THE LAST CHASE (1981)--Directed by Martyn Burke.  Stars Lee Majors, Burgess Meredith, Chris Makepeace.  This Canadian sci-fi movie is ripe for a remake.  It has a great concept for a thrilling action movie—and its message is as timely as ever—but Burke, whether through numb scripting, a woeful budget, or just slack direction, turns in a real lemon.  Twenty years after cars have been outlawed due to an oil shortage, former racecar driver Frank Hart (Majors) assembles his old Porsche and drives it cross-country in search of a “free” California, which appears to be an antidote to the totalitarian government that rules the rest of the U.S.  Assigned to stop Hart and Ring (Makepeace), a teenage stowaway, is Captain Williams (Meredith), an American war hero who chases the Porsche in a revamped jet fighter.  What could have been an entertaining take on DEATH RACE 2000 and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT is instead an inert mess that doesn’t follow through on any of its ideas.  The entire government appears to be run by one guy in a computer control room, and though Majors’ trek is supposed to be some kind of propaganda, so far as we know, no one in the U.S. knows anything about it.  Plus, Majors is miscast as an iconoclast, while Meredith is just downright silly.  Music by Gil Melle.

THE LAST CHILD (1971)--Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey. Stars Michael Cole, Janet Margolin, Edward Asner, Van Heflin. Pretty good made-for-TV movie set in the future (1994) in which it is illegal for a couple to have more than one child. When Cole and Margolin become pregnant with their second baby, they flee to the more tolerant Canada, and are pursued by U.S. agent Asner. Not really a chase movie, Peter S. Fischer's teleplay is more sensitive and thoughtful than you might expect from the plot description. Heflin (in his last role) is very good as a sympathetic politician. Also with Barbara Babcock, Harry Guardino and Kent Smith.

THE LAST DETAIL (1973)--Directed by Hal Ashby. Stars Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid. Nicholson gave one of his greatest performances as career Navy man "Badass" Buddusky, who is assigned along with Young to transport an 18-year-old sailor (Quaid) to jail to begin serving an eight-year sentence for stealing forty dollars from a church fund. The sailors take pity on Quaid, and spend his last weekend as a free man introducing him to drinking, fighting and sex. Screenplay by Robert Towne has a lot of funny and touching scenes and was notorious for its profane, but realistic, dialogue. Based upon a novel by Darryl Ponicsan, whose CINDERELLA LIBERTY was turned into a movie starring James Caan the same year. Look for Michael Moriarty, Gilda Radner, Carol Kane and Nancy Allen in small roles. From the director of COMING HOME.

THE LAST DRAGON (1985)--Directed by Michael Schultz. Stars Taimak, Vanity, Julius J. Carry III, Chris Murney, Faith Prince. PG-rated musical/romance/martial-arts/blaxploitation film about a naive karate student (Taimak) who protects a beautiful club DJ (Vanity) from both a ruthless agent (Leo O'Brien) who forces her to play his clients' records and a gang leader named The Shogun (Carry). The action scenes are smooth enough, but the script is full of holes, the plotline involving the sleazy agent is dull, and the acting by the two leads is downright awful. Carry is pretty good though; he later became Bruce Campbell's sidekick on THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY, JR. Songs include "Rhythm of the Night" by DeBarge. From the director of CAR WASH.

LAST EMBRACE (1979)--Directed by Jonathan Demme. Stars Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin. Pretty good Hitchcockian thriller, although it more closely resembles the work of Brian DePalma than ol' Hitch himself. Scheider is an American agent who has just been released from a three-month stay in a sanitarium following the murder of his wife. He becomes suspicious of his employers when they refuse to give him a new mission, and, in fact, suspects that they are trying to kill him. He also becomes involved with a cute graduate student (Margolin) who has moved into his apartment during his absence, and grows more paranoid when he receives a note in Hebrew signed by the "Avenger of Blood". The plot grows more complicated, and many characters are not whom they seem in David Shaber's screenplay, which climaxes at Niagara Falls. Tak Fujimoto, who has shot most of Demme's features, keeps the camera moving almost constantly, and Demme adds many very clever directorial touches, including a number of Hitchcock allusions. Miklos Rosza scores in the great tradition of Bernard Herrmann. Scheider is very good (his next role--in ALL THAT JAZZ--would earn him an Oscar nomination), but Margolin steals the picture in many ways in a difficult and well-written role. It's a shame she never became a bigger star; she certainly, like Jessica Harper and others, had the skills, but perhaps not the glamour. She died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 50. Also with John Glover, Christopher Walken, Charles Napier, Max Wright and Mandy Patinkin.

