Category Archives: 70’s Movies

Animal House (1978)

Posted on March 11, 2018 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: They like to party!

In 1962 the Dean of Faber College, Vernon Wormer, (John Vernon) wants to rid the campus of the Delta Fraternity as he considers their rundown house and partying ways to be a blight to the University. He works with the clean-cut Omega President (James Daughton) to establish a kangaroo court which has Delta’s charter revoked. The Delta members then seek revenge by creating havoc at the homecoming parade of which both Wormer and his wife Marion (Verna Bloom) are attending.

The film, which was a huge box office hit at the time of its release, succeeds by wisely balancing the farcical humor with a believable setting where many of the scenarios shown were based off of real-life experiences of the film’s writer Harold Ramis and producer Ivan Reitman during their own fraternity years. While the film does devolve at the end to being just a procession of slapstick gags it also manages to provide diverse characters and a genuine college atmosphere, which was filmed on-location at the University of Oregon.

The inspired casting helps especially John Belushi who mostly improvised his part. Although he’s best remembered for his pimple gag I actually laughed more when he cries out like he’s lost some prized possession after witnessing a crate of alcohol go crashing to the ground. His ability to chug an entire bottle of whiskey in one take is impressive and I liked how his character, as crude as he is, was able to convey a sympathetic side in his attempts to ‘cheer-up’ a despondent Flounder (Stephen Furst) after his car gets wrecked.

Tim Matheson is equally engaging as the cool and collected fraternity leader whose dry delivery doesn’t initially hit you as being funny until you go back and actually think about what he has just said. Kevin Bacon is hilarious in his film debut as a member of the snotty Omega Theta Pi who tries to quell a panicked crowd only to get quite literally flattened by them.

It’s also great seeing Verna Bloom, an actress relegated to mostly plain Jane roles, wearing a snazzy brunette wig and playing a sexually frustrated woman who has an amusingly drunken ad-libbed segment. Karen Allen is gorgeous as always playing a ‘good-girl’, but who isn’t afraid to flip someone the finger if she has to. You also get a nice glimpse of her bare ass as well as Donald Sutherland’s, apparently Allen only agreed to show hers if he bared his, and for the record Matheson’s crack gets exposed briefly too.

However, what I took away from this movie the most were the politically incorrect segments. The most extreme one is when Larry (Tom Hulce) contemplates having sex with Clorette (Sarah Holcomb) after she passes out drunk, which would be considered date rape now, but treated merely as throwaway bit here. Then in a later scene Larry tries to have sex with her again only for her divulge to him that she is just 13. Although the actress looks much older and was actually 19 when it was filmed it still gets implied that they went ahead and had sex anyways despite the character’s age issue.

I was alive when this film was released and although there was criticism pertaining to the film’s overall raunchiness these specific segments, which would create shockwaves now, were never brought up. Whether things are better now, or we’ve become too sensitive about stuff that was merely considered ‘tasteless’ back then is a whole other argument. Yet when they say things shown in the ‘70s could never be done now it’s all true, which makes watching this movie and others like it feel almost like you’ve slipped into a different universe.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 27, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Landis

Studio: Universal

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Crude Comedy, Cult, Farce, Movies with Nudity

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The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

Posted on March 6, 2018 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Plotting to kidnap Churchill.

During World War II Nazi Colonel Radl (Robert Duvall) is hired to study the feasibility of kidnapping British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bringing him back to Germany. At first he considers it an impossible task, but then learns that Churchill is set to visit an airfield in an English village where one of their German sleeper agents resides. He then hires paratrooper Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) to lead the mission inside the village, but the plan quickly unravels forcing the soldiers to make a daring escape before the allied troops arrive.

