Trailer War Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Trailer War Blu-ray Movie Review

Short Subjects

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 19, 2012

Even those who didn't like Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino's and Robert Rodriguez's 2007 homage to exploitation cinema, enjoyed the fake trailers that played between the two halves of the main feature. Some said that Grindhouse would have been better if it had been made entirely of trailers.

Drafthouse Films has granted their wish, except that their trailers aren't fake. Through its affiliate, the American Genre Film Archive (or "AGFA"), Drafthouse has access to perhaps the largest collection of exploitation features and trailers in the world. Many are the only known copies. In an effort to promote the work of AGFA, and also no doubt as a tie-in to Drafthouse's release of the Eighties exploitation-style film Miami Connection, Drafthouse has released Trailer War, a nearly two-hour compilation of trailers from AGFA's vaults, selected—excuse me, "curated"—by programmers Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson, the latter being noteworthy as the visionary who rescued Miami Connection from obscurity. The curators were advised in their labors by director Joe Dante, who began his career in film cutting trailers for Roger Corman.

Trailer War is currently offered exclusively through Drafthouse Films's website. Predictably, however, resellers popped up as soon as the disc's street date arrived.

AGFA holds some remarkable examples of cinematic bad taste, and yet I'd wager that many readers of Blu-ray.com have seen one or more of the 45 films whose trailers have found their way into the compilation that is Trailer War. I've reviewed Blu-rays of schlock by Herschell Gordon Lewis and Doris Wishman, as well as the original Casino Royale (1966), but trash cinema and fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000 aren't my passion. Still, even I have seen a few of the films featured here. No, I won't say which ones.

The films can be as recent as the 1990s, but most are from the 1970s, which was the golden age of exploitation cinema. An occasional studio logo appears, but most of the domestic producing and releasing entities are now-defunct independents like American International Pictures or New World Pictures. A generous contingent of non-U.S. films is included, especially from Hong Kong and Taiwan, where martial arts and bad dubbing went hand in hand. Mexico, Italy and France are also represented (the French-dubbed trailer for Maniac Cop 2 is a high point).

The usual themes recur. In addition to kung fu and similar forms of combat, slasher and stalker storylines are common. So are aliens and space travel, following the success of Star Wars. The influence of blaxploitation movies and music-driven films like Saturday Night Fever is evident. And then there are one-of-a-kind, how-do-you-explain-this oddities like The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (a French farce involving Hassidic Jews and a bubble gum factory) and Partners, involving cops going undercover in San Francisco's gay community. (On the commentary track, the curators explain the latter as a product of too much cocaine in the Paramount executive suite.) And of course there's nudity and sex, lots of it, much more than filmmakers could get away with today if they expected to receive an R rating instead of NC-17. One cannot accurately describe the sexual content of these film as "gratuitous", since it's obvious from the trailers that, in the era predating both home video and internet porn, showing sex and bare skin was precisely the point.

The most useful information a review can provide for prospective purchasers of Trailer War is a complete listing of the film titles. Let's get started:

1. Stunt Rock
2. Argoman, The Fantastic Superman
3. Inframan
4. Voyage of the Rock Aliens (Pia Zadora, Craig Sheffer and, I kid you not, Jermaine Jackson)
5. Star Crash (how did Oscar winner Christopher Plummer end up here?)
6. Dungeon Master
7. Animal Protector (starring David Carradine, purportedly funded by animal rights groups and, from the trailer, apparently having nothing to do with the protection of animals—which may explain why only the trailer survives)
8. Eunuch of the Western Palace (even the trailer isn't for the squeamish)
9. The Tongfather
10. World War of Kung Fu
11. The Man from Hong Kong (starring George Lazenby, the one-off James Bond)
12. Con el Odio en el Piel (in Spanish only)
13. Black Samurai
14. Force Four
15. Force Five (no relation to Force Four)
16. Sister Streetfighter
17. Golden Needles (Joe Don Baker, Elizabeth Ashley and Burgess Meredith??)
18. Mitchell (Joe Don Baker . . . again)
19. Maniac Cop 2 (dubbed in French)
20. The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
21. Partners (the inspired comic pairing of Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt)
22. Amuck (Farley Granger and a lot of nudity)
23. Big Guns (Alain Delon as a hit man)
24. Mr. No Legs
25. Adults Only Snipe (not really a trailer; just a warning)
26. Lola's Mistake
27. Nightmare Honeymoon
28. Don't Answer the Phone
29. The Scaremaker
30. The Mutations (a low-rent recycling of Tod Browning's Freaks, featuring some of that film's original cast and a lot of latex)
31. Deranged (according to the commentary, this is the most accurate film depiction of Ed Gein, the killer who inspired Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, among others)
32. Shoot (Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine)
33. Dead End Drive In (drive ins as prisons)
34. Who Saw Her Die
35. Amin, the Rise and Fall (definitely not the Forest Whitaker film)
36. H.O.T.S.
37. The Beach Girls
38. Nudes on a Tiger Reef
39. The Boob Tube
40. Northville Cemetery Massacre
41. Amazing Grace (Moms Mabley, Slappy White and Stepin Fetchit)
42. The Lawyer (starring Barry Newman)
43. The Electric Chair
44. Women in Cell Block 7 (in English with Spanish subtitles)
45. Penitentiary
46. Thunder Cops

