Plaza Suite (1971)

Posted on December 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: One room, different characters.

The entire movie takes place in one setting, New York’s historic Plaza Hotel, where three different couples rent out the same room at different times and the story examines what happens while they’re in it. The first segment involves Sam and Karen (Walter Matthau, Maureen Stapleton). Karen has checked into the room because that was where they spent their honeymoon 23 years earlier, but since then their marriage has soured and she hopes to rekindle the old flame but finds her husband’s resistance to it to be both challenging and troubling. The second story involves a famous Hollywood producer (also played by Matthau) checking into the room so he can have a quick fling with Muriel (Barbara Harris) a girl he dated before he was famous and who is now married with kids. The third and final act revolves around Roy and Norma (Walter Matthau, Lee Grant) and their efforts to get their daughter Mimsy (Jenny Sullivan) to come out of the bathroom, of which she has locked herself inside, and attend her wedding.

The film is based on the play of the same name that was written by Neil Simon who also wrote the screenplay. The play, which opened in 1968 at the Schubert theater before moving onto Broadway, had the same storylines, but was cast differently. In that one George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton played the characters in all three segments, but director Arthur Hiller didn’t like that approach. Initially he wanted different actors for each story including having Peter Sellers and Barbra Streisand cast in the second, which would’ve been terrific, but when that fell through, he decided to have Matthau play in all three and then simply change around the female leads, but this approach doesn’t work as well. The film suffers badly from having everything done in the same room, which quickly becomes visually static, and the talky script is only occasionally amusing.

The first story features a strong performance by Stapleton, but having the husband eventually admit to having an affair with his secretary, has been done hundreds of times before. The segment lacks anything fresh and the viewer can almost immediately guess where it’s going right from the start making it both predictable and boring. Had it unfolded differently where the husband at least pretended there was a spark left in their marriage and only revealed his true nature through subtle layers then it might’ve had potential but having him be aloof and cranky at the start offers no surprises and makes things much too obvious.

The second segment shows its cards too soon as well. It’s clear that the producer will come onto any attractive woman he sees, so watching him attempt to exploit an old girlfriend and then become shocked when he finds her more intrigued with the celebrities that he knows instead of himself doesn’t offer much of a payoff. Instead, he should’ve been portrayed as being burnt out with Tinsel Town and all of the plastic people he’s bedded and genuinely wanting to rekindle things with his past love whom he remembered as being down-to-earth and then having him shocked to learn that she had become just as superficial as the rest would’ve been funny.

The third act is by far the funniest particularly Matthau hamming up over his frustration at how much the wedding, and subsequent reception, is costing him. This is also the only segment to have some of the action take place outside of the room when in an attempt to get into the locked bathroom he goes out on the 7th story ledge, which is a bit nerve-wracking. However, there’s still some issues including the fact that Mimsy, the daughter, never says anything while locked inside the bathroom, which is unrealistic and off-putting. I didn’t like the point-of-view shots showing her sitting on the toilet through the door’s keyhole as this was unintentionally creepy as it insinuates that anybody could secretly peep at anyone else going to the bathroom and therefore putting a keyhole on a bathroom door would’ve been patently absurd. The parents are also not very likable, or caring as they seem to feel that their daughter is somehow ‘obligated’ to get married and it’s ‘too late to backout’ when it really isn’t. Forcing someone to get hitched and acting like it’s some sort of ‘life duty’ is very old fashioned making the segment quite dated even for its time period.

Some of the exterior shots were cool including the opening bit where Stapleton is shown walking down a busy New York street towards the hotel where the pedestrians are not extras, but instead regular people unaware that they were a part of a movie. The bird’s eye shot showing cars going along the Brooklyn Bridge and its ability to focus in on the one being driven by Harris is impressive and quite possibly, at least on a visual scale, one of the best moments in the film. Even these segments though have some logic loopholes as it shows the character from the segment that has just ended walking outside the hotel while the new character walks in making it seem like the new guest goes into the room the second the former one leaves it, which wouldn’t make sense as a maid would’ve had to go in there in-between to clean it.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 12, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, PlutoTV, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hotel setting

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Anna (1987)

Posted on December 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: A struggling Czech actress.

Anna (Sally Kirkland) was at one time a major movie star in her homeland of Czechoslovakia, but when a new government regime took over her country during the 1968 communist invasion and she spoke out against it, she was banned from reentry. She then moved to the United States trying to seek acting employment in New York, but only able to eke out a measly living with bit parts and understudy work. Krystyna (Paulina Porizkova) is a young and aspiring actress who’s also from Czechoslovakia and who comes to the U.S. looking to meet Anna whom she has always idolized. Anna decides to take Krystyna under her guidance, teaching her English and improving her appearance in hopes that she can one day land the big role, but for Krystyna things come more easily. Soon she’s a big star, which sends Anna into a jealous and despondent state.

