Comedy

Discotec fin de Semana (1979)

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It’s Sabado Noche Fever! Aye-aye-ai!

Produced for Mexico’s Agrasánchez Studios, but filmed in my mother’s hometown of Brownsville, Texas, the disco-fied culture of the late 1970s is shot and filtered through the grainy Mexican film industry to create the dance-music-drenched fever dream, Discotec fin de Semana, released one year after dance fever had taken America by storm.

In its aftermath, Discotec has all the best low-budget set pieces, a bumpin’ age-30-for-18 cast and a dance floor-burning soundtrack, with discotheque versions of “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Disco Heat” and “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.” Out of sight!

It’s a typical high school day, with the dancing b-ball player and the rich chauffeured student trying to win the heart of studious Susana (Silvia Pasquel). This is all well and good, but after the extended scene about the public school bus system, they all set out for a night of (mostly amateurish) disco dancing.

Between all the sex-comedy tropes of horny teens getting it on in a parked car, there is dangerous drag racing, current CB language, mustached scolding teachers, bleeping censored language, a Peter Frampton poster and a stereotypical grandma getting down with her bad self. Superbad!

Of course, it all culminates in a badly choreographed dance contest, but not before a seemingly epic knife fight at the beach!

Truly, more of a South-of-the-Border American Graffiti than a downscale take on Saturday Night Fever, Discotec fin de Semana is a Mexican love letter to the non-New York ritualized dance denizens — with their off-brand shirts and ill-advised moves — waltzing about the Texas moonlight.

Either way, it’s better than John Travolta’s Urban Cowboy. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Watching the World Die: Nuclear Threat Films of the 1980s

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On the cusp on turning 12, I was floored by the March 20, 1983, broadcast of Special Bulletin, the NBC made-for-TV movie designed to look like a real-time news broadcast of a nuclear incident on the East Coast, courtesy of domestic terrorists. Although I knew it was fake, the effect was so chilling that exactly eight months later, my mom forbade us from watching ABC’s highly contentious The Day After, in which the threat — and eventual nukes — came not from our own, but the Soviet Union.

We American kids grew up with the fear, worry and anxiety of nuclear war as all too tangible. U.S.-Soviet relations were so bad, the mushroom clouds were not a question of if, but when.

You had to be there. Be glad you weren’t.

Not to say 2024 is all wine and roses; despite the Cold War in our collective rearview mirror, we’re inching closer to That 1983 Feeling than we’ve ever been. At least today, we have Mike Bogue’s Watching the World Die: Nuclear Threat Films of the 1980s to keep us company. Just hopefully not in a bunker.

Something of a companion to Bogue’s previous tome, 2017’s Apocalypse Then (which focused on 1950s atomic cinema and shares McFarland & Company as publisher), Watching the World Die is, rather surprisingly, not the grim, doom-and-gloom read I expected. Documentaries aside, which the author purposely doesn’t include, the decade’s movies on the topic were largely escapist, thereby taking the edge off. Having characters like Yor, C.H.U.D., Hulk and Godzilla romping around will do that.

In all, Bogue casts his critical eye on 121 films in detail, from populist blockbusters (WarGames), well-intentioned flops (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) and indie darlings (Miracle Mile) to three James Bond entries and many more Italian SFers. However, where Watching the World Die most excels is in rummaging through the junk drawer of VHS obscurities — not because Bogue’s writing differs in these essays (it doesn’t), but because the flicks get bonkers.

You may have heard about the Steve Barkett ego project The Aftermath, but what about Thomas A. Cohen’s survivalist family saga, Massive Retaliation? The Dack Rambo vehicle Ultra Warrior? Or Canada’s Survival 1990 with its dog-eating mutants? Giving attention to such forgotten B- and C-level genre productions is something of an archeological dig of unpopular culture; that Bogue’s shovel dug that deep into oblivion is enough to forgive his book’s exclusion of comedies — the intentional kind, I mean. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or McFarland.

Action

The Beekeeper (2024)

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Between moonlighting as a smuggler, hitman, mercenary, peasant turned warrior and Megalodon-killing marine biologist, any of the machismo-brimmed hats Jason Statham has worn shouldn’t surprise us. In Suicide Squad director David Ayer’s The Beekeeper, however, he dawns a mask. (At least for the first six minutes.) Regardless, the film’s initial impression as a Great Value John Wick doesn’t work against it, instead amplifying its gun-toting buzz.

The film follows Adam Clay (Statham), a physically imposing beekeeper who rents a shed from his elderly neighbor, Eloise (Phylicia Rashad, Creed). One night, a phishing scam — secretly run by Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson, Five Nights at Freddy’s), the god of insufferable tech bros — drains Eloise’s savings and a community trust account, spurring her to suicide.

