Redbox Mucks Up Their Web Page Some More. I Think I’m Done.

Sometimes, you have to wonder what goes through some the mind of some corporate web designers or the big shot executives who tell them what to do.  Lately, any time Redbox has decided to tinker with their web site, they manage to really muck it up. 

I’ve always had my little quibbles with Redbox.  Many of their practices are hardly consumer friendly and they seem to be totally unwilling to make the effort to change.  Make a complaint and you’ll get a brush off.  Oh yeah, occasionally they’ll try to give you a free rental when what they should be giving you is a refund for their incompetence.

You may know that drill.  You reserve a movie and you go over to get it from the machine a few hours later and the machine is broken and not working.  And since you have no clue as to when it might be working again you can either accept your losses or call the Redbox number where the poor patsy on the other end of the phone will try to shove that rental credit on your ass, even if you have no idea when you might get to use it.

Refund?  That would be too much trouble.  After all they don’t really want to give you your money back even though its no fault of yours the machine wasn’t working.  Because that would inconvenience them, and one thing corporate big wigs don’t like is to be inconvenienced.  Better the customer put up with their lousy policies and bullshit nonsense instead of issuing a damn credit on your Visa. 

I can hear them now:

”Hey what’s the big deal?  We have a few million customers so why does one poor shlub in some hick town matter?  Let him/her get pissed off.  Beside, where the hell else are they going to go?  Blockbuster is no longer around, and Netflix takes forever.  We’re practically a monopoly so why should we give a damn?”

Yeah, I think that’s the same attitude Blockbuster took for years and look at them now.

One time I had four movies on reserve at a particular store that has two Redbox machines.  They were in Machine B.  Of course when I went to pick up the movies, it was machine B that wasn’t working at all.  It had even been unplugged to keep people from trying to use it.

This time I called the Redbox number on my cell phone right there in the store.  Basically their answer was that I was shit out of luck.  Could you switch my movie rentals to Machine A since all four movies were in that machine ready to be rented.  Nope, couldn’t do anything like that.  That would be too difficult. 

Could I get a refund?  Nope, and you could almost hear the person on the other end chuckling to themselves over that idiotic notion.

What they could do was give me a credit and I could rent the movies.  Well, eventually I could.  The problem was that their computer, which must be a Commodore 64 the way they run things, would continue to show me with four movies reserved until that reservation ran the clock out.  And the limit on movie reservations at one time is 5.

Therefore, I couldn’t even use the credit until after 9:00 the next night when I would have no use for the damn things because we in the real world have to work this thing called a job. 

There have been other instances as well and if you do a few searches on the internet, you’ll read some real horror stories.  But honestly, with their latest act of corporate stupidity and uselessness, I think I’m done.  You finally have to draw the line somewhere just to keep your sanity.  You can’t say, “What were they thinking?” because obviously they weren’t, and they don’t.  Sometimes policies are invented just to annoy you.

It used to be when you went on the Redbox web site, after having saved “your locations” you could click on one of them and see what was in that particular machine at that location at that moment in time.  If a movie wasn’t showing either it wasn’t in the machine or all copies were checked out.  If they were all checked out you could scroll to the bottom of the page and see a somewhat faded entity marked “not available.”  Pretty simple.  Then you would just click on one of your other locations (if there was one) to see if the DVD or Blu-ray was there, or just choose something else.

In my case, there are three Redbox Vending Machines within a half mile or so radius from where I live.  One of these is just two blocks away.  After that, you have to travel eight miles to the next Redbox and unless you have Quaker Oats for brains, you’re not going to make that trip.  You’ll just wait for the movie to arrive or be checked in or whatever.

But now you no longer know if it’s in or not because Redbox Executives in their infinite wisdom decided to no longer make it readily apparent whether a movie was at your chosen location or not.  Now, they simply list all their movies available at all locations, whether it’s checked out or not or whether its in the machine or not.   In my town, which seems to be last on the delivery list, this often happens.  What a machine in the big city may get on Tuesday, we may get by Friday, if we’re lucky.

So now when you click on a title that’s not even at the location you are browsing, it says “Find DVD nearby” instead of just telling you the damn thing wasn’t there in the first place.  And just checking one certain movie right now, I’d have to drive 30 miles to get it.  Some recommendation that is.

 

Why the change?  Why not just tell you up front that a movie is not at the location you’re browsing and let you make your own choice as to whether to check a box that isn’t 30 miles away?  It worked for me just fine.

Because like politicians, Redbox thinks you’re too stupid to do that.  And I guess they think somebody’s willing to spend $10 worth of gas to drive to a Redbox and get $1.20 movie so they might as well make that sales pitch for the stupid people.  It’s just idiotic and unnecessary.  And worse, you still don’t know if all copies of that movie are all just checked out or if it even arrived at that location yet.  IF ITS NOT AT THAT LOCATION JUST SAY SO INSTEAD OF ME JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS TO FIND THAT OUT!

