Monthly Archives: February 2025

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Posted on February 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Fighting for nuclear disarmament.

Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) escapes from prison with the help of his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer). He is then able to create a powerful villain named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) by stealing a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum and using its code to create a genetic matrix. Nuclear Man has many of the same powers as Superman, but, unbeknownst to Superman, he’s only powerful when he’s in sunlight and without that he becomes weakened. Meanwhile Clark Kent is having battles of his own when the newspaper he’s working for, The Daily Planet, gets taken over by a rich tycoon named David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) who degrades the paper’s integrity by insisting only stories with a salacious bent get printed. David’s daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway) takes a liking to Clark and the two soon become an item.

The fourth installment was the first not to be produced by the Salkinds who decided to give up on the franchise after the box office flop of Supergirl and sold the rights to the Cannon Group who were suffering financial strain, which caused the budget for this one to be cut from $36 million down to $17 million. Many have complained that the result of this compromised the special effects though I didn’t find the drop-off to be quite a bad as I feared. The biggest drawback are the flying scenes where it clearly looks like Superman is matted in front of a greenscreen and isn’t nearly as slick looking as the first two. The opening bit though that takes place on a Russian space station I thought was alright, but I did wonder how Superman was able to know that the cosmonauts were in trouble, as he appears to the rescue out of nowhere, and what would tip him off that they were in danger?

The dumbest addition is the Nuclear Man. In the 45-minute deleted footage there were actually two with the first one being portrayed by Clive Mantle and resembling the comic book villain Bizarro. This one gets defeated by the Man of Steel prompting Lex to create a another one. The second creation is the only one shown in the studio cut version and this one looks like a male model wearing a tacky get-up stolen from Clash of the Titans. He speaks with Lex’s voice and I’m not sure why it was done this way outside of actor Mark Pillow, who plays the second incarnation, not having any acting experience, so they had his lines dubbed by Hackman, but the explanation that he has Luthor’s voice because Luthor made him doesn’t make sense. Why just stop at the voice? If he’s going to replicate his creator then he should have the same eyes, ears, and body as Luthor as well.

I was happy that Margot Kidder gets more screentime as in Part III she was relegated to being not much more than a cameo appearance. However, having her Lois Lane character constantly getting into extreme danger, this time on a subway train where the driver passes out, causing the car she’s riding in to accelerate to dangerous speeds, starts to get a bit overbaked. How many times statistically can one person accidentally walk into a life-threatening situation? Once sure, could happen to anyone, but even just twice would be a stretch. However, this lady inadvertently falls into a scary mess seemingly every other day making her more like a walking-talking bad luck charm that everyone else should stay away from for their own protection.

The scenes that she shares with Superman are stupid as he takes her on a flight with him into the night sky, but this was already done in Part I, so why redo it? Then when they land back at her apartment after revealing to her that Clark is really Superman, he does something that makes her forget that, but why even bother to let her know about his secret identity if he’s just going to make her lose her memory of it right after?

Initially I liked the addition of Hemingway as the new love interest as I thought the bratty persona of her character would lend some spice. Unfortunately, she loses her entitled attitude right away becoming benign and boring like everything else. The scene featuring her getting kidnapped by Nuclear Man, who takes her into space with him, is ridiculous because she’d never be able to survive outside of the earth’s atmosphere as there would be no oxygen, which along with the frozen temperature, would’ve had her dead instantly.

I really liked Hackman recreating his role as Luthor, who adds a much-needed campy charm. Cryer isn’t bad either as his young henchman and he does have the film’s one and only funny line. The story isn’t as political and preachy as I thought it was going to be either, which is good, but everything else falls flat. The initial runtime was supposed to be over 2-hours, but I was thankful it got cut down to a mere 90-minutes and even then, it was a drag to sit though. The franchise came to a merciful end after this, and I feel it was for the best.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Studio: The Cannon Group

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Sequels

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Superman III (1983)

Posted on February 21, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Computer whiz corrupts Superman.

August ‘Gus’ Gorman (Richard Pryor) is an unemployed man looking for a job and comes upon the idea of training to become a computer tech when he sees it advertised on the back of a book of matches. Much to his surprise he excels as a student and is soon able to use his newfound computer knowledge to hack other programs including the payroll department at his company where he’s able to give himself a large, unearned monetary bonus. Ross Webster (Robert Vaughan), the company’s CEO, becomes aware of what Gus is doing, but is so impressed by his computer skills that instead of firing him he hires him to hack a weather satellite that will cause a rain storm in Columbia that will destroy the coffee crops and allow Webster to corner the market, but Superman intervenes and tempers the storm, so it isn’t as bad. This causes Webster to realize how detrimental to his plans Superman is and orders Gus to come create some synthesized Kryptonite in order to impair Superman’s ability. Gus researches the elements that make up Kryptonite on his computer and finds all of them except for one, so he arbitrarely adds tobacco in it for good measure. Instead of weakening Superman it turns him into an uncaring, sinister person who ‘drops-out’ of the hero saving lifestyle and becomes an anti-social person who shows no concern for others.

