REDNECK down, DRESSED TO KILL coming up

Telly Savalas prepares to accept his Oscar for REDNECK

This past Wednesday we had the great pleasure of watching one of our most volatile actors, Telly Savalas, explode in a shower of high-energy emotive sparks. He shows zero restraint. It's a nutso, psychotic performance. And Franco Nero's there too, though Savalas gives off so much power the other stars tend to get lost in the coma of light around him. I don't think I'll ever lose the auditory memory of Mark Lester yelling "mow SKEET ohhh!"

Quality stuff.


This week we'll be watching one of my favorite films by one of my favorite filmmakers: Brian De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL. I still remember the controversy it caused. I saw it at Earl Vanderheyden's house (his parents had Showtime and mine had HBO, it was really either/or back then) and thought it was the scariest, most intense thing I'd ever seen. I didn't see it again until 6 or 7 years ago and was struck by how funny it is and how much the story of Keith Gordon's investigation parallels the filmmaking process itself, and his obsession with getting to the heart of a Hitchcockian murder recalls De Palma's own celebrated status as the Hitch of the '70s and '80s - a constructor of shock machines, but also a reverse-engineer of shock. It's a really good film and you want to see this on the big screen if you're here. It's still controversial and doesn't get dragged out (heh heh) for a lot of theatrical screenings.