This marks the final film directed by John Sturges who was noted for helming his share of action flicks and westerns. The film’s handsome production offers plush scenery, on-location shooting and some wonderful bird’s-eye-views. One could enjoy the movie on this level alone as well as its ability to focus more the actual planning of the mission than the fighting. It has a sort of behind-the-scenes approach to all of the thought and effort that goes into the strategy of war as opposed to the physical on the ground aspect. The film also takes a surprisingly humanistic approach to the Nazis portraying them more as regular human beings who just so happen to be fighting on the wrong side as opposed to the robotic, demonic persona that they’re given in most other war films.

The film’s faults lies in that it’s too leisurely paced. The planning stage allows for some interesting insight, but could’ve been trimmed while the action is sudden and jarring and only popping up near the end when it should’ve been introduced earlier. There is never any real danger to Churhill as the plan goes awry long before he arrives. Since the whole thing was fictional anyways then why not have the soldiers surround whatever building Churchill was in and thus making it seem at least that he might really get captured before having their plan unravel. The way it gets done here the viewer’s energy is strangely geared at seeing the bad guys escape capture, which is off-putting as is the gimmicky ending that makes everything that is shown previously seem insignificant.

The cast is impressive, but mostly underused. Duvall, who speaks with a dubious German accent, takes up most of the screen-time during the first half and then pretty much disappears altogether during the second part. Caine, who doesn’t speak with a German accent, or at least any that is detectable, seems stiff and uncomfortable in an uninteresting role that does not take advantage of his talents. Apparently he was originally offered the role of Liam Devlin who was a member of the IRA, but Caine refused it due to his personal political beliefs and was thus given the Steiner role on the rebound.

Larry Hagman, mostly known for his TV work, gets an amusingly showy bit as the inept Colonel Potts who tries to lead the US Army Rangers on a mission to rescue the village’s town folk who are held hostage by the soldiers. While the part takes full advantage of Hagman’s comic ability to play a hyper, emotionally frazzled character it seems out of place in this type of movie and almost turns the film dangerously close to becoming an ill-advised comedy.

Donald Sutherland ends up becoming the scene stealer as Liam Devlin who with his hair dyed red really looks Irish and speaks with an authentic sounding Irish accent. The character also has an unusual ability to whistle and then move his finger in a way that subdues an aggressive dog by seemingly putting it under a sort-of hypnotic spell. Whether anyone could really do this, or is there is some truth in what the character does here I don’t know, but it would be interesting to find out.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Release: December 25, 1976

Runtime: 2Hours 3Minutes

Rated PG

Director: John Sturges

Studio: Columbia Pictures

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, War Movies

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Death Wish (1974)

Posted on February 26, 2018 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Architect becomes a vigilante.

In connection with the Eli Roth/Bruce Willis reboot that is set to be released to theaters this Friday I thought now would be a good time to go back and take a look at the original. The story centers on Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) who works as an architect and lives a comfortable life with his wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and adult daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan). One day while he is at work his New York apartment gets invaded by three thugs (Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Logan, Gregory Rozakis) who kill his wife and rape his daughter. Paul becomes outraged that the police can’t seem to make any headway on the case and decides to take matters into his own hands by becoming a self-styled vigilante shooting random thugs on the street late at night, which in turn has him becoming a cult hero to the many residents of the crime ridden city.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Brian Garfield. Garfield was inspired to write the story after his car got vandalized. He initially fantasized about tracking down the criminals and killing them before eventually speculating what would happen if someone actually went through with these feelings and decided to take the law into their own hands. The main difference between the novel and film is that in the book the vigilantism becomes more of the problem while in the movie it’s considered the solution.

Many critics at the time gave the film unfavorable reviews as they felt it advocated violence, but I found the movie to have a certain uplifting quality. While the message is certainly simplistic and one-sided it still nicely conveys the idea that ordinary citizens can make a difference and it is up to us, the American public, to foster change and not to simply leave it up to someone else. The film doesn’t completely promote violence as the solution either as there is one scene where an old lady (Helen Martin) scares off her attacker simply by using her hat pin.