When Richard Donner, who had directed the first installment and 75% percent of the second one, got fired, he was replaced with Richard Lester. Lester had a far different vision for the Superman films. He disliked what he considered the ‘dark tone’ that Donner had given the first two and wanted a humorous quality put in. While I don’t mind some campiness Lester clearly goes overboard including the segment done over the opening credits that features unending slapstick that makes a mockery of the Superman franchise and drives the whole thing down to such a silly level that I wouldn’t have blamed anyone if they had walked out of the theater and demanded their money back.

Pryor was a big fan of the first two Superman movies and said as much when he was a guest on the ‘Tonight Show’. The Salkinds, who had proved already to have an unhealthy proclivity to the so-called ‘star power’ by casting Marlon Brando in the first film and paying him an outrageous sum even though his acting was subpar and a lessen known actor could’ve done a better job at half the price. No one ever came to a Superman movie simply to see Brando nor any other big-name actor, but for whatever reason the Salkinds didn’t understand this, so when they heard Pryor was interested in being in one of their films and he was a trop draw at the box office at the time, they admittedly signed him up.

Pryor, for his part, is highly engaging, but his schtick is out of place here. The script centers too much on his character making Superman seem like he’s only a co-star in his own movie. The character he plays makes no sense either as he’s portrayed initially as being a dumb guy who can’t hold down any job and then suddenly becomes a super genius with computers. However, there needed to be something shown in his background that would connect this, like he was really good with math, or coding, but instead it’s never explained. The movie makes it seem like it’s ‘dumb luck’ that he’s such a programming whiz and even he himself doesn’t understand it, which is just plain ridiculous especially as he continues to become more and more sophisticated with it.

While I liked the gaudy set design of Webster’s penthouse, and his rooftop ski slope, as a villain he’s a complete bore and seems too similar to Lex Luthor and his ditzy lady friend Lorelei, played by Pamela Stephenson, coming-off as being simply a younger version of Luthor’s main squeeze Miss Tessmacher. Webster’s evil sister Vera, played by Annie Ross, is equally dull and I have no idea why she was even put into the story as she adds little and doesn’t play-up her domineering persona enough to be even remotely interesting or amusing. Her character shows the same flaw as Pryor’s where she becomes really good at running a complex computer system too easily and too quickly.

The Lois Lane character gets minimized to the extreme where we see her briefly at the start and then quickly at the end. Supposedly this was due to a falling out that Margot Kidder had with the producers, but the Salkinds insisted it was more because they wanted to explore Superman’s romance with someone else, but Lois and Clark Kent’s relationship had gotten quite intense during Part II, so there needed to be some explanation with why now they were in the ‘friend zone’ like maybe perhaps she had found another boyfriend. The film though never bothers to come-up with any answer making it feel like there was no story cohesion between this one and the other two. Annette O’Toole, who plays the new love interest Lana Lang, is benign and the romantic chemistry between her and Kent is nil. 

David and Leslie Newman’s script lacks understanding in regard to technology and extreme naivety with the way Pryor’s character is able to use his computer to hack into other programs. Viewers today, who are much more sophisticated about the topic, will find the stuff here to be quite antiquated. The way the giant supercomputer gets completed is absurd too as it’s never shown who builds it. Was it done by just the four villains single-handedly, or by a large crew? Even if a crew did do it, it would take months if not years to construct and yet here it’s done in seemingly a day, or two. When Gus and Webster create an economic crisis by redirecting oil tankers you’d think the U.S. government would certainly get involved and investigate and would have computer experts on hand to trace back how and where the hacking occurred and at some point the two would eventually, at the very least, come under suspicion and yet here that never happens, nor even gets touched upon.

Spoiler Alert!

Some have complimented Reeve’s performance as the evil Superman, which is good, but the giant showdown that he and Clark Kent have in which they use they’re individual superpowers to try and take the other down, is too reminiscent between Zod’s gang and Superman from part II and thus comes off as redundant instead of exciting. 

I didn’t agree with Pryor’s character getting off-the-hook at the end either. Yes, he did ultimately save Superman’s life, but he also stole money and got involved in nefarious projects that broke many laws, so instead of being transported to a new location where he could get another job and ‘start fresh’ he should’ve been taken to a prison to serve his debt to society. Even if he was at heart ‘a nice guy’ he still did some wrong things and should’ve had to pay some sort of consequence. 

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1983

Runtime: 2 Hours 5 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Lester

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Superman II (1980)

Posted on February 18, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Superman loses his powers.