THE LAST HORROR FILM (1984)--Directed by David Winters. Stars Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Judd Hamilton. Opens with a naked woman being zapped to death in a hot tub, and rapidly goes downhill from there. TAXI DRIVER was the obvious inspiration for this poorly directed, suspenseless whodunit set at Cannes during its annual film festival. Spinell plays Vinny Durand, a sweaty, whimpering cabbie who masturbates during horror movies. He's obsessed with horror movie actress Jana Bates (Munro), and stalks her while she's at Cannes to collect a Best Actress award (beating out Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Sally Field!) for her latest slasher. Meanwhile, an unknown assailant is bumping many of her peers off in various bloody ways Padded with stock footage shot during the real 1981 Cannes Film Festival, this is an obvious vanity project for Winters and Hamilton (the two also wrote and produced), although neither shows much talent. Spinell does what he can, although he's really just recycling his Frank Zito character from (the much better) MANIAC. Munro, who also appeared in MANIAC, looks good, but isn't given much of a character to play, and the killer's identity is pretty easy to figure out. Winters also plays a sleazy horror director, Spinell's real-life mom Mary plays Mrs. Durand, and June Chadwick and Robin Leach appear as entertainment reporters. Hamilton, who also shows little skill as an actor, was Munro's real-life husband. Winters--a former actor, choreographer and director of episodes of THE MONKEES--went on to helm a whole slew of terrible action flicks for Action International Pictures during the '80s.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)--Directed by Wes Craven. Stars David A. Hess, Fred Lincoln, Jeramie Ran, Marc Sheffler. Reprehensible thriller about two teenage girls who are raped, tortured, and murdered by four maniacs. The killers later break into a house; coincidentally, it's the house where the parents of one of the girls live and they want revenge. Low-budget feature is crudely made, and you'll feel awful, not entertained, when you see how cruelly the teenage girls are treated. Produced by Sean Cunningham, who made FRIDAY THE 13TH.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)--Directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow. Stars Vincent Price, Emma Danieli, Giacomo Rossi Stuart. Adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I AM LEGEND, which was remade in 1971 as THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston. Price has been criticized as being miscast in this movie, but I thought he was just fine in this Italian sci-fi/horror as the only survivor of a worldwide plague that has turned the Earth's populace into vampire zombies that come out only at night. Price's days are filled by driving around a deserted city searching grid by grid for the vampires' nesting place, while drowning out the sounds of his tormentors at night by playing classical music records loudly. Matheson (who co-wrote the screenplay using his Logan Swanson moniker) is reportedly not fond of the movie, but I thought it was alternately creepy and provoking. Salkow was brought in post-production to reshoot some inserts and added scenes for American audiences.

LAST MAN STANDING (1996)--Directed by Joseph Merhi. Stars Jeff Wincott, Jillian McWhirter, Jonathan Fuller, Jonathan Banks, Steve Eastin. If you check your brain at the door, you might get some kicks out of this slick actioner from PM Entertainment starring direct-to-video regular Wincott as a detective on the run. No cliches are left unturned as maverick cop Wincott and his older, wiser, soon-to-retire-and-write-a-book partner Banks (48 HOURS) investigate a simple disturbance call at a Long Beach hotel and end up in a massive gunfight with a gang of bank robbers led by long-haired Fuller. What appears to be several hundred thousand dollars lying around at the scene turns out to be about $3000 when the evidence turns up at the police station, and Wincott suspects detective Eastin of being dirty--suspicions that grow when Banks is killed a night later. Soon Wincott, with wife McWhirter in tow, is on the run from both the bank robbers and members of his own police force, all with their own motives for wanting Wincott dead.

I won't even start listing the massive holes in director Merhi's script, since that would take most of the day, but I will admit they didn't bother me a whole lot--they really aren't any worse than your average episode of HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK, for instance. PM's trademark car chases, wild stunts, explosions and lots of breaking glass keeps your senses too busy to spend much time wondering how the bad guys managed to blow up an entire barn without being noticed by anyone or why they failed to sabotage Wincott's car to make sure he couldn't get away. Oops, sorry, I promised I wouldn't mention plotholes. Wincott is a pretty decent actor as DTV action stars go, probably because his background is in acting, rather than athletics or martial arts like so many others (he was a Canadian television star in the '80s), and he's got a bit of acting range and a sense of humor to go along with his solid action credentials. McWhirter is an interesting change of pace as the female lead; we normally see models or impossibly gorgeous women cast in parts like this, but McWhirter, while attractive, also possesses a down-home demeanor and a verisimilitude unusual to the genre. It's also refreshing to see a woman with natural-looking breasts doing nude scenes these days. It's interesting to learn that human beings can smash through as many glass windows, partitions or sculptures as they want and never get cut and that corrupt cops can get fake FBI credentials for their hired assassins to flash. Oh, right, those naughty holes again...

