I am a poor college student. I have over fifteen hundred films on DVD and Blu Ray. This does not compute. How does one so destitute amass such an incredible collection?
I buy everything on the cheapness. And now you can too!
The Warner Archives Collection is a treasure trove of often amazing cinema obscura – where you can find everything from Noir You Never Knew Existed…to awesome Gene Roddenberry smut (and I don’t mean Earth: Final Conflict). Right now, a great deal of it is on sale for the holidays. And I’d like to recommend a specific title to you here – in our forum…
Gordon (Shaft) Parks fantastic 1974 feature The Super Cops emerged at the Archives not long after Edgar Wright screened it at the New Beverly Cinema as part of his ongoing The Wright Stuff exhibitions. It’s truly a singular film experience. Even though it’s ostensibly a buddy cop action-comedy, it’s like no other film of the genre. For one, the whole “mismatched cops” template doesn’t exist here – these guys are pals from the start and friends to the end. Rather than butt heads with one another, they come up against the shit attitudes of other cops unwilling to bust ass – or bad guys – with the speed, precision, and almost swashbuckling zeal they manage. At the same time, both men are charmingly awkward goofballs.
David Selby and Ron Leibman star as real-life police officers Robert Hantz and David Greenberg – and their quirky camaraderie and intentionally dorky banter would be fit for an episode of Super Friends were it not filled to the brim with f-bombs and attitude. The film is wonderfully tone-deaf, filled with Bed-Stuy street-level drugs and prostitution (made all the more grim via grimy, desperate-living location shooting) and loaded with astute observations regarding race and class conflict – but the set pieces are kinda’ frenzied four-color fun (one chase scene sees the NYPD duo chase a couple of drug runners through a building as it’s being torn apart via wrecking ball, another sees them literally dropping in on some would-be mooky assassins). The whole thing plays like a twelve-year-old Shane Black’s first draft of Lethal Weapon, and the comic/cartoon aspects of the film should come as no surprise when I tell you that TV Batman scribe Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the script (adapted from a true-crime book of the same name).
Semple’s involvement is so very fitting when you learn that the real Hantz/Greenberg tandem was known on the streets and the force as Batman and Robin (in the archival footage that begins the film, the real Dave Greenberg is wearing a T-Shirt with the old-school Adam West Batman logo on it), and he does a great job walking a line between ’70s-era cop-movie grit and utter schtickiness. This flick is a really great time. Thrill to a day long past, when the NYPD did more than beat the working poor with sticks – check out The Super Cops!
Much of the time, the price tag for Warner Archive stuff is a real deterrent. It’s hard to shell out $30.00 for a bare-bones DVD with often dubious image quality. So when a sale comes along wherein I can tell you that you can pick up this great flick for $15.00 shipped – well, that’s me doing a public service.
GO GET THE SUPER COPS FOR $15.00!
FIN.