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5.9/10
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A young woman arrives in Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. An incompetent agent hooks her up with a production company which specializes in low budget B-movie fair, plagued by strange... Read allA young woman arrives in Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. An incompetent agent hooks her up with a production company which specializes in low budget B-movie fair, plagued by strange deadly accidents.A young woman arrives in Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. An incompetent agent hooks her up with a production company which specializes in low budget B-movie fair, plagued by strange deadly accidents.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis movie was shot on short ends. "Short ends" are the parts of film stock that are not processed for developing. If only part of a roll of film is actually used, the developer will only develop the part that was used and leave the unused part in the can. The unexposed parts (the short ends) can then be sold for later use. Low budget productions will often buy these since they are sold at a discount price. This can backfire as there is no way of knowing of the quality of the film, which often explains why a low budget production result in a low quality film.
- GoofsDuring one sequence, two women take out Frankenstein's "Monster" car from the film "Death Race 2000" and a lot of footage of the car from that film is used. However, one shot used from "Death Race 2000" of the car driving through a bomb field is actually Machine Gun Joe Viterbo's car, not Frankenstein's.
- Quotes
Mary McQueen: You'll never be a star now, you little cunt!
- Crazy creditsAll Rights Reserved Including Zeppelins.
- ConnectionsEdited from The Big Doll House (1971)
Featured review
all over the place in a good, zany R-rated way
Joe Dante got his start as a director in collaboration with director Allan Arkush on this zany send-up of low-budget film-making, lampooning their own mentor/boss Roger Corman with "Miracle Pictures - if it's a good movie, it's a Miracle!" It's also an homage to an obscure Bela Lugosi flick, The Death Kiss, about a death on a horror movie set. This story takes that premise a little further by making it about a series of deaths, seemingly (at first) unrelated, but soon enough showing a pattern of the female stars being targeted. Who is the culprit isn't really as important, or as entertaining until the last few minutes anyway, as seeing the whole fun/rotten atmosphere of down-and-dirty B-movie-making.
It's not that every joke (intended or not) always works, and some of the acting, even if intentionally, is quite pitiful. But Dante and Arkush are putting so much there on the screen via Patrick Hobby's screenplay that enough of it really does stick. Some of it attributable to the plucky can-do attitude of the character Candy Hope (and equally fun to watch, Candice Rialson) and how she observes and becomes apart of the insanity and snobish-ness of the film crew. Lines also stick out as being the kind you want to quote for weeks ("Your motivation is to kill hundreds of Philippine soldiers!"), and acting from the likes of Dick Miller as the well-meaning agent and Paul Bartel as the pretentious director Erich von Leppe.
The jokes and gags keep coming, and often at a quick enough pace - there's a big shootout between the girls and (stock footage of) Philippene soldiers that is a lot of fun, and a car that's brakes are cut off which allows for a tremendously goofy car chase scene (the car itself possibly on loan from Death Race 2000). And there's a hysterical sequence at a drive-in movie theater for the premiere of Candy's big-screen debut that turns out horribly. It's a sometimes sloppy comedy but that's part of the charm, and a lot of ingenuity goes a long way (one sequence at the movie set after hours where a killer lurks after one of the girls is actually very well directed and moody, a sign of things to come from Dante especially).
It's not that every joke (intended or not) always works, and some of the acting, even if intentionally, is quite pitiful. But Dante and Arkush are putting so much there on the screen via Patrick Hobby's screenplay that enough of it really does stick. Some of it attributable to the plucky can-do attitude of the character Candy Hope (and equally fun to watch, Candice Rialson) and how she observes and becomes apart of the insanity and snobish-ness of the film crew. Lines also stick out as being the kind you want to quote for weeks ("Your motivation is to kill hundreds of Philippine soldiers!"), and acting from the likes of Dick Miller as the well-meaning agent and Paul Bartel as the pretentious director Erich von Leppe.
The jokes and gags keep coming, and often at a quick enough pace - there's a big shootout between the girls and (stock footage of) Philippene soldiers that is a lot of fun, and a car that's brakes are cut off which allows for a tremendously goofy car chase scene (the car itself possibly on loan from Death Race 2000). And there's a hysterical sequence at a drive-in movie theater for the premiere of Candy's big-screen debut that turns out horribly. It's a sometimes sloppy comedy but that's part of the charm, and a lot of ingenuity goes a long way (one sequence at the movie set after hours where a killer lurks after one of the girls is actually very well directed and moody, a sign of things to come from Dante especially).
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- Quinoa1984
- Dec 13, 2009
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- The Starlets
- Filming locations
- Hollywood Sign, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA(climax at the Hollywood Sign)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $60,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 23 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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