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DVD Review: 42ND STREET FOREVER
THE BLU-RAY EDITION

Studio: Synapse
Year: 1968-1980
Cast: various
Director: various
Release Date: May 08, 2012
Rating: Not Rated for (adult themes, violence, nudity)
Run Time: 03h:45m:00s
Genre(s): cult

"Can your brain take all this sleaze in one sitting?" - back cover blurb

Buy Now @ Amazon

If the thought of nearly four hours of B-movie trailers from the late 1960s/early 1970s - blaxploitation, sexploitation, martial arts, horror, sci-fi, vengeance, etc - gets you as giddy as it does me then the 42nd Street Forever: The Blu-Ray Edition from Synapse is necessary viewing.

Recommended, but for a very select audience.

Movie Grade: B+

DVD Grade: B+

Synapse has issued a half dozen or so compilations of grindhouse/exploitation trailers under the '42nd Street Forever' banner, and this Blu-Ray edition serves as a quasi "best of". They have cherry-picked the best from the first two volumes, and then tossed in a some new content, as well, and then remastered the whole thing in 1080p. This mind numbing mixture of second-tier genres runs the gamut from horror to sex to blaxploitation and back again, all presented in one humongous 225-minute block.

There are some "legit" titles represented here, including the Paul Schrader-penned Viet Nam Vet/vigilante feature Rolling Thunder - starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones - and Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45, in which doe-eyed Zoe Tamerlis becomes a pouty-lipped vengeance machine after two horrific crimes are committed against her; let's not forget Pasolini's infamous Salo, which has been given the Criterion treatment a couple of times. But those are the rare birds here, as most of the films represented are from far down the Great Pit of Carkoon of bad movies, with such memorable films as The Teasers Go To Paris, Spy In Your Eye and The Depraved. Somewhere in between there's a smattering of some rock solid B's, with Flesh Gordon (soft core classic!), They Call Her One Eye (where my Christina Lindberg obsession began) and Dark Star (written and directed by John Carpenter) among them.

It takes a certain degree of bad-movie stamina to appreciate something like this, but if you spent a lot time at drive-ins back in the old days you may find that some of these titles are more familiar than you might think.

The trailers:

Black Samson
Savage!
Kenner
The Guy From Harlem
Welcome Home, Brother Charles
Boss Nigger
Honky
Sugar Hill
Rolling Thunder
Act of Vengeance: Rape Squad
Ms. 45
They Call Her One Eye
Ginger
Savage Sisters
Chained Heat
Delinquent Schoolgirls
The Pom Pom Girls
The Teasers Go to Paris
The Teacher
College Girls
Street Girls
The Babysitter
Teenage Mother
I, A Mother
When Women Had Tails
The Curious Female
The Tale of the Dean's Wife
The Minx
The Centerfold Girls
The Depraved
Invitation to Ruin
Helga
The Sun, The Place and The Girls
Fairytales
Flesh Gordon
Starcrash
Dark Star
The Raiders of Atlantis
Matango
The Green Slime
They Came from Beyond Space
The Deadly Spawn
The Dark
The Evil
The Evictors
The Undertaker and His Pals
The Devil's Nightmare
Deadly Blessing
Rabid
Eye of the Cat
Mark of the Witch
I Dismember Mama/The Blood Splattered Bride
Women and The Bloody Terror/Night of Bloody Horror
Dr. Butcher M.D.
The Grim Reaper
Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon
Wicked Wicked
The Flesh and Blood Show
The Three Dimensions of Greta
Hard Candy
Panorama Blue
Italian Stallion
Maid in Sweden
Pornography in Denmark
Secret Africa
Shocking Asia
Taboos of the World
Chappaqua
Salo
The 44 Specialist
The Bullet Machine
Death Drive
Spy in Your Eye
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die
The Last of Secret Angels
The Crippled Master
Shogun Assassin
Super Man Chu
Born Losers
Hells Angels on Wheels
Devil's Angels
The Pink Angels
Werewolves on Wheels
Dixie Dynamite
Mr. Billion
Super Fuzz
Sunset Cove
Van Nuys Blvd.
Skatetown U.S.A.

Man, that's a lot of trailers!

IMAGE/AUDIO
The AVC-encoded 1.78:1 transfer has been remastered in 1080p, but these are still some pretty rugged trailers and the quality varies greatly. Nicks, scratches, and other debris are not uncommon, but overall the content looks good enough for a batch of vintage exploitation titles.

The primary audio track is DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono - and as with the image side of things it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Voice quality, however, is always clear and free of any measurable hiss issues.

EXTRAS
The sole extra is a big winner: an informative commentary track featuring AVManiacs's Edwin Samuelson, Fangoria's Michael Gingold and Temple of Schlock's Chris Poggiali, and I would recommend making this your primary audio choice the first time through. These guys have a great knowledge of these wonderful oddball titles/genres, and together do a fine job connecting dots between production companies, directors and actors.

Posted by: Rich Rosell - May 27, 2012, 1:51 pm - DVD Review
Keywords: grindhouse trailers