The problem that I had with it was why does Bronson constantly get harassed by these thugs in the first place? Whether he is at a restaurant or on the subway the bad guys constantly hone in on him for no apparent reason even when there’s plenty of other people around. In the book it made more sense because the title character would intentionally set traps for the thugs like abandoning his car and putting an ‘out of gas’ sign on it, so the criminals would try to rob the vehicle and then when they did he’d shoot them. Of course this would make the character’s motives more questionable, which the film wanted to avoid, but in the process it becomes less believable.

While this has become Bronson’s signature role it still would’ve worked better had a less brawny actor played the part. In the book the character is a meek accountant and someone like Jack Lemmon, who was originally considered for the role, would’ve been a more authentic fit. Bronson’s image is so entrenched as a ‘tough guy’ that his presence here seems like just another of his action themed vehicles. Chuck should’ve also not known how to use a gun right away either and maybe even been initially clumsy with it as it would’ve made the character arch from peaceful novice to sharp shooting vigilante stronger.

I liked Michael Winner’s directing particularly the way he shot the interiors of the apartments and his grimy portrayal of the urban New York setting that perfectly played-up the city’s crime ridden paranoia at the time. This is also a great chance to see some young performers before they were famous including Christopher Guest as a patrolman. I also found it amusing that Paul Dooley and Vincent Gardenia share a brief scene together as they both went on to play the dad character in Breaking Away. Dooley portrayed him in the movie version while Gardenia played the part in the short live TV-series.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Winner

Studio: Paramount

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

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Classic, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Police Drama

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Moving Violation (1976)

Posted on February 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Crooked sheriff chases couple.

Eddie Moore (Stephen McHattie) is a drifter hitch-hiking his way through a small Texas town (at least it’s supposed to be Texas even though it becomes abundantly clear that it was filmed in southern California instead.) While in town he meets up with the attractive Camilla ‘Cam’ Johnson (Kay Lenz). They quickly fall for each other and decide to go make-out on the lawn of one of the town’s richest citizens Mr. Rockfield (Will Geer). It is there that they witness a murder when the town’s corrupt sheriff (Lonny Chapman) kills his deputy (Paul Linke) after the deputy confronts Rockfield on his unscrupulous business practices. Now Cam and Eddie must go on the run as the sheriff tries to frame them for the murder.

The first 20 minutes is about as lame and contrived as any 70’s drive-in fare you’ll ever see to the point that it should’ve been skipped completely. Instead they should’ve just started out right away with the chase while keeping it a mystery as to why it was happening, which would’ve given the film added intrigue and only explained the backstory later on through flashback.

If you can get past the highly uninspired opening bit then the film improves from there. The chase sequences are better than usual with crashes getting captured in a more realistic, graphic way; one segment even shows an air bag going off when the police car drives into a brick wall. Unfortunately director Charles S. Dubin unwisely inserts a goofy banjo strumming soundtrack making the film seem like all those other yahoo southern actioners even though it really isn’t. Had it been done on a completely serious level it would’ve worked better. For the most part it is once you get past the goofy opening segment, but there are still comedy bits thrown in, which only hurts it as a whole.

Lenz is great playing a character that becomes seriously distraught at what is going on. Dealing with ongoing near-death collisions and seeing people killed before your very eyes would upset almost anyone, but most films don’t deal with the post emotional trauma that someone going through these situations would most likely encounter in real-life, but this one dose, which is refreshing.

Chapman’s sheriff character though doesn’t work as it gets played too unevenly between him being an aggressive menace to at other points a laughable buffoon. The film also relies too heavily on the corrupt, stupid policeman stereotype and it should’ve balanced itself by having at least one police character that was not a completely mindless jerk.

The ending was definitely influenced by Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry as it gets suddenly violent and grim in a completely unexpected way, but I liked it.  Ultimately as a whole it’s a half-step above the usual low budget action flick with enough unique twists to make it worth seeking out as a curio.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: July 6, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Charles S. Dubin

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Police Drama, Road Movies

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The Great Train Robbery (1979)

Posted on February 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A daring gold heist.

