Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Directors:

Allan Arkush
Joe Dante

Writer:

Danny Opatoshu (written by)

Release Date:

25 April 1976 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller | Comedy

Tagline:

The street where starlets are made!

Plot:

Joe Dante directs this story of the glamour, the glitter, the magical allure of Hollywood... and not a speck of it rubs off on Miracle Pictures...

Plot Keywords:

Hollywood | Black Comedy | Robby The Robot | Wilhelm Scream | Show Business

Cast

Candice Rialson	...	Candy Hope
Mary Woronov	...	Mary McQueen
Rita George	...	Bobbi Quackenbush
Jeffrey Kramer	...	Patrick Hobby
Dick Miller	...	Walter Paisley
Richard Doran	...	P.G.
Tara Strohmeier	...	Jill McBain
Paul Bartel	...	Erich Von Leppe
John Kramer	...	Duke Mantee
Jonathan Kaplan	...	Scotty
Billy C. Farlow	...	Singer (as His Lost Airmen)
George Frayne	...	Commander Cody (as Commander Cody)
George Wagner	...	Cameraman
W.L. Luckey	...	Rico Bandello
David Boyle	...	Obnoxious Kid

Also Known As:

The Starlets (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:16 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Gilmore Drive-In Theater - 3rd Street & Fairfax Avenue, Fairfax, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

New World Entertainment Films

Trivia:

Filmed in ten days in October 1975 for less than $60,000.

Quotes:

Candy Hope: Wow, Walter, what a neat car!
Walter Paisley: Yeah, it's a Rolls Canardly.
Candy Hope: A Rolls Canardly?
Walter Paisley: Yeah, it rolls down one hill and can 'ardly get up the next.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

no Miracle ... just a good picture

I spent the best years of the 1970s at the drive-in, and this film is a most enjoyable look at drive-in movies and the people who made them. If you don't count the Ingmar Bergmans, it may be the best picture ever released by New World Studios. I saw this on big screen, before the print had gotten very many scratches, and more recently on video where it held up as any other classic does.

New World editors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush were allowed by boss Roger Corman to direct a picture, within very strict budgetary limitations, and they produced this classic look at drive-in films and the people who make them, just a few years before the whole genre was kicked into limbo by the VCR. Through clever use of action footage from older New World films, Arkush and Dante brought their film in on budget and earned their first professional directorial credits.

Aspiring actress Candice Rialson (wow!) hits town, fresh from Indiana, and secures the services of scruffy talent agent Walter Paisley (okay!), who gets her work in lowbudget pix from Miracle Studios ("It it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!") -- where they make movies like BAD GIRL IN BOYS TOWN and ATOMIC WAR BRIDES, where director Paul Bartel reminds Godzilla, "Your motivation in this scene is to step on as many people as possible," and where Mary Woronov is the queen of the lot. Skinny snarling starlets blast away with machine guns. Extras from THE HOT BOX fall out of trees in the Philippines. Model-Ts crash in BIG BAD MAMA. Candy jumps to dodge rolling car debris. Wait a minute, somebody is killing the starlets here at Miracle! Rita George dies! Tara Strohmeier dies (NOOO!!!!). Who's doing it? Is Candy next on the list? Who will survive and what will be left of them?

We also visit a glam movie premiere at a Valley drive-in, watch a boy-girl scene scored to a somewhat revised version of "Everybody's Truckin'," with the band serenading the gropers live, and we see Paisley audition Robby the Robot ("Let me hear you say 'Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn'"). Candice Rialson is perfect (in her best role) as the naive Candy, Mary Woronov goes gleefully over the top as movie legend Mary McQueen, and Dick Miller should be in EVERY motion picture that comes out of Hollywood. The treatment of the wacky world of drive-in moviemaking is affectionate, there are a lot of cameos, and anyone who likes Dante's or Arkush's other work will find this well worth the 80-odd minutes it takes to watch. However, I have never been able to spot Belinda Balaski anywhere in this, and she's not named in the IMDB credits. Is this the only Dante film she's not in?

Corman remade the film in 1989 as HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD 2, with Ginger Lynn Allen in the lead, but it is just a remake, not a sequel, and even though the budget is considerably larger it is not as fresh or as funny (though it's not as bad as the remakes of BIG BAD MAMA or ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL).

This film belongs on a drive-in screen, not on your tv set, but since that is the only place you're ever going to see it now, crank up your living room Rolls Canardly and have some fun. I used to give this a rating of 9 on the IMDB scale, but having finally seen THE PASSION OF JEANNE D'ARC in the meantime, I have lowered BOULEVARD to a more realistic 8.