered Bride
53. Women and Bloody Terror/Night of Bloody Horror
54. Dr. Butcher M.D.
55. The Grim Reaper
56. Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon
57. Wicked Wicked
58. The Flesh and Blood Show
59. The 3 Dimensions of Greta
60. Hard Candy
61. Panorama Blue
62. Italian Stallion
63. Maid in Sweden
64. Pornography in Denmark
65. Secret Africa
66. Shocking Asia
67. Taboos of the World
68. Chappaqua
69. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
70. The 44 Specialist
71. The Bullet Machine
72. Death Drive
73. Spy in Your Wife
74. Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die
75. The Last of Secret Angels
76. The Crippled Master
77. Shogun Assassin
78. SuperManChu
79. Born Losers
80. Hells Angles on Wheels
81. Devil’s Angels
82. The Pink Angles
83. Werewolves on Wheels
84. Dixie Dynamite
85. Mr. Billion
86. Super Fuzz
87. Sunset Cove
88. Van Nays Blvd.
89. Skatetown U.S.A.
Not all of the movies shown on this disc are available on home video though you will wish they were. Consider this the ultimate party disc to have on in the background; the mind-meltingly fun trip back to a time when movies were real movies and trailers were real trailers; the disc that will make you yearn for the days before stadium seating and surround sound… the golden era of the exploitation film. Long may the 42ND STREET FOREVER Blu-rays continue!
THE DISC:
Normal criteria of quality really can’t be used for a lot of vintage exploitation movie trailers. In essence there are 89 separate mini movies here that all had their own unique source prints. Some obviously came from overseas, some look to be a couple of generations removed from the original, some are missing frames and some are scratched up pretty badly. So what I will say on this front is that it looks like these are not simply an upconvert from the DVD but that Synapse Films went back and remastered each and every spot on this disc in HD from the source prints they have. The vast majority of the spots are presented in anamorphic 1.78 (and most of the movies these spots are too were probably originally shown in 1.85) with a few in 2.35. Fans will not be disappointed.
Likewise, the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack sounds to have been completely remastered from scratch as well. That’s not to say every trailer sounds fantastic. That depends on the quality of the print used but there isn’t a single spot that sounds horrid or distorted. On top of the remastering, Synapse even went the extra step and SUBTITLED many of the trailers. For fans of these films and vintage exploitation trailers, the presentation here has no equal on home video… yet.
THE EXTRAS:
There is only one supplement and it is a great one. The commentary track features Michael Gingold (from Fangoria Magazine), Edwin Samuelson (from AVManiacs) and Chris Poggiali (from Temple of Shock) talking for the full nearly four hour running time about everything they can think of to cram into the precious few minutes they have for each trailer. This is an enjoyable, entertaining and enthusiastically fun track that should not be missed.
MY SAY:
DANGER: by putting 42ND STREET FOREVER in your Blu-ray player you will instantly lose nearly four hours out of your day without even beginning to notice. I can’t think of ANYTHING else that does that! Very Highly Recommended!!
Synapse Films/ 2012 / 227 min. /UR
