By Richard Winters
My Rating: 4 out of 10
4-Word Review: Gang terrorizes elderly couple.
David and Becky (Lee Strasberg, Ruth Gordon) are an elderly couple who spent their entire lives living on Coney Island, but find that their once nice neighborhood has been overtaken by a street gang lead by Strut (Kim Delgado) who demands money from David for ‘protection’. When David refuses to comply it causes Strut and his gang to go on an unrelenting terror campaign where they not only evade David’s home and scare Becky, but also destroy the synagogue where he worships.
The film has a nice independent feel to it and I enjoyed the way the neighborhood’s of Coney Island, many of them with old and picturesque homes gets captured, but this also proves problematic because the area comes off looking too nice to be marred by gangs. In order for the plot to make more sense the couple should’ve been living in a rundown tenet building in an extremely bad part of town instead something looking straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
The gang itself is laughable and outside of their campy looking leader seem to be made up of children no older than the fifth or fourth grade. The kids behave threateningly one minute and then get quickly scared off the next. The way they scurry off like a flock of frightened birds makes them seem not very street tough at all, but instead like a bunch of hellions with too much time on their hands and not enough adult supervision. I was also confused why they never get caught and thrown into juvenile detention since they commit most of their crimes in broad daylight for everyone to see.
The story doesn’t focus that much on their activities either as there are long segments in between the gang activities that deal instead with Becky’s cancer and David’s grandson Peter’s (Michael Ayr) rocky love-life, which is actually more interesting and made me believe that the gang storyline could’ve been cut out completely and the movie would’ve been better off for it.
Strasberg, gives a good performance though he’s a bit too serious and probably unable to play a comedic role, or be funny even if he wanted to. Gordon is okay too, despite the fact that her delivery always makes her sound like she’s drunk, but having her collapse and die quite literally in the middle of their 50th wedding anniversary party was over-the-top.
I enjoyed Joe Silver’s supporting performance as David’s grown son especially when he chases a kid who refuses to pay for his food out onto the street and then physically drags him back inside. The scene where David and Becky look through an issue of Playboy before going to sleep is amusing too, but overall the amateurish way it portrays the young gang and the violence that they commit ends up sinking it especially with its laughable ending.
My Rating: 4 out of 10
Released: November 14, 1979
Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Stephen Verona
Studio: Atlantic Releasing Corporation
Available: YouTube
Scopophilia 