Change Your Image
cdleseurs1
As Arizona's Official Western Film Historian and Encore Fellow at Spirit of the West: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, he gives presentations on the western genre as well as touring the country hosting Q & A panels at celebrity western film festivals. Charlie has also written several books on the western film genre as well as being a staff writer for Arizona's Real Country Magazine.
Reviews
First Man on Mars (2016)
If you've seen First Man Into Space (1959), You've seen First Man On Mars.
It's hard to spoof 'vintage' drive-in fodder without some kind of understanding of the genre. Whereas those early films like 1959's "First Man into Space," was an earnest low-budget attempt, trying to use what knowledge (or lack thereof) they had at the time with a usually well known "B" actor, like John Agar or in this case Marshall Thompson; the film was later partially remade as "The Incredible Melting Man." (1977). Here's the IMDb story-line: "Navy test pilot Lieut. Dan Prescott, in experimental rocket plane Y-13, disobeys orders and becomes the first man to fly outside the ionosphere. Unable to turn, he ejects...and is plastered with metallic meteor dust. The pilot compartment lands with no trace of the pilot... but first cattle, then people, are found with their throats cut by something that seems to have a craving for blood..."
Spoofing something from 40 to 50 years ago that in and of itself appears to be a spoof when viewing today is hard to do and appeal satisfactorily to anything but a film study group.
The Lucifer Complex (1978)
I was a Clone!
I was one of the clones! The curly haired guy in a few scenes behind Robert Vaughn. He didn't say much, just smiled and did what he was told. Many of us were acting students from the Lee Strasberg Drama Institute - so much for method acting. It was filmed across the street from Paramount at a small sound stage we entered through a back alley. They feed us from MacDonalds! I never got paid for it, so I guess I might as well not hold my breath anymore. You'll notice there is a strip across where our private parts would be, so you couldn't see our bathing suits or underwear, and we just grabbed the feeding tubes and stuck them in our navels.