The supporting cast includes several recognizable faces like Robert LaSardo, PLAYBOY Playmate Ava Fabian and Hugh Hefner lookalike Michael Greene, and frequent PM screenwriter Jacobsen Hart has a bit part as a nerdy hotel manager. Merhi and partner Richard Pepin are the rare studio bosses who also write and direct the films their company makes (Troma's Lloyd Kaufman is another). The typically bland synth action music is by Louis Febre, who's practically the PM house composer, scoring over a dozen of their films.

LAST MAN STANDING (1996)--Directed by Walter Hill. Stars Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Bruce Dern, David Patrick Kelly. YOJIMBO, gangster style. The Japanese classic is remade by writer/director Hill as a 1930s period piece set in an almost-deserted West Texas town pitting an Irish gang against a band of Italian mobsters. In the middle: monosyllabic drifter John Smith (Willis), who passes through tiny Jericho on his way to Mexico, and decides to make a few bucks and kill more than a few bad guys along the way. The film's major flaw is this: there seems to be only a handful of townspeople (actually we see lots more gangsters than townfolk), so why do both sides want control of this jerkwater town so badly? It's in the middle of the desert fifty miles from the Mexican border. Willis seems to be acting in Stallone/Seagal mode; everything is a mumble, and much of his dialogue (what little there is) is pretentious. Dern is good as the town's corrupt sheriff, and Hill still directs action scenes about as well as anybody, but there isn't much of anything interesting going on here. If you're not interested in the Japanese original, check out Sergio Leone's Italian remake A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS instead, the film that put Clint Eastwood on the map. Also with William Sanderson, Leslie Mann and Karina Lombard. Good score by Ry Cooder.

THE LAST OF SHEILA (1973)--Directed by Herbert Ross.  Stars James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, Joan Hackett, Raquel Welch, Ian McShane, Dyan Cannon, James Mason.  This cinematic jigsaw puzzle, penned by composer Stephen Sondheim and PSYCHO star Anthony Perkins, ought to delight mystery fans.  It's a very intricate and twist-filled tales of gamesmanship and murder, played wittily by an accomplished cast.

One year after his wife Sheila was killed in a hit-and-run accident, wealthy film producer Clinton (Coburn) invites six of his friends to spend a week on his yacht in the South of France.  He suspects one of them of being the killer, and arranges a game designed to reveal his or her identity.  Each of the six is given a "secret"--an informer, a shoplifter, a homosexual, etc.  The object is for each player to discover everyone else's secret, one per night, in a series of elaborate, dress-up hide-and-seek scenarios, including one in a spooky abandoned abbey.  It doesn't take long for some of the players to deduce Clinton's ultimate goal, and when he is murdered by one of them, the pieces slowly begin to snap together.

The six players are down-and-out screenwriter Tom (Benjamin) and his wife Lee (Hackett); Philip (Mason), a lowly director of TV commercials; wisecracking talent agent Christine (Cannon); and starlet Alice (Welch) and her shady manager-husband Anthony (McShane).  All have something to hide, secrets that become exposed in the manner of a classic Agatha Christie drawing-room mystery, as the Hollywood sophisticates pour themselves drinks and react to news that would shock a normal person with an urbane élan.  Of course, one key to a successful mystery is that the pieces must logically fit together with a bare minimum of holes (if any), and SHEILA is successful in that regard.  My main quibble is that the killer's identity is revealed much too soon--before Coburn is even killed, in fact--through a giveaway clue that perhaps Sondheim and Perkins should have held in their back pocket.

Ross directs his stars with a light touch, with only Welch's usual stiffness seeming out of place among heavyweights like Coburn and Mason.  Of course, she makes up for it by appearing in a bikini (as does Cannon, for that matter).  Billy Goldenberg composed the score, and future director Joel Schumacher (PHONE BOOTH) designed the costumes.  Also with Yvonne Romain of Hammer's CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.  Ross, who died in 2001, did FUNNY LADY next.

THE LAST OF THE FINEST (1990)--Directed by John Mackenzie. Stars Brian Dennehy, Joe Pantoliano, Jeff Fahey, Bill Paxton. In the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal came this cops-and-robbers thriller that attempted to draw the audience's attention to the corruption and double-dealing that infects our national government. Although Mackenzie's film is pretty much the same bang-bang stuff we've all seen before, the added effort and political twist rates it a bit better than routine. Dennehy and his elite unit of LAPD are bounced from the force following a drug bust gone badly. After one of our heroes is killed, they decide to go after the kingpin himself (who's hooked up with some very important government bigwigs), but find themselves as targets after ripping him off for $22 million. Centering the film is a typically fine performance by Dennehy, who manages to be tough and sensitive at the same time. None of the actors playing Dennehy's partners were major names at the time (although they had many years of Hollywood experience under their belts), so it's neat to see Pantoliano, Paxton and Fahey (despite his miscasting as an Hispanic!) when they were younger and still sharpening their skills. Also with Henry Darrow, Michael C. Gwynne, Deborra-Lee Furness, Lisa Jane Persky, Pamela Gidley, Guy Boyd and Xander Berkeley. Music by Jack Nitzsche and Michael Hoenig. Co-scripter George Armitage was a writer/director of AIP blaxploitation flicks during the '70s, and directed John Cusack's hit GROSSE POINTE BLANK in '97.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971)--Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Stars Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Cloris Leachman, Ben Johnson, Eileen Brennan, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, Clu Gulager. Excellent drama about a group of teenagers in a small Texas town in the early 1950s. Has all the elements of a cheesy soap opera, but the acting, writing, sets and direction all come together to make one of the most powerful films of the seventies. Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry scripted from McMurtry's novel. Leachman and Johnson won Academy Awards. Was Shepherd's film debut. She and Bogdanovich quickly became an item off the set.