The film was inspired by the life and career of Polish actress Elzbieta Czyzewska and her relationship with a young Joanne Pacula, who came to the U.S. from Poland looking to break into show business and in the process became a bigger star than her mentor. At the time though upon its release the attention was much more on Kirkland’s brilliant performance and whose career struggles had closely emulated the character she was playing having landed a major role in 1968 in the film Coming Apart but had since been relegated to only bit parts until her breakthrough here. This also marked a career resurgence for her co-start Robert Fields, who burst onto the scene in 1958 co-starring in the cult hit The Blob, but outside of The Sporting Club saw very few substantial speaking roles until this one came along of which he also does quite well.

The film succeeds in the recreation of the audition atmosphere. I had in my younger days went to a few acting auditions for small roles in stage productions while living in Chicago and what I went through closely resembled what Anna has to deal with here particularly the improvisational aspect where the actors are expected to discard the scripts they’ve memorized and instead forced to elaborate on a personal or touchy life experience of which Anna refuses to do with good reason. The humiliating demands the casting directors force her to do and the impersonal and competitive vibes she gets from the other auditioners are completely on-target making it some of the stronger moments in the film.

The film’s weaker scenes are when director Yurek Bogayevicz tries for the symbolic. I actually didn’t mind the shot of watching Anna going down a lonely, dark elevator while Krystyna gets invited to a posh party, or her rekindling her relationship with her off-again boyfriend Daniel while outside in a rainstorm, but when she goes to a theater to watch one of her old movies, and the film gets stuck in the projector and the image of her face gets burned up in front of her was pouring things on too thickly.

I also had a hard time understanding how Krystyna was able to get her rotted teeth fixed for free. No dentist is going to repair someone’s teeth, which looked to be a daunting task, for nothing yet that’s what seems to occur here. There’s a passing comment that he was expecting ‘something’ in return, but it’s not clear what. Maybe it was sex I don’t know, but it should’ve been verified instead of glossed over and then quickly forgotten. Krystyna’s ability to find Anna all by herself in the big city of New York where she can’t even speak the language was a bit too easy and needed better explaining as well.

The characters are also, with the possible exception of Daniel, not always likable. Krystyna is appealing most of the way but then goes on a TV talk show where she steals a personal life experience that Anna had told her about earlier and makes it her own. Then she comes back to the apartment and is somehow confused with why Anna is upset with her, which for anyone else wouldn’t have been that difficult to understand. Anna’s meltdown on stage when she was finally able to land a speaking role gets a bit overdone as well. I realize she was going through a lot in her personal life, but as a working actress she still needs to put that stuff behind and able to tackle her role, even if it’s last minute, in a professional manner and not ruin the entire production by behaving like some angry, petulant child, which actually made me agree with a member of the stage crew who told her she’d never work again.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending in which Anna stalks Krystyna and attempts to shoot her while she’s filming a movie scene on a beach is a shocker. This was the type of film where I didn’t see that coming as typically things like that only occur in thrillers, but this one had been a drama all the way, so it’s definitely unexpected, but still works. While it’s realistic that Anna most likely wouldn’t have killed her since she wasn’t used to shooting a gun, so having her miss and hit Krystyna in the arm did make sense, but it still would’ve packed a more powerful punch had she died.

I felt too that having Anna walk in the ocean and commit suicide would’ve given it a more complete finality. The idea that Krystyna would take care of Anna and even let her live in her home defied logic. This was someone who had just tried to kill her and what’s to say she wouldn’t attempt it again? How could she ever trust her again, or be comfortable around her? In reality she would’ve been either charged with attempted murder and incarcerated or put into a mental hospital.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Yurek Bogayevicz

Studio: Vestron Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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Whiffs (1975)

Posted on December 20, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Robbing with laughing gas.

Dudley (Elliot Gould) sacrifices his body to be a guinea pig for the army’s tests. All their latest warfare weapons get used on him first to see how effective they are. He feels he’s doing it to help his country and therefore doesn’t mind the toll that it takes, but as his health declines his superior officer Col. Lockyer (Eddie Albert) realizes that they’re going to have to find someone else to replace him. Dudley is offered a small monthly disability payment, which he feels won’t be enough to survive on. He tries to get other jobs to supplement his measly income but is unable to hold any of them down. He then meets a former fellow test subject Chops (Harry Guardino) at a bar and the two concoct a plan to rob banks using the nerve gas that Dudley has snuck out of the military facility. The scheme is, with the help of a crop-duster named Dusty (Godfrey Cambridge), to spray the gas onto the town’s population, which will disable the folks for certain amount of time and give the two a chance to take the money without any impediment. Trouble ensues when Lockyer catches on to what they’re doing and becomes determined to stop them by bringing in the military.

Screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein, who wrote also wrote the script for S*P*Y*S, which came out a year before, learned from his mistakes from that one making this a slight improvement. The protagonist has a better arc and the plot is more concretely structured. The humor’s focus is improved as it takes some major potshots at the armed forces and it also manages to have a normal character, as in Dudley’s nurse girlfriend Scottie (Jennifer O’Neill) who is sensible and relatable to the viewer. It features a great performance by Guardino, who’s effective particularly as he riles in pain during one of the tests, but still manages somehow to continue his conversation with Gould. This is also not quite as silly as the other one as it ventures into some dark areas though at times it gets a bit difficult to keep laughing when you witness what terrible, painful things the army gets the two test subjects to agree to.

The main weakness comes in the form of the main character who’s likable enough, but not particularly relatable. I’ll give Gould credit for going against type and taking on a role that was way different from any of the ones he did before. Usually, he played caustic intellectuals who would routinely question and challenge authority, but here he’s a passive simp that does whatever he’s asked without argument, but this then becomes part of the problem. No sane person would agree to allow their bodies to go through such a battering even if it was for the ‘good of the country’ and thus it becomes confusing why Gould would put up with it for so long and the viewer is unable to connect emotionally with his quandary as much as they should.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending doesn’t pack much of a punch and becomes boring just as the tension should’ve been heightening. The idea that Gould decides to drug the whole town just to rob a bank didn’t make much sense as they could’ve easily just used it on the bank employees, which would’ve taken up much less time and effort and not attracted all the needless attention. It also comes off as disingenuous that Gould, who spends the majority of the film being a dope who can’t seem to think for himself, would then suddenly become so cunning as he quickly, on the spur of the moment, comes up with crafty ways to outfox those that are chasing them, but if he was so smart then why did he stupidly subject himself to being the army’s guinea pig for so long? He wasn’t even the one who came up with using the gas to rob the banks in the first place as that idea came from Guardino, so if the story were going to be consistent then Guardino should’ve been the one who continues to do the thinking while Gould would simply take the orders like he had through the first two acts.

Having Gould then jump off Dusty’s crop duster plane just as it’s taking the three men to the safety of Mexico, so he can instead have sex with O’Neil, as his impotency miraculously gets cured, isn’t a satisfying payoff. During the early part of the decade watching two people copulate onscreen in unusual places might’ve been deemed edgy and irreverent, but by this point it had been done too many times, making the moment here, no pun intended, anti-climactic. It would’ve worked better had the sex stuff been written out and O’Neill just been a part of the robbery versus having her disappear for long periods as she does here.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 15, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ted Post

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Robbing Banks

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S*P*Y*S (1974)

Posted on December 18, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Targeted to be killed.

Bruland (Donald Sutherland) and Griff (Elliot Gould) are two CIA agents stationed in France who prove to be inept at every turn. When they accidentally kill a Russian gymnast defector (Michael Petrovitch) the head of the CIA Paris unit, Martinson (Joss Ackland), makes a deal with the soviets to have the two killed. This would then avoid a dangerous retaliation that could lead to a nuclear war. However, neither Bruland or Griff are made aware of this until they start getting attacked by people from all ends including the KGB, the CIA, the Chinese communists, and even a French terrorist group. In their pursuit to survive the two, who initially disliked the other, form an uneasy alliance.

The film’s original title was ‘Wet Stuff’, but the producers wanted a tie-in with M*A*S*H that had been hugely successful and also starred Gould and Sutherland, so they changed it to make it seem similar to that one, but the attempt failed and the movie became a huge bomb with the both audiences and critics alike. Viewers came in expecting the same irreverent humor, which this doesn’t have, so audiences left disappointed and the word of mouth quickly spread causing it to play in the theaters for only a short while. The irony though is that in countries that hadn’t seen M*A*S*H, like the Netherlands and Germany, it fared better because the expectations going in weren’t as high.

On a comic level it’s not bad and even has its share of amusing bits. The way the defector gets killed, shot by a gun disguised as a camera, was clever and there’s also a unique car chase in which Gould takes over the steering wheel from the backseat while someone else puts their foot to the pedal. The initial rendezvous between Sutherland and his on-and-off girlfriend (Zouzou) has its moments too as he finds her in bed with another guy while a second one is in the bathroom forcing him to have to pee in the kitchen sink. Gould then, who thought she was ‘raping him with her eyes’ when they first met, takes over and gets into a threesome while the dejected Sutherland has to sleep on the couch.

On the negative end the characterizations are poor to the point of being nonexistent. Initially it comes-off like Gould and Sutherland are rivals, which could’ve been an interesting dynamic, but this gets smoothed over too quickly. Having the two bicker and compete would’ve been far more fun. There’s also no sense of urgency. While Sutherland does lose his spy job and forced to pretend to feign illness to get out of paying a restaurant bill it’s then later revealed that he did have the money, but this then ruins any possible tension. Had they been in a true desperate situation the viewer might’ve gotten more caught up in their dilemma, but as it is it’s just too playful. The villains are equally clownish and in fact become the center of the comedy by the final act, which takes place at a wedding, while the two leads sit back and watch making them benign observers in their own vehicle.

