Category Archives: 80’s Movies

O’Hara’s Wife (1982)

Posted on December 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wife turns into ghost.

Bob (Ed Asner) and Harriet (Mariette Hartley), whom he affectionately calls ‘Harry’, share a special bond and have been in a marriage for over 20 years that has produced two children, Rob (Perry Lang) and Barbara (Jodie Foster). They plan for a second honeymoon, but just before they’re ready to leave Harry suddenly dies. The grief-stricken Bob feels he can’t go on, but manages to stay focused due to the love and support of his children. Then one day, about a month after he death, she suddenly reappears in the form of a ghost. At first Bob runs away from her thinking he’s gone crazy, but then eventually settles to the idea that she’s going to be around wherever she goes and in return she helps him to understand that life is about more than just working hard and if he doesn’t learn to relax he too will soon be dying as well.

Feeble attempt at a ghost comedy, which has been done many times before in a far better way in such classics as A Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Topper just to name a couple. Right off the bat though this thing falls flat with a long drawn out song segment sung by Billy Preston, Billy’s a good singer, but just not here, that happens not once, but twice. A movie should not slow-up the pace with a droony song especially when that’s just ‘telling us’ through its lyrics what we already know is happening to the characters visually.

The second thing where this movie really gets dumb is when the wife just falls over dead for no apparent reason. One second she’s perfectly healthy and joking around with her hubby and then in the next instant she just literally falls over dead in the corniest way possible. The doctors diagnose it as a brain hemorrhage of some sort, but normally healthy, middle-aged people don’t just ‘fall over dead’. A better, more gripping and believable way would be to have her die in a car accident, or have her diagnosed with something early on, or at least complain about certain symptoms that will eventually lead to her demise, but to just croak instantaneously without any warning or set-up is about as stupid as it gets.

The ghost angle is just as poorly thought-out. I realize having ghosts appear and disappear and go through walls may seem cliched, but at least that had a logic to it and this thing doesn’t. Here we have her opening and closing doors to get through them as if she’s a regular person. Her husband can also feel and touch her and she can even use her body to stop his movement, but if she’s just a spirit then shouldn’t she be a vision only and not able to do those other things? She also panics when she sees her husband’s medical chart and realizes he has a serious heart condition and may die, but since her ghostly existence proves there’s essentially ‘life after death’ then why should she care? She acts like death is some sort of ‘end’ even though her appearance literally proves the opposite, so why not celebrate his impending doom as that will mean they’ll be in a ghostly existence forever and thus death will be a happy ending and not a sad one like her character seems to believe.

Hartley is certainly perky, she always seems perky no matter what she’s in, but her character is one-dimensionally nice, and not fleshed-out enough to be interesting in any way. Asner has some funny bits particularly when he must deal with this ghost wife when someone else is around who can’t see her and thus making his behavior look pretty weird, but overall he’s a bit too old for her, almost like he could’ve been her father, and a younger actor more age appropriate to Hartley would’ve been better. Mary Jo Catlett, as Asner’s much put upon secretary as some endearing moments, but ultimately it’s Foster, who gets billed as having a ‘special appearance’ though she’s in a good chunk of it, that comes off best though I didn’t initially recognize her as she has darker hair here and on a bit of the chubby side  and I could only tell who she was at first by the sound of her voice.

I did like how it attempts to tackle family drama and how as children age and become adults may not see things eye-to-eye not only with their parents, but siblings as well. This becomes especially apparent with Rob who doesn’t agree with his father quitting his job and the two share a couple of raw moments, which is good because these things do occur in real-life families, but then the film glosses over this issue by having the two magically reconcile a little bit later, which like with everything else in the movie is too shallow.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: December 3, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William Bartman

Studio: O’Hara Cinema Group

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Ghost Story, Obscure Movies

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Fever Pitch (1985)

Posted on December 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sportswriter addicted to gambling.

To commemorate the sad passing of Ryan O’Neal just last week we here at Scopophilia decided to review one of his more infamous outings in a film that helped to ultimately bring in his career downfall, which was already fading at the time anyways, but this one was the nail in the coffin. He plays Steve Taggart a popular sports journalist who wishes to do an expose on the gambling epidemic. His editor (John Saxon) gives the okay and so he proceeds to write articles dealing with a ‘Mr. Green’ whose addiction is ruining his life and career. Unbeknownst to his editors Mr. Green is actually Steve whose gambling habit is so out of control that he owes $31,000 to a bookmaker named The Dutchman (Chad Everett) who has a henchman named The Hat (William Smith) that follows Steve around and threatens him with violence if he doesn’t pay up. Steve’s recourse is to simply gamble more hoping somehow to get on a lucky streak and be able to pay it all back when instead he just continues to drown in an even more widening debt.