In 1855 Edward Pierce (Sean Connery) comes up with an idea to rob a large shipment of gold from a traveling train.  He recruits the services of his mistress Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) and a screwsmen named Robert Agar (Donald Sutherland) to help him do it. The heist requires that they make copies of four keys that are used to open the safe, but each are possessed by four different bank executives forcing them into an elaborate scheme to attain them all. Eventually the authorities become aware of their plan making their heist even trickier to pull off.

The story is based on an actual incident that occurred in 1855 that Michael Crichton became intrigued by, which inspired him to write a fictionalized account that became a best-selling novel and in turn lead to him being offered the chance to direct the film version. As a period piece it succeeds as I loved the variety of wardrobes that the characters wear and the lavish settings that not only reveals London’s rich neighborhoods of that era, but its poverty-stricken ones as well all in amazingly accurate detail.

The film has an underlying quirky tone that is engaging, but this also makes it seem less authentic. For a crime caper to be enjoyable one must believe that it could really happen, or what the characters do is actually possible. There were times when I wasn’t convinced of either and the blame goes to the film trying too hard to be cute instead of just sticking to the detail.

Henry Fowler (Malcolm Terris) is one of the bank executives with a key who proudly proclaims to wear it around his neck, which he states that he ‘never’ takes off. In order to get the key and allow Robert to make a wax impression of it, Miriam pretends to be a prostitute who convinces him to take off the key, so they can make love, which he immediately does. This seems too easy as rarely do humans behave exactly as you think they will. When things come together without any hitch you start to question its validity. If a guy says he ‘never’ removes his key than make it much harder to convince him to do it, or force Robert to make the wax impressions of the key while Henry still has it around his neck and making out with Miriam, which would’ve been funnier.

Another segment has Robert breaking into an office at the railway station where two of the keys are stored inside a cabinet. The night watchman that guards the office always leaves at the same time for exactly 75 seconds to go to the bathroom. Robert is then forced to break into the office and make the wax impressions of the keys and then get out within that same 75 second time frame, but who goes to the bathroom at the exact same amount of time each and every time they go? Most people will go within a certain time range, but no one is that robotic to literally ‘count out the seconds’ as they pee. Having a character behave in such an extreme way only accentuates the film’s whimsical quality while throwing the believability out the door.

Later on in an effort to get inside the train compartment Robert pretends to be a corpse inside a coffin. To create a stench a dead cat is put in alongside him, but how was Robert able to withstand the horrible odor as people standing outside the coffin kept complaining about the unbearable smell. What was it about Robert that made him tolerate it as long as he does when almost no one else could’ve? This makes Robert seem super-human and gives even more leverage to the fact that this couldn’t have really happened at least not in the way done here.

The exciting ending features Connery, not a stunt double, but the actor himself getting on the train roof as the train is running at 55 mph and trying to go from the front of it to the back while ducking under numerous bridges that come whizzing by at lightning speed. This had me holding my breath, but I still came away wishing the film had stuck more to the original account. I read a brief overview of the real crime that was written in more detail by David C. Hanrahan in ‘The First Great Train Robbery’.  There are many differences between the real event and how it gets portrayed here with the real account being far more interesting.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 50Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Michael Crichton

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Dry Humor, Foreign Films, Heist Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a train setting

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I Start Counting (1970)

Posted on February 13, 2018 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: She suspects her brother.

Wynne (Jenny Agutter) is an adopted 14-year-old teen who begins to have romantic feelings for her 32-year-old stepbrother George (Bryan Marshall). However, she finds some troubling signs, like scratches on his back and blood on a shirt she gave him, which makes her believe that he may be the killer that has murdered several teen girls in the area.

This is one of the earlier films directed by the gifted David Greene who went on to helm some amazing films including the TV-movies Roots and Fatal Vision, but here he still seems to be searching for his rhythm. The story, which is based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Erskine Lindop, has some potential, but the pacing drags and there’s too much emphasis on a panning camera that seems to want to pan to different points on the screen in literally every shot. The soft, melodic music is more liable to put the viewer to sleep than create any tension.

