Directed By: Various
Starring: Various
Trivia: These trailers were hand-picked by the employees of the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX
After opening up their vaults for 42nd Street Forever, Vol. 5, The gang at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, put together their own collection of movie trailers in Trailer War, which features some of the craziest, goriest, sleaziest trailers from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. In short, it’s a fun-filled assortment of awesome!
Right off the bat, Trailer War gives us some doozies, including Stunt Rock, a 1980 action/musical directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith in which a variety of death-defying stunts are intermixed with concert footage of a rock band named Sorcery. This is followed by 1967’s Argo Man, The Fantastic Superman, an Italian film that looks as if it might be a hoot (a guy in a yellow jumpsuit runs around fighting criminals, occasionally taking a little time out to score with some beautiful babes). Deeper into the collection, we find trailers for movies like the 1979 kung-fu extravaganza, Eunuch of the Western Palace; Shoot, a 1976 drama / thriller in the same vein as Deliverance and Rituals (a group of buddies, played by, among others, Cliff Robertson, Ernest Borgnine, and Henry Silva, run into trouble while out hunting in the middle of the woods); and The Mad Adventures of ‘Rabbi’ Jacob, a French slapstick comedy from 1973. Yet of all the trailers presented, none is as crazy as the one for 1984’s Voyage of the Rock Aliens, a musical / sci-fi / comedy starring Pia Zadora, Ruth Gordon, Michael Berryman, and (in what looks like it might be a cameo appearance) Jermaine Jackson.
A handful of the trailers in Trailer War are for films I’ve seen before, like Partners (a 1982 comedy in which Ryan O’Neal and John Hurt play police detectives posing as a gay couple), Don’t Answer the Phone and The Mutations. For the most part, though, the movies featured in Trailer War were completely new to me, and much like the ones in the 42nd Street Forever series, I can’t wait to check some of them out!