Really, I think I’m done.  I’ll just order them from Netflix.  It may take longer sometimes, but at least I can watch them at my leisure and not deal with the frustrating antics of Redbox and their total disregard for customer convenience.  I can only be annoyed jumping through corporate hoops before I change the game plan.  Having helped do Blockbuster in, I don’t think copying that company’s little regard for their customers is a great idea.  I’m sure with all their customers, Redbox won’t miss me.  But I won’t miss them either.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame – Turner Classic Movies Style

Monday, April 1st is the opening of the major league baseball season.  In actuality, the first game of the season is being played as I write, March 31, but I’ve always thought that particular Sunday Night Game Before Everybody Else Plays as a bullshit bush league move on the part of MLB and ESPN.  From the day they decided to pull that nonsense years ago, it pretty much crapped on one of baseballs time honored tradition.  That was, because they were the first professional team in existence, the Cincinnati Reds always had the honor of being the first team to open the season.  If their game started at one, all other games would usually start a tad later. 

This event is tantamount to being a holiday in Cincinnati.  They have a parade, there’s a lot of pre game hoopla,  and the local newscasts are taken over by the whole event as if Jerry Springer had just returned to town having been elected president.  Now, there’s a thought.

When I lived in Ohio, I made it a point to do my best to watch the event on television.  I never had a chance to be there in person, but I wish I had accomplished that feat at least once.  Despite the attempt by MLB and the almighty advertising dollars of ESPN to water it down, it’s still a big deal for the people of Cincy.  So the Astros's, the Rangers, Texas in general, MLB, and ESPN can go screw themselves.

I don’t follow baseball the same way that I once did.  I still keep track of the Reds and how they are doing by checking scores and the standings on occasion, but I couldn’t tell you too many names of the players on their roster or when was the last time I watched a complete game.  It’s not always been like that.

When I first moved out west, it was almost as if I hadn’t left the Reds behind.  Back in 2001 you could listen to the games for free on the internet by streaming from just about any radio station in the country and that included the Reds home of WLW in Cincinnati.

That didn’t last long and when MLB found out there was a buck to be made, that was the end of the freebies unless you did it illegally.  It’s not worth the trouble for me to bother. 

But all this accomplished as far as I was concerned was to make me less of a fan.  It was a cheapskate move on their part then and still is.  Charge all you want to for streaming video of the games.  I don’t care, because I won’t be paying.  But taking away the audio streaming rights from local stations was a pure b.s. move and I still feel the same way.

Turner Classic Movies is having their own celebration by broadcasting seven very classic almost forgotten baseball films.  All except one in living high definition black and white.  And I’m sure some of you will find them infinitely more entertaining than watching your team get their ass kicked over the course of 168 games again.  I won’t mention names.

You won’t see The Natural here, nor Field of Dreams, Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out or even Bang The Drum Slowly.  Nor such idiotic worthless crap as Little Big League or Rookie of the Year.  They showed Little Big League on my cross country flight once.  I gave thought to jumping out somewhere over the Grand Canyon.

The films you will be able to watch are as follows, with times being EDT.  Adjust accordingly for your own zone:

Of the films listed here, I am most familiar with the top three.  Of the others, the only one I have seen and know something about is Kill The Umpire.  

In that film, William Bendix plays a fanatical baseball fan named Bill Johnson who is forced to become an umpire to make a living because his love of the game interferes with his life.  Due to the fact that that he uses some eye drops on the day of his “tryout” game, he begins seeing double, so he makes every call twice.  The guy that does the umpire hiring thinks this is a pretty cool gimmick, hires him, and gives him the name “Two Call Johnson.” Later, he is nearly chased out of town when he makes a close call against the home team in a playoff game.  It’s harmless comical fluff and not a bad way to spend an hour and twenty eight minutes.

As for Fireman, Save My Child and Take Me Out To The Ballgame, I can’t recall having seen either one.  And since Take Me Out is a musical with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, I’m sure I would have remembered it especially since I still have Kill The Umpire planted in my memory circuits.  Why I never crossed paths with it, well your guess is as good as mine.  But now I feel compelled to so I will record it tomorrow.

I also know absolutely nothing about Fireman, Save My Child except that it sounds more like a public service announcement than a baseball film.  The

IMDB gives this synopsis:

Joe Grant is an inventor, fireman and baseball player in his small home town. He gets an offer to play in a big team, he hopes to get more money for his inventions. But he is invited to present his invention to a fire-extinguisher company at the same time when he is supposed to play. Will he be able to show the effectiveness of his invention and win the game ?

The film stars Joe E. Brown, who as Jack Lemmon’s boyfriend Osgood Fielding III, delivered what is considered the ultimate, funniest line ever to end a film.  That was for Some Like It Hot (1959).