Superman (Christopher Reeve) flies to Paris in an attempt to save Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) who was assigned to go there to cover terrorists who’ve taken over the Eiffel Tower and threatening to detonate a hydrogen bomb unless their demands are met. Superman manages to take control of the bomb and lift it into outerspace where it goes off, but unbeknownst to him the explosion also releases Zod (Terrence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) from their imprisonment inside the phantom zone. The three now fly towards earth planning to take it over with the superpowers they’ve been given from the sunlight. Meanwhile Clark falls in love with Lois and admits to her that he’s Superman. He takes her to the artic to see his Fortress of Solitude and it’s there that he listens to a past recording of his mother Lara (Susannah York) advising him that if he wishes to marry Lois that he will then have to enter a crystal chamber where he’ll then lose his powers, which he does. Now that Zod and his evil associates have taken over the country by invading the White House he becomes powerless to do anything about it as he desperately searches for a way to regain what he gave up.

The production had many behind-the-scenes upheaval including run-ins between director Richard Donner and the producers who insisted that he was going over budget. Initially it was deemed necessary to film both the first segment and the sequel at the same time, but due to money concerns they stopped filming part 2 with 75% of it already completed in order to finish the first part and get it out to theaters. During the pause the producers then fired Donner and replaced him with Richard Lester. Lester was known more for his zany comedies and had a different directorial style than Donner. His approach was to insert campiness into the story and move it away from the dark elements. This caused several scenes to be refilmed some of which without the original cast including Hackman who refused to come back to do reshoots causing a few of his scenes to be dubbed while Brando had sued the producers for his share of the gross profits causing all of his scenes to be taken out completely and replaced mostly with York who ended up speaking the lines that he would’ve and for the most part does a far better job of it.

While the Donner version was released onto DVD in 2006 and is a bit different this review will stick with the one that was shown in the theaters and I felt is quite well done. Unlike with part 1 this one gets right to the action without the stagy back story from the first, which I found boring. The showdown between Superman and the evil three done on the streets of Metropolis as well as the massive destruction that the villains cause the small redneck town of East Houston are very exciting with great special effects that should please anyone. The comedy bits that Lester inserted I didn’t feel went that over-the-top and in some ways were helpful as it released some of the tension as these were some really nasty bad guys, who caused massive destruction, so inserting a campy chuckle here and there I didn’t feel was that out of order.

The script doesn’t have as many plot holes like in the first one. The only major issue to quibble about is when Superman goes into the chamber that sucks away his powers. Why though is it necessary that he should have to give up his powers just because he wants to get married is a whole different discussion that’s worth questioning, but I get that there needed to be a dramatic conflict, so we’ll roll with it. However, it’s never explained how Clark and Lois get themselves out of the artic and back to civilization as they ‘flew’ into the Fortress using his flight powers, but once he was made mortal, they couldn’t rely on that on the way out and without any other mode of transportation I wasn’t sure how they were able to travel and nothing gets shown, but should’ve.

Spoiler Alert!

His long trek back to the Fortress in an attempt to retrieve the powers is equally problematic as he is shown doing it completely on foot, which could take many weeks, or longer to do. He’s also shown wearing nothing more than a light jacket while he does it without any head covering, which now that he’s human, wouldn’t be enough to shield him from the brutal elements and frigid cold and he most likely would’ve died before he got there from either frost bite, or pneumonia. How he’s able to get the powers back aren’t sufficiently explained either. Supposedly it’s because of a green crystal that Lois dropped and is still there when he returns, but if the control module was already destroyed then how would this get it to work again?

End of Spoiler Alert!

The acting is again what really makes it fun. Hackman is once more excellent as Luthor as here he plays it both ways as the ‘middleman’ between Zod and Superman where one minute he’s arrogant and confident and then the next he’s nervous and pleading. It’s a shame though that Perrine and Beatty, his cohorts in crime, aren’t in it as much as I felt the three together had a great chemistry. Gotta love Kidder as a brash Lois who manually squeezes oranges for Vitamin C as she’s become a self-described ‘health nut’ all the while a cigarette dangles from her mouth. Stamp is really good too as the main villain and his intense performance is what keeps the tension going, which again is why the comedy bits aren’t a problem here, though in Part III this does become a major issue, which will be discussed in the next review.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 4, 1980

Runtime: 2 Hour 7 Minutes

Rated PG

Directors: Richard Donner, Richard Lester

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sequels

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Superman (1978)

Posted on February 16, 2025 | 9 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: The Man of Steel.

As the planet Krypton gets set to be destroyed by its exploding sun, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) and his wife Lara (Susannah York) put their child on a spaceship that takes him to the planet earth. It is there that his spaceship crash lands into a wheat field that his spotted by Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha (Phyllis Thaxter) who take the child in and treat him as their own. The boy is named Clark (Christopher Reeve) and as he grows, he begins to show amazing abilities including running faster than is humanely possible and incredible strength. Once he becomes an adult, he gets a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet newspaper where he meets fellow reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). He even saves her, while dressed as a superhero, from a helicopter accident and becomes known initially as the ‘caped wonder’ before finally being coined as Superman. His publicity attracts the attention of criminal mastermind Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) who devises a plan to steal missiles and use them to create an earthquake along the San Andreas fault and thus casting off coastal California into the ocean and turning the desert land he purchased into prime real estate. Superman attempts to stop him, but Lex has found one thing that can stop him: a meteorite known as kryptonite.