Not enough emphasis is put on the murders or the investigation. We see the face of one dead body underneath the water and then that’s it. The killings become almost like an afterthought that gets briefly mentioned here and there, but fails to build up any fear in the viewer and at times becomes almost forgotten. The story instead focuses on the inner thoughts and feelings of Wynne and meanders between her fearing her brother to being in-love with him until she seems weirder than he is.

Agutter gives a great performance and helps hold the thing together, which would’ve become a limp, unfocused bore otherwise. Simon Ward, especially with his facial features makes for a good creepy bus conductor, but Marshall’s flat performance as the brother does not help to the point where the viewer doesn’t particularly care if he is the killer or not.

The only time that there is any true tension is at the end when the killer’s true identity gets exposed and he tries to kill Wynne in a dark, isolated building, but even here things get botched as the film makes it too obvious who the killer is too soon, which then lessens the film’s final twist. Certain other aspects like a flashback sequences dealing with Wynne’s troubled childhood doesn’t add up to much. In fact the only thing that I found even mildly diverting was Wynne’s relationship with her competitive best friend Corinne (Claire Sutcliffe), which brought to mind the old adage: with friends like these who needs enemies.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 27, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes

Not Rated

Director: David Greene

Studio: United Artists

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971)

Posted on February 8, 2018 | 5 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Coach kills pretty students.

Ponce (John David Carson) is an awkward teen in his senior year of high school that still hasn’t been out on a date. He suffers from having erections at the most inopportune times and too shy to ask out one of the many beautiful female students that populate his school. He also finds himself dealing with a series of murders of pretty coeds who turn up dead with funny little notes attached to them and he starts to suspect that the killer may be the school’s beloved football coach (Rock Hudson).

The film, which is based on a novel by Francis Pollini with a screenplay written by Gene Roddenberry starts out well with sharp, satirical dialogue and funny situations dealing with the police investigation, but then deteriorates into smarmy sex jokes and becomes nothing more than a teasing T&A flick. The script makes it obvious early on that the coach is the killer and had it not revealed this so quickly it could’ve made the film more of a mystery and given the ending an impactful twist.

My main beef though is that it takes place in a high school instead of a college even though all the students look to be well into their 20’s. The fact that the coach has sex with the female students makes the thing seem off-kilter as does Angie Dickinson who plays a teacher who brings Ponce into her home to help him with his erection problem. If the setting was a college with the student characters over 18 than all this tawdriness would at least be legal and less outrageous.

The female students come off as being too free-spirited and reflect the counter-culture movement that occurred mainly on the college campuses of that era and not the high schools. They also all look too much like models. A realistic portrait of a high school class will have a variety of body types not just those of women ready to become cover-girls. I enjoy beautiful women as much as anybody, but the film should’ve had at least one average or overweight female in the cast simply to give it balance and avoid it from seeming too much like a tacky male fantasy, which is all this thing ends up being anyways.

Hudson, with his monotone delivery, is a weak actor and gave only one good performance in his career, which was in the film Giant. Yet here his discombobulated acting skills successfully reflect his character’s confused personality. Carson is a bland protagonist and his presence doesn’t have much to do with how the plot progresses. His character is put in solely for a dull side-story dealing with his attempts to get-it-on with his teacher in her home, which amounts to being just a dumb comic variation of Tea and Sympathy that is neither funny nor sexy.

The supporting cast is far better. Telly Savalas owns the screen as a relentless investigator. Keenan Wynn is hilarious as a dim-witted policeman in one of the funniest roles of his prolific career and he’s the best thing in the movie.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 26, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Roger Vadim

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, YouTube

5 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Black Comedy, Football Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sex

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The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)

Posted on February 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Shyster manages baseball team.