Writer/director Richard Brooks became fascinated with the topic of gambling while recovering from a heart attack and spent years writing the script, where he intended to have Sam Shephard play the lead. Unfortunately despite his great success with other films this one ended up becoming a giant flop that cost the studio over $7 million to produce, but only recouped a paltry $244,000 at the box office. Derided by both critics and viewers its become a ‘so bad it’s good’ type movie that in the ‘Official Razzie Movie Guide’ gets listed as the 100 Most Enjoyable Bad Movies Ever Made.

The movie would’ve been better had they got Shephard in the lead role as intended instead of the wooden O’Neal who doesn’t show enough emotion, or nuance to make his part interesting. The character would’ve had a better arch had we known him before he got into gambling and could see his downfall right from the beginning versus coming into it when he’s already starting to hit rock bottom. Having the viewer fooled into thinking Mr. Green was a real person might’ve made an interesting twist versus giving it all a way at the start that it’s Steve.

The dialogue is badly overwritten with the character’s regurgitating out gambling statistics like they’re a computer and there’s no conversational quality in anything that gets said. Despite being supposedly this ‘hard-hitting’ look at what goes on in Las Vegas it instead comes-off more surreal as it shows only people who are ‘captivated by the madness of gambling’ like these are the only type of people who exist without countering it with others who are not into it and thus giving it a better balance and perspective.

The story also suffers from too many coincidences and extreme dramatic arcs. The most notable is when Steve finds a soldier (Patrick Cassidy) inside a bathroom stall ready to shoot himself with a gun as he’s so depressed about losing all his money, but Steve stops him from doing it. Then gives the soldier money for airfare and a little bit extra for spending cash. The soldier uses it to continue his gambling where he wins it all back at the craps table making it seem like a ‘happy’ ending and going against the film’s own narrative that wants to show the ‘evils’ of the addiction only to laugh it all away when somebody gets on a magical win streak that somehow makes it all better. Going from potential suicide victim to happiest guy on earth in the matter of only a couple of hours is a bit of a stretch.

Having Steve get physically attacked by The Hat inside a gambling lounge as he has both his shins kicked-in and then miraculously having Flo (Catherin Hicks), a cocktail waitress whom he had a fling with, walk by at the exact same instant when The Hat leaves, so she’s able to help back to her room seemed way to coincidental and convenient. The fact that he doesn’t go to a doctor and able to still walk using only some pain pills to get by was even more absurd. What gets even dumber though is that during the melee Steve injures The Hat, using non other than salt and pepper shakers, causing him to wear a over-the-top neck brace as he goes around town trying to ‘even the score’ with Steve by attempting to kill him, but unable to do so at every turn like he’s morphed into the live action version of Wiley E. Coyote.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest laugh, or most nauseating moment depending on your perspective, comes at the end when Steve is supposedly ‘cured’ of his addiction by having attended a Gambling Anonymous meeting only to, at the airport waiting to go home, decide to put one last quarter into a slot machine called ‘Bet a Buck for God’ in which he amazingly wins a massive payout and having his winnings immediately handed to him by a woman dressed like a nun. I thought for sure this was some sort of dream, but to my shock it’s not and we’re all supposed to take it seriously.

It then gets even worse as Steve goes on one last hot streak and able to win back all the money he’s owed and thus get out of his predicament, which does a complete injustice to the subject. Many other victims of gambling aren’t able to do this as the movie even says itself the odds are the house will ultimately win making the wrap-up completely false and thus the film’s notorious cornball status is highly deserved.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Brooks

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: VHS, DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Obscure Movies

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The Devil’s Honey (1986)

Posted on December 9, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge on a doctor.

Jessica (Blanca Marsillach) is madly in-love with Johnny (Stefano Madia) who’s a famous saxophonist. The two share many kinky moments and have sex in the wildest of places. Wendell (Brett Halsey) is a surgeon who no longer has sex with his wife Carol (Corinne Clery) and instead seeks out prostitutes though even here the arousal is brief as he can’t achieve an erection for any extended period of time. Carol finds out about his philandering and asks for a divorce, which sets Wendell into a panic as he still enjoys having his wife around as a support system even if it isn’t for intercourse. As this is happening Johnny falls unconscious during one of his recording sessions due to a bump he got on his head while falling off his motorcycle earlier. He gets rushed to the hospital where Wendell is on-call, but he’s unable to concentrate on the surgery due to the stress of his marriage and Johnny ends up passing away. Jessica is outraged by this and sets a vendetta on Wendell to punish him for killing her boyfriend. It begins by her calling him constantly, but eventually she kidnaps him by taking him to her place and tying him up. She tortures him sexually, which strangely both of them begins to enjoy.

