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The Hollywood Knights (1980) is now out on Blu. (2 Viewers)

Kyrsten Brad

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Brad here. Well folks, another one of our 1980s teen-hijinks favorites movies (complete with cult following) is now out on Blu. The Hollywood Knights (1980) starring Tony Danza and featuring a young Fran Drescher and Michelle Pfeiffer. Of course I first caught this one on late-night cable TV during my early college days. To this day, I still moon over that cheerleader.
I'm honestly kinda surprised that Sony/Columbia let this one out (to Image) for release as its not exactly one of their more well-known titles but we're not looking a gift horse in the mouth now are we.


HollywoodKnights.jpg




Excerpt from Wiki Article on Hollywood Knights

On Halloween night in 1965, a group of high school pranksters – the Hollywood Knights – enraged by the Beverly Hills Residents' Association's success in arranging for the shutdown and demolition of their favorite hangout, "Tubby's Drive-In" diner, which is to be replaced by an office building, launch a sustained and comically vengeful campaign against the principals of the association and two bumbling local police officers charged keeping the "The Knights" in check during their last night in Beverly Hills. The ensuing antics include, among other things, a sexual encounter involving premature ejaculation, a punch bowl being "spiked" with urine, an initiation ceremony involving four pledges who are left in Watts wearing nothing but the car tires they are left to carry, a cheerleader who forgets to put on her underwear before performing at a pep rally, several impromptu drag races, and the lead character of Newbomb Turk (Robert Wuhl) wearing a majordomo outfit and singing a version of 'Volare' accompanied by the sounds of flatulence. "Mooning" also plays a prominent role in the film: one of the advertising slogans exploited the recent Apollo space program by touting that The Hollywood Knights was the first movie "to moon a man on the land." During a mooning incident in the film's final scene, the character Dudley Laywicker, becomes absolutely "all eyes", transfixed by the bare buttocks. So much so, that he takes his glasses off for a better look.
 

Felix Martinez

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This is a fave of mine and I picked up the blu-ray when it was released a few years ago. I held onto the DVD for the commentary by Floyd Mutrux, but the blu-ray is the way to go to view the film.
 

Ronald Epstein

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This is pretty incredible...and I will tell you why...

A few weeks ago, I am at work and the song Volare by Bobby Rydell comes
on the radio.

My co-worker starts making farting noises. I knew exactly where he was
getting it from. I asked him if he knew the movie. He said he saw the movie
once, but forgot the name.

So, I went home and pulled out my DVD copy of The Hollywood Knights. I
wanted to watch it.

However, it's been sitting on my home theater table for the past few weeks
because I had other titles to watch before it.

...so it's rather odd that I had that DVD off the shelf, on my table and ready
to watch -- and all of a sudden the Blu-ray becomes available for purchase.

....which brings me to this question...

Where did that product listing come from?! That came in under the wire.
In fact, looking at the Amazon listing itself it says DVD and released October 2011.

Nobody noticed it before?

Anyhow, I changed Brad's link above to an official preorder link.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
 

Kyrsten Brad

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Ronald Epstein said:
This is pretty incredible...and I will tell you why...

A few weeks ago, I am at work and the song Volare by Bobby Rydell comes
on the radio.

My co-worker starts making farting noises. I knew exactly where he was
getting it from. I asked him if he knew the movie. He said he saw the movie
once, but forgot the name.

So, I went home and pulled out my DVD copy of The Hollywood Knights. I
wanted to watch it.

However, it's been sitting on my home theater table for the past few weeks
because I had other titles to watch before it.

...so it's rather odd that I had that DVD off the shelf, on my table and ready
to watch -- and all of a sudden the Blu-ray becomes available for purchase.

....which brings me to this question...

Where did that product listing come from?! That came in under the wire.
In fact, looking at the Amazon listing itself it says DVD and released October 2011.

Nobody noticed it before?

Anyhow, I changed Brad's link above to an official preorder link.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
First of all, you're very welcome.

I was wondering the same thing because I have made previous Amazon searches for The Hollywood Knights and all I could find were DVDs. That is until just a week ago when this blu-ray popped up.

Anyway, its here. Another one makes it to Blu.
 

Robert Crawford

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Ronald Epstein said:
This is pretty incredible...and I will tell you why...

A few weeks ago, I am at work and the song Volare by Bobby Rydell comes
on the radio.

My co-worker starts making farting noises. I knew exactly where he was
getting it from. I asked him if he knew the movie. He said he saw the movie
once, but forgot the name.

So, I went home and pulled out my DVD copy of The Hollywood Knights. I
wanted to watch it.

