Manero / Balboa

It's by no means unusual for a successful film to spawn imitations, along with the inevitable official sequels, prequels, remakes, and re-imaginings...happens all the time.  So it was that the phenomenon that was Rocky inspired music impresario Robert Stigwood to quickly develop and produce his own urban, working class fable, optioning Nik Cohn's New York article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" and enlisting Serpico scribe Norman Wexler to write the screenplay version of what would eventually be called Saturday Night Fever.  It's fitting that Rocky director John G. Avildsen was the original helmer of Saturday Night Fever before having "creative differences" with Stigwood and star John Travolta, leading to his being replaced by John Badham during pre-production.  I can only assume that the Rocky poster on Tony Manero's wall is a remnant of the production design overseen by Avildsen (additionally, there's a Serpico poster in Manero's bedroom; incidentally, Serpico is another film that Avildsen was attached to at one point).  Prior to their near-collaboration on Serpico, Wexler and Avildsen teamed on Joe, another blue collar cinematic icon of the '70s, which J. Hoberman wrote about here on its 30th anniversary.

Even with that not so unusual production history in mind, it is interesting to see the mythos and cultural impact of a film, right down to the Rocky poster prominently displayed on Tony Manero's wall, so quickly and openly acknowledged and absorbed, in part, by another film; to put this in perspective Saturday Night Fever was being produced while Rocky was still in theatrical release.  It's this relationship between Rocky and Saturday Night Fever, Rocky Balboa and Tony Manero, that I play with a bit in this short video essay:



Continuing this Balboa - Manero strand, Rocky writer and star and Sylvester Stallone would direct Saturday Night Fever's inferior sequel Staying Alive (complete with theme song by Stallone frere Frank). 

 

Completing this circle, over thirty years later, Saturday Night Fever would inspire the fascinating Chilean film Tony Manero, darker and more disturbing than anything on screen in either Rocky or Saturday Night Fever.

1983 / 2006

Her,Suzanne76 pointed this connection out to me at a recent screening of The Keep so she gets full credit for this, whatever that's worth.  Obviously the stills aren't quiet as effective as seeing the scenes play out in motion, but there is certainly something familiar about the Miami Vice scene that feels like it may be some kind of an acknowledgement of the earlier film.  Whether this is an intentional nod to The Keep on Mann's part or not, it's worth pondering.  It should, of course, also be noted that Mann has not kept his negative feelings about The Keep secret and has "disowned" it to a degree.  To date, The Keep remains unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray, no doubt due to Mann's antipathy towards the finished film, though it can be found streaming, in widescreen, on Netflix Instant.

Scott Glenn's Glaeken Trismegestus travels by fishing boat from Greece to Romania in Michael Mann's The Keep (1983).

Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) pilots a speedboat with Isabella (Gong Li) from Miami to her Cuban home in Mann's Miami Vice (2006).

Addendum: it seems I had a different scene in mind than Her,Suzanne76 when she whispered to me during the "boat scene" in The Keep, "Like Miami Vice."  We have a pretty good shorthand going, but sometimes even our signals can get crossed.

More nautical stuff from Mann's Miami Vice, most of it at night, the sky taking on some of the same purple and orange hues as in the scene in The Keep.

Filmways Pictures

Formed when Filmways, Inc. purchased Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures (AIP) in 1979, Filmways Pictures released several films of note before it went into bankruptcy and was absorbed by Orion Pictures in 1981.



This rare first Filmways logo comes from the beginning of the Dressed to Kill letterboxed laserdisc issued in '93 by Image.  The DVD and Blu-ray replace this logo with MGM and Orion logos.  Dressed to Kill was probably the company's most successful film in terms of box office and critical reception, in addition to the controversy and word-of-mouth that it generated.  De Palma's expensive follow-up, Blow Out, while recognized now as one of his finest achievements, was a big money loser in the Summer of '81 and a crushing blow to the company's survival.  Based on the unscientific IMDb numbers, Death Wish II, released in early '82, was likely the company's only other box office winner.  Other worthwhile titles in the Filmways stable included Arthur Penn's Four Friends, the cult classic post-punk concert film Urgh! A Music War, The First Deadly Sin (Sinatra's last starring role), and the final film to go out with the Filmways imprimatur, Summer Lovers.  Most of these films appear on DVD with newer Orion logos rather than the Filmways logos that were originally attached.