This was cult director Lucio Fulci’s return to a sex themed film, which he had started his career out as and away from the gory giallos he had become most known for. The attempt is not without merit as the sex is explicit and almost like a porn film with brief interludes of dialogue before it goes right back to the sexual imagery. Unfortunately on the erotic end it’s not all that titillating. The scene where Johnny blows his saxophone up Jessica’s vagina looked more laughable than kinky. The segment where he tries to get her to fondle his penis while they’re riding on a motorcycle, which almost gets them into a bad accident, I found genuinely cringey and not sexy at all. The fact that she’d be so into a guy that’s rather controlling and degrading to her seemed a mystery though it might’ve been meant as a quirk to her personality, but never explained sufficiently.

Outside of the sex the drama is weak. The moment inside the studio where he complains about having a headache, but the producer tells him to keep on playing anyways, so he blows out a few weak notes before tumbling to the floor came-off as unintentionally funny and had me laughing. Jessica’s distraught reaction where she bangs on the glass that separates the control room from the studio was ridiculous as she should’ve run into the studio to try to physically come to his aid, which had a better chance of actually helping him than just pounding on a window. I also got sick of hearing Johnny play the same piece over and over until it became nauseating.

Things improve with the presence of Halsey an American actor who appeared in many B-pictures during the 60’s and 70’s, but eventually went abroad by the 80’s when the film offers here began to dry up. While his face is chiseled and good-looking the hollow look in his eyes perfectly fits the character and thus becomes  a memorable image. Watching Jessica harass the hell out of him is kind of fun though no explanation for what the substance was that she used to knock him out, nor where she managed to attain it.

Spoiler Alert!

The third act has some tension though it gets ruined by all the flashbacks. Wendell’s wife also disappears completely and no scenes showing her reaction to the news that her husband’s been kidnapped. She had figured prominently in the first two acts and therefore we should’ve seen some sort of response from her in the third. Whether she was happy to have him gone, or had a change-of-heart and became upset is something we should’ve seen. There’s also no answer to what ultimately becomes of the new couple who end up liking the abuse that they give to each other. Do they go on cohabitating and if so does Wendell go back to being a surgeon and if not how do they survive financially? There needed to be more of a conclusion and just leaving it all hanging is not satisfying.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lucio Fulci

Studio: Selvaggia Film

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Erotica, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies with Nudity, Sex, Thrillers/Suspense

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Tribute (1980)

Posted on December 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

tribute

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father reconciling with son.

Scottie (Jack Lemmon) has been working in show business for decades and has built up many friends and fans, but finds it all come crashing down when, at the mere of age of 55, he gets diagnosed with leukemia. His greatest regret is not having a close relationship with his now grown son Jud (Robby Benson). He wants to reconcile, but not make it obvious that’s it’s because he’s about to die. When Jud comes over for a surprise visit with his mother (Lee Remick), whom Scottie has long since divorced, he tries to mend things and become the father he never had, but the hurt runs deep and Jud proves to be resistant to everything Scottie tries making him feel even more hopeless and forcing him to come to terms with his personal faults and inadequacies.

The film is based on the stageplay of the same name, which also starred Lemmon, and got sold into a $1 million movie deal before the stage version ever hit Broadway. On the surface it’s deemed a drama, but the script by Bernard Slade, who also penned the play, comes off more like a desperate comedy akin in tone to Same Time Next Year, which is Slade’s most famous work that had a strong dramedy vibe to it. This works on that same level as it attempts to lighten the poignant moments with comical bits, but it fails miserable.

Had some of it managed to actually been funny I might not have complained, but it amounts to cringe instead. The most eye-popping moment is watching Lemmon in a chicken costume run around his place going ‘balk-balk’ and even lay a giant egg on the sofa, which I felt was a career low point. What’s even dumber is his wooing of a young woman, played by Kim Cattrall, who’s also a patient at the hospital. He gets into her room by pretending to be a doctor and then gropes her breasts in a feeble attempt to check her heart rate. A normal woman of today, and even one back then, should respond with outrage for him copping-a-feel by disguising himself into being someone he isn’t, but in this stupid movie she’s instead ‘charmed’ by his antics and it’s enough to get her to go to bed with him later.