Clay discovers her body right before Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy), an FBI agent and Eloise’s daughter. After tense introductions, Clay contacts “the Beekeepers,” a secret organization he retired from that specializes in keeping the peace with a lot of guns. Clay obtains an address for an assuming office in Massachusetts, and the body count starts rising.

As you could imagine, not a lot happens under The Beekeeper’s hood — and that’s the beauty of it. Beyond the recurring use of the phrase “protect the hive” and the increasingly concerned looks of Jeremy Irons (Justice League), what a Beekeeper actually does is never explained. Though arguably oversimplified, the lack of a monolithic organization like the Continental, Kingsman or Expendables keeps the action’s focus exactly where it needs to be: on Statham.

Unfortunately, effectively dumbing down the secret society angle also means The Beekeeper noticeably lacks substance when its lead wanders off-screen. Most of the banter between Parker and her partner falls flat, as if their wit is the only thing preventing the movie from diving headfirst into a vat of ridiculous honey. The action’s set pieces emerge through an equally uninspired formula:

  1. Clay kills the bad guy(s).
  2. Bigger bad guy(s) called in to retaliate.
  3. Clay kills them, too.
  4. Repeat approximately five times.

That being said, how we get to the shootouts and explosions isn’t nearly as important as how they’re orchestrated. Fortunately, The Beekeeper finds Statham in peak, stoic form. Even if the violence lacks any permanence, it’s still a joy to see Clay outmaneuver a minigun or take out a team of commandos with some ratchet straps and an elevator.

The Beekeeper doesn’t offer much more than B-roll for an inevitable Statham documentary, but it doesn’t really need anything more than that. It’s not like The Transporter or Crank franchises offer substantially different experiences, yet they still persist as (vaguely) quintessential 2000s action flicks. Between this and The Meg, we could be closing in on the twilight of Statham’s generously prolific career. Check The Beekeeper out, and don’t stop bee-lieving in its star. —Daniel Bokemper

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

I.S.S. (2023)

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Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose does the thing — playing an astronaut, that is — in the film I.S.S. Those initials are short, obviously, for International Space Station, which mice scientist Dr. Foster (DeBose, 2021’s West Side Story) joins in the opening moments.

Foster’s arrival brings the station’s total head count to six: three Americans, three Russians. Unlike their countries’ leaders, they get along pretty well. On her second day, however, that cordial relationship heads straight for the scissors when they witness massive explosions decimating Earth below. Almost immediately, both sides are ordered by their respective governments to take control of the orbiting station “by any means necessary.” Goodbye, glasnost!

If a suspense film in the stars seems an odd match for DeBose, that goes double for director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the acclaimed documentarian of Blackfish. Turns out, such worries are for naught. DeBose holds her own as part of an iron-strong ensemble that includes Chris Messina (2023’s The Boogeyman), John Gallahger Jr. (The Belko Experiment) and Hollywood’s most reliable Dane, Pilou Asbæk (Overlord). While Cowperthwaite lets each shine, she places particular attention where she should: creating tension and stress. Now, we’re not exactly dealing with Gravity here, but the movie is better than its release in the wasteland of January would suggest.

Of course I.S.S. employs effects, but it’s not driven by effects. No alien aboard, either, although the fear of “the other” pervades every corridor as each cosmonaut and astronaut remains uncertain who, if anyone, is an ally. Made all the more problematic by a setting that’s claustrophobic, despite the vastness of space, the movie is an interesting game of trust involving man, machine and mutually assured destruction. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

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For the movies, Gaston Leroux’s opera-dwelling phantom has been a literary gift that keeps on giving. Witness Brian De Palma’s cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, the ’80s straight-to-VHS slasher Phantom of the Mall and the somewhat obscure The Phantom of Hollywood, a 1974 CBS movie of the week.

Without me telling you, you can guess its basic story points: The fictional Worldwide Studios has plans to demolish its backlot, which doesn’t sit well with the masked, mace-wielding figure who lives among its sets and subterranean tunnels. Once he gets wind of it, he leaves notes and makes calls to studio execs (Rat Packer Peter Lawford among them) that amount to outright threats of death: “To destroy the backlot is to destroy yourself!”

They ignore him; fatal “accidents” happen; the Phantom kidnaps a lovely woman (Skye Aubrey, The Carey Treatment); and things don’t go as smoothly as he planned.

Given our overexposure to Leroux’s plot, it’s not at all taxing to guess the identity of the Phantom. This is no detraction, however; its very familiarity is comforting and welcome. The pleasures of this Phantom, as with every twist-’em-up version, is seeing how the filmmakers will modernize each element of the original Opera. So what if this one is a little insidery and self-congratulatory? It does not fail to entertain, and does so efficiently, in fewer than 75 minutes.

It’s an added treat for old-school film buffs, as viewers not only see clips from celebrated movies like The Wizard of Oz, but also get good glimpses of the MGM backlot, which ironically, was being destroyed at the time. That might be the only reason this nifty telefilm exists. Regardless, I’m glad it does. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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