42nd Street Forever Volume Two:
The Deuce
(Synapse Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2006)
review by Suicide Blonde

These days, when I can’t remember what trailers I saw five minutes into the movie, it’s refreshing to take a jaunt back in time to when movie trailers made you sit up and take notice.

42nd Street Forever Volume 2: The Deuce offers up 56 trailers for nudie, blaxploitation, biker, auto racing, sword-and-sandal, and just plain odd movies for your enjoyment. Although there are more trailers than in Synapse’s previous 42nd Street Forever collection, this compilation is less eclectic. This is both a good and a bad thing – good in that there are none of the icky, vaguely disturbing mondo movie trailers, bad in that the endearingly lame 70s-era porn trailers are for the most part missing. The result is that while this collection is a little less “out there”, it is less wearying, and would probably be a better initiation for people new to exploitation cinema.

The Deuce offers up its trailers grouped into rough categories, and there’s a few semi-respectable films here, including early works by David Cronenberg and Abel Ferrara. Also, be on the lookout for Tommy Lee Jones, with all his hair and before his face was carved of granite, in the trailer for the Rolling Thunder revenge drama. And you’ll see an astonishingly young Patrick Swayze in Skatetown USA.

The titles, listed here in alphabetical order, are:

…Tick …Tick …Tick
Amazons Of Rome
The Babysitter
Black Sampson
Born Losers
Burnout
The Clones
College Girls
The Curious Female
The Dark
Deadly Blessing
Delinquent Schoolgirls
Dirt
Dixie Dynamite
Dragstrip Riot
The Evictors
The Evil
Female Jungle
The Giant Gila Monster
Gigantis: The Fire Monster
The Guy From Harlem
Helga
The Hellcats
Hells Angels On Wheels
The Hideous Sun Demon
I A Woman
Invitation To Ruin
Kenner
Kiss The Girls And Make Them Die
The Last Of The Secret Agents?
Mission Mars
Mister Billion
The Monster Of Piedras Blancas
Ms. 45
Murders In The Rue Morgue
Pick-Up
The Pom-Pom Girls
Rabid
Revenge Of The Gladiators
Revolt Of The Slaves
Rolling Thunder
Samson And The Slave Queen
Savage
Skatetown USA
Spy In Your Eye
Stingray
Street Girls
Sugar Hill
Take A Hard Ride
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Trunk To Cairo
Van Nuys Blvd.
When Women Had Tails
Wild Rebels
The Woman Eater

Amazingly enough, I was sufficiently intrigued by some of the trailers to see about renting the movies themselves (Rolling Thunder, Sugar Hill, The Evictors, Murders in the Rue Morgue).  Most I’m content to let exist merely as trailers, though I would like to find out just what the heck “Kenner” is about – the trailer was one of the most incoherent I’ve ever seen.

If you want some entertainment but aren’t up for a sustained narrative more than three minutes long (we’ve all had those days), you could do worse than to pay a visit to The Deuce. And if you figure out what the “Kenner” trailer is about let me know.

Extras are virtually nonexistent – you can play all the trailers or select the one of your choice. Come on, guys – how about a little documentary about the 42nd street cinemas?