What’s worse and even more outlandish is that Scottie then sets her up with his son to have them conveniently ‘bump into each other’ in public and then begin going out. Yet how many sons are going to be cool with Dad sleeping with their girl first? Of course Scottie never tells him that he’s already ‘tested her out’, but it does end up showing inadvertently what a conniving jerk the old guy is and what the film considers to be nothing more than an amusing comic side-story really hurts the likability of the character if you think about it.

The acting is good. Lemmon is expectedly strong and so is Remick as his wife though her part is limited. I liked seeing Benson, who usually got stuck with immature parts due to his young, geeky features, play the mature and sensible, level-headed adult of which he does perfectly. Colleen Dewhurst has some strong moments as the caring nurse and Cattrall, despite the annoying nature of her dippy character, is pleasing enough. Yet the ultimate scene-stealer goes to Gale Garnett famous for the mid-60’s folk song ‘We’ll Sing in the Sunshine’, who plays a hooker and in one segment goes topless (looks great), but it’s a bit jarring when you realize it’s the same person who sang such a sweet-natured tune, tough in some ways you could say it’s also a testament that her creative talents are quite broad.

The third act, where they have this major tribute for Scotty has a touching potential, but gets overdone by filling-up an entire auditorium with all of his ‘close friends’, which even for a social butterfly seemed a bit exaggerated. The scene where the hooker gets a restaurant packed with all of her male clients who have ever slept with her has an amusing quality though again equally hard to believe that all of these men would be cool with everybody knowing that they’ve bedded a prostitute. I’ll give props though to the segment showing Scotty getting treatment in the hospital, which gets shown exclusively through still photos, which I found visually innovative.

Unfortunately everything else falls into second-rate melodramatics. It doesn’t even have the decency to tells us whether Scotty dies or not. When an entire movie deals with a character’s ultimate demise I think it should eventually get answered instead of leaving it open. It makes the whole terminal illness thing seem like a tease done to emotionally manipulate the viewer than an actual reality that it supposedly is.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1980

Runtime: 2 Hours 1 Minute

Rated PG

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies from Canada, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

Posted on November 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Talent agent becomes beard.

Danny Rose (Woody Allen) is a hapless talent agent who represents clients who are down-and-out, but seeking a comeback. Lou (Nick Apollo Forte) is a singer who uses Danny as his agent. Since he has some potential and might even get hired by a big star, in this case Milton Berle who plans on tabbing him as his opening act, Danny will do anything to keep Lou happy especially since Danny’s other clients tend to drop him once they become famous, which Danny doesn’t want to happen again. In order to appease him Lou has Danny acting as a ‘beard’, or a person who pretends to being a boyfriend to someone he really isn’t. In this case it’s to Tina (Mia Farrow) a woman whose been dating a gangster. Danny acts as her boyfriend to draw attention away from Lou, but her ex-gangster lover becomes jealous and thinking Danny to be the real boyfriend sends out a hit on him forcing both he and Tina to go on-the-run.

While this film did well with the critics I felt it was pretty much a letdown. What annoyed me most was the washed-up, aging comedians sitting around a cafe table and essentially telling the story, which gets done in flashback. I felt these comedians, who say nothing that is funny, or even slightly amusing, served no real purpose except for maybe padding the runtime, which was short already, and the scenario could’ve easily played-out without constantly cutting-back to these guys to add in their useless side commentary. This also cements Allen’s transition from being hip and edgy. which he was considered as during the 70’s, to out-of-touch with day’s youth and young adults by the 80’s as no one in this movie appears to be under 40.

It’s confusing too what time period this is all supposed to be taking place in. Supposedly the cutaways to the comedians is present day though with it being shot in black-and-white it hardly seems like it, and then the scenes with Danny are apparently things that happened in the 60’s. This though gets completely botched not only because of the cars they drive, which are of an 80’s variety, but there’s also a scene where Lou and Danny are walking on a sidewalk and go past a theater marque advertising Halloween III, which was  a film that was released in 1982.