The film needed somebody that was normal and the viewer could identify with. Buffoons can be entertaining, but ultimately someone needs to anchor it and this movie has no one. I thought for a while that Zouzou would be that person, and she could’ve been good, but she and her terrorist pals end up trying to assassinate the two like everybody else, which adds too much to the already cluttered chaos. The satire also needed to be centered on something. For instance, with Airplane the humor was structured around famous disaster flicks from the 70’s and all the jokes had a knowing tie-in. Here though it’s all over the place. Yes, it pokes fun of spies, but that’s too easy, and having it connected to let’s say James Bond movies would’ve given it a clearer angle and slicker storyline.

Since it did have a modicum of success in certain countries it convinced screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein to continue to pursue the formula as he was sure it was simply the botched marketing that had ruined this one, so he wrote another parody script, this time poking fun at the army, just a year later, which also starred Gould, and was called Whiffs, which will be reviewed next.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 28, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Irvin Kershner

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Buddy Movies, Obscure Movies, Parody, Spy/Espionage

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The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

Posted on December 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Zucker brother’s first movie.

In 1974 there was the release of The Groove Tube which had a format of comical skits, much like a variety show, that managed to be a big hit and thus ushered in several imitators causing a whole new genre to surface. Unfortunately, those copycats didn’t fare as well and many of them were downright lame. By 1977 the trend had died off and yet brothers David and Jerry Zucker along with their friend Jim Abrahams were motivated to make another one revolving around funny sketches that had gotten a good response from audiences during their improvisational shows done on stage. The studios though weren’t impressed citing the decline in box office receipts towards sketch movies and thus refused their request for financing. They were then able to get a verbal deal from a wealthy real estate developer who agreed to fund the project as long as they made a 10-minute short that he could use to shop around to attract other investors, but when he found out how much it would cost just to produce the short he pulled out forcing the Zuckers to put up their own money, which amounted to $35,000, to get the short made.

This though proved to be beneficial as it attracted the attention of a young up-and-coming filmmaker John Landis, who had just gotten done directing Schlock on a minuscule budget and felt he could do the same here. It also got shown to Kim Jorgenson a theater owner who found it so funny he got other owners to play it before the main feature, and this was enough to get them to pool their money into a $650,000 budget that when completed made a whopping $7.1 million at the box office. This then directly lead to them getting studio backing for their most well-known hit Airplane which was a script that they had written before doing this one but had been previously unable to get any backing for.

Like with most films made during the brief period when this genre was ‘hot’ the jokes and skits are hit-or-miss. The opening sequences dealing with a TV news show are the weakest. Watching a reporter pick his nose because he doesn’t realize that he’s on the air isn’t really all that outrageous when today YouTube has actual news bloopers showing essentially the same thing. Having an ape go berserk in the studio during a live broadcast was too obvious and telegraphs the punchline to the viewer right from the beginning and thus making the outcome quite predictable.

The parody of Bruce Lee movies entitled ‘A Fistful of Yen’ definitely has its share of amusing moments though it goes on a bit too long and the special effects look cheap. My favorite segments came after this one and take up most of the final 20-minutes. These include Hare Krishna monks going to the bar after a ‘hard day of work’ harassing people on the street. There’s also ‘The Courtroom’ skit that’s a parody of Perry Mason-style TV-shows from the 50’s. The Zinc Oxide bit involving a housewife, played by Nancy Steen, who’s forced to face the reality of what life would be like if all the items in her house that was made from Zinc Oxide suddenly disappeared.

The film also features well-known actors who volunteered their time with little pay and appear in brief cameos. These include Bill Bixby as a spokesperson for a send-up of aspirin commercials. There’s also Donald Sutherland who plays a klutzy waiter during a parody of disaster flicks, Tony Dow playing his most famous role of Wally from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ as a jury in the Courtroom and Henry Gibson, in what I found to be both the funniest and darkest skit, where he essentially plays himself in a mock add showing how parents (Reberta Kent, Christopher Hanks) can still keep their deceased son as a ‘a part of their family’ by bringing along his increasingly decomposed corpse with them wherever they go.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 10, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Landis

Studio: United Film Distribution Company

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Crude Comedy, Low Budget, Martial Arts, Movies with Nudity, Parody

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Porky’s Revenge (1985)

Posted on December 10, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rescue from shotgun wedding.

Porky (Chuck Mitchell) has rebuilt his casino that was destroyed by the teens in the first film by turning it into a riverboat. To help pay for this he extorts Coach Goodenough (Bill Hindman) for money and other such favors since he owes him on a gambling debt. Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) and his friends try to come to their coach’s rescue by sneaking onto the boat and taking pictures of the illegal gambling activity, which they hope to show to the district attorney. Porky though catches them in the act and threatens revenge, so to get out of their jam they agree to throw their next basketball game, so that Porky can bet against them and win a lot of money. Meanwhile Meat (Tony Ganios) is having problems of his own when he gets ‘forced’ into having sex with Porky’s daughter Blossom (Wendy Feign) causing Porky to insist that the two now must get married.

