made with
google translate
sorry for the mistakes
Hollywood Boulevard
Bizarre events in
Hollywood. Joe Dante in his debut directs, together with Allan Arkush,
a film produced by New World Pictures, i.e. by Roger Corman, who with
Jon Davison set himself the goal of making the least expensive film of
all time. Sixty thousand dollars budget.
They ruthlessly plunder clips from Corman's films, disassemble them,
reassemble them and not content with that, they also take a lot of
quotes and jokes. In order not to bore you with a long shopping list, I
will leave the references here.
I should add, however, that they close the story (not a spoiler) with
Robby the Robot auditioned for an, eventual, remake of Gone with the
Wind.
Hollywood Boulevard is simply a film ironising b movies, curiously
produced by the King of the genre, who in addition to irony adds a
mysterious murderer and the inevitable boobs that cannot be missing in
works like this.
Quite a mess, to say the least, and what's more, the first few minutes
make one think of the classic story of the pretty provincial girl who
goes to Hollywood trying to make it big but ends up in a bad way. But
this is not the case.
She is Candy Hope, played by Candice Rialson, a beautiful and talented
b-movie starlet who did not achieve the success she would have deserved
in her career, but who, in the words of Quentin Tarantino, inspired
Bridget Fonda's character in Jackie Brown. Our aspiring actress, who is
renamed Candy Wednesday by her cunning manager played by the good Dick
Miller who uses the name Walter Paisley as in Bucket of Blood, after a
few attempts ends up working in a war b movie, titled Machete Maidens
and filmed in the Philippines. The crew is a hodgepodge of people
without art or part, from the director to the star Mary McQueen played
by Mary Woronov, another name linked to Corman but also to Andy Warhol.
And above all, someone gets killed in 'mysterious' accidents.
The film is horrendous (the scenes in which we see him in a drive-in
are beautiful) but our Candy does not give up and we find her with the
same production in a sci-fi western, in which again, someone dies in
strange circumstances. It is a mysterious assassin whom we see masked
like all assassins. But this plays in our Candy's favour.
A film that is a b movie, laughing at b movies and Hollywood. An
outcome that is funny, absurd and without the slightest control. An
exercise in self-mockery, deliberately exaggerated, well researched and
well realised and with that slasher touch that frames everything.
After all, Roger Corman is behind it all. And what more do you want?