For my money the unsung gems are the first three films listed.  I’ve seen all of them several times over the years.  I wrote a brief review of Angels in the Outfield when I rented it from Netflix and back when I attempted to do something new in that regards.  That project turned out to be way more time consuming than I thought it would and you can’t do a movie review justice in just a paragraph or two so I’ve had to dispense with it for now.  You just as well write, “I liked the film.  It was good” because that’s about what it amounts to.  You can get a zillion comments like that on Amazon and IMDB anyway, which is why I put out the effort to do more.  Also because I just like doing it.

Please don’t mistake this version which has the great Paul Douglas as manager of the Pirates with the totally insipid Disney remake that came along in 1994 and included super angel special effects and people flapping their arms like they are angel wings at an Anaheim Angels game.  Believe me, it is the simplicity that makes the 1951 version so much better. 

In The Kid From Left Field, Dan Dailey plays ex-major league ball player Larry “Pop” Cooper.  Pop works as a peanut vendor who is more interested in what is what is happening on the field more than pushing peanuts.  At the same time, he teaches his son everything he knows about the game and he knows quite a bit.  He has way more knowledge than the manager of the team for which he works, the Bisons.  Through a series of circumstances, Pops gets fired from his peanut paying peanut job, his son Christie (Billy Chapin) becomes the bat boy, and then manages to relay the information imparted to him by Dad to the Bison’s roster, thus turning them into a contending team.  Eventually, it is Christie who becomes manager even though Pop is the one pulling the strings.  This was also remade as a Gary Coleman TV vehicle.  (Or should I say an Arnold Jackson and Benson DuBois get together?)  Forget that one as well and watch this one.   

In the case of, It Happens Every Spring, I’ve seen it many times.  In fact, I have a digital copy of it on my computer which I recorded on VHS off Cinemax years ago.  I transferred it onto my hard drive so that I could write a review that I still haven’t gotten around to.  I wrote one years ago for the IMDB, but most of my early reviews on there were a POS.  Now that it has returned to cable, I wish I hadn’t put it off.

The film is available on Amazon and from the Warner Archive Store on DVD.   I may wait until I can pick up a copy which hopefully is sooner rather than later.  But it’s a totally overlooked hilarious gimmick film, not acknowledged at all by Major League Baseball who views Professor Vernon’s  discovery as cheating.  Of course, there is no cheating in baseball, just steroids and an occasional spitter/greaseball.   The latter having been made into an art form by one Gaylord Perry.  Oh, and I guess Angels interfering in the field of play is okay too since MLB lent its license to that film.  Here is my plot synopsis from my original review:

 

Professor Vernon Simpson (Ray Milland) is a chemistry professor at a Midwestern college. He is in love with the Dean's daughter, Deborah Greenleaf (Jean Peters) and hoped that someday they would be married. College professor's salaries being what they were in the late forties, his only hope of being able to financially support Miss Greenleaf depended on an experiment he had devised that would one day change the world.

Like all normal American men of his day, Vernon gets caught up in the Rite of Spring better described as the opening of the baseball season.  He’s also  twitterpated by the Dean’s daughter as well so I guess the title does have a double meaning.

One day while in his lab working intently on his experiment, some of the young college students are outside practicing baseball. Unfortunately, an errant ball comes crashing through the window destroying the Professor's experiment and mixing his chemicals into a convoluted mess. Or so he thought.

While cleaning up the destroyed experiment, Vernon accidentally discovers that the mixture of chemicals left behind has the unique ability to resist wood. After testing the formula in his lab, he recruits the young college baseball players to scientifically examine the reaction of this chemical when applied to a baseball.Having acquiring enough data to prove to himself that when the formula is applied to a baseball, no hitter could touch it, Professor Simpson has no alternative but to offer his services to the St. Louis Team (you’re to take it for granted they are the Cardinals, although the Browns were also in existence at that time as well so choose one.  The Browns later became the Baltimore Orioles)  who are themselves in desperate need of pitching. Although skeptical at first, the owner of St. Louis gives Vernon a tryout in an attempt to embarrass him.  It is Vernon and his secret formula that teach the manager and the owner of St. Louis a thing or two, and they sign him to a contract that would pay Vernon $1,000 dollars for every game he wins.  A princely sum in those days I suspect.  At one point a newspaper shows that Vernon has won 38 games, and this is before the season is over and the world series where he pitches in at least another three.  If he were playing now, he would probably be paid at minimum, a million dollars a game.  Do the math.

If you can only catch one of these films, It Happens Every Spring should be the one. Paul Douglas is in this film as well, as a catcher who uses Vernon's formula as a hair tonic to hilarious results.  And if you can’t watch it, add it to your sports collection while you can.  Yeah, that’s a sales pitch. 

