NY Daily News article - not good....

Capt_Redneck · July 24, 2005

I read this article this morning when I went to get. It was on the front cover , almost a small headline with a pic of JS. This is not looking good for the movie as it is compared to "Showgirls" in the article....

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/331043p-282537c.html

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Let's talk trash

By HENRY CABOT BECK

Sunday, July 24th, 2005

Hazzard County, Ga., is a mythical American place where the women are beautiful, the cops are dumb, and there's no creek so wide that a good muscle car can't jump it.

"The Dukes of Hazzard," opening Aug. 5, is the big-screen version of the CBS 1979-'85 TV series. Both are a distillation of all those high-octane Li'l Abner movies set in the rural South in the '70s, many of them starring Burt Reynolds, who has a key role alongside Jessica Simpson, Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville in the new movie.

These backroad favorites are just a small group in the bold and brazen trash movie category, which has entertained (and appalled) audiences over the years - some because the filmmakers knew their movies were awful, and many others because they obviously didn't.

The modern age of the trash movie probably started with the overwrought adaptations of Harold Robbins novels like "The Carpetbaggers" (1964), a fictionalized take on the life of Howard Hughes, and "Where Love Has Gone" (1964), a bodice-ripper that pitted Susan Hayward against Bette Davis, both on and off the screen. There was no clear winner.

A couple of years later, Robbins had a new competitor in the trash novel marketplace: Jacqueline Susann, whose "Valley of the Dolls" set book racks afire. The story of a group of women and their struggles with sex, drugs and show business became a film in 1967. Starring Patty Duke and Barbara Parkins, it set a new standard for squalid spectacle. It's fair to say that "Desperate Housewives," not to mention other primetime soaps, like "Dallas" and "Dynasty," owe a huge debt to Robbins and Susann.

The '70s was trash's golden decade. Moviegoers could feast on Blaxploitation films, women-in-prison pictures like Jonathan Demme's "Caged Heat" (1974), classic horror films like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) and "Halloween" (1978), and kung-fu flicks popularized by Bruce Lee.

But it was movies that pretended to be serious dramas, often with major stars, that provided the most fun at their own expense.

"Caligula" (1979), starring distinguished British actors like Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud, Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell, was an unbearably awful exercise in sadism and explicit sex. It was put together by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione at the end of a decade of rampant self-indulgence. What could screenwriter Gore Vidal have been thinking of?

In 1982's "Q," Michael Moriarty played a lowlife junkie and bebop pianist who discovers the secret nest of a lethal Aztec monster while hiding out from bad guys in the top of the Chrysler building. If there were Oscars awarded for great over-the-top acting in cheesy horror movies, Moriarty would have taken one home that year.

Speaking of awards, Pia Zadora took home a Golden Globe for her acting in the turgid, incestuous drama "Butterfly" (1982) and then followed it with the showbiz b****fest "The Lonely Lady" (1983).

"Mommie Dearest" (1981), Faye Dunaway's infamous attempt to portray legendary movie star Joan Crawford as a sadist, netted six out of a possible 11 Razzies, the awards handed out for the worst movies of the year.

That might have been a record were it not for "Showgirls" (1995), the supremely tacky story of a couple of aspiring Las Vegas dancers played by Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley. That movie, which instantly became a bad-taste classic, set an all time Razzie award record with 13 nominations and seven wins.

"Exit to Eden" (1994), which must still make Dana Delany blush, was almost as tawdry and not half as funny. "Striptease" (1996), starring Demi Moore at her most braless and Burt Reynolds at his lewdest, was another milestone in vulgarity; If Moore had any qualms about stripping on screen, her record $12 million salary must have eased them.

Gleefully trashy movies shouldn't be dismissed as the bottom of cinema's, well, trash heap. Highly regarded directors such as Quentin Tarantino and John Waters have taken inspiration from them. And we bet there's more than a few highbrow critics who've dutifully sat through an art-house snore wishing they could sneak into a "Showgirls" or a "Dukes of Hazzard."

Capt_Redneck · July 24, 2005