While fans of the franchise traditionally rate this at the weakest of the three films I found it to be a step up and even, at least at the beginning, to be moderately amusing particularly the pool scene where the cheerleaders concoct a scheme to get the boys to take off their bathing suits and prance around in front of the parents naked. The script was written by Ziggy Steinberg, whose career is the perfect encapsulation of Hollywood, where if you’re considered ‘up and coming’ you can find plenty of work, but the second your material is perceived as getting stale you can quickly become a leper and no offers to be found. This though came at a point where he was still a sought-after commodity, and I felt the script was better structured and seemed much more like a sequel continuing the elements from the first one versus going off on wild tangents like the second one did.

It helps having Chuck Mitchell back as the title character. It’s not like his acting is all that great, but his big presence and gruff, unfiltered delivery keep it fun and he offers a bona fide nemesis for the kids to go after. The casino boat is impressive, and the majority of the film’s $8 million budget was used just to build it. Seeing it get destroyed, which comes near the end, is exciting too and probably more memorable than the destruction of Porky’s original backwoods casino.

The characters though lack growth. Pee Wee for example is still obsessed about getting laid even though he had already lost his virginity in the first film, so his personality needed to evolve into something else. He should, especially being a senior, be the confident one who now takes some insecure freshman under his guidance to show him how it’s done instead of acting as a perpetually immature junior high kid, which by this point is no longer even remotely interesting.

The pranks continue to go overboard and boarder on cruelty. The one that gets played on Beulah Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) is especially stupid. She is set up to believe that she’s going to have a rendezvous with her long-lost boyfriend Snooky (Sandy Meilke), so she goes to a hotel room lying in bed in her nightie waiting for him to enter, so that they can return to their ‘passionate ways’ of the past. In reality though it would never work that way. These two had not seen, or corresponded with each other in many years, so there was no guarantee that both would still have the same feelings for the other. Since so much time had passed they were by this point theoretically strangers, so to avoid embarrassment and possible rejection they would instead get together at a restaurant, or over drinks in order to ‘catch up’ with things and then if they still both felt the same spark they might check into a hotel room, but nobody would just do that right off the bat.

I did though like the way her character changes, she’s the only one that does, by having her behaving like a completely different person once she’s finally able to get together with the real Snooky. However, I feel it would’ve made more sense had she been portrayed as someone who had never had sex versus one that just hadn’t had it in a while. Having her being lifelong frigid would’ve explained better why she was so hyper obsessed with suppressing everyone else’s sexuality. A better payoff would’ve had her really have sex with Tommy (Wyatt Knight) and found much to her surprise to liking it and this would then inspire her evolution.

Spoiler Alert!

The prank involving the bridge operator (Mal Jones) gets botched as well. It hinges on him believing that Wendy (Kaki Hunter) and Tommy are jumping off it to commit suicide, which distracts him enough so that he leaves to bridge operator room and allows Pee Wee to go in and close the bridge and thus destroy Porky’s boat that is trying to go underneath it. However, the bridge isn’t high enough from the water to be that dangerous. In fact, if it was truly that dangerous then both Tommy and Wendy would’ve died when they jumped off of it, but they don’t so the operator would never have been fooled. If anything, he would’ve thought they were just a couple of teens going out for a late-night skinny dip and wouldn’t have panicked at all.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated R

Director: James Komack

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Basketball Movies, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983)

Posted on December 7, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Banning a Shakespeare play.

Now that Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) has lost his virginity to Wendy (Kaki Hunter) they decide that their next project will be putting on a production of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ at their high school, which will be directed by Mrs. Morris (Ilse Earl) Pee Wee’s mother. Problems though ensue when John Henry (Joseph Runningfox), a Seminole Indian, gets cast in the lead where he will then kiss Wendy, a white woman, on stage, which gets the local Klux Klan upset and they proceed to ambush things, so it won’t be able to proceed. There’s also outcry from a local Reverend named Bubba Flavel (Bill Wiley) as he and his religious constituents feel that the play is ‘obscene’ and therefore must be shut down in the name of ‘decency’. The teen cast then visits the office of County Commissioner Bob Gebhardt (Edward Winter) hoping he can use his influence to help keep the play going and while he initially promises them that he will, he eventually renegades. This angers the kids, and they devise an elaborate revenge on not only him, but the Klan and Reverend Flavel.

It’s quite clear that writer/director Bob Clark, who was working on Christmas Story while helming this one, had no idea that the first installment was going to be as big of a success as it was and there had clearly been no plans for a sequel. When the studio came begging for one, he felt obliged and spent 6 months, with the help of two other screenwriters, to come up with something. The result though is a movie in desperate search for a story with a script that’s a mishmash of over-the-top nonsense. What made the first one so good was that as crude as it was it still showed teens as they were with dialogue and situations that rang true, but here all of that gets thrown out with everything played up in an extreme way simply for the sake of a cheap laugh.