At the time this film, which suffered from numerous behind-the-scenes problems and infighting, was made it was the most expensive one ever produced with a whopping $55 million budget. While the effects were mesmerizing for many back-in-the-day I don’t know if they still all hold-up. The flying segments particularly over the Statue of Liberty is impressive to a degree but can’t quite equal today’s technology and appears like two people in front of a greenscreen as does the giant red sun that moves in to destroy Kyrpton. Watching the young Clark Kent running alongside a train looks tacky too like he’s being held up by invisible wires, which he was, and his feet aren’t really ever touching the ground. In all fairness though the earthquake segment and the destruction of the Hoover Dam and the shaking of the Golden Gate Bridge remains top notch.

The script though, which takes on quite a lot and had to be slimmed down from its original 500-page version that was written by Mario Puzo, feels rushed at times and glosses over certain things that I felt should’ve been a little more drawn-out particularly when the Kents find the boy crash land in the field. The film makes it look like they just left the remains of the spaceship in the field making me think other people in the area would’ve also come upon it later and would start a panic that some alien had come out of it and invaded the town. Later on, we come to realize that the ship got hidden inside their barn, but there’s no scene showing them transporting it, or how they went about doing that, which I felt should’ve been put in for the simple sake of clarity.

Watching Superman orbit the earth in an attempt to get it to spin backwards and supposedly ‘turn back time’ is kind of cool to see and an interesting concept though not totally plausible. Making the world rotate the other way would certainly change some things like having the sun rise in the west instead of the east and have the ocean waves go in a different direction among other things, but causing everything to essentially ‘rewind’ and go back to the way they were even bringing certain people who had died suddenly back to life just wasn’t completely convincing though it’s not enough to hurt the movie as a whole.

Most fans will likely tell me I’m quibbling about the Clark Kent disguise though when you really think about it it’s not much of a disguise at all. I admit watching this muscular guy dressed in a suit and acting all clumsy and wimpy is amusing especially the way Reeve plays it but besides combing his hair in a different direction than when he’s Superman the only other difference is that he wears glasses. However, that would be tantamount to saying someone who does wear glasses but then comes to work one day without them would not be recognized by any of his friends, or co-workers especially when he’s still speaking in the same voice making me believe that Lois and Jimmy, played by Marc McClure, should and would’ve caught on to this pretty quickly. I realize the comic book did it this way, but when it got updated into a movie, they should’ve reenvisioned it a little by adding more to the Clark get-up like besides just glasses he’d also have a mustache, or goatee and speak a bit differently, so having those close to him not catch-on would be more understandable.

I think what I enjoyed most was Hackman, who didn’t play a lot of villains during his career but is highly enjoyable here. Initially he didn’t want to take the part as he felt playing a campy character would tarnish his reputation of being a serious actor, but the change of pace does him good and proves if anything how versatile he is. His refusal not to shave his head, as the Lex Luthor in the comic is bald, works in his favor as his hair gets styled differently in each scene in order to represent him wearing a wig, which creates a creative visual. Valerie Perrine is great too as his girlfriend Miss Teschmacher who helps contrast his delusional personality with her more grounded sensibilities and I just loved the way he’d yell out her name every time he got annoyed with her, which is the comedy highlight.

The rest of the supporting cast though, made up of big name starts like Trevor Howard, Maria Schell, and even Larry Hagman didn’t seem needed and given such few lines I was surprised why they’d even take the roles unless it was because of the money. Brando is an equal waste. He’s given top billing and paid an exorbitant amount of money including a percentage of the profits despite refusing to memorize his dialogue and even having his lines written on the baby’s diaper for him to read off of as he puts the child into the spaceship. Had the producers skipped the unimportant ‘star power’ and cast lesser knowns in these roles they could’ve saved themselves a lot of money, which in retrospect might’ve lessened the tensions they had with director Richard Donner for going over budget and ultimately lead to his firing and a very tumultuous follow-up Superman II, which will be covered in the next review.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 10, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Donner

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Classic, Disaster Flicks, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies with Nudity

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For the Love of Benji (1977)

Posted on February 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Secret code on paw.

