FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Video Vulture by John Tebbutt Sadly, you can’t see the films described in this week’s column; they don’t exist. However, all of these films were seriously considered for release at one time. Some had millions of dollars spent on them, while others didn’t get much farther than the "idea" stage. • Ilsa Meets Bruce Lee in The Devil’s Triangle: Man, oh, man, what a title. Imagine the derisive laughter this aborted oddity inspired when it was advertised in VARIETY. The invincible Bruce Lee facing Dyanne Throne’s bosomy "She-Wolf of the S.S.," while trapped in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Truly, the mind boggles. "The Match of the Century!" screams the poster, which also promises an appearance by a great white shark, and broken box office records. Unfortunately, the film never appeared, and disappointed softcore/kung fu fans will have to content themselves with Kung Fu Leung Strikes Emmanuelle. (Yes, it’s real.) • Smokey Is The Bandit: When Burt Reynolds declined to star in Smokey and The Bandit 3, his costar Jackie Gleason was hired to play both roles. This vaguely surreal innovation crashed and burned with test audiences, so it was re-shot with Jerry Reed as the Bandit. (Burt Reynolds finally did show up for a brief ad-libbed cameo at the end of the film. An extended version of this pointless scene aired on T.V.’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.) I applaud the producer’s nerve to put such a bizarre spin on a popular film series. Unfortunately, the whole point of sequels is to avoid innovation and to stick to tried-and-true formulas. • The Fly 2 (Sam Raimi’s version): Speaking of gutsy innovative sequels, I would have loved to have seen Sam Raimi’s sequel to Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly. When Raimi was offered the job, he would only agree to direct it if he could film it from the perspective of a tiny mutated fly that was slowly turning into a human. The answer was no, so Raimi walked and we got stuck with a mundane monster film instead. Nuts. • Bride of Die Hard (My title): In Die Hard, John McClane (Bruce Willis) rescues his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) from a crack team of terrorists. Then he does it again in Die Hard 2: Die Harder. I used to tell my friends, "I’m only watching another Die Hard movie if she rescues him this time!" Later, I found out that at one time, this idea really was pitched as the plot to one of the sequels. Now that would have been worth seeing! • Tigero: For the full story on this unmade masterpiece, check out the nifty documentary Tigero: A Film That Was Never Made (1994). It details Samuel Fuller’s return to a jungle village where, 40 years earlier, he had shot footage for a John Wayne film that sounds like it would have been very cool. Great for movie buffs. • The Breast of Russ Meyer: Russ Meyer’s last movie to date was 1979’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. Since then, he’s announced a number of projects that never got completed: a remake of his own Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! with Pandora Peaks; a "religious" epic called The Bra of God; a sequel to Mondo Topless; and The Breast of Russ Meyer. In an interview, Meyer described the latter as "Twelve hours of unfettered beauty, great history and humour! ...But I refuse to stop fishing and womanizing and having epicurean meals and generally having a good time, so it’ll be ready when it’s ready." (This was over 13 years ago, folks.) Perhaps Russ is just too wealthy to sweat about completing this movie, or maybe the proliferation of breast-enhancement surgery has removed the challenge from finding the "uniquely talented" actresses who populate his films. In any case, any new Meyer film is worth waiting for, and we’ll continue to be patient. (Meyer narrates Playboy Home Video’s Voluptuous Vixens, but it just isn’t the same.)

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