Have a great baseball season, hope your team does well, and in homage to Joe Nuxhall, a Cincinnati Reds broadcaster who should be in the Hall of Fame but isn’t, this is the old movie reviewer rounding third and heading for home.  Now go de-halo the Angels, Reds!

Random Thoughts: Netflix Fail

I’ve been renting discs from Netflix for quite a while.  I’ve also been streaming since way back when they first started offering the service.  Back in the beginning, the streaming came free with the discs rentals but the selection was mostly major suckage.  Over all these years I’ve mostly been satisfied with the Netflix service, but over the past year or so, the disc rental department seems to be on a downward spiral. 

I guess Netflix has a reason for letting this side of the business go all to hell, but I’m not sure I understand why especially when it’s still profitable.  But in the last twelve months, I’ve returned more broken discs than I had in all the previous years combined.  And it’s really getting to be a pain in the ass. 

I guess I’m seriously considering unsubscribing, but if I give up the disc service, I’ll probably quit on the streaming as well.  After all, I still have Amazon Prime and do I really need both?  And Redbox Streaming is out there somewhere waiting in the wings as soon as they put it on one of my devices that I already own.

I’ve been on this Stallone kick for a couple of weeks and had the film Victory starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and directed by John Huston,  in my DVD Queue.  Somehow along the way I had missed ever seeing the film so I was looking forward to it arriving.  Well it did arrive, on time, but cracked all to hell.  Exasperating and a pain in the ass for this to happen,  but something I’m learning to live with more and more every month when it comes to Netflix. 

They do give you a choice.  When you report it as being broken you can either have them send the same movie or just request for them to send the next one in your queue.  Just about every time except once I have requested the same movie.  If I didn’t want to see it, I wouldn’t have ordered it. And that’s what I did this time.  I requested Victory once again.

Keep in mind that when a disc is obviously unplayable as this one was, and you have to wait on a replacement, you’re kind of getting screwed.  Because instead of a two day turn around, it turns into a four day turn around and you have no movie rental during that time.  Even longer if it takes more than one day for the disc to get to you.  It’s not a great policy but one I understand.  Give someone an extra disc for their inconvenience and you end up with people reporting bad discs on a regular basis.

So finally the discs comes for the second time.  Immediately upon taking it out of the envelope, I notice there is writing scrawled across the front and it is anything but a good sign

And when I took the disc out as you can see from the graphic at the top of the article, it was toast.  I didn’t know whether to be exasperated at Netflix or one not too bright customer.  One thing Netflix makes very clear.  Don’t put a note in an envelope, and don’t write on it.  Nobody will read it.  That’s why you go on the web site and report a problem.  And it’s not that hard.  Two clicks and you’re done.  Practically everything at Netflix is done by machine, and if a human does sort the envelopes, they sure as hell don’t have time to read them from the few rare videos I’ve seen about the inner workings of Reed Hastings baby.

Obviously something was wrong with the disc before they even shipped it out.  It was had to at least have been badly scratched  up when some not too bright dingbat customer sent it back.  If only half the movie played, this person couldn’t realize that there was a serious problem?  Have people become that irrationally ignorant that they would actually think Netflix would send out half the movie?

So I get left holding the bag and now I had to decide whether I wanted to send it back and try for Victory again, or just get something else.  On top of that, when I report it, they’ll obviously pull the disc and surely must think I’m the dumb ass who wrote a message across the envelope.   I’m tempted not even to let them know, but then I would probably be putting the next person to get the disc in the same position that I was in.  And I’m sure they would anonymously be cursing me as being the stupid idiotic customer who scribbled on the front of an envelope.

I ended up reporting it.  But I decided to give up on Victory for now and will be watching Stephen King’s Thinner instead.  Or Christine.  Or the original Mighty Joe Young.  All fodder for future reviews. 

Back in December, I rented the movie Victor/Victoria.  It was broken and I sent it back.  I didn’t report it  but I probably should have.  The reason I didn’t was just a couple of weeks before that I had received the Alfred Hitchcock film Torn Curtain.  And it too was cracked all to hell.   I reported it and ordered it again.  Maybe I was becoming afraid that if I had too many broken discs, Netflix would pull my membership.  I do know they will cancel your ass if you suddenly report too many “lost discs.”  Was this the same thing?

Several years back I ordered the movie Fathom from Netflix.  It was a movie with Raquel Welch that I had seen as a teenager.  The first disc arrived broken so I asked for a replacement.  The next disc came from somewhere in Texas.  It arrived broken as well.  I decided to try again, but the next disc had to be shipped all the way from New York to my place of residence in California.  All in all, it took two weeks before I received a copy of Fathom that was playable.  