LAST RESORT (1986)--Directed by Zane Busby.  Stars Charles Grodin, Robin Pearson Rose, Gerrit Graham, John Ashton.  This might have been Roger Corman’s attempt at ripping off NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION, though it plays more like CLUB PARADISE, and I don’t think even Roger would want to rip off CLUB PARADISE.  Julie Corman produced this desperate comedy about a middle-class Chicago family that takes a vacation on a Caribbean island resort that isn’t quite as swanky as it’s described in the brochure.  Considering its 75-minute running time and the number of scenes in the trailer that aren’t in the movie, Corman may have bumped aside first-time director Busby to do some late-in-the-game fine-tuning. 

There’s no story; instead, writers Jeff Buhai and Steve Zacharias (REVENGE OF THE NERDS) assemble a bunch of drug, sex and slapstick gags and rely on the surprisingly efficient cast to make them work.  Grodin as the patriarch manages to pull off a few laughs, and I really liked the bubbly Rose as his wife.  LAST RESORT may be more notable for featuring familiar faces in early roles, such as Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Megan Mullally (WILL & GRACE), Brenda Bakke and Mario Van Peebles as a swishy counselor.  Busby, who went on to direct many sitcoms, also appears as the camp babysitter.  LAST RESORT looks incredibly cheap, and I’m surprised Grodin wasn’t getting a better offer than this lumpy Concorde comedy.

THE LAST SHARK--See GREAT WHITE.

THE LAST SHOT (2004)--Directed by Jeff Nathanson.  Stars Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Toni Collette, Calista Flockhart, Tony Shalhoub, Ray Liotta.  Disney dumped this comedy into just a handful of theaters in the fall of 2004.  I'm not sure why it handled this $40 million comedy's theatrical chances so poorly, although it isn't likely to have been a big hit anyway. Not that it isn't entertaining--it is, mostly--but films about filmmaking have historically not been big moneymakers, and without any major stars, THE LAST SHOT's box-office potential likely wasn't there.

Written and directed by Jeff Nathanson, who penned Steven Spielberg's hit CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, THE LAST SHOT is a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tale of an FBI agent (Alec Baldwin) who concocts a sting operation to capture corrupt Teamsters redhanded by luring them into a film production.  Since the FBI doesn't make movies, Baldwin convinces a has-been director (Matthew Broderick) that he's a producer and wants to make Broderick's screenplay--ARIZONA, about a cancer-stricken woman's trek through the deserts--on location...in Rhode Island...with a Providence landfill subbing for the Arizona desert.  Broderick is as fooled by Baldwin's blather as the mobster (Tony Shalhoub) being lured in, which leads to some real friction when Baldwin actually befriends the naïve director and regrets pulling the wool over his eyes.

Some of Nathanson's material is funny stuff, particularly the dialogue and Joan Cusack's hilariously profane cameo as a ballbusting producer ("You wanna eat lunch off of my ass? I thought you were kosher.").  Baldwin is a very good comic actor who doesn't get a chance to demonstrate it as much as he should.  Toni Collette (THE SIXTH SENSE) is terrific as a high-maintenance leading lady, while Buck Henry (Uncle Roy!), Tim Blake Nelson, James Rebhorn and Glenn Morshower provide strong support.  As does an unbilled Eric Roberts, bravely being a good sport and allowing himself to be mocked doing what Eric Roberts does best.

