Hollywood Boulevard

I spent the best years of the 1970s at the drive-in, and this film is a most enjoyable look at drive-in movies and the people who made them. If you don't count the Ingmar Bergmans, it may be the best picture ever released by New World Studios. I saw this on big screen, before the print had gotten very many scratches, and more recently on video where it held up as any other classic does.

New World editors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush were allowed by boss Roger Corman to direct a picture, within very strict budgetary limitations, and they produced this classic look at drive-in films and the people who make them, just a few years before the whole genre was kicked into limbo by the VCR. Through clever use of action footage from older New World films, Arkush and Dante brought their film in on budget and earned their first professional directorial credits.

Aspiring actress Candice Rialson (wow!) hits town, fresh from Indiana, and secures the services of scruffy talent agent Walter Paisley (okay!), who gets her work in lowbudget pix from Miracle Studios ("It it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!") -- where they make movies like BAD GIRL IN BOYS TOWN and ATOMIC WAR BRIDES, where director Paul Bartel reminds Godzilla, "Your motivation in this scene is to step on as many people as possible," and where Mary Woronov is the queen of the lot. Skinny snarling starlets blast away with machine guns. Extras from THE HOT BOX fall out of trees in the Philippines. Model-Ts crash in BIG BAD MAMA. Candy jumps to dodge rolling car debris. Wait a minute, somebody is killing the starlets here at Miracle! Rita George dies! Tara Strohmeier dies (NOOO!!!!). Who's doing it? Is Candy next on the list? Who will survive and what will be left of them?

We also visit a glam movie premiere at a Valley drive-in, watch a boy-girl scene scored to a somewhat revised version of "Everybody's Truckin'," with the band serenading the gropers live, and we see Paisley audition Robby the Robot ("Let me hear you say 'Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn'"). Candice Rialson is perfect (in her best role) as the naive Candy, Mary Woronov goes gleefully over the top as movie legend Mary McQueen, and Dick Miller should be in EVERY motion picture that comes out of Hollywood. The treatment of the wacky world of drive-in moviemaking is affectionate, there are a lot of cameos, and anyone who likes Dante's or Arkush's other work will find this well worth the 80-odd minutes it takes to watch. However, I have never been able to spot Belinda Balaski anywhere in this, and she's not named in the IMDB credits. Is this the only Dante film she's not in?

Corman remade the film in 1989 as HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD 2, with Ginger Lynn Allen in the lead, but it is just a remake, not a sequel, and even though the budget is considerably larger it is not as fresh or as funny (though it's not as bad as the remakes of BIG BAD MAMA or ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL).

This film belongs on a drive-in screen, not on your tv set, but since that is the only place you're ever going to see it now, crank up your living room Rolls Canardly and have some fun. I used to give this a rating of 9 on the IMDB scale, but having finally seen THE PASSION OF JEANNE D'ARC in the meantime, I have lowered BOULEVARD to a more realistic 8.

This is a fun movie, especially if you like filmmaking you can apreciate the silly movie making gags. I wasn't expecting much when i rented this movie, but i ended up being entertained from beginning to end. It is stuffed full of nudity and silly humor to make this a sugercoated fluffy bunnyhop throught the Glitter Dome.