Now, Fathom is no longer available on Netflix but that’s not unusual.  I have my doubts these days if they are replacing any catalogue titles at all.  But you may console yourself with my review or order the movie from Amazon while it’s still available at all.  It’s been in and out of print.  So I just ordered a copy from Amazon while it was on my mind.  The fact that it is coming from an outside seller (but handled and shipped by Amazon so it’s okay) does not bode well for the future availability of Fathom.   And I’ll probably just break down and buy a copy of Victory from Amazon as well since it’s less than six dollars at the moment.

I had a grand total of seven broken discs from Netflix last year, and already have had two this year.  Once upon a time I was averaging one a year, and that one included discs that just wouldn’t play although there was no visible breakage.  There comes a time when you begin to wonder if it’s money worth spending since Hastings doesn’t even seem to even believe in that side of the business anymore.  That along with the fact that the catalog titles are starting to dwindle down as I see the word “saved” more and more every day.  I’m just not that enamored of the streaming selection that it would keep me around.  But we’ll see what happens.

Way back when……Interview With The Vampire (1994)

I don’t know how you feel about it, and although Interview With The Vampire is not one of my favorite all time films to watch, I do find it fascinating.  Hard to believe in this era of Vampire Lovers on Television and The Big Screen, you never hear much about this film anymore and it is certainly heads and shoulders way better than any of The Twilight Movies.  I hope to dig into it with an in depth analysis of my own someday, with the usual snarky pictures of course.  I’m debating as to whether I should upgrade my DVD to blue ray.  As for now, here’s a picture of the cast at the premiere including Tom Cruise, Christian Slater, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst.  Hard to believe 18 years have passed.  Photo comes from Imgur:

7 Worst Product Flops of 2012 as told by Huffington Post

Yes boys and girls and mommies and dads.  It’s that time of year when every web site and magazine has a best and worst list for just about every category imaginable.  Huffington Post has come up with it’s list of biggest flops of the past twelve months.

They are:

1.  Apple Maps
2.  Dodge Dart
3.  John Carter
4.  Sony Tablet
5.  Nokia Lumina 900
6.  Pan Am
7.  Ultrabook
8.  Playstation Vita

Now, I may disagree with at least one of these.  John Carter’s ranking comes from the fact that some people still of are the mindset that North American Gross is the only thing that counts.  In fact, according to Box Office Mojo, while Carter only made $73,000,000 domestically, it made over $209,700,000 in foreign theaters for a total of over $282 million dollars on a $250 million dollar budget.  That doesn’t even include movie tie ins.  DVD/Blu-ray sales, digital sales, pay per view or anything else.  Granted, the film may have been a flop and may never turn a profit but this idea of it being the biggest flop of all time falls into the Waterworld category, a film that fell into that mythical chamber of money making disasters when it in fact, turned a profit.  Blame Disney who took a $200 million dollar write of for letting production and marketing costs spiral out of control.  Then again, for the studio that showered George Lucas with $4 billion dollars for Lucasfilms, this is all chump change.

My son was one of those who bought a Playstation Vita.  He sent it back.  And with two products on this list is it any wonder that Sony is losing money hands over fists?

I didn’t even know that Chrysler had reassembled the Dodge Dart.  I owned one once – back in the 70’s. 

I intended to check in on Pan Am but the show was gone before I ever got around to it.  That happens to me a lot.  Is it on Netflix or Amazon Prime?   (Neither.  As it turns out the series won’t be released on DVD until the middle of January but you can preorder it.  You can put it in your saved queue on Netflix but that doesn’t mean anything as it’s never a guarantee they’ll stock it.  Especially these days.)

As for the Nokia Lumina, I upgraded my phone this year.  I went with the Galaxy SIII, the larger screen winning me over because when you get to be my age, the eyesight is the first thing to go.   I previously had the Apple 3GS and was conflicted about it.  I hate Apple, and I hate Apple fanboys even more.  And the Google maps app. on the Galaxy works great and the GPS locator has saved me a couple of times already.

Maybe I can come up with some kind of a list of my own over the next week or so.  We’ll see.

Movies on DVD Blogging–The Big Bird Cage

This little gimmick is something I tried on my Facebook Page and I’m sure I’ll have the same success rate here as I did there.  What that means is nobody will read this shit here either.  I  mean, why just have your family and friends ignoring your shit when you can have the whole wide internet world ignore it?  Pretty cool when you look at it that way.

The way this works is that  while I’m  watching something on my TV, I’ll grab the web cam and take a shot of something in the movie that captures my interest and write a comment for it.  It may be a DVD I own or am renting,or  it could be an old Classic TV series.  It could be something I’m watching on Netflix or Amazon, or on the regular TV series.  Whatever floats my boat. 

What kind of comments?    It may be something as dry as a symopsis of the film, something I’ve noticed about one of the actors or the character they are playing, or maybe something I just want to poke a little fun at.

