Lonely Street - She (1985)

Here's a couple of things I saw on Comcast's On Demand. I always look in the free section, trying to make the monthly cost of cable be worth something. Occasionally I find something that's a keeper. The first movie is the keeper, the second movie isn't.

 

Lonely Street is a 2009 movie with Jay Mohr. It's based on a novel of the same name by Steve Brewer. I haven't read it or even heard of it. I have been a bit of a fan of Jay Mohr for a while. His 1999 tv series Action is one of my favorite shows. It's not in the top ten but certainly it is in my top 50 favorite series of all time. It has a super sarcastic and bleak look at the movie business and Lonely Street has a bit of that darkness. Mohr plays a low level private dick who takes whatever job he can get. He'll tell you about it in the trailer but don't judge him, at least not yet. When Mike Starr comes knocking with a job he goes off to see the reclusive Mr. Aaron. Robert Patrick plays that character and I did not recognize him. Mr Aaron hires Jay to keep an eye on a fan who's been spying on him. Joe Mantegna plays a sleazy record producer. Mohr's real life wife, Nikki Cox, plays a reporter who gets involved with the case. I didn't know much about her until I went and looked at the IMDb. She'd been in plenty of tv that I never saw. Another reporter, played by John F O'Donahue, gets murdered and his boss, Lindsay Price, comes snooping around. Lindsay plays the love interest for Jay in the movie. There are plenty of goofy characters to help fill up the movie. There's a lot of jokes and some of them were pretty funny. For some reason I enjoyed the game that the hustler played by William Katt runs. You get a group of people and they stand around in a circle. They toss some money into the middle of the circle and someone jumps in and tries to get the money while everyone kicks them. Jay jumps into the circle to raise some money. Just some goofy shit that struck me as funny. It all works better with Jay's voice over. I'm going to keep an eye out for the dvd on this one. I just looked and it's under 4 bucks at Amazon as I write this. It also comes in a three pack with a couple of other indie films that I don't know anything about but look vaguely interesting. You can go look if you are inclined.

 

The 1982 version of the H Rider Haggard's She is pretty bad. The story was originally set in the past but for this low-budget Italian production it's been changed to a post-apocalyptic future with a lot of people trying to live while thugs come rob and murder them. I know if I was H Rider I'd pop these guys right in their nut sacks for ruining a good adventure story. Sandahl Bergman plays She. She's never been anyone I cared that much to see. There's plenty of mediocre fighting and people getting slaughtered. There are lots of odd ball characters in goofy costumes. Some of the links will take you to reviews that have a lot of pictures. A lot of fans seem to like the movie because it's so bad. It gets a rather high 4.4 on the IMDb. I could barely give it a three. Occasionally it's mildly humorous but mostly I just laughed at what was on the screen. I wouldn't recommend it.