Benji (Benjean) and his dog mate Tiffany along with Cindy (Cynthia Smith), Paul (Allen Fiuzat), and their nanny Mary (Patsy Garrett) arrive at the airport to board a plane that will take them to Crete, Greece where they plan to vacation. While waiting in-line Mary visits with the man standing behind her, Chandler Dietrich (Ed Nelson), who seems nice and she, along with the two kids, start-up a friendship. Unbeknownst to them he’s not such a swell guy but instead a spy who’s stolen a secret formula that can accelerate the production of oil. He sneaks into the baggage room and imprints this formula onto Benji’s paw while the animal is stuck in a cage. Things though don’t go as planned because Benji and Tiffany don’t arrive in Greece when the plane does causing much confusion. When he does finally get spotted by a baggage handler he escapes from his cage and runs through the city streets lost and alone. He manages to find the hotel that his owners are staying at but is afraid to go up to them when he sees they’re with Chandler. Once Chandler realizes that Benji is in the vicinity he buys a large Doberman dog to go sniff him out and thus retrieve the formula still imprinted on his paw.

For a follow-up this isn’t bad, and the change of scenery helps. The film also features some exciting chase sequences including the climactic one with Benji trying to escape Chandler who attempts to run him down with his sports car. The segments though dealing with Benji roaming the city streets I didn’t find interesting, nor does it have the gripping quality that they had in the first installment and to have added a dramatic quality to it the children should’ve been lost with Benji and thus caused even more of an urgency. Also, the opening scenes get done in Greek with no subtitles, so it’s impossible to understand what’s said and for the sake of clarity should’ve been spoken at the very least in broken English.

Garret is delightful as the tubby nanny and the scene where she tries to nervously hold a suspected criminal, played by Art Vasil, with a gun despite clearly not knowing how to handle one, is entertaining. The children however seem used only as props to get excited when they see Benji and despondent when they don’t. Surprised too that Peter Breck, who played their father in the first one, isn’t here. It’s stated that he’ll be arriving a week later, but his character was the only one in the first film that had any discernable arch as he initially didn’t like the dog but learned to accept it when the pooch saved the kids, so it would’ve been interesting to see how his relationship with the pet had progressed.

Nelson is the most effective as he’s a smart and cunning villain that creates quality tension every moment, he’s on screen and his somber eyes along with his salt and pepper hair create a creepy vibe. My only issue is that there’s no explanation for how he’s able to get into the baggage area without being detected. He’s in there for several minutes as he drugs the dog, so you’d think some employee would’ve walked in on him, but don’t. Did he bop a security guard on the head to gain access, or knock him out with the same drug he used on the dog? Either way it should’ve been shown as well as explained how he was able to just open the door to the room as you would think it would’ve been locked and a key, or pass code needed for entry.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic sequence gets a bit botched as Benji arrives at the hotel the family is staying at only to see it surrounded by police. Then Nelson drives up in his car with a gun pointed at Cindy’s head in an attempt to get the dog to jump into the vehicle. However, it doesn’t make much sense for Nelson to go into an area where police are visibly all over as there’s no real chance for escape. It would’ve worked better had the police not been seen up front making Nelson’s arrival seem more plausible as he’d be under the impression no cops were there and more tense as the viewer would think it was all up to Benji to save the girl and no one else to help. Once Benji bites Nelson’s arm forcing him to drop the gun then the police could’ve suddenly appeared by jumping out of the bushes, or wherever, and arrested him.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 10, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Joe Camp

Studio: Mulberry Square Releasing

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a Hotel setting, Sequels, Spy/Espionage

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Benji (1974)

Posted on February 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dog saves kidnapped children.

Benji (Higgins) is a stray dog who resides in an empty house that some consider haunted in the outskirts of a small town. He regularly visits Cindy (Cynthia Smith) and Paul (Allen Fiuzat) who are children who live in a big home with their father (Peter Breck) and housekeeper Mary (Patsy Garrett). The children want to keep the dog as their own, but the father refuses insisting that strays can carry diseases and therefore it wouldn’t be safe. One day three people (Deborah Walley, Christopher Connelly, Tom Lester) break into the abandoned home, but do not notice Benji, or his poodle companion Tiffany, who hide behind a table. The three, who are led by a fourth person named Mitch (Mark Slade), plot a kidnapping and to Benji’s shock it turns out to be the two children that are the victims. He tries to alert Mary and the father, but is unable to get them to understand until he comes up with a clever tactic to clue them in. Will he be able to get them and the police to catch-on soon enough before the kidnappers move the children out of the home and into an undisclosed location?

The film was a labor of love for writer/director/producer Joe Camp who worked in advertising before deciding to get into filmmaking. The inspiration came while he was watching Lady and the Tramp on TV and concluded that there weren’t enough quality children’s films out there and decided to attempt to change that. However, when he shopped his storyline around to the various studios it got roundly rejected, so he decided to use his background in marketing to make and distribute the film himself. It was made on a modest budget of $500,000 but ended up making $45 million.