Sure to be Frequently Asked Questions and Answers:

Why are you doing this?

Because I  feel like it.  Next question.

 

What kind of  movies did you try this out on at Facebook?

Eyes Wide Shut, Quo Vadis, Tangled, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Getting Straight, and the last one I did was an episode of Buffy. As you can see, it can run the gamut, there is no set criteria.  It’s just what I’m feeling.

 

Why use your web cam?  Why don’t you just take screen captures on your computer and post them?

A.  Because not everything can be played on my computer.

B.  I would lose my spontaneity.

C.  You would lose the effect of what it actually looks like on a flat screen TV and how it really looks to me in my bedroom sanctuary.

D.  More Copyright issues that way, probably less this way.  It’s not like I’m showing the freakin’ movie or anything like that.  I’m in a sense, actually promoting it…..unless it’s really really bad.  And the pictures should be just crappy enough that nobody would care anyway.  I think.

E.  It would be too much like work to do screen captures and not as much fun as this.  And I’m a fun kind of guy because as Arthur said, “Fun is the best thing to have.”  When this becomes too much like work, I quit.

 

Will you post the ones you did on Facebook?

It’s doubtful.  But it could possibly happen if I need a blog post and don’t feel like screwing around with anything else.  Besides, the pictures are open to the public.  You just have to find them.

 

Why are you swearing so much?

In my real personna, it comes and it goes, same as it does here.  This is who I am sometimes.

Now that we have that idiotic stuff  out of the way, let’s get on with it. 

 

I finally received my copy of Roger Corman’s Cult Classics, the Women in Cages Collection from Amazon.  There are three movies in the set. 

They are: 

 

Women in Cages,  The Big Doll House, and The Big Bird Cage.  Three classic films of the B-Genre from the seventies.

Two of these star the great Pam Grier which most of you may know from her recent stints in the Quentin Tarantino movie Foxy Brown. 

But it was Roger Corman who gave Miss Grier her biggest break when he he cast her in The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage, the movie which I’m  going to view tonight. 

 

I originally saw both of those movies as part of a triple feature at a cinema near downtown Columbus back in the early seventies.  I guess you could classify it as a Grindhouse Theater since it was showing films such as this on a continuous basis.  Other films I saw there were fine cinematic masterpieces such as Student Nurses and Private Duty Nurses.  I was very much interested in human anatomy back in those days and those films did not disappoint.  But character and plot development?  I couldn’t tell you a damn thing?  After all , it was 40 years ago.

 

 

Okay, now that we’ve taken care of that, let’s move on.

 

I decided to watch the trailer that was on the DVD first.  It was really grainy, had lines through it  and was  in really bad shape, just like a Quentin Tarantino flick.  He would be so pleased. 

 

Seriously, I did hope the movie wasn’t like that.  And oh yeah, here’s the shot all you pervs out there are craving.  That’s what you came for isn’t it?  Now that you’ve seen this anonymous butt you can move on because there isn’t anymore.  Go read my Jenni-cam article or something, better yet, go find the thousands of nude pictures of her available by learning how to use Google Image search properly.  You have to turn off the search content filter.

I didn’t know who Anitra Ford was.  I know, shame on me  But since her name was in letters as big as Pam Grier’s,  that must mean she has an important role in this film.  So I looked her up on the IMDB and now I feel such shame that I didn’t know she was a Price is Right Girl.  Actually, her whole biography is kind of interesting.  Go read it yourself, do I look like the Freakin Enycyclopedia Britannica?

 

My first glimpse of Anitra Ford.  Or should I say Anitra Ford’s ass.  How did I know it was Anitra?  Do you really have to be a genius to figure that out?  I would also like to say  that it’s a mighty fine ass, something any young actress can really be proud of.  I was also glad to see that, unlike the trailer,  for the feature part of the program, they cleaned the picture up quite nicely.

 

Pam Grier plays a singer.  She doesn’t look so tough here. Did she do her own warbling?  How the hell do I know?  I wasn’t paying attention to that. I was thinking of moon pies.   (Later, by listening to the director’s commentary I found out that not only did she do her own singing, Pam is a very good singer.)

 

Here’s what Anitra looks like from the front.  Just in case you’re interested and don’t see her purely as a sex object like Bob Barker and I do.  I couldn’t help notice how frizzy her hair was though.  Either that was the style back then or Corman wouldn’t spring for a hair stylist.  Another one of those little details you won’t remember from having seen the film forty years ago.

 

Did I say Pam didn’t look so tough?  It’s amazing what a machine gun hidden in your guitar will do for your perception of things.  And I knew all along she wasn’t really a nightclub singer.