I have not seen the above logo on a DVD or Blu-ray, but if someone has I would be interested to hear about it.

 

Judging by this industry ad, things could have been much different for film history, if Filmways had stayed afloat a little longer.

'70s and Beyond Studio Logo Mashup #2

Here's a second video tribute to some of those opening logos of yesteryear.  This one is set to the "United Artists Logo Theme" by Joe Harnell that was composed for use with the studio's 1981 logo, music I heard every time I popped in that Rocky III tape into the VCR, which was a lot.  I don't know too much of Harnell's music, but he composed 2 of the most memorable themes of my childhood: the aforementioned UA theme and that of the Incredible Hulk television series.  The Hulk theme is a piano piece also known as "The Lonely Man."

There are several other logos I would have liked to include in one of these videos, but was unable to locate good quality versions (or, I ran out of running time)...

"Damn it! I forgot..."

'70s Movie Studio Logo Mashup

As part of my ongoing love affair / obsession with studio / distributor logos of yesteryear, particularly those of the late '60s - early '80s, I've put together a short video mashup of some of the greatest hits of logos from that period.  All the source clips come from movies in my personal DVD collection.  As I've written here before, some of these logos have become quite rare in the DVD and Blu-ray age, replaced by newer studio logos; specifically, the '70s-era Saul Bass-designed WB "worm logo" and Transamerica-era UA logos are very scarce these days.  However, the odd WB and MGM discs have retained these logos, which I've happily used for this video.

I would have included World Northal on this video clip except I recently sold my Quadrophenia DVD, which contained the World Northal logo, in anticipation of the upcoming Criterion release of the film.  I can't locate the logo anywhere else in decent condition.  Strange Behavior, another World Northal title I have access to (via my roommate Clyde), frustratingly does not contain the logo on the Elite Entertainment DVD.

 

The music for this clip comes from electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani's Columbia Pictures theme, which was composed for use with the '76 - '81 Columbia logo, aka "the Sunburst."  The music itself is hard to find these days over that logo; only 1 DVD in my collection (The Hollywood Knights) out of about 10 Columbia titles from that era, retains the Ciani music.  My Midnight Express disc, for instance, does not have the music played over the logo; however, when I saw the same film projected on 35mm, the theme music was included.

Incidentally, Finders Keepers / B-Music label has recently put out another in a long string of most welcome, left field releases...this one a Suzanne Ciani compilation entitled Lixiviation and Dead-Cert has just done a limited LP pressing of Ciani's first album Voices of Packaged Souls.

The Armies of the Night

My obsession with trailers and The Warriors started young.  This, like the earlier videos from my recently-unearthed archive, was edited in my high school television studio with now-antiquated 3/4" video decks, sourced from the original Paramount laserdisc of the film and a VHS dub of the basic cable edit (for the edited "Did we lose these fucking clowns or what?" line).  I have no excuse for the rather inadequate voice over.

RCA Selectavision CED front cover

CED back cover

Assault - Anschlag bei Nacht

And...those Germans manage to get something right, using the most righteous Tyler Stout-drawn Assault on Precinct 13 Mondo poster artwork for their Blu-ray:

 

Hexenkessel

Here's a head-scratcher by way of Germany:

 

Aside from the dead body, which doesn't look like anything that actually appears in Mean Streets, we have the main imagery from the American one-sheet for Once Upon a Time in America essentially lifted wholesale for this German Blu-ray of Mean Streets aka Hexenkessel.  Does Mean Streets ever venture anywhere near Dumbo, or Brooklyn in general, for that matter?  Not that I recall.  The body at the bottom recalls the artwork from Goodfellas.  So, the German cover for Mean Streets evokes two other movies with De Niro, but not the one it is supposed to be representing.

 

US Blu-ray cover

French Blu-ray cover

"A Universe of...Heavy Metal."

Was going through my "archives" and found this old  Heavy Metal trailer that I edited in high school to celebrate the film's then-upcoming, inaugural release on home video.  This was edited the old-fashioned way with two 3/4" video decks.  The video is sourced from a cable television broadcast sometime in the '90s.  Keep in mind this is very pre-Final Cut and pre-HD so quality is far from pristine.  Music is by the great Elmer Bernstein and the narration is by voice-over artist John Leader. The audio comes from my 12" promotional copy of the 1981 Heavy Metal radio special, dubbed "The Ultimate Illustrated Radio Special."