The most annoying aspect are the one-dimensional characters particularly the Reverend who is a cartoonish caricature in a silly send-up of a southern preacher. The same goes with the City Commissioner that is well played by Winter, which helps keep it remotely entertaining, but portraying a politician as being sleazy and two-timing is quite cliched and redundant. The return of Beulah Ballbricker, played by Nancy Parsons, is problematic as well. In the first film she was very strict with the rules, but here she’s turned into a religious fanatic, which seems like two different people. The scene where she sits on a toilet and begins singing loudly is dumb. Sure, people may talk on the phone while taking a dump, or read a magazine, or even browse the internet, but bellowing out a loud rendition of ‘That Old Black Magic’ while in a public stall is not one of them making her beyond ‘goofy’ and more into someone who should be institutionalized.

The pranks come off as unnecessarily cruel especially the scene in a graveyard where Pee Wee is made to believe that he accidentally killed a prostitute while having sex with her, which could be quite traumatic for someone and yet his ‘friends’ act like it’s ‘all in fun’. What’s worse is that Pee Wee never brings it up afterwards apparently having no qualms whether a sex worker dies at his hands or not just as long as he’s not blamed, which unintentionally makes him cold and uncaring.

The climactic bit where Wendy dresses up as a big bosomed 17-year-old prostitute who makes a major scene at a posh restaurant in an effort to embarrass the commissioner gets overdone too. For one thing it’s seems awfully extreme to put so much effort to get revenge on what’s nothing more than a tacky high school play with cheap props that isn’t going to make any money and cast members who weren’t all that excited about being in it, so why get so upset if it gets canceled? It also begs the question why these kids are so sure they can get away with their hijinks and not suffer any consequences. The ‘prank’ that gets done inside the restaurant causes a lot of damage and since these teens live in the same community as the adults they would most assuredly get recognized by someone and be either arrested for causing a disturbance and handed a very hefty bill for the repairs, or their parents would, which for them would be just a bad.

The only small funny bit, and I kid you not, comes at the very end during the closing credits, when the head waiter at the now ravaged restaurant tries to save face by convincing the patrons that it had all been an ‘April Fool’s joke’, which got me to chuckle. It’s also kind of amusing how Pee Wee gets so aroused by pics in National Geographic, or sexually stimulated by strippers who aren’t even naked, but just scantily clad enough to excite him anyways, which in this porn saturated era probably wouldn’t be deemed all that titillating, so in that aspect it’s interesting, but everything else is a disaster. It doesn’t even have Porky. How can you have a film titled ‘Porky’s’ if that character never actually shows up though he does reappear in the third installment, which will be reviewed next.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 24, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976)

Posted on December 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They dissect a cat.

Jonathan (Jonathan Kahn) is a 14-year-old who lives with his mother (Sarah Miles) and nanny Mrs. Palmer (Margo Cunningham) in a beachfront house along the sea after the death of his father three years earlier. Jonathan enjoys his friendship with a group of boys lead by Chief (Earl Rhodes), but his mother does not approve due to Chief’s anti-social sentiment forcing Jonathan to have to sneak out on the sly to see them. One day Jonathan finds a peep hole in his bedroom wall that allows him to see inside his mother’s bedroom, and he begins to peer in on her when she’s undressed, and this creates an unhealthy arousal. When his mother begins a relationship with a sailor named Jim (Kris Kristofferson) he becomes jealous and conveys as much to Chief who devises a sinister plan to ‘solve the problem’.

Lewis John Carlino had a highly respected career as a screenwriter garnering 4 Academy Award nominations for best screenplay, but his three forays as director weren’t as successful and all started out well but ended up just missing the mark. This one was no exception as many critics at the time felt the problem lay in adapting a novel, that was written by Yukio Mishima, which was set in Japan, and trying to convert it to English society. The cultures differences that make up the complex Japanese society that were so integral to the characters in the book gets completely lost in the translation leaving the viewer feeling cold, detached, and genuinely confused when it’s over.

The on-location shooting filmed in Dartmouth, Devon, England, is excellent and the one thing that helps the movie stand-out particularly the isolated hillside house that gives the atmosphere an almost surreal-like feel. There’s also a really creepy performance by Rhodes who nails it as a highly intellectualized kid who displays no moral compass and effectively comes-off as a very believable young sociopath. However, these moments gets coupled with some very disturbing ones dealing with animal cruelty which includes a very drawn-out scene involving the killing and dissecting of a cat as well as putting a firecracker in a seagull’s mouth and while no animal was actually harmed during the production it still left many audiences at the time upset and will very likely do the same with viewers today.