However, it's been sitting on my home theater table for the past few weeks
because I had other titles to watch before it.

...so it's rather odd that I had that DVD off the shelf, on my table and ready
to watch -- and all of a sudden the Blu-ray becomes available for purchase.

....which brings me to this question...

Where did that product listing come from?! That came in under the wire.
In fact, looking at the Amazon listing itself it says DVD and released October 2011.

Nobody noticed it before?

Anyhow, I changed Brad's link above to an official preorder link.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I've had the BD of The Hollywood Knights since October of 2011.
 

ahollis

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Robert Crawford said:
I've had the BD of The Hollywood Knights since October of 2011.
Yes. I got the BD of this fun film back in 2011 also and just saw it on the shelf at Best Buy last week.
 

Ronald Epstein

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So, it was released on Blu-ray in 2011.

Incredible. Totally missed it.

Well, Brad, you certainly helped me on this one. :)
 

rayman1701

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Thread threw me a bit since I've had this since it came out in 2011 as well. It is one of my all time favs, I know it's not Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia (now keep that song out of your heads, I dare you) but I watched it so many times as a young lad on HBO that it is now just a part of my existence, and I still have laugh out loud moments. We all have films that logically we know we shouldn't like as much as we do, but boy are those some of the funnest movies.(Now I'm gonna have Fran Dresher's voice in my head for the rest of the day.....Newbomb!)
 

Jon Hertzberg

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Kyrsten Brad said:
Brad here. The cheerleader who "forgot" her underpants is still in my head after all those years. Which actress played the cheerleader anyway?
Playboy Playmate Michelle Drake, who also appeared in the opening scene of AMERICAN GIGOLO.
 

Robert George

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If anyone wants that cover and can't use EuphoricFX, PM me an email address and I'll send that way. The file is about 2.7 MB.
 

Kyrsten Brad

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Well finally got to view it. I 'll go into detail a little later when I have a real keyboard to type on. But to make it short, PQ on this release leaves something to be desired. The release was fro Universal which probably tells you a lot right there. Might be better than the DVD release but not by much.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Yeah, quality was not very good on this Blu-ray release.

I would estimate they used the same old DVD master.
 

Kyrsten Brad

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Brad here. First thing that jumped out at me was the rather muted (mushy) colors, almost as if all colors were pastels. Grain was definitely noticeable. OK so we want some grain as opposed to a over-DNR'd release but it appears that NO film restoration was used. As Ronald pointed out, looks like Universal used a old DVD transfer for this Blu. And the sound, well pretty much blase. Oh we got plenty of good songs from the time period (and some that charted well before 1965) but it didn't sound much better than it did on our old 21" TV at home with mono-speaker sound off HBO.

The movie itself was rather funny but not as surprising as if you saw it for the first time back in 1980 (and really doesn't hold up well today). But it was typical for early 1980s humor. Us guys-will-be-guys loved the all-too-brief look at Michelle Drake's derierre under that cheerleader outfit (no wonder I had it bad for Michelle Drake back in 1979 but that could be said for Denise McConnell (Feb 1979 Playmate) and of course Candy Loving (25 Anniversary Playmate), however one might say it was all too brief.
Through it all the acting of then-unknowns or barely-knowns Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer shone thru but most of the attention was focused on "Newbomb" (Robert Wuhl) and how he got his nickname (fatulence humor well before Disney's The Lion King). And our first looks at a near-teenage looking Fran Drescher was nice as well. Problem I saw though is that while most of the portrayals were of teenagers, some of the actors playing teenagers looked well into their early 20s (Newbomb for example).

And from the land of Captain Obvious, the adults (save for 2-3) were all portrayed as clueless, hypocritical, out of it dolts. But that was also typical of late 1970s-early 1980 teen humor flicks.

In summary if this movie is tied it with some of your most cherished memories from the early 1980s, or maybe you're a early-mid 1960s teenager) then it might be worth picking up as this Blu is probably the best we're going to get (unless it gets farmed out to a film house that does decent restoration in addition to marketing in the future). I don't see Universal making any extra effort on this one. However its definitely not a blind-buy must have and probably not worth it for anyone who has no real connection or memories from the early 1980s, or mid-1960s if you alive & aware back then.

Still, Newbomb was rather funny but seemed to be a fatulent version of Blutarsky from Animal House.
 

Robert Crawford

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Guys,

The Hollywood Knights was a low budget movie that came out in 1980, in which many films didn't look pretty color-wise. The film played in second tier movie theaters and I don't remember it ever having robust colors even when I viewed it in a downtown movie theater in Champaign, Illinois.
 

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