Eggsploitation!
In this economy? How did we manage?
No Mel this month. Hey there! It’s Johnny! I asked to handle the post for this month as an April Fool’s joke but considering how late in the month we get these out, who is the real fool here? Before we decided on this month’s themes, I was aware of the idea of exploitation films, but I had no idea how many films and subgenres fall under the exploitation umbrella: Blaxploitation. Cannibal Films. Canuxploitation. Nunsploitation (not even joking here). Sexploitation. The list goes on.
Armed with that knowledge and a fistful of puns, we chose an ingredient as flexible as the exploitation definition itself: Eggs!
Week 1: Johnny’s Movie
Movie: The Street Fighter (1974)
Gird your loins for fight scenes built like Enter the Dragon B-sides!
Making up for my final movie pick from last month lacking enough martial arts, my first pick was the storied Sonny Chiba’s X-rated masterpiece The Street Fighter. There are no captions on Tubi, so it is almost unwatchable to elder millennials, but the dubbing is everything you want from a 70s martial arts flick. The fights are dirty and lacking technically but well shot. The Bruce Lee influence on this movie is overt. Just a heads up: this movie is less than stellar with its violence towards women, but at the very least that one guy gets his balls ripped off.
Check it out if you want to:
Enjoy copious amounts of 70s near orange fake blood.
Be ready to marvel at the sheer range and absurdity of Sonny Chiba’s kung fu flailing/poses.
Meal: Fisherman eggs
Chock full of protein, veggies, and the sudden worry that maybe I should have made mashed potatoes similar to what I made to go with the herby salmon I made for The Revenant. I’m not fully sure if Big Starch has gotten to me, but this meal is solid without them. I riffed slightly on this recipe by adding some basil and chopped kalamata olives, and by the end of dinner, Mel and I were both wondering if adding more sardines is the play here.
Week 2: Mel’s Movie
Movie: Cannibal Girls (1973)
All aboard the meat van for this Canadian independent exploitation horror film!
This is Mel's second movie about man-eating since we started this project. And like the previous week’s movie, this pick was yet again close to unwatchable by elder millennial standards due to no subtitles on Tubi. That said, a young Eugene Levy stars and is visually doing his best Gene Shalit impression. There are some very weird transitional choices made. It’s a disjointed watch, but there’s a glimmer of a solid movie here.
Check it out if you want to:
Laugh the way you would when watching any movie that could have been easy pickings for MST3K or Rifftrax.
Enjoy serial killers in magician outfits.
Meal: Baked Eggs With Kale, Bacon, and Cornbread Crumbs
I guess great minds bake eggs alike. This was a similar prep to the Fisherman Eggs from last week, but I think the kale here worked better than the parsley for this baked preparation. Mel cheated bought a corn muffin to make super tasty croutons and when you get down to it, combining bacon and eggs is unbeatable at any time of the day. Of the four meals, this is my favorite.
Week 3: Johnny’s Movie
Movie: Black Dynamite (2009)
Ha-ha! I wrote this review before I even walked in the room!
*Ahem* I’ve seen this movie a few times and it’s one of my jams. Black Dynamite is The Naked Gun/Scary Movie of blaxploitation films. Much like Mel's corn muffins I kind of cheated here, since Black Dynamite is a late 2000s parody of the genre, so it’s VERY aware of what it's doing. It has history and tropes to, well, exploit as opposed to The Street Fighter and Cannibal Girls, which while bad, are earnest attempts at cinema. Because Black Dynamite knows what it is, it's given full license to revel in the genre and be as hilarious as possible.
Check it out if you want to:
Catch up with Michael Jai White if you lost track of him after Solo or Never Back Down.
Just appreciate Cedric Yarbrough. My dude makes the absolute most of his screen time here.
Meal: Crescent Breakfast Tart
I’m trying to avoid baking eggs, I swear. This was a more original idea than breakfast tacos but so close to the idea of a breakfast pizza that the texture of the crescent roll crust threw me at first. After a couple of bites, you get over that and embrace your new tasty, pillowy overlord. I added mushrooms and onions to the recipe and I’m pretty happy with that choice. The combination of bacon and eggs remains undefeated. If I could do anything different with a run back, I would probably put the cheese on the crust first to give the eggs a nest. Without those little divots, the egg distribution was so asymmetrical that the tart looked like it could have helmed a Troma franchise.
Week 4: Mel’s Movie
Movie: Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965)
This is a film where the cinematography treads a thin line between strong environmental storytelling and the director’s barely veiled fetishes.
I am more than familiar with the idea of something being so bad that it’s good, but I’ve never run into something that’s just barely bad but is SO good. No matter what you have in mind going into the movie, the opening narration will throw you for a loop. Your three female leads are fueled by fast cars, bad choices, and pure attitude. The “Vegetable” is paradoxically beefy; there’s maybe one person to root for in the whole movie, and with everything going on she’s debatably the B-plot. I cannot recommend this movie enough, and I know Mel was thrilled to see burlesque legend Tura Satana on the big screen.
Check it out if you want to:
Lose yourself in a tremendously quotable movie.
Have an appreciation for Dutch Flood control construction applied to women’s clothing, because I’ve never seen so little material hold back SO MUCH.
Meal: Skillet Baked Eggs and Asparagus
Yeah, we are ending this with baked eggs but in a slightly different way. Not a quiche or a frittata but a real easy way to get rid of some herbs and veggies in the fridge. This was my least favorite of the four meals but I think that’s because I had two days of it as reheated lunch leftovers. It’s significantly better fresh.
It’s Mel jumping in here at the end for our usual sign-off, but before that, didn’t Johnny do a great job with this post? I think he’s going to need to do more of these in the future, for sure.
For May, we have the added challenge of packing up our lives and moving. But that won’t keep us from watching movie and making dinner … it just means we have a little less time, which will be reflected in both our film and food choices. Until next month!