The film’s biggest flaw though is that it doesn’t interpret the character’s actions in any way that helps makes sense of their motivations and for the most part they’re all quite two-dimensional. Jonathan’s arousal at seeing his naked mother needs much better explaining. Most kids aren’t this way, so what is it about his psyche that causes him to enjoy it without any guilt or shame? The movie gives us no clue, nor does it explain how his father died and when you add in the boy’s weird behavior and you start to wonder if the Jonathan maybe had something to do with it, which would’ve opened an interesting subtext if even brought up subtlety, but the script fails to touch on it.

The book makes the reasons for the son’s actions clearer. For instance in the novel the boy losses respect for the sailor when he sees him jump into a water fountain, which he considers to be undignified and the movie really needed to have some similar moment as the kid, like in the book, is initially in awe of the man, but it’s never totally clear what creates the deadly shift. Also, when the son is caught peeping in at his mom the response by his mother in the book is different as she feels the boy should receive a severe punishment, but the sailor, in hopes of becoming ‘friends’ with the kid whom he’s now helping to raise, resists, but the film flubs this scene too by treating it almost like a forgettable throwaway moment that has no impact versus one that would’ve helped reveal the sailor in a more in depth way.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending, which should’ve been a shocker, falls flat as well. In the novel it’s made clear that the boys plan to drug and dissect the sailor just like they did with the cat and they even bring along the tools to do it, in the movie we only witness him drinking the spiked tea. The camera then zooms way out showing the boys at an extreme distance where it’s not obvious what they’re doing. To really make a memorable impression we should’ve seen the boys stab the sailor several times with their knives, which would’ve been far more startling. I felt too there needed to be a reaction from the mother. Does she find out what they did, or does his violent demise remain a mystery? How does her relationship with her son evolve, or devolve afterwards? These questions remain unanswered making the movie seem less like a story and more as a concept that’s never adequately fleshed out.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 5, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lewis John Carlino

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Educating Rita (1983)

Posted on November 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to better herself.

Rita (Julie Walters) is a young working-class woman who finds her job as a hairstylist and marriage to Denny (Malcolm Douglas) to be unrewarding. Denny wants her to have a child, but she fears that will just tie her down more. In an attempt to ‘better herself’ she decides to enroll in Britian’s open university where she takes a course in English literature.  Frank (Michael Caine) is a disillusioned college professor who lost the zeal for his job years earlier and has now taken to the bottle. Rita wants him to be her tutor, but Frank initially resists only to eventually agree. Despite their contrasting personalities the two ultimately form a bond and Frank uses Rita’s passion for learning to reignite his own dormant desires that allows him to breakout of his loveless relationship.  However, Rita too begins to see things differently when her roommate/friend tries to commit suicide and she realizes that things aren’t always greener on the other side of the fence.

The film is based on the play of the same name by Willy Russell that premiered in London in 1980 and also starred Walters in the title role. Unlike the movie the play had only two characters and everything took place inside the tutor’s office.

The story’s theme does have an inspiring quality, which is what galvanized the critics to it, but the main character and her transition is a bit hard to believe. On the surface she’s quite likable and well played by the star, but her ambition seems awfully extreme. It would’ve helped had we seen the moment when she first got the idea to go back to school versus having it just briefly be discussed. Wanting to learn a trade in order to make more money and move out of one’s humble surroundings is both commendable and understandable but becoming well versed on the plays of Henrik Ibsen isn’t really going to do that. To pay the bills she’s still going to be stuck working as a hairdresser, which was supposedly the boring routine she wanted to get out of. Expanding one’s literary knowledge may allow her to have lofty conversations among elites at posh parties, but as a whole she’d still be in her same predicament financially.

The Pygmalion-inspired theme was unnecessary. Without sounding snotty I couldn’t buy into the idea that this working-class woman with a limited education could learn to fully appreciate the great literary works or would even want to. The story acts like all that is needed is a great deal of enthusiasm and you can do accomplish anything, but history is full of people who jump into lofty goals with the best of intentions and still fail. Realistically I think this type of person would’ve eventually gotten overwhelmed and realized she was in over-her-head. To solve this the character should’ve been modified to being someone who was middleclass with a literally background, but who had to drop out because her parents died forcing her to go to work at the factory in order to make ends meet, but still longed to get back into what she really enjoyed and thus hired a tutor to help her, which would’ve been for the discerning viewer easier to swallow.

Rita’s ultimate transition is more off-putting than inspiring. I didn’t like her change in hair color where she goes from blonde to brunette, which makes her seem like a different person instead of someone who’s evolved. There needed to be more challenges and roadblocks. A brief spat with her husband, in which he throws her books into a fire, blows over too quickly and she’s able to grasp the complex material, even able to write in depth term papers with a relative ease that didn’t come off as wholly believable. Having her get a bad grade in a course and using this to reassess her goals would’ve allowed in a broader angle and not have been so fanciful, which the film starts to become.

