I think it’s his performance as Security Chief extraordinaire Tuxan in The Groundstar Conspiracy that’s my favorite Peppard performance. And for once, Peppard totally nails the role of the hardass bastard.

And while Campus’ film didn’t receive a rave review from Pauline Kael in The New Yorker or make Vincent Canby’s top ten list of the year in The New York Times (however Ralph Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic did), it performed far better at the box office than did Mean Streets and for the audience it was made for, proved every bit as iconic if not more so.

Starting off I’d like you to know, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean is my favorite screenplay.

But the film he didn’t do for Gene Corman and United Artists was pretty good too, I Escaped From Devil’s Island starring Jim Brown. When faced with finding a new director for his picture, Gene Corman decided not to go with one of his brother’s promising protégées. Instead, he chose an old salty dog he admired who he’d worked with before, someone who’d been directing pictures since 1937: None other than the great William Witney.

Roustabout, one of my favorite Elvis Presley movies, and Elvis: The Movie with Kurt Russell.

Roustabout, one of my favorite Elvis Presley movies, and Elvis: The Movie with Kurt Russell.

Targets is about what happens when the boy can fight the monster no longer. When the monster wins. When the monster breaks free, takes control, and wrecks bloody havoc on all who cross its path.

John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy is pretty much a piece of shit from the word go, but the more it goes, the more enjoyable this piece of shit gets, till it can officially be classified under that beloved category, enjoyable piece of shit.

Wong Tao was a popular martial arts matinee idol who starred in many flicks, some of them pretty good, and one, The Hot, The Cool, & The Vicious, that’s sensational.

But of all of his solo vehicles none show him off the better effect than helmer Lee Tso Nam’s (director of the aforementioned The Hot, The Cool, & The Vicious) Fatal Needles vs Fatal Fists.

Sometimes a Great Notion is a good somewhat compromised movie, that is justly famous for one of the greatest scenes in early seventies cinema.

His first film with Clint Eastwood, Coogan’s Bluff. It was the French Cahiers du Cinéma crowd and Andrew Sarris that made Siegel an auteur. But it was Coogan’s Bluff that made Siegel, for the first time in his career, a major Hollywood director. Coogan’s Bluff plays like a trial run for the next twenty years of action cinema.

The John Sayles-scripted, Julie Corman-produced, Lewis Teague-directed 1978 gangster opus “Lady in Red” (aka “Touch Me and Die”) is my candidate for most ambitious film ever made at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

Except for “Big Wednesday,” none of the Milius-directed films have a satisfying conclusion. And the climactic showdown between the heroic trio and the monster waves is so good it makes up for the rest

As similar as their stories are, what I find the most interestingly insightful about comparing the two is seeing where they’re different. “Tynan,” which was written by Alda himself, was the better script. Yet “Honeysuckle Rose” is the better movie, and especially the better Schatzberg movie.

As similar as their stories are, what I find the most interestingly insightful about comparing the two is seeing where they’re different. “Tynan,” which was written by Alda himself, was the better script. Yet “Honeysuckle Rose” is the better movie, and especially the better Schatzberg movie.