Compared to other children’s films this is an improvement as both the children and adults are portrayed as being smart, realistic people. In other kiddie flicks it seems it always has to be one way or the other with the kids being the naive ones saying cutesy, silly things and the adults chuckling about it, or dispensing preachy ‘life lessons’, or its the kids that are in the know while the adults are out-of-touch, so it’s nice when both sides can be shown as sensible and even when there are disagreements it gets handled in a respectful manner. The soundtrack doesn’t have that cheesy, singsong saccharine quality like you usually hear in this type of genre, but is instead distinct, jazzy, and even toe-tapping.

It’s impressive how the film gets literally inside the head of the dog and you see everything, including the camera angles, from his point-of-view. Most other films with animals as characters don’t do that. Usually they get paired with a human friend/owner who helps ‘narrate’ what the animal is thinking, but here there’s none of that. I was thinking, but willing to forgive the moment when one of the kidnappers pulls out a gun and Benji reveals a frightened expression though animals really won’t know what a gun is, but director Camp smartly inserts a visual showing the dog encountering a gun in the past when police confront a robber and thus explaining why the dog would understand its danger, which other filmmakers wouldn’t have bothered to show, or even thought through.

I have only two criticisms. The first one is a relatively mild complaint dealing with the behavior of the bad guys, particularly Connelly and Lester’s characters who seem unrealistically spooked by the house even though two big, tough rugged guys who are streetwise enough to commit a bold kidnapping shouldn’t believe such childish things. When they broke into the house, they should’ve gone through the entire place including the upstairs to make sure no one else, including a possible vagrant, was residing there. Also, when the kids are kidnapped, the perpetrators should’ve worn masks, or blindfolded the kids, so as not to be identified later, which seems like something that should’ve been a no-brainer.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest issue though is when Mitch kicks the little dog named Tiffany and it appears that he’s killed her. While it does show at the very end that she was only injured as the she hobbles out of the vet clinic wearing a cast on her tiny legs it is still very traumatic for a child to see such a violent act on a defenseless animal. I remember when I watched this movie at the age of 5 in the theaters, I cried all the way home afterwards. A few years later when we watched it again on Showtime with my younger brother and sister, they cried about it too. A scene like that, even if the dog is eventually shown as surviving, wasn’t necessary and the movie should’ve certainly been given a PG-rating as the G-rating is misleading.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 17, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Joe Camp

Studio: Mulberry Square Releasing

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies that take place in Texas

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Any Which Way You Can (1980)

Posted on February 8, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Betting on a fight.

Philo (Clint Eastwood) is still working as a trucker, still travels around with his pet orangutan Clyde, and still lives at home with his mother (Ruth Gordon) while getting involved in some bare-knuckle fights on the side to earn some extra money. He also continues to be harassed by the Black Widow biker gang who constantly hound him to even a past score. Things begin to change a bit when he meets back up with Lynn (Sondra Locke) who apologizes for her behavior from before and wants to rekindle their romance. Philo resists at first, but eventually the two get back together and she even moves-in with him in a spare room, but pressure mounts when fight handicapper Jack Beckman (Harry Guardino) comes-up with the idea of pairing Philo with Jack Wilson (William Smith), whose fighting skills mixes both martial arts and boxing. Jack figures it would be a match that would generate much betting interest and uses his men and money to convince Philo to take part in it. While Philo does initially agree he eventually backs out due to pressure from Lynn as she feels it’s too dangerous, but Jack, who has Mafia money riding on the fight, won’t take no for an answer and kidnaps Lynn in an effort to get Philo to reconsider. 

This is one of those sequels that’s a vast improvement over the first and much of the credit goes to Stanford Sherman, who wrote over 18 episodes for the 60’s ‘Batman’ TV-show and shows a good knack for balancing campy humor with interesting action. He’s also able to tie-in everything that goes on, so it doesn’t come off like a disconnected mess like with the first installment that had characters and situations coming-out of nowhere that wasn’t cohesive. Here each character has a purpose and everything that happens has a reason and connects with the main theme making for a much slicker production even when some of it gets silly.

Much more attention goes to the ape here though it’s not the same one as in the first film. That one was named Manis who was deemed to have grown too big for the part, so he got replaced by Buddha who has some amusing segments with his best moments coming when he tears up some cars, including one being driven by a bad guy, played by Michael Cavanaugh, as he’s trying to get away and another scene where he wears a dress and then ‘flashes’ an amorous hotel owner. However, in a book by Jane Goodall entitled ‘Visions of Caliban’ it was asserted that Buddha was badly beaten by his owner during the production after he stole some doughnuts on the set and was eventually clubbed to death forcing them to bring in a third ape named C.J. to do the publicity tour for the movie after filming had wrapped. 