 

I  didn’t see this plot twist coming.  The guy with the beard was a member of Pam Grier’s gang.  So after they get all the loot from the patrons at the night club, he decides he wants a piece of Anitra’s ass  and kidnaps her by carrying her out to what appears to be a getaway golf cart.  Except when he gets there, the golf cart is full and they drive off without him, to the 13th hole I suppose. 

 

So he steals a cab and shoves a not very reluctant Anitra inside.  She asks him what he intends to do with her, and Bearded Guy replies something to the effect that  he’s going to rape her.  She says, that’s okay because she really likes sex and wouldn’t mind being raped by him at all.  No, that’s not the plot twist.  That’s expected in these kind of  movies in which all women are sex starved, sex craving  bimbos.  But hey, it’s all in good fun so what the hell!

 

The plot twist is that  the taxi gets cornered on a bridge by the cops.  Bearded Guy decides to say adios and escapes by jumping off the bridge.  So Anitra gets arrested as an accomplice.  I fully expected that Pam Grier would be the one going to prison first, not Miss Price Is Right price tag turner.

So in a bit of irony, the innocent Anitra gets taken to court, is forced to cop a plea by the crooked cops and the crooked judge, and sent up river wearing the same red dress she started the movie with.  I guess besides not springing for a hair stylist, Corman skimped on the wardrobe department as well.  Not that I minded.

 

The prison camp Commandant.  You just know by looking at this asshole that he’s going to be a real bastard before it’s over with.  Think Colonel Klink of Hogan’s Heroes with a different accent and without the laugh track.  Yeah, he’s not going to be a funny guy, even if he does look like Gilbert Godfried.  The actor is Andres Centenara, but you can call him Warden Zappa, no relation to the more famous Frank Zappa or his daughter Moon Unit.

 

One of the girls tries to entice head guard, Rocco, by flashing and playing with her nipples while he guards the shower door.  The problem is that  Rocco, like some of the other guards, is gay.  So no matter how many times they flash their titties, Rocco isn’t in the market.  So I guess that enables him to beat on them with careless abandon whenever the mood strikes.

 

Remember bearded guy?  We catch up with  him struggling to get through the forest and back to his base of operations.  Unlike Anitra, who managed to keep her red ass clinging dress intact all the way up river, Bearded Guy can’t keep his pants or shirt on walking through the jungle for a few days.  Of course, just looking at this screen shot, you can tell he compensates for his lack of worthy apparel with a little over acting.  But I think it’s played that way on purpose.

 

Girl’s, meet Anitra.  Anitra,  meet the  girls.  I’ve seen this scene somewhere before though.  Anitra’s little flesh flash reminds me of something I posted somewhere. Where could it have been?  Oh yeah, now I remember.  It was here. It is here that I finally figured out that Anitra’s character name is Terry.  Although Anitra  is cooler, I guess I’ll call her Terry from here on out.

 

Bearded Guy finally makes it back to his camp and Pam isn’t all that happy to see him.  Being blind as a bat and not seeing the condition he’s in, she thinks he’s been out in the forest screwing Terry for the past couple of days.  Then again, maybe a person doing the nasty with Terry would end up looking like this.

 

As you can see, Pam doesn’t stay pissed with bearded guy and after a mud bath, head up to their shack to play hide the bologna.  We also find out some things.  Pam’s name is Blossom, and Bearded Guy is named Django and he is played by Sid Haig, and this guy has a ton of credits to his name and is still going strong. 

As it turns out, Django and Terry  really are revolutionaries.  I thought that was just a bullshit story.  They never say what they are revolting against (Evil Women’s Prisons or being stuck in  B Movies?) or what country they are in.  Judging from the surrounding area of dense foliate, a nearby river, the heat and humidity, and the general lack of education of the populace, my guess is Mississippi.

Not long after this the Revolutionaries come up with a new plan of recruitment.  They’ll break all the women out of the local prison, who will be so grateful that they’ll join up just out of gratitude.  How does this plan work?  Well, first they have to get somebody on the inside, and since there’s only one woman around, you can guess who the lucky girl is going to be without me telling you.

 

The Big Bird Cage.  And here I thought it would be an actual cage.  No, I didn’t expect it to have giant parakeets in it, and I didn’t think Big Bird was in this movie.  I don’t think they had Sesame Street in those days.  What it is though is a Sugar Mill, built by Colonel Klink-Zappa, so that the harvested sugar cane can be refined, squeezed and processed, then sprinkled on your Captain Crunch Cereal.  The Quaker Oats factory is just down the road and to the left.

 

And although it wasn’t meant to work that way,  it does a good job of chopping up female prisoners as well if they don’t watch their back.  These broads spend so much time fighting each other, it’s no damn wonder they can never escape.  Is this what they call a hand job?

 

I couldn’t go on without mentioning Karen McKevi’s  role as Karen.  For me she, was the big dog in the bone yard.  I think she stands about 6 1/2 feet, which pretty much sums up my feelings about that.

