42nd Street Forever: Blu-ray Edition (2012)
Review by Jude Felton
If the thought of watching well over 3 ½ hours of the
finest in sleazy and filthy trailers is akin to having your face sandpapered I
recommend you stop reading right now. If, on the other hand, this sounds right
up your street, 42nd or otherwise, then you should stop reading now
and go and buy this thing of beauty.
With this release Synapse Films have taken trailers from
both their previous two DVD releases and added a whole load more and released a
behemoth of a Blu-ray. This is ‘sploitation heaven, and it has it all covered;
Sexploitation, Blaxploitation, Revenge flicks and everything in-between from a
grand era in cinema. Watching 42nd Street Forever is like reading
the world’s largest menu; you might not be sure what everything is, but once
you see it you just know you are going to love it.
In today’s age trailers, or previews or whatever you like
to call them, seems nothing more than a montage of all the film’s highlights,
scrapped together with ridiculous editing with no soul to them. There are of
course exceptions to this, but you have to remember that so many of the films
previewed on this release were put out by major studios. Can you imagine Warner
Bros. throwing out a Blaxploitation movie now? I thought not. I was only about
half an hour into 42nd Street Forever and I already had a list of
movies that I not only want to see, but found myself needing to see. The smile
on my face was ridiculous, I was chuckling to myself and I cared not one little
bit.
Now, I didn’t count the total amount of trailers
contained herein, and there are a shitload, but on the packaging it states that
there are over 80, and granted not all were great. These were few and far
between though and just help emphasize the variety of movies that are out
there, just waiting to be found. Some of the films previewed are fairly
obscure, to my eyes anyway, whereas some I have seen, or even own.
One of the joys of this release is down to its very
format; it consists purely of trailers. So, you don’t need to set aside 4 hours
to sit down and watch it. You can break it up into smaller segments without
losing the flow, although I very much doubt you will want to. Despite the
lengthy running time it actually speeds by and you will lose track of time.
Synapse really has released a beauty with this Blu-ray
edition, which also comes complete with an audio commentary, and I have
absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to any fan of the weird and
wonderful. Sleaze has never looked so good, of that you can be sure.
42nd Street Forever: Blu-ray Edition is released by Synapse Films on May 8th.
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