A Low Down Dirty Shame
More Movies Please!
English - February 26, 2021 16:00 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsFilm Reviews TV & Film Arts Visual Arts conversation theater film filmmaking movies Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
On the podcast this week, Steven and Sean are celebrating our very first b-movie bonus episode of the year with a… Well, not a paragon of ‘90s action goodness, per se. More of a middling example of guns going pew-pew in a movie. It’s the Keenen Ivory Wayans film from 1994, A Low Down Dirty Shame.
Not only is this our first b-movie bonus episode, it’s our first four person “roundtable” show. This time, we’re joined by returning guest Johnny SoCal and first-time guest Greg Vander Velde. We’re thrilled to have them both on.
This film is a good example of the sort of generic action movie that was produced during most of the ‘90s. Many of them feel like they were stamped out of a giant roll of films by a large cookie cutter. They’ve got many of the same qualities:
An entire small nation’s supply of bullets shot at every single character, Troublesome objectification of women (who can still give as good as they take), An antagonist that you’re going to struggle to remember even before the end credits start rolling, and Production quality that’s, well, it’s fine. It’s just fine.On the plus side, this one has the distinction of hardly having a single white person in the entire cast. That’s a welcome change, and was unfortunately novel back when it was made. I mean, I love me some Terminator 2, Speed, and Mission: Impossible, but diversity was not really a hallmark of this era.
This one is a b-movie for a reason, though. We’ll give it this: it’s got a hell of a lot of heart. It’s apparent that every single actor wanted to make this a great film, and that helps immensely. Where the story may falter, the enthusiasm of its creators makes up for its shortcomings. Keenen Ivory Wayans plays it cool, Salli Richardson-Whitfield keeps you guessing, and Jada Pinkett Smith is just a straight-up bad-ass.
A b-movie it may be, but it’s a worthy addition to our catalog.
(Recorded on January 11, 2021)
Links to Stuff We Mentioned:
A Low Down Dirty Shame trailer - YouTube
Avatar: The Last Airbender - IMDb
A Brief History of Nickelodeon Slime | NickRewind - YouTube
(Jada Pinkett Smith did not, in fact, star as Selina Kyle in this show. Sean could not have been more confidently wrong in this episode.)