 

Warden Zappa throws a little soirée for some high faluting government officials. In the crazy world of B-Movies, a lot of the girls main goal is not trying to escape, but attempting to getting invited to one of these orgies since  their one desire is to get laid by a man, any man or just to get their brains fucked out in general.  

 

But what I said above doesn’t hold true for everybody.  This gal goes batshit crazy when these viral young handsome fellows come on to her, which causes major problems around Camp Zappa.  I know she looks like she’s in orgasmic ecstasy here, but believe me when I tell you these guys wienies are about to become as limp as a night crawler.

 

Terry tries to escape when her other plans go awry.  Here she comes across some nice Pilipino Gentlemen and asks for their assistance.  Unfortunately she’s about to learn that the words “Help Me Please” means “Rape Me Please” in the Philippines.  And the other reason I posted this outfit?  It gives us a chance to see Terry in another skimpy blouse while being quite wet as well.  Ah!  Life’s little pleasures and treasures.

 

 

This is the punishment for getting yourself raped in the Philippines.  Either that or it’s a new hair treatment, and remember, Terry did have the frizzies early in the movie.  I know you’re saying that it would not be possible for someone to survive such torture.  Well, bub, let me explain some shit to you:  There is no such thing as a light saber either. And yeah, it was really her punishment for trying to escape.

 

While Terry decides to just hang around outside  for a while, Blossom finally get’s herself registered at the  Hotel Zappa Deluxe.  Blossom is the boss now and if these clowns don’t know that yet, they will know it right quick.

 

Blossom:  My name’s Blossom, but that don’t mean shit.  All you have to know is that now I run this place.  Any other  questions?

Girl:  Yeeeahh… where do you want to be buried, nigga’?

Blossom:  That’s Miss Nigga’ to you bitch.

You just have to love that shit.

 

The other part of Django’s plan is to infiltrate the camp by getting himself hired on.  This consists of  putting on a beret, baring his midriff in front of Rocco, and sashaying into the Men’s Room to let Rocco have a good look at his package.  Is this what they call Penis Envy?  Or is it just Penal Lust? 

 

On one hand you want to laugh, on the other hand you’re a bit bugged by the stereotype of gays.  But that’s the way Hollywood portrayed them in those days, and in some cases, still do.  So it is what it is.

 

Unfortunately, a monkey wrench is thrown into their plan when the Warden discovers who Blossom is and proceeds to have Rocco torture her for information.  Unlike Terry though, she gets to keep her hairdo.

 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  She’s taking a shower and lathering herself up.  Well, Karen is lathering herself up but not with soap.  And she’s not taking a shower.  That you see, is chicken grease.  And just why should she be covering herself from head to toe with the remnants of a day’s work at KFC?  

 

But there are bigger questions.  Will Django spring Blossom and Terry before sadistic Warden Zappa does them in?  Or will he succumb to the seductive charms of Rocco?  Will the girls join the revolution in support of more B movies like this one?

 

You’ll have to either go to Shout Factory or someplace like Amazon to buy the movie to find that out.  And it’s one helluva deal.  You get three of these movies for the price of what one normally costs and these are good transfers, not the usual public domain shit some companies churn out to throw in the bargain bin at Wal-mart or K-mart.  A couple of things do irk me though.

 

The first is that Netflix has basically quit carrying Shout Factory titles altogether.  So you can’t get this there but you might try to get it at Blockbuster On-line. I haven’t checked.   Sad to say, is that Netflix’s DVD rental service is steadily going downhill which makes their recent big price increase kind of a joke.  Seriously thinking of canceling the DVD portion.

 

Better yet, don’t be such a tight wad and buy the damn thing.  This one  movie alone is worth it.  You get a little bit of everything:  action, comedy both intended and unintended, some surprisingly snappy dialogue,  torture, beautiful naked women, an Ex Price-is-Right tag turner, and  practically everything else you could want in a movie like this.

 

You can’t watch a movie like The Big Bird Cage and be expecting an A List 100 million dollar Hollywood extravaganza.  There’s no comparing the two.  You have to watch it in the spirit in which it was made, and whether or not even on a very limited budget the Producer, Director, Writers, and actors at least put a little effort into achieving the final result.

 

I really had fun watching The Big Bird Cage.  I’ve only watched a little of it with the Director’s Commentary but look forward to more of that.  I’m not sure that today’s jaded young audiences (and yes, they are quite jaded) will ever know the joys of a film such as this, but hey at least it’s in color.  You don’t know how many times I hear some young foolish idiot punk kid proclaim they won’t watch a black and white movie for any reason.

 

But the trick is not to take a film like The Big Bird Cage seriously, and if you can do that, you should be okay.  So grading The Big Bird Cage on the Roger Corman B Movie curve (as compared to other films), I’d have to give it *** out of *****.