In the autumn of 1975, Roger Corman set out to make the fastest, cheapest drive-in movie in the history of New World Pictures. This wild, uproarious cult classic is the result. Candice Rialson is Candy Hope, a starry-eyed Midwestern beauty hoping to make it big on that street of dreams, only to find that the glitter is just glass from broken liquor bottles. Instead, she ends up as a contract starlet with Miracle Pictures, a prolific B-movie factory grinding out sleaze epics for the passion pits of America (sound familiar?). Dick Miller is her agent. The always-fantastic Mary Woronov is Mary McQueen, the studio's Amazonian leading lady who has no patience with the new crop of upstarts ("You get your boobs in front of a camera and you're ready to jump into the cement!"). Everyone is shipped to the Philipines to shoot Machete Maidens of Moratau, with Paul Bartel as the director ("Your motivation is to massacre 3,000 Asiatic soldiers."). The film is pieced together with stock footage from other New World masterpieces, particularly Death Race 2000, with Candy donning David Carradine's famous leather mask. A kid at a drive-in cries out for more sex, while his parents deride the movie as "sick" and "worse than television." A drive down Hollyweird shows the famous Pussycat Theatre and various adult bookstores and massage parlors. A romantic interlude is serenaded by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, belting out a raucous, dirty country tune. Mary's name is superimposed onto the poster for Untamed Mistress. Robbie the Robot refuses to do nudity. B-movie in-jokes come thick and fast, including a girl stabbed to death on a bed frame a la Snuff. The whole thing looks great, especially for $60,000, and is consistently hilarious--especially Mary, complete with cigarette holder and the vocabulary of a sailor. A bona fide drive-in classic. And remember..."If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!"

The flick doesn't so much satirize or parody drive-in cheapos as it mocks them. And what movie series is easier to mock than the rubber monsters, cheezy sets, and sloppy directing from the 50's. In fact those earlier flicks pretty much made fun of themselves, and I can imagine what went on behind those set-ups. Here, those behind-the-scenes come to imagined life and add up to the flick's goofy core. But no teen of that era cared what critics thought, including myself. Then too, I really liked the drive-in crowd scene here, where anything goes including make-out teens on car fenders and wholesome 50's type families who actually watch the screen.

Anyhow, the action never stops after the first part. It's all explosions, gunfire, and production crew misfires, and shouldn't overlook the many topless actresses who are anything but misfires. Speaking of actresses, Rialson and Woronov's characters Candy and Mary are not mocked, being more abused by the quickie industry than lampooned. In fact the opening scenes of the stage-struck Candy getting taken-in by fast-talking operators like Walter (Miller) strike a more somber and realistic note than the movie's goofy remainder. In fact, despite the overlying lunacy, there's a somber subtext: namely, that Hollywood exploits the heck out of young women, making them readily dispensable like Jill and Mary. Perhaps that's not a surprising reality to most of us, but a worthwhile under-current to the tom-foolery, nevertheless.

On a lighter note, good to see real veterans of Roger Corman's drive-in empire getting lead roles here - I'll bet they had fun mocking their past. Anyway, brace yourself for an hour-plus of nonstop action and lots of laughs from a nutzoid look at good-times past at the beloved drive-in.

A beautiful blonde from Indiana (Candice Rialson) moves to Hollywood to become an actress and find fame. She hooks-up with a dubious team of moviemakers who run Miracle Pictures. Their slogan is: "If it's a good picture, it's a miracle." Statuesque Mary Woronov is on hand as an increasingly bitter actress who works for the company.

"Hollywood Boulevard" (1976) is an amusing send-up of Grade Z filmmaking with comedy, action, slasher, you-name-it. It's amusing for the first 40 minutes or so, but starts to lose its charm by the second half. Sure, it's entertaining to a point if you want to turn-off your brain for a fun time, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a shallow, throwaway flick.

Nevertheless, there's a surprising sequence that obviously influenced Coppola and his outstanding air raid on the village sequence in "Apocalypse Now."

Blonde Candice Rialson was a memorable B-film starlet in the 70s, along the lines of redhead Claudia Jennings; and, less so, thin Tara Strohmeier, who plays Jill here. Meanwhile brunette Rita George is notable as Bobbi. There's quite a bit of top nudity, so stay away if you find that objectionable.

Eleven years later, "Howling III: The Marsupials" would feature a satirical filmmaking crew, similar to the one in this one.

It runs 1 hour, 23 minutes, and was shot in Los Angeles, including Hollywood, except for sequences done at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, which is west of there, just north of Malibu in the high country (the Western town set and open landscape shots).

GRADE: C.