True Crime (1996 DTV)

vt Dangerous Kiss; vt True Detective
US / 94 minutes / color with some bw / Jonathan Furie, Trimark Dir & Scr: Pat Verducci Pr: Jonathan Furie, Andrew Hersh Cine: Chris Squires Cast: Kevin Dillon, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Bowen, Jennifer Savidge, Joshua Schaefer, Tara Subkoff, Marla Sokoloff, Bill Nunn, Ann Devaney, David Packer, Alissa Dowdy, Aimee Brooks, Ashley Crow.

Embarrassingly often, direct-to-video movies compare rather favorably to their big-screen counterparts. Far more frequently, they have a sort of hokey small-budget TV-movie-style charm that transcends all other considerations. And then there are DTVs like True Crime.

Catholic highschool kid Mary Giordano (Silverstone) is obsessed with magazines like True Crime. (Do such mags still exist? I remember reading them as a schoolboy in the 1960s, but I was under the impression they’d vanished long ago.) Kathleen (Dowdy), the younger sister of one of Mary’s classmates, Margie Donlevy (Brooks), has been

Girl in Gold Boots (1968)

US / 94 minutes / color / Mikels, Geneni Dir & Pr: Ted V. Mikels Scr: Leighton J. Peatman, Arthur A. Names, John T. Wilson Cine: Bob Maxwell Cast: Jody Daniel, Leslie McRae, Tom Pace, Mark Herron, Bara Byrnes, William Bagdad, Victor Izay, Harry Lovejoy, James Victor, The “Gold Boot” Girl Dancers, Chris Howard & The Third World, Preston Epps.

Michele Casey (McRae), waitress in the remote roadside diner where her drunken father (Izay) is the cook, dreams of becoming a professional go-go dancer in Hollywood. When petty crook Simon “Buz” Nichols (Pace) drops by and tells her of his sister Joannie (Byrnes), a headlining go-go dancer in Hollywood’s Haunted House club who could probably get Michele a job, Michele quickly accepts his offer of a ride to LA. En route they pick up a hitch-hiker, Finlay “Critter” Jones (Daniel), and soon there are tensions between the two men over Michele.

Even so, they make it to the Haunted House, whose owner, Leo McCabe (Herron), is soon persuaded by Michele’s youthful charms to add her to the go-go troupe. Joannie, who seems somewhat past her sell-by date, teaches Michele the dancing ropes, but it’s soon evident that Joannie’s strung out on drugs . . . and that drug-trafficking is the main business of the club, not the nightly performances by the dancers. Buz leaps happily into this milieu, becoming right-hand man to Leo’s right-hand man Marty (Bagdad).

Michele (Leslie McRae) demonstrates her go-go dancing skills, such as they are.

Critter, who eventually admits to being a draft-dodger, soon sees clearly enough what’s going on, and tries to persuade Michele to leave with him, but she believes Leo’s declarations that

Wenn es Nacht Wird auf der Reeperbahn (1967)

vt When Night Falls on the Reeperbahn; vt Trip with the Devil; vt Uneasy Summer

WG / 96 minutes / color / Constantin Dir & Scr: Rolf Olsen Pr: Heinz Willeg Cine: Franz X. Lederle Cast: Erik Schumann, Fritz Wepper, Marianne Hoffmann, Jürgen Draeger, Konrad Georg, Marlis Draeger, Tanja Gruber, Willi Rose, Gabriele Sharon, Fritz Schütter, Heinz Reincke, Herbert Tiede, Karl Lieffen, Rudolf Schündler, Brigitte Schacht, Frank Nossack, Fanny Herrera, Günter Lüdke, Dieter Wagner, Erni Mangold.

Set in Hamburg, an unabashed exploitationer. Staggering through the streets as if drunk, her clothes partly torn from her, Eva Falsacher (uncredited) is the victim of a hit-and-run accident, the driver being the supposedly respectable businessman Hans Henningsen (Schündler). He has just been with harlot Wanda (Mangold), who has stolen his wallet; her pimp, Uwe Wagenknecht (Reincke) uses the wallet to blackmail Henningsen.

Meanwhile, maverick investigative journalist Danny Sonntag (Schumann), despite the contrary instructions of his editor, Manfred Nagel (Wagner), is probing the city’s rash of LSD-related crimes. One night he’s ambushed by a group of stocking-masked thugs who make it clear they’re beating him up because of the articles he’s been publishing about their enterprises. By coincidence, he’s discovered and rescued by Uwe and Wanda. (The next day he can barely walk, and his face is a mass of bandages. A couple of days later there’s nary a scab left. They heal fast, these journalists.)

Danny (Erik Schumann)  interviews his contact Mumps (Willi Rose) at Mumps’s workplace.

It doesn’t take too long for Danny and ourselves to learn that, led by the sociopathic Feuer-Hotte (Jürgen Draeger), the sons of some of Hamburg’s business and social leaders are