Drowning in debt small-time promoter Marvin Lazar (Tony Curtis) decides to take over the Bear’s baseball time by escorting them to Japan and managing them in a game against the Japanese champions run by coach Shimizu (Tomisaburo Wakayama). Problems arise though when Lazar runs out of money and is forced to partake in shady ploys to keep the team afloat.

The script was written by Bill Lancaster, who had penned the first one, and produced by Michael Ritchie who had been the director on the original, but the immense charm from the first installment is completely lost here. The wide-open poorly structured story lacks originality and filled with strained humor that will barely crack a smile.

The kids lack pizazz and play-off of tired caricatures that are no longer cute or funny. The biggest drawback is that the feisty Tanner who had been so prominent in the first two films is missing. It also looks weird and unrealistic that there is such a vast age difference amongst the kids in the line-up. Aren’t Little Leagues usually designed to be age specific? For instance there is usually a Pee-Wee division and then a 10 to 12 age division and so forth, so then why do we have kids here who look to be in the second grade matched with others who seem ready to enter the Junior High? Such a wide range in skill levels would make it virtually impossible to field a functional team from the get-go.

The playing ability of the team seems to have strangely regressed as well. In the first film they came close to winning the championship and in the second installment they did, but here they play like complete bumbling novices with no baseball experience at all.

Curtis is amusing, which helps save the film from being a complete disaster, but it hurts it as well because the script becomes geared completely around his character while the kids are overshadowed and forgotten. The story goes on long misguided tangents that have nothing to do with baseball at all including a segment dealing with Curtis challenging a Sumi wrestler to a match and the Japanese players getting involved in a singing contest, which begs the question if this is a movie about the Bears team then why is more screen time given to the Japanese one?

The side-story dealing with Jackie Earle Haley’s romantic foray is dumb too. He spots a young Japanese lady (Hatsune Ishihara) walking out of a nondescript store on a busy Tokyo street and for some reason becomes completely mesmerized by her and begins chasing her all around city and aggressively coming onto her like he’s a stalker, which would’ve scared any normal woman, but here this crazy behavior gets her to ‘fall-in-love’ with him despite the fact that she speaks no English.

The production values are surprisingly slick and the on-location shooting done in Japan is nice, but the script and humor is empty-headed and forgettable. It’s also interesting to note that George Wyner who appeared in the first film as the manager of the White Sox team appears here in a completely different part as a network executive.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 30, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated PG

Director: John Berry

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Baseball Movies, Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family, Sequels, Sports Movies

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Roller Boogie (1979)

Posted on January 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Save the roller rink.

Terry (Linda Blair) comes from an affluent upbringing, but resents how little attention that she gets from her busy, preoccupied parents (Roger Perry, Beverly Garland). She finds refuge with the roller skating crowd that populates Venice Beach and starts up a relationship with Bobby (Jim Bray) who has aspirations of going to the Olympics. The two team up as a couple to win a roller boogie contest only to realize that the rink where it is to be held has been threatened for closure by an unscrupulous land develop (Mark Goddard) who uses mob-like tactics to get what he wants. Terry, Bobby and he rest of the roller skating crowd plot a way to save the place before it’s too late.

The film is nothing more than a vapid gimmick made to cash in on the roller boogie fad that caught on in the late ‘70s for a few seconds before mercifully fading away. Director Mark L. Lester who has done some great work with other low budget films by making them compact and exciting fails to the do the same here. Way too much footage showing the kids roller skating around the rink that quickly becomes derivative and almost nauseating. The script by Barry Schneider is filled with an overabundance of colloquial phrases that gives the dialogue an amateurish and grating quality. It also plays up the stereotypes of rich people to the extreme almost putting it on a camp level without intentionally trying to be campy.

The storyline dealing with Terry’s rich family background doesn’t make sense. For one thing Blair is all wrong for the part as she conveys too much of a down-to-earth personality almost like she has no relation to her parents and not from that environment, but instead plucked from a working-class neighborhood and supplanted into the home like some fish-out-of-water.