Caine plays his part wonderfully and he certainly is much more into this role than he was in Blame it on Rio, which he did the same year. However, his character’s motives were difficult to understand. I thought this would’ve been the classic case, which can occur with a lot of academics in higher education, where the students aren’t into learning and are apathetic, which frustrates the professors, and this then turns them to alcohol. Here though that didn’t seem to be the case making him come off more like he was just tuning out on his own accord and thus making him less relatable. I also felt he should’ve been fired much sooner as the young adults attending his classes knew that he was drunk, even verbally said as much, so he likely would’ve been reported, and for him to then on top of this get a second chance when he fell over inebriated during a speech, seemed rather implausible.

I did enjoy the scenes involving Frank’s girlfriend Julia (Jeananne Crowley) and her relationship with a married man named Brian (Michael Williams) and how every time Frank comes into the room, and they are there Brian pretends, as a ‘cover’, that he is speaking to someone on the phone. These scenes, which becomes a running-joke, were amusing, but near the end Frank informs Brian that the phone was disconnected and thus revealing that he was in on their charade. This though doesn’t jive because with the old fashioned rotary phone, such as the ones shown here, there would always be a dial tone when one put the receiver to their ear, except of course if the service had been cut and thus Brian would’ve already known that it had been disconnected when he didn’t hear the tone and no need then for Frank to explain it.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, College Life, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays

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Hitch-Hike (1977)

Posted on November 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple picks up killer.

Walter (Franco Nero) and his wife Eve (Corinne Clery) are constantly bickering about Walter’s alcoholism. They go on a trip to Los Angeles and on the way pick-up Adam (David Hess) whose car is stranded on the road. Unbeknownst to them he’s a robber who has doubled-crossed his partners and absconded with a suitcase full of $2 million dollars. It doesn’t take long before Adam has a gun to both of their heads demanding they take him to Mexican border where he plans to escape while also killing them in the process. As the two try desperately to figure a way out they are also being secretly followed by the two young men whom Adam betrayed and who are now intent on extracting a revenge.

One of the biggest problems I had with the movie is that it’s supposed to take place in California but was actually shot in the mountains of Gran Sasso in Italy, which looks nothing like the state. I realize that California has a varied topography but the locales here are screaming southern Europe and the highway signs are done in blue, which anyone living in the U.S. would know is fake as here they’re green, which only accentuates the off-kilter look of the production. Since where they’re driving to makes no real difference to the plot I would’ve just had it be some city in Italy like Rome, which would’ve helped the authenticity.

The other problem I had is that, at least the version I watched, it’s spoken in Italian. Normally I prefer movies that are subtitled versus dubbed, but I could’ve sworn years ago I saw it in English, but what’s available on YouTube, which is the only service currently streaming it, doesn’t offer that, which is a big shame. Not so much because of Nero or Clery, but more Hess as his own voice is not used, which then defeats the whole reason for having him. He’s best known for playing the sadistic killer in The Last House on the Left, and he has an excellent way of being menacing, but because we don’t hear him actually speak in his native tongue all of that gets lost and the creepy energy that was supposed to be there by casting him gets completely wasted.

Spoiler Alert!

The story, which is based on the unpublished novel ‘The Violence and the Fury’ by Peter Kane, doesn’t get off to a good start as it features two people, particularly Nero, who are not likable, and thus the viewer really doesn’t care about their predicament making the tension mediocre at best. There are also elements that are stolen from better known movies like the mysterious truck that keeps chasing them during their drive, with the identity of the driver hidden, that’s taken straight from Duel. Loopholes abound as well as we later learn that Hess is the driver of the truck, but how was he able to avoid being shot by his cohorts earlier with a gun aimed right at him and how was he able to hijack the truck as he had been without any vehicle? Maybe he was able to hitch a ride with a truck driver, just like he did with the couple, and then do away with the driver once inside, but this is stuff that needs to be shown as otherwise it comes-off like the filmmakers are just making up the rules as they go with no concern whether it’s logical.

The twist ending is limp as it features Nero setting the car on fire with his injured wife inside and putting Hess’s dead body next to hers in an attempt to make it look like both he (Nero) and she died in the blaze, but there were such things as dental records back then, so after the coroner examined the charred bodies he/she would determine that it wasn’t really Nero who died and thus the authorities would continue to search for him. Seeing him then become a hitchhiker himself leaves open too many questions and comes off like a cop-out where the filmmakers ran out of ideas and thus decided to just end it there.

End of Spoiler Alert!

The moment where Nero is forced to watch Hess make love to his wife, and witnessing the humiliation and anger in his eyes, is the film’s best moment. Watching Clery, the only person you sympathize with, is entertaining both with her clothes on and off. However, the film lacks any character development, and the plot is quite strained with a lot of moments where the story, much like with the car ride, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and if anything, just driving itself around in circles.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Pasquale Festa Campanile

Studio: Explorer Film ’58

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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