Like in the first one the movie also features a lot of bare-knuckle brawls though these aren’t quite as interesting since Clint wins every one of them, so there’s never any tension. To keep it realistic, and give it better balance, they should’ve had him lose one, possible in humiliating style, and the rest of the movie could’ve been having him trying to defend his title and the audience would’ve been more emotionally invested in seeing him do it.  Would’ve been nice too had they not implemented that annoying punch sound effect that to me puts the fight at a cartoon level and I wished more movies from the period did it like The Whole Shootin’ Match, which didn’t feel the need to have that effect put in and thus actually made the fighting grittier and more intense in the process. 

While the film is way too long, there’s no reason for a runtime of 2-hours with such a slight and goofy plot, which should’ve have not been more than 85-minutes. However, it saves itself with some genuinely inspired moments including when real-life couple Logan and Anne Ramsey, who play a traveling husband and wife who stay in the hotel room next to the two apes whose noisy love making turn them on as does Clint and Sondra in adjacent room while Ruth and the elderly hotel clerk, played by Peter Hobbs, also make it in the motel office, I found to be quite amusing and almost worth the price of admission. The climactic bout between Clint and Smith and the way it galvanizes people from all over to witness it and bet money on it, including the Black Widow biker gang, who survive a ‘taring’ earlier, is good fun making it worth checking out on a slow night. 

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Buddy Van Horn

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

Posted on February 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: A bare-knuckle brawler.

Philo (Clint Eastwood) is a truck driver still living with his mother (Ruth Gordon) and who compensates his income with bare-knuckle fights where people can make bets either on, or against him. He also travels around with an orangutan named Clyde whom he won as compensation for one of his fights. One day while waiting in his pick-up at a red light a biker gang known as The Black Widows and led by Cholla (John Quade) pull up beside them and begin harassing the ape. This creates a confrontation, and the bikers seek a vendetta on Philo determined to challenge him to a fight and begin stalking him until he agrees. Philo is also being chased by Putnam (Gregory Walcott), a cop upset at Philo over a misunderstanding that occurred while the two were in a bar. Meanwhile Philo is also trying to find Lynn (Sandra Locke) a singer he fell for who moved away to Colorado with her boyfriend, but Philo travels there in an attempt to find her and win her back, but Putnam and the Black Widows are in hot pursuit. 

The script is the product of Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, who after watching Smokey and the Bandit, became ‘inspired’ to write this one and was convinced it would make the perfect follow-up vehicle for star Burt Reynolds. However, when he shopped it around to the studios, they all rejected it, so he decided to send it off to Clint Eastwood’s secretary in the hopes that Clint, being good friends with Burt, would show him the script and convince him to do it. Instead to everyone’s surprise Clint, who was looking to broaden his appeal, decided to take on the starring duties himself and even cast Kronsberg as one of the biker gang members.

Many of those close to Clint thought it was a bad career move, and the critics savaged the film upon its initial release, but at the box office, which is what really counts, it did very well and became one of the highest grossing films of Eastwood’s career. A major reason for this is its rural appeal where everyone is essentially a redneck and white collar, college educated suburbanites just don’t exist. Instead, one’s social standing hinges on how much they down at the bar and whom they beat-up, which helps create a strong and surreal atmosphere. Initially though with this type of mentality I thought the setting should’ve been Texas and not California as when most people think of Cali they connect it with rich Hollywood stars and Malibu mansions when in reality that’s only a portion of the state and on the east end it’s much more rustic with a far more blue collar attitude and the movie does a good job of exposing this. 

It’s fun to see Eastwood not taking himself so seriously and being laid-back even smiling versus having him constantly look at everybody with his patented squinty-eyed stare. In support I though Ruth Gordon was great. Usually she plays ditzy old dames, but here she’s crusty and ornery and the segment where this ‘vulnerable old woman’ single-handedly shoots-up the biker gang when they invade her property is the movie’s highpoint. Bevery D’Angelo quite good too playing a free-spirited flower child named Echo. While she doesn’t have anything funny to say it’s nice having a character who’s quiet and subdued to help balance all the other wackiness. 

The script though is in desperate search for a story that never really transpires. Too much hinges on random events strung together by the thinnest of threads versus being connected by actual motivations and momentum. Having Eastwood, a tall and intimidating looking guy, constantly getting harassed for no reason, doesn’t make a lot of sense. The biker gang should’ve hounded him because they were hired by someone who lost to him in a fight and was bitter about it and the cop could’ve been hassling him because he lost a bet on one of his fights and thus wanted some compensation. While these may not be deep and profound motives at least they give a reason for what’s happening versus having things strung together by a lot of disconnected events that come out of nowhere. 

Spoiler Alert!

Sondra Locke though almost saves it. Her hyper and sarcastic personality makes for a nice contrast to Eastwood’s, and I liked how he pursues her as a love interest only to ultimately realize that she’s a psycho and he’d be better off without her. Most other movies have the concept that ‘lover conquers all’ and you’re better off with someone, even if they’re seriously flawed, than without, so having this movie take the alternative viewpoint is a refreshing change of pace and thus deserves some credit. 