THE LAST SIEGE (2002)--Directed by Worth Keeter.  Stars Jeff Fahey, Ernie Hudson, Brent Huff, Beth Toussaint.  DIE HARD on a train.  Isn't that what UNDER SIEGE II was?  Ah, that explains the title!  A passenger train on which a black senator (Hudson) and his entourage are traveling is hijacked by a paramilitary group commanded by David Anderson (Huff) and held hostage with a nuclear bomb.  Unluckily for Anderson, who just happens to be aboard but his old foe Eddie Lyman (Fahey), an Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms agent who just happens to be dating Hudson's assistant (Toussaint).  THE LAST SIEGE is as much a disaster movie as action film, since it establishes a bunch of extraneous characters who exist only in Steve Latshaw's screenplay to get bumped off by the baddies.  Latshaw has certainly penned his share of derivative direct-to-video action movies, but this one is worse than most, hampered by Keeter's frustrated direction and a woefully low budget.  The climactic train crash is expressed by shaking the camera and placing the actors in a forced perspective exterior shot with an obvious model, while the cardboard sets and lack of background extras fail to furnish some needed production value.  The actors do what they can, but none are particularly interesting, not even Fahey, who has been known to mug it up.  Also with Larry Manetti (MAGNUM, P.I.), Rosalind Allen (SEAQUEST DSV), Patrick Kilpatrick, James Stephens (THE PAPER CHASE), Michael Monks (who won an Emmy for THE PRACTICE), Frank McRae (USED CARS) and Ernie Hudson, Jr.  Music by David and Eric Wurst.  Filmed as HIJACK.  Fahey and Hudson also worked together in OPERATION DELTA FORCE.

THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1985)--Directed by Nick Castle. Stars Robert Preston, Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Barbara Bosson. Kids should enjoy this fun sci-fi adventure about a teenage video-game wiz (Guest) who is recruited by alien Preston to fight an invading force of evil aliens. So his family and friends on Earth won't miss Guest, a robot duplicate replaces him. Stewart is cute and perky as Guest's confused girlfriend. One of the earliest examples of computer-generated special effects. Castle is a protg of Steven Spielberg.

THE LAST SUPPER (1996)--Directed by Stacy Title. Stars Courtney B. Vance, Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish. Preachy film about five roommates, all graduate students and all liberals, who decide the world would be better off if those with right-wing beliefs were killed off. So they invite a succession of those with opposing viewpoints over for dinner (a homophobic priest, a book-burner, a male with chauvinistic views on rape, etc.) and poison them. Film goes on a little too long, and some of the students become annoying, but the concept is an interesting one, and the name actors playing the victims in cameos (including Charles Durning, Jason Alexander and Mark Harmon) are entertaining. Bill Paxton (as a racist truck driver) and Ron Perlman (as a Rush Limbaugh-type broadcaster) stand out.

LATITUDE ZERO (1969)--Directed by Ishiro Honda.  Stars Joseph Cotten, Cesar Romero, Richard Jaeckel, Linda Haynes, Patricia Medina, Akira Takarada, Masumi Okada.  Toho made this entertaining Jules-Verne-inspired undersea adventure.  The Nemo-esque Craig McKenzie (Cotten) rescues a trio of scientists whose bathysphere is endangered by a volcano eruption.  McKenzie brings the three aboard his submarine and takes them to Latitude Zero, an elaborate underwater city protected by a waterproof and shockproof dome.  Most of the population seems to be famous scientists and artists who were believed to be missing or dead, as well as sexy women in miniskirts.  Even after all this (admittedly overwhelming) evidence, the three men, including American Perry Lawton (Jaeckel), are hesitant to believe McKenzie’s claims of being 200 years old.  They do offer to chip in on a rescue mission when McKenzie’s equally elderly but more deadly archenemy Malic (Romero) kidnaps another prominent scientist en route to Latitude Zero.  Malic also operates from a secret base, which houses his alluring sidekick Lucretia (Medina) and some homemade monsters, including walking bat-men, giant rats and a flying lion with wings.  GODZILLA vets Eiji Tsuburaya and Akira Ifukube contribute exciting special effects and music, respectively.  I was surprised to hear some minor swearing in the G-rated American dubbing, but the movie is still kid-friendly.  It didn’t open in New York until Christmas 1970, where it played on a double bill with the M-rated Italian western DAY OF ANGER.

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (1974)--Directed by Stuart Rosenberg.  Stars Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern.  During the early 1970's, Walter Matthau starred in three excellent crime dramas, more or less consecutively.  Best known, of course, as a comedic character actor, Matthau's gruff demeanor and hangdog stage manner were perfectly suited to the tough, gritty milieu of urban cops and criminals, particularly those with dry senses of humor.  THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE and CHARLEY VARRICK are the best of the three, but THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN is no slouch either, an absorbing mystery with an outstanding supporting cast for Matthau to play off of.

A black-gloved individual using a "grease gun" slaughters eight people, including the driver, on a San Francisco city bus.  Leading the investigation is Lieutenant Jake Martin (Matthau), who is nonplussed to discover that one of the victims is his partner, Dave Evans, who was supposed to have been on vacation.  A visit to Dave's girlfriend Kay (Cathy Lee Crosby, soon to play Wonder Woman in a failed TV pilot) reveals that the two were having problems in the bedroom and that Evans was obsessed with solving one of Jake's cold cases, the sex murder of a prostitute.  Jake, who's having his own problems at home (he and his wife sleep in separate rooms, and his 15-year-old son goes to porn theaters), is teamed up with a headstrong new partner, Leo Larsen, played charismatically by Bruce Dern as a motormouthed lothario.  Dern was playing a lot of psychos, bikers, dopers and killers up to that point, and THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN probably did a lot to bring him into the mainstream; over the next few years, Dern would star in THE GREAT GATSBY, Hitchcock's FAMILY PLOT and COMING HOME, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor (he lost to THE DEER HUNTER's Christopher Walken, another screen psycho of repute).

