Hollywood Boulevard (1976; Joe Dante & Allan
Arkush) is at best a curio—conceived as a bet between New World honcho Roger Corman
and producer Jon Davison (who later produced Airplane, Robocop and Starship
Troopers), that Davison and then-New World trailer editors Dante and Arkush
couldn’t put together a flick in 10 days, using short ends and footage swiped
from a dozen other New World action flicks.
At the beginning of the flick, there is some great
location footage of downtown Hollywood at its seedy best (I wonder if Los
Angeles Plays Itself used any of it?),
lots of boobs, and good swiped footage from various Filipino
and Poor White Trash actioners previously released by Corman’s New World, but
otherwise,
Hollywood Boulevard is a bad flick, honestly—not funny
and quite slapdash.
The jokes here make Abbott & Costello seem like
Noel Coward—and they are so dated, as
if these people were beamed in from the 1930s.
Wackiness is okay, but when there wasn’t stock footage
going on, the flick was a snoozer. Even Dick Miller and Mary Woronov seemed a
little lost.
The movie is currently available via Netflix Streaming—if
you’re curious about New World Pictures and the people who got their start
there, Hollywood Boulevard is worth fast-forwarding through.
You can’t hate the flick, it’s too good-natured for
that, but you can mock it—and then be grateful that the directors’ next
individual film projects turned out to be such winners: 1978’s Piranha (Dante)
and Rock & Roll High School (Arkush).
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