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 20, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 55 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: James Fargo

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies Based on Songs, Road Movies

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Tootsie (1982)

Posted on February 3, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pretending to be female.

Michael (Dustin Hoffman) is a talented actor but having difficulty finding employment due to his demanding nature and inability to get along with directors. His friend Sandy (Teri Garr) is auditioning for a part in a soap opera, and he helps her prepare for the role and even takes her to the audition only to learn that she was rejected before given any chance to do a screentest. It’s at this same time that he learns his agent George (Sydney Pollack) hasn’t gotten him a chance to audition for another role because in his words ‘no one will work with him’. Michael then decides to disguise himself as a woman named Dorothy Michaels in an effort to get the role that Sandy was turned down for so as to raise money to produce a play that will star Sandy. While he does get the part, he also becomes a big star with everyone believing that Dorothy really is a woman, which cause many complications in both his personal and professional life making him feel like he wants to end the charade and go back to his normal identity, but not quite sure how to do it. 

The genesis for the story began all the way back in 1970 and was based on an off-Broadway play by Don McGuire titled ‘Would I Lie to You?’ about an out of work stage actor who dresses as a woman to get a big part. Director Dick Richards adapted the plot into a screenplay, and it got shopped around for many years, but to no avail. Then in 1980 cross-dressing actor Christopher Morley played the role of a woman named Sally Armitage in the soap opera ‘General Hospital’. The part was played straight with the viewers under the impression that it really was a female, and Sally even gained the romantic interest from the character Luke, played by Anthony Geary, only to eventually reveal that she was really a man, which was a ratings hit and thus lead to renewed interest in this script. Eventually Dustin Hoffman got a hold of it and decided he wanted to take it on under the condition that was given full creative control and even hired his own people, Larry Gelbert and Murra Schisgal, to rewrite the story to his liking. 

Personally, my favorite parts of the film come at the beginning where we see Michael’s struggles as an actor as well as all of his thespian friends giving one a glimpse at just how hard the business is and how few people can make an actual living in it. Watching both him and his roommate Jeff, played by Bill Murray, working as waiters, but still talking about their acting ambitions while on that job was on-target. Garr gives a great performance as a struggling would-be actress who is full of insecurities and letdowns and a perfect composite of many young women who find the auditioning process grueling and thankless and for this reason, I felt she should’ve won the Oscar instead of Jessica Lange as her part as the love interest wasn’t as interesting, or honest. 

Murray is terrific as the roommate in an unusual part for him as his over-the-top clownish, snarky, frat boy persona is kept under wraps and instead he plays the part straight, but his sardonic responses to things are great. Director Pollack, who took on the role of Michael’s agent at the request of Hoffman and thus making it his first acting role in almost 20 years, is quite good too particularly with how his exasperated nature feeds off of Hoffman’s hyper one and their conversation inside his office is the movie’s highlight. Charles Durning has a few key moments as well playing Lange’s lovesick father who begins to fall for Dorothy though any man that would give a woman an engagement ring before they’d even been out on a single date has to be a bit loopy.

Hoffman falls into the woman role easily and it would be hard to recognize him had the viewer not known about the disguise beforehand though I felt the way Dorothy walked and moved her hands and arms made her seem like Mrs. Butterworth the animated character from the maple syrup commercials. It’s also hard to imagine he wouldn’t have been found out a lot sooner especially since he collected a weekly paycheck from the company, which would’ve required him to give them his social security number, which in-turn would’ve exposed who he really was. Being on magazine covers where he supposedly does interviews as Dorothy should’ve been equally problematic as the reporters would’ve asked him (her) about her past like what other stuff did she act in, where was she from, and where did she graduate. Stuff that’s very much standard questions in any interview and when he (she) couldn’t come up with anything or made-up stuff that could easily be background checked would’ve then raised red flags and brought the ruse to a very quick halt.

Spoiler Alert!

Soap operas were no longer broadcast as live and hadn’t been since 1963, so that story angle doesn’t fly either. Yes, I realize the idea was that it was taped and only had to done live as an emergency when one of the tapes got destroyed, but in reality, the taping would’ve been done so far ahead (usually by several weeks) that even if a video did somehow get corrupted there still should’ve been plenty of time to refilm it before reaching the actual air date. 

The ending it a bit disappointing as well. Sure, it’s nice seeing Lange putting her arm around him as they walk down the sidewalk showing that the two had made up after his secret identity was exposed, but it doesn’t answer what happened to his career. He did this whole thing to help finance a play for Sandy, so what became of that? Also, were casting agents so impressed with the way he fooled everybody that they now were willing to hire him, or was he still blacklisted? These were all major motivations for why he did the ruse, so there should’ve been clarity to what became of it. 

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sydney Pollack

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actress, Comedy, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Romance

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