[Moneyline]

Cocaine Cowboys (2006): Directed by: Billy Corbin. Excellent documentary on cocaine smuggling in South Florida during the early '80s. Billed as the true story behind SCARFACE and MIAMI VICE, this micro-budgeted documentary manages to be more entertaining than its fictionalized predecessors. The movie has two distinct halves. The first and better half is anchored around interviews with Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday, two charismatic mega-smugglers for the Medellin Cartel. The interviews show not only the personal stories of these two men, but also document the intricate methods of smuggling and enormous economic impact of the drug trade. The second half tells the story of the "cocaine cowboys," the hyper-violent gangsters and enforcers who made Miami the most dangerous city on Earth at the time. There's a cool synthesized score by Jan Hammer, but don't bother with the annoying DVD commentary from director Corbin. Definitely worth checking out.

Don't Look in The Basement (1973): Directed by: S.F. Brownrigg. Decent exploitation/horror movie would have been a classic in the hands of more capable filmmakers. Playboy Playmate Rosie Holotik stars as Charlotte Beale, a nurse who begins working at a secluded insane asylum shortly after the head doctor is accidentally killed by one of his patients. The clever script has some good twists and turns, and the final sequence is chilling. Unfortunately, not much else is executed well. The overacting by the cast of no-names is too much to be believable, but not quite enough to be funny. What really sinks the film, however, is the awful editing. This is the sort of movie where if a character wants to talk to someone in a different room, you see them walk up the stairs, walk all the way down a long hall, knock on the door, wait for the door to open, and then start the conversation. At least 10 minutes of the film could have been chopped off without anybody at the drive-in noticing. There's less gore here than what you'd typically find in an exploitation movies, but there's still plenty of sleaze thanks to a nymphomaniac asylum patient who is perpetually exposing her breasts. While not terrible, this is far from one of the best exploitation movies of the '70s.