Trailer War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

What can one say about Drafthouse's 1080p, MPEG-2-encoded Blu-ray? The source materials are awful. Even the best of them are pocked and dusty. The worst are scratched, faded, snowy with damage and so lacking in color that the red of the "red-band" trailer screen barely manages to look pink. But what else would you expect from exploitation trailers made 30-40 years ago, treated badly and stored indifferently? The poor condition is part of the experience. The elements have been adequately scanned, and you can see what's happening to the extent that the original photography and editing were competent, which wasn't always the case. To watch Trailer War is to recognize just how well-made the fake trailers of Grindhouse really were.

Trailer War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

What's this, no lossless?? Sacrilege! How can one fully appreciate the intense scratchiness, the constant sharp popping, the unintelligible dubbing (including the original English dialogue now rendered in French or Spanish) with this compressed, lossy garbage?? Let's start an internet petition and boycott this shoddy excuse for a release until it's withdrawn and done right!!!

Actually, the trailers sound just fine, certainly no worse than they would have back in the day when they were run through an analog projector and pumped through a sound system that was hardly likely to have been either state-of-the-art or well-maintained. The encoding is Dolby Digital 2.0, and I urge listeners to switch off their surround decoding, unless you enjoy the sensation of being immersed in amplified analog noise. (In instances of extreme wear and tear, the noise can be louder than the soundtrack.)

Trailer War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson: One of the many advantages of having this commentary from the two programmers who chose the compilation is that they've not only seen many of the films, but also know something about the history of their production. Nilsen and Carlson have devoted much of their lives to tracking down these rarities, but the purchaser of Trailer War can get the benefit of their scholarly efforts (and I mean that sincerely) just by listening to the commentary.



• Legendary Joe Dante Talks Trailer Cutting (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:42): Dante recalls some of the trailers he cut for Roger Corman and confirms that the art of the trailer is often the practice of deceit. He also describes, with frank amusement, how he was "ruthless" at including spoilers in trailers for other directors' films, if he thought they would inspire viewers to buy tickets, but when it came time to cut trailers for his own movies, he suddenly developed scruples.



• Behind the Scenes at the American Genre Film Archive (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:25): Lars Nilsen gives a tour of an AGFA facility and provides a brief overview of AGFA's history and mission.



• TRAILER WAR Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1 & 1.78:1; 1:23): This may be the only trailer in history that's been built entirely from other trailers.



• Drafthouse Films Trailers (1080p)
• The Ambassador
• Bullhead
• The FP
• Klown
• Miami Connection
• Wake in Fright
• Drafthouse Alliance: This promo also plays at startup and is, unfortunately, non-skippable. The only plus is that it's less than a minute.



• Easter Egg: It shouldn't be hard (because there aren't that many options) to find the hidden icon that's a pair of dangling cherries. (Hint: The "Special Features" menu must be open.) Click on it, and you'll be taken to a clip (in 1080p) that's just over seven minutes and is introduced by a text screen that begins: "As we were gathering trailers for this compilation, we found a mysterious reel labeled only, 'Untitled Nude Clips'".

Trailer War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've always loved trailers, but in recent years I find them less enjoyable. According to Joe Dante's interview, trailers for new films are no longer cut by a single editor but are mash-ups of creations by various PR firms submitted to the studios for evaluation. That would explain a lot, although every so often you'll get a director with sufficient clout (and concern) to oversee the trailer for his or her film and release something with a distinctive personality. The trailers on Trailer War all have personalities, although they're frequently borderline certifiable. One thing's for certain—they aren't dull. Exploitation cinema being what it is, I eagerly await Trailer War 2. Highly recommended.