IOW: CONTINUE with a VIEW!
Our third time is definitely the charm with Images of the Week as we bring you thrice the Dark Maze Studios action! Despite our set visit on PRESS START 2 CONTINUE and familiarity with the PRESS START universe (even if many references blast well over our heads) we’re still not exactly sure what happens in the follow-up to everybody’s favorite Champaign-Urbana videogame inspired lo-fi adventure-comedy. In the best film exploitation sense, the first official still issued by Dark Maze for CONTINUE tells us something we already expect – that Lin-Ku (Al Morrison) will mouth off and/or fight opponents – and something we didn’t know until now – that Lin-Ku meets a new foe in All-American boxing fatigues, played by Dominique Worsley – without really telling us what the heck is going on!
On the flip side, CONTINUE director Ed Glaser happily indulges his fascination for “remakesploitation,” those international genre movies aping popular American films with reckless abandon, via the new Web series DEJA VIEW. Of the five episodes posted so far, your humble editor’s favorite ones cover the Bollywood supernatural thriller MAHAKAAL (1993), an extrapolation of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series, and SUPERMEN DÖNÜYOR (1979), the infamous “Turkish SUPERMAN,” so we’ll include these below for your enjoyment. Other episodes to be found on the Dark Maze Web site will introduce you to a Bollywood MATRIX/WHOLE NINE YARDS mishmash called AWARA PAAGAL DEEWANA, a comedic Brazilian goof on PLANET OF THE APES translated as O TRAPALHÃO NO PLANALTO DOS MACACOS, and the English-language Italian JAWS knock-off GREAT WHITE which Universal Studios successfully kept out of American theaters. Their histories are very interesting and Glaser does a great job characterizing each film by the milieu in which it was produced.
Oh, for an exposé on that awful looking, brand-spanking-new bastardization of KING KONG which swipes footage and audio from, of all things, the 1976 remake produced by Dino De Laurentiis – set to a Bollywood beat, of course. What, you folks don’t believe me?
~ Jason Pankoke