Why this young woman, who has a scholarship to Juillard, would want to win a trivial roller boogie contest anyways is a mystery? What long term benefits is it going to get her? The story would’ve worked better had it borrowed the Saturday Night Fever formula where Terry was from a poor, struggling background, of which Blair’s acting skills better reflects, who needs to win the contest to achieve some money and get herself out of a desperate situation, which also would’ve gotten the viewer more emotionally connected to her dilemma.

The storyline dealing with the roller rink being forced out of business is dumb too. With such large crowds of teens the place should be rolling in dough, so why isn’t it and isn’t there another roller rink in the area that the kids could go to instead? If the kids were really smart they would simply wait a week for this silly fad to go out-of-style and then jump into the new, completely different silly fad that would come along to replace it.

Bray had no formal acting training and was merely brought in for his roller skating skills, which are impressive, but his speaking voice is annoying. Despite being from California he has a strangely distinct Nordic accent like someone raised in the upper Midwest and better suited as a cast member for Fargo. By comparison Blair’s acting comes off as pretty strong in the scenes that she shares with him, but then again with Bray’s placid presence just about anybody and their pet hamster could’ve achieved the same thing.

On the flip-side from a completely voyeuristic standpoint the film is kind of fun as it drowns itself in late ‘70’s kitsch giving it a certain tacky appeal seeing the people on screen revel in it that now I’m sure would be quite embarrassed by it, which is why I suppose this film has achieved a revival of sorts with modern day audiences.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 44Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mark L. Lester

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Cult, Romance

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The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)

Posted on January 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Playing in the Astrodome.

Having won the league championship game a year after losing the first one the Bears now look to play the Houston Toros at the Astrodome between games of a Major League double-header. The problem is that they no longer have a manager, so Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley) recruits his estranged father (William Devane) to act as one for the team’s benefit. Kelly and his father do not get along, which causes friction with the rest of players, as they prepare to play the Toros who are much bigger physically and have far more talent.

If there was ever a reason as to why making a sequel from a successful first film is usually a bad idea this movie could be held up as the best example. The originality and fresh humor from the first gets completely lost here. While the first one conveyed a strong message this one has none at all and barely even a story instead just a thin plot wrapped around episodic comedy that barely elicits even a chuckle.

It does at least allow for some screen time showing the parents of the kids, which was woefully lacking in the first one. It also gives the kids more speaking lines and their presence is more central to the storyline while in the first film it was almost completely spun around Matthau. Unfortunately with the exception of Haley and Jimmy Baio, who plays Carmen the team’s new pitcher, none of the child actors have enough talent to carry the movie, which makes the scenes with them in it quite lethargic and lifeless.

Devane is extremely weak in the lead and his character poorly defined. The way he gets asked to volunteer as the team’s coach is quite awkward and the fact that he literally takes over the team in a matter of just 2 short days like he’s a seasoned manager that’s been doing this for years seemed unrealistic. It was also hard-to-believe that this guy, who worked at a pipe fitting plant, would be so adept at baseball strategy and able to convey these skills to the players as effectively as he does without having any prior experience.

The Astrodome is captured as being this impressive monolithic structure when in reality, if you see it in person, it is quite underwhelming. I realize when it was first built in 1964 it was considered the ‘8th wonder of the world’, but time has not been kind to it. If you go to see it now, which I did just this past summer, it gets dwarfed considerably by the far bigger and more majestic looking Reliant stadium, which sits right next to it. There are so many other buildings that have been built around it that the Astrodome now gets easily overlooked and almost forgotten making Kelly’s fascination with the structure seem quite dated.

In the first film the climactic game was full of high drama, but the one here is a bore. Watching the security guards try to tackle Tanner (Chris Barnes) and carry him off the field is genuinely funny and probably the film’s one and only highlight in this otherwise pointless excursion that would’ve been best left unmade.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 8, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Michael Pressman

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Baseball Movies, Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies that take place in Texas, Road Movies, Sequels, Sports Movies

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