Gunslinger Gals: Wild Women with Winchesters!

 

Quick Shots: Amazon's Edge

Edge was part of a plan that Amazon had when it was first getting into original programming. They produced a big group of pilots and put them out at once, then waited to see what people watched.  There were a lot of short movies, including one based on the long running Edge western series by George G. Gilman.  Edge set out to be the grittiest, bloodiest, most violent paperback western series ever.  The few I’ve paged through were… okay.  Some people loved them, but I never saw how it differentiated itself from all the other paperback western series.

So what was the Edge film like?  It was… okay.  Portraying Edge is Max Martini, who did this film between David Mamet’s The Unit and Tony Scott’s 13 Hours.  Martini has great acting chops with a good script and a good director, as you would see in the work that bookended this one.  Unfortunately here he’s working with Shane Black, who can be great (The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Lethal Weapon 1 & 2) but occasionally turns out bullshit (The Predator).  From both a visual and story standpoint, this one is very mediocre, where not derivative; at some point Edge appears to land in the “Tree of Woe” from Conan the Barbarian. Somehow there is a chastity belt involved, and thus the scene below.  Meh, go watch something else.

(Just found- a great summary of the Edge series!)

What in Tarnation is That Dirty Black Bag?

 NEW WESTERN!!!  NEW WESTERN!!! NEW WESTERN!!!

Hopefully I can watch and give a review soon.

Premiers 3/10?  That's kind funny.

Gunslinger Gals: Pinups!

Did you have to do it, Slap?  Did you have to make a post that is just pictures of hot sexy topless retro vintage  pinup cowgirls with guns, just to see what would happen with search engines?

Sure did.

 

St. Patrick's Day, Deep Roots, & the Pornographic Joys of Cultural Appropriation

I wish I could find this one.  It looks ridiculous.  A saw a quick clip and, with the help of screenshots, it seems to be the sexy ‘70s adventures of a proud native American helping vanilla white women raise their spiritual awareness with his penis.  It’s a perfect picture of the culture of the United States, and gives me a great opportunity to rant about racial politics on St. Patrick's Day. Commentary between screenshots.

The mainstream American culture (which has shifted greatly over time) comes into conflict with a minority. It smashes them, abuses them, harnesses their bodies, criminalizes their culture, then suddenly reverses course and venerates these noble people.  Rinse and repeat as he borders change and new immigrants come in.  Native Americans are the clearest and most extreme example of moving from genocide to reveneration, but there’s others.  Let’s look at my own history:

Irish?  Scum, potato farming drunks, barely better than darkies.  In fact the “white” majority made the Irish afraid of emancipation, because the blacks would all come North and take the low paying jobs that only Irish would do.  Now everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.  Kiss my ass, I actually am Irish.  (To a point- my great grandfather was a war orphan from a part of Ireland that was never really fully held by centuries of occupiers and had a lot of British troops on the prowl- there’s at least a few British soldiers in my Irish ancestry, an interesting possible precursor to the Nigerian section below.)

German?  Once the endless tide of the liberal Catholic immigrant horde fleeing war and oppression in Europe, threatening to destroy America.  Now, firmly a part of the “white” majority, despite the two world wars.  That changed fast.

Ashkenazi?  Russian AND Jewish?  Not as welcome in the United States as they thought when they took the boats over from the old country, but at least it’s better than pogroms by idiots who believed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  No wonder so many became gangster, just like my great grandfather, the mysterious “Mr. X”.  A century later and most Americans can quote entire episode of Sienfeld.  Be the Master of Your Own Domain. 

Nigerian?  Tough tits, America, my black great great great great great grandma was bought by my white great great great great great grandpa, they had a daughter, repeat for several generations, and my grandfather had a nice tan but never knew he was a descendant of multiple generations of slaves and their rapists.  That’s some fucked-up genetic baggage.  I’m here, I’m 1/64 Black, and I’m here to stay.

Rant over.  Éire go Brách, Slava Ukraini.

Quick Shots: Texas Rising

 Boy, do I love the Texas Rising miniseries that the History Channel put out.  Except, well…

The costumes are great but off by about 20 years.

Santa Anna deserved a better actors than Oliver Martinez.

I’m usually not one to shout “RACISM!!!” like an SJW, but what’s the deal with Amen Igbinosun’s portrayal of Nate?

At some point, someone has to acknowledge that slavery was illegal in Mexico and a big motivator for the revolution was the expansion of slavery-based cotton farming.

The quickdraws with flintlocks looked ridiculous.

At least it’s more historical than Ancient Aliens and Pawn Storage Wars.

Besides all that, I really enjoyed it.  The series has a great feel to it, a pretty wide group of interesting characters, and I really enjoyed the “not quite soldiers, not quite outlaws” nature of the Rangers.  They also did a nice job of seating the Texas Revolution as an engagement between nations and all the accompanying geopolitics.  If you want to break out from the typical western, see some great (if slightly anachronistic) costumes, and catch some snappy dialog by great actors, check out a few episodes.  It's a shame there's not season 2, I would have loved their promised take on the Comanche Wars.

Oh, and the “Yellow Rose of Texas”, the mixed-race prostitute that saved Texas by spying on the Mexican army, plays a prominent (and sometimes) naked role.

Quick Shots: Dead Again In Tombstone

 

I tried.

Dear Lord, I tried. 

I tried because I respect Danny Trejo. 

I tried because any weird western film deserves a respectful watch. 

I tried because of the images below which promised that there had to be something cool and fun and decadent to be seen.

But, ultimately, I gave up after an hour.

Lone Ranger and Tonto reintroduce the Midnight Theater

While rereading old posts I ran across one from 2013 about a parody porn movie being made about the Lone Ranger (called, appropriately, Lone Ranger XXX). Just like the low-budget “mock busters” designed to have the look and feel of highly anticipated blockbusters, the porn industry has been putting out parodies of popular films, often sticking much closer to the source material than the powers that be at Disney and Warner Brothers do with the expanding comic book movie franchises. 

I poked around a bit and found that Lone Ranger XXX has indeed been made and released; I also learned that a site called Adult DVD Empire, a sort of Amazon Prime of porn, not only has all of their movies organized by genre, but also has screenshots of most of them. Yes, there’s a western genre label. Yes, I have a lot of screenshots. Yes, there is going to be a Midnight Theater version of Lascivious Screenshots coming to a blog near you.