TUBI CONTINUED… 42ND STREET MEMORIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS STREET (2015) ***

Here’s a fun, breezy, if a bit lightweight documentary on everyone’s favorite movie sleaze pit, New York’s 42nd Street.  Director Calum Waddell takes us on a trip down memory lane as we learn the origins of the street and its early days as a legitimate theater center.  Slowly over time, it gives way to a movie lover’s paradise, cram-packed with theater after theater playing all kinds of goodness from action to exploitation to Kung Fu to sex flicks.  

Sure, it was disgusting.  Sure, it was a cesspool.  Sure, it was crime-ridden.  But let’s face it:  ALL of New York was a disgusting, crime-ridden cesspool at the time.

Many directors (Joe Dante, Frank Henenlotter, William Lustig, etc.), distributors (Samuel M. Sherman, Lloyd Kaufman, Terry Levene, etc.), and starlets (Veronica Hart, Debbie Rochon, Lynn Lowery, etc.) are interviewed.  They all give not only information about the history of the street, but also reminisce about the old theaters and the countless movies they played.  Levene has many of the best anecdotes, including how he hired out a flatbed truck full of actors dressed up as medical professionals to drum up publicity for Doctor Butcher, M.D.

Since so much archival footage of the street has been lost to time, what better way to show 42nd Street in all its glory than by using clips from the movies that were filmed on location there?  What makes it even better is the fact that many of these movies (Nightmare, The Exterminator, Massage Parlor Murders, etc.) were just as scuzzy as the street itself!  These clips are so good that you almost wish they delved more into the movies that played there as well.  

Eventually, Mayor Guliani and Disney came in and cleaned everything up, wiping away the grindhouses of the past and replacing them with a more tourist-friendly destination.  Luckily for movie fans, the grindhouse spirit still lives on through home video releases (which kind of was responsible for ushering in 42nd Street’s demise).  Nowadays, you can watch an exploitation flick in the comfort of your own home and not have to worry about bums peeing on you from the balcony, but it’s just not the same.