An interesting point to make about older police procedurals is the lack of attention paid to forensics.  Now that we have followed the O.J. Simpson trial intensely, and we're surrounded by cop shows on all the major TV networks (doesn't CBS stand for C.S.I. Broadcasting System?), it's hard not to wince when you see the cops in THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN handling evidence without gloves and smoking at a crime scene.  Also, the killer doesn't wear gloves when he drops his bus token into the slot, leaving you to wonder why the lab guys don't fingerprint all the tokens and find the killer that way.

Also in the cast are Lou Gossett Jr. (AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN), Val Avery (BLACK CAESAR), Anthony Zerbe (HARRY O), Joanna Cassidy (BLADE RUNNER), Albert Paulsen (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE), Matt Clark (WHITE LIGHTNING), Gregory Sierra (BARNEY MILLER), Clifton James (Sgt. Pepper in the 007 films), Paul Koslo (MR. MAJESTYK) and Leigh French (THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR).  Tom Rickman, later to write COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER and DEAD POETS SOCIETY, adapted a Swedish police procedural, and it was directed by Stuart Rosenberg of COOL HAND LUKE fame.  The dialogue is very good, and Rickman does a decent job of constructing a complicated plot without over-explaining it to the audience.

Strangely, after filming this, VARRICK (in which he played a bank robber) and PELHAM (a transit cop negotiating with subway hijackers led by Robert Shaw) in close succession, Matthau never again starred in a straight crime movie.  He was good at it, but perhaps he felt audiences liked him better in comedies, where his elastic face could garner laughs with just a look.  It's his "averageness" in the looks department that made him such an intriguing dramatic lead.  You knew he had to be a good cop, because he certainly wasn't able to coast on his looks.  And, of course, his Everyman quality made him a hero you could identify with.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)--Directed by Stephen Norrington.  Stars Sean Connery.  "I'm waiting to be impressed," states a skeptical Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) when confronted with the concept of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.  And, frankly, so was I after all the negative buzz that has been haunting the project, from a notorious on-set physical confrontation between Connery and director Stephen Norrington (BLADE) to reports of Norrington being fired during post-production, leaving 20th Century Fox's in-house staff to edit the picture.  A candid behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of LEAGUE may be more interesting than the film itself.

LEGAL EAGLES (1986)--Directed by Ivan Reitman. Stars Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Daryl Hannah, Brian Dennehy, Terence Stamp. A pair of attorneys (Redford, Winger) team up professionally and romantically to investigate a case of arson and art fraud involving a beautiful but flaky performance artist (Hannah). Reitman handles the action set pieces as well as the humor, and Redford is charming in a rare comedic role.

LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE & BLONDE (2003)--Directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld.  Stars Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Luke Wilson, Bob Newhart.  If a comedy falls in a theater and nobody laughs, is it still a comedy?  LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE & BLONDE, the sequel to the surprise 2001 hit that starred Reese Witherspoon (ELECTION) as a dumb blonde who gets into Harvard Law School, sure looks like a comedy.  It contains bright lighting, broad performances, frothy music and dialogue that doesn't sound like anything that would ever come out of somebody's mouth, just like in a television sitcom.  However, no one laughed at the screening I attended.  Oh, sure, 73-year-old Bob Newhart talking like Snoop Dogg inspired a titter or two, and Witherspoon's precious hairless Chihuahua Bruiser created some goodwill for dog lovers.  But the frustration and boredom one is left with upon leaving the theater can classify this film only as a tragedy of grand proportions.

I didn't see LEGALLY BLONDE, so I can only imagine the wild script machinations the filmmakers must have dreamed up in order to explain how a young woman as stupid and vapid as Elle Woods (Witherspoon) could possibly have graduated from Harvard and become a high-priced Boston lawyer.  As the sequel opens, Elle is preparing for her impending wedding to lunky Emmett (Luke Wilson, who, after playing the same ball-less eunuch in OLD SCHOOL, CHARLIE'S ANGELS and the two BLONDEs, has officially become this decade's Bill Pullman).  Wanting desperately to invite Bruiser's mother to the wedding, Elle hires a private eye, who discovers the bitch is the property of a cosmetics company that uses animals for experiments.  Since her firm won't touch the case, Elle does what any of us would do--gets a job with a U.S. Congresswoman (nicely limned by Sally Field) and writes a bill, aided by the world's most politically savvy doorman (Newhart), that will ban animal testing.

