PART II:  SMOKEY IS THE BANDIT!

Welcome to the SpeakEasy's second installment of our second annual CHEAP-ASSATHON, an event meant to spotlight and celebrate flicks that are not only of the low-budget variety, production-wise, but you only need a low budget to obtain great DVDs of!

What CHEAP-ASSATHON is complete without at least mention of one disc from Alpha Home Video's growing catalog of B-Flicks?  As I've said earlier, I made a huge fuss about their then-current output last year, and they continue to impress me, especially with releases such as their disc of the Ed Wood scripted "Girl Gang/ J.D." film, The Violent Years (pictured at left).  Sure, Alpha's transfers are sometimes poor, but usually watchable, but they make up for it in excellent package design, availibility of titles, and low SRP. The Violent Years is a fun, female variation on the classic juvenile deliquent film genre which grew into popularity in the 1950s (which could probably be seen as a prototype for the later exploitation standard, the "women in prison" film of the 1970s) littered with the typical over-the-top deadpan dialouge Wood is known for, mixed with laughably bad performances.  Bad girls don't go to Hell....they just end up in movies like this.....

Another CATCOM disc makes it's way into the running this year with their release of the documentary, 100 Years of Horror, a 2 hour edit of a ten tape VHS set(!) released in 1996 by Passport Video, with features host Christopher Lee taking a look at several different  varieties of horror films through the genre's history in cinema.  It's kinda interesting, featuring interviews with Bela Lugosi Jr. (about his father's work), Robert DeNiro (about his performance in the then current Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), and a few others, it's format reminds one of another series of documentaries, The Hammer House of Horror, which sometimes tend to show up as supplementary material on various Anchor Bay releases in the past. Lee speaks at times about his involvement in various Hammer projects, which is fun.  If ya got 3.99 to spare (which is what I gave for my copy), it's well worth the price of admission, but may tend to bore hard-core fans of the genre, because you're not really seeing anything new or insightful.

Another new face on the Cheap-Ass front is an outfit called Platinum Disc Corporation. Their discs seem to haunt the majority of Wal-Mart Cheap-Ass bargain DVD bins, but I purchased their Zorro Rides Again disc at a local chain grocery story for 4.99.  I'm a long-time cliffhanger serial buff, and this disc contains all 12 episodes of Republic Pictures' second Zorro chapter play from 1937, so I was in bliss.  especially after discovering that the disc also contains the original theatrical trailer and a really good transfer with enhanced 5.1 audio.  A fun thrill ride for those longing for a simpler matinee fare, with John Carroll portraying a descendant of Don Diego Vega taking up the mantle of "The Fox" to defend his family's interests in mining land in 1930s Texas (which looks an awful lot like back-lot California at times).  With Duncan Renaldo (a veteran of several classic B westerns) as his sidekick and directed  by the powerhouse serial team of William Witney and John English......