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darryllmonroe
Reviews
The Cool and the Crazy (1958)
Quite simply the best JD movie ever made, or at least I have seen
This movie centers on Bennie, a new bad kid in town who is a front for a drug syndicate of sorts, sent to get all the local kids hooked on "M" as a prelude to bringing in "The Needle" .Marijuana, it seems, is highly addictive gateway narcotic and has horrible debilitating withdrawal's , referred to as "I got the smoke" {clutching your throat in withdrawal agony }. and it makes you wanna "crawl into the woodwork" dance with objects other then people and indulge in drug crazed violence . Golly, I never smoked anything even half as good as what Bennie's got. Of course the very first time the kids get turned on by Bennie they start acting like the stuff is heavily laced with PCP.... Gosh, maybe that's it...Indeed. The only place these kids are going is to drug hell, at least so it seems. And the "take a good look at it" scarred straight approach of the grimed face cop at the end is priceless. Move over Joe Friday. I love this movie, always have since I saw it on TV at 3 in the morning like 35 years ago. Yes , it is preposterous , yes, it is even ridiculous but Scott Marlowe's over the top performance as Bennie is incredible , even inspiring. Perhaps the funniest movie I have ever seen, sure , most of it unintended , but still. Every dire warning cliché in the book can be found here.."Do you know what this is Amy, this is M , marijuana !" Jackie says after showing Amy the "stick". She does the right thing any red blooded all American girl would do, grabs the thing and tears it up. {Just like my mom did} Thinking about it makes me want to relapse . If you have any sense of humor at all, find this movie, get high if you get high , and even if you don't {I don't anymore} watch it and laugh your ass off...." You ruined it man, I was gonna drive right between those two motorcycle cops " .....see the movie and you will understand...Oh, I forgot to mention, The Jump Blues band at the big dance , who ever they are, are wonderful, performing a song called "The Cool and The Crazy " of course...
The Born Losers (1967)
You have got to be kidding
I saw this movie on TCM cult movie Friday nights just last Weekend. I am beyond mystified why anyone would regard this pompous horse dung of a movie and character as quality film making...Yet, there it is. Tom Laughlin is easily the most arrogant , high and mighty excuse for an actor who has ever walked the earth. The acting in this movie , and every other Billy Jack movie is sooooo amateur, no, that is too kind a word....It's not even acting. You would get substantially better acting in your average Junior High School play.
All this said, I nearly broke a rib laughing while viewing "Born Losers" so as high camp uber trash it performs brilliantly. I wanted to find a copy of the Billy Jack collection just so I could make some tape loops but the average price of 29$ I saw on Amazon and Ebay was about 28 $ too much....Anybody that likes these movies on a serious level is insane, and , apparently, a lot of people like these movies, thus we live in an insane world......