Reese Witherspoon is a very fine actress, but there's very little she can do to elevate such lifeless material to resemble something resembling wit.  I believe there is gold to be mined from this storyline, as ludicrous as it is, but director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld (KISSING JESSICA STEIN) and screenwriter Kate Kondell (from a story co-written by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, who penned this summer's very good DOWN WITH LOVE) aren't interested in panning for it.  Their approach lacks any edge or subtext, and instead of creating what could have been a clever satire of the American political machine, LEGALLY BLONDE 2's riskiest material involves a running gag about a homosexual rottweiler.

It's a shame to see a performer like Witherspoon spinning her wheels in this muck, considering how aptly she was used in the excellent satire ELECTION.  In that film, she portrayed another enthusiastic go-getter, a high school senior who was good-natured on the surface, but manipulative underneath.  If only she could have injected that type of bite into this movie, but with Elle Woods, what you see on the surface is all there is.  The same can be said for LEGALLY BLONDE 2, which offers less substance and joy than the cotton candy sold at the theater concession area.  Also with Regina King, Jennifer Coolidge, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bruce McGill, Dana Ivey, Jessica Cauffiel, James Read and Tane McClure.  Music by Rolfe Kent.  Toni Basil provided choreography.  John Lennon's "Power to the People" is heard on the soundtrack, as are a cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and the SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK "It's Only A Bill" song.

THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN (1985)--Directed by Matthew Robbins. Stars Helen Slater, Keith Gordon, Christian Slater, Richard Bradford, Peter Coyote. Texas teen Billie Jean (Helen Slater) becomes a folk hero when she accidentally shoots a man (Bradford) whose bullying son trashed her younger brother's motorcycle. She decides to flee from the law with sympathetic cop Coyote in pursuit. Lightweight but enjoyable with an early role by Christian Slater (TRUE ROMANCE).

THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972)--Directed by Charles B. Pierce.  At the height of the Bigfoot phenomenon, Southern filmmaker Pierce directed this faux-documentary that does a very nice job capturing the feel of the real thing.  Some of the jokey dialogue tips off that it’s all fake, but this story of the little swamp town of Foulk, Arkansas being stalked by a mysterious hairy monster certainly looks realistic enough to fool you.  If you didn’t know better, that is.  After all, there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.  Right?  Pierce’s pacing is too slow for the film to be completely successful, but one sequence of the creature terrorizing two women and their kids raises a chill.  Many of the actors appear to be non-professionals, adding to the film’s verisimilitude.  RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK is an unrelated sequel, but Pierce did make BOGGY CREEK II a decade later.

THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY (1972)--Directed by Martin Goldman.  Stars Fred Williamson, D'Urville Martin, Don Pedro Colley, John P. Ryan.  The television sportscasts I delivered over WSIU-TV when I was in college will be on DVD before THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY is. Paramount, which released it to theaters in 1972 (and made a lot of money with it), apparently owns the rights, but I doubt it has the balls to splash a movie called THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY on Best Buy's shelves.

CHARLEY is hardly an important movie, even in the blaxploitation genre, but it is sincere and occasionally interesting. The script by producer Larry G. Spangler and director Martin Goldman adheres strictly to the standard three-act structure. Charley, played by former pro football player Fred Williamson in his first major leading man assignment, is a slave who is freed by his kindly owner as a dying favor to Charley's mother, but is forced to bolt after killing the plantation's cruel new owner (the late John P. Ryan, who specialized in portraying unhinged sadists).

Along with Toby (D'Urville Martin), an avuncular comic-relief sidekick, and loyal, bald Josh (Don Pedro Colley), Charley escapes to a small town with a dim view towards blacks. There, the trio faces a showdown against the posse on their tail, which is led by a vicious slave tracker named Fowler (Keith Prentice). After settling that account, Charley and his party (which has added two more) agree to protect white farmer Lyons (Doug Rowe) and his half-breed wife Sarah (Tricia O'Neil) against the murderous Preacher (Joe Santos, who battled Richard Roundtree in SHAFT'S BIG SCORE the same year) and his rampaging followers.

It's hard to criticize NIGGER CHARLEY on a technical level, because the (obvious bootleg) print included on the Blax DVD is horrid. Ghosting, color dropouts, smears, audio static, and tracking errors abound on the full-frame image, which was clearly swiped from a television station's 3/4-inch tape (it has been censored for language and possibly violence and nudity, and appears to be missing up to seven minutes). Goldman, who didn't direct many other features, isn't exactly Sam Peckinpah (or even William Witney, for that matter), but the plentiful action scenes pack some punch and are given a degree of dramatic weight by dint of the attractive leads. This is one of Williamson's finest performances. While he would eventually come to walk through his later badass roles, relying on his (admittedly strong) personality to carry him, NIGGER CHARLEY finds Fred playing with more range and doing it well enough to make you forget he's ten years too old for the part.

THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY, lurid title or not, was a very profitable film and not a lavishly budgeted one either. A year later, Paramount brought back Williamson and Martin to star in THE SOUL OF NIGGER CHARLEY, this time directed by Spangler and not as successful (though doubtlessly a moneymaker). While it seems virtually every blaxploitation picture of the '70s is now out on a legit DVD, even some really crummy ones, I wouldn't hold my breath for this one, though it apparently used to play on television as THE LEGEND OF BLACK CHARLEY. It's a compromise I'd be willing to live with if it would get the movie more exposure.

LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1980)--Directed by Henning Schellerup. Stars Jeff Goldblum, Meg Foster. Goldblum is perfectly cast as Ichabod Crane in this cheap made-for-TV telling of Washington Irving's spooky fable about a headless horseman. Director Tim Burton filmed a theatrical remake starring Johnny Depp. Also with Paul Sand, Dick Butkus and Laura Campbell.

THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER (1981)--Directed by William A. Fraker. Stars Klinton Spilsbury, Michael Horse, Jason Robards, Christopher Lloyd, Richard Farnsworth. One of the most notorious flops of the 1980s. An incredibly dull retelling of the legendary story of Texas Ranger John Reid (Spilsbury), who was ambushed by bandits and left for dead. Reid is nursed back to health by Indian friend Tonto (Horse), and, donning a mask, captures his ambushers and rescues President Ulysses S. Grant (Robards) in the process. A great story is ruined by terrible performances by Spilsbury (whose voice was dubbed by actor James Keach) and Horse and stodgy direction by cinematographer Fraker. Filmmakers received even more scorn from audiences when they legally banned TV Lone Ranger Clayton Moore from wearing his mask in public.

THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1973)--Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Stars Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege, Shih Szu, John Forbes-Robertson. Hammer Films teamed up with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers to make the world's first kung-fu vampire movie. At the turn of the century, Professor Van Helsing (no actor has played this character as many times or as well as Peter Cushing) teams up with his son, a Scandinavian beauty (former Penthouse Pet Ege), a cute Chinese girl (Szu) and seven badass kung-fu fighters to save a Chinese village from being assaulted by a band of skull-faced Samurai vampires. These ugly warriors are under the command of none other than Count Dracula (Forbes-Robertson stepped in when Christopher Lee made it clear he had no inclination to reprise his most famous role)! The Dracula prologue and climax were filmed only after the Shaws insisted the Count be added (to help the foreign box office). Shot on location in Hong Kong, Baker's film is a lot of fun (if not particularly coherent), and contains many well-choreographed martial-arts battles. Wasn't released in the U.S. until 1979, severely edited and retitled THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. We had to wait until 1992's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER for another karate vampire movie.

LEGION (1998)--Directed by Jon Hess. Stars Parker Stevenson, Terry Farrell, Corey Feldman, Rick Springfield, Troy Donahue. Painfully generic made-for-cable ALIENS ripoff suffers from an unimaginative script, cheap sets, a trite premise and some really bad actors acting badly. A group of prisoners in the year 2036 is offered pardons if they will follow tough soldier Farrell on a mission to a deserted fuel plant on a desolate planet. In actuality, they are being set up by sinister colonel Donahue to be used as guinea pigs for a sinister military experiment. There are no surprises here at all (except at how old and uncomfortable Stevenson and Springfield look); performances and direction are strictly paint-by-numbers. The monster is pretty cheesy too. After much thought, Donahue delivers the film's worst performance, but Aussie popster Springfield is the most embarrassing.

LEGIONNAIRE (1998)--Directed by Peter MacDonald. Stars Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Berkoff, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Nicholas Farrell, Daniel Caltagirone, Ana Sofrenovic. After years of declining box-office returns, this Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle was, despite its $32 million budget, dumped directly to video and cable without the benefit of a theatrical release. Ironically, its one of Van Damme's better features, boasting an old-fashioned epic feel, sweeping direction, awe-inspiring Moroccan locations and--yes, it's true--decent acting from J-C himself. In 1925, French boxer Alain (Van Damme) is ordered by a Marseilles mobster to take a dive. He doesn't, and finds himself on the run from the gangster's assassins. He escapes by signing up with the French Foreign Legion, and soon finds his way to the desert trying to stay alive against Arab rebels and, much to his surprise, the long arm of the mobster in pursuit. Directed by MacDonald (RAMBO III) as a type of old-fashioned romantic adventure like GUNGA DIN that they don't make anymore, LEGIONNAIRE takes the time to develop its characters, so that when they are forced into battle, we care about what happens to them. It also gives Van Damme a chance to stretch a little bit, using his natural charisma in male-bonding situations. The battle scenes are