On the plus side I enjoyed Mia’s performance of a hot-headed, highly oppionated Italian especially with the dark glasses and bouffant hair-do, which could’ve been done up even more. She’s known as being such a serious actress, who’s marvelous in drama, but to see her able to handle the comedy and even become the centerpiece is a real treat. Woody and her make for a quirky couple, she’s actually taller than him when they stand side-by-side, and she really gets in some good digs on him. Though with that said I actually wished that Nick had played the role of Danny as his amateurish acting made his doopy character funnier and the scenes between him and yappy Mia could’ve been a real riot.

There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, though it certainly takes it sweet time getting there. Watching Woody and Mia attempt to escape the killer by running through a field of tall grass I liked as too the scene where they are chased into a warehouse filled with parade floats and the hydrogen that escapes from them, due to the shooting bullets, causing their voices to become extremely high-pitched. The rest of the humor though relied heavily on Italian-American stereotypes that have been done hundreds of times before and isn’t original. I was also surprised that it has walk-on cameos by Howard Cossell and Milton Berle, who even appears in drag during the Thanksgiving Day parade, but are given no lines of dialogue.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: January 27, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Farce, Gangster Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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First Monday in October (1981)

Posted on November 23, 2023 | 2 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: The first lady justice.

While Daniel Snow (Walter Matthau), an associate justice on the Supreme Court who leans heavily left on most issues, is on vacation in Alaska, he gets word that the staunch conservative judge has passed away. The President then decides to nominate a woman to the court by the name of Ruth Loomis (Jill Clayburgh). Unfortunately Daniel is not happy about this as she’s as conservative as the man she replaced. Once the nomination is confirmed the two are immediately at odds over such things as pornographic movies and corporations that pollute the environment. While they bicker and debate constantly they do end up becoming friends, which comes in handy when Ruth realizes that her late husband was involved in some unscrupulous matters and she considers resigning from her position though Daniel tries desperately to talk her out of it.

The film is based on the 1978 play of the same name written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, who also wrote the screenplay. Initially the play, which first starred Jean Arthur and Melvyn Douglas received such terrible reviews that it soon closed and was revamped with Henry Fonda and Jane Alexander, was considered a novelty as up to that time no woman had ever served on the nation’s highest court. That all changed when Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’ Connor in July of 1981 forcing this film, in an effort to appear timely, to move up its release date to August, but the timing didn’t work and the movie was overall panned by both the critics and public.

The only interesting aspect is watching it from today’s perspective where the Supreme Court has now become a toxic and divisive issue when back in the early 80’s that was not the case. When the Girl Scouts of America posted on Twitter commemorating Amy Coney Barret getting nominated and approaching it as an achievement for women it got a lot of pushback from those unhappy with her due to her conservative leanings. Yet in this movie the fact that the character is staunchly conservative is not considered a problem and feminists and other women are seen during the senate hearings proudly cheer her on and considering her nomination a landmark.

In some ways having the political drama that the modern day court holds today might’ve made the story more interesting as the thing is so genteel that it’s enough to put most people to sleep. The script would’ve had more intrigue had their been a bad guy, maybe like the producer of the porn movies who gets talked about, but never seen, or even the elusive head of a mysterious corporation whose case the court is set to hear, that should’ve been added in to create genuine conflict, which is otherwise sorely missing.

I did like the scene where the judges get together inside a viewing room to watch the porno flick ‘The Naked Nymphomaniac’, but Matthau’s character should’ve been present during this and it’s less funny without him. Their subsequent arguments about whether X-rated movies should be allowed under the First Amendment seems quite dated as this issue had already been considered settled law and by the 80’s most video stores were offering adult films for rental and cable movie channels were showing porn late at night making the plot here woefully out of touch with the times.

Matthau and Clayburgh are great actors, but their performances here prove to be dull and lifeless. Having some sort of romance enter into the picture, it gets briefly alluded to when Matthau admits to having a certain attraction to Jill, but immediately dropped, might’ve given it a spicy angle, but just portraying them as friends with different viewpoints isn’t enough to keep it captivating. There’s  not too much that’s funny either. There’s a couple of semi-humorous lines here and there, but nothing that will make anyone break out into uproarious laughter. Matthau’s inability to eat his lunch using chopsticks while in a Chinese restaurant might amuse some slightly, but overall it’s a dull, empty ride. Very surprising that this thing received an R-rating. The only objectionable part is when they watch a porn flick, but nothing much in the way of nudity or sex is shown.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ronald Neame

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity

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Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the Bandit?

Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) announces his retirement as sheriff after more than 30 years of service. He decides to spend his time in Florida where he expects to get some rest and relaxation. However, once he becomes a part of the senior community he doesn’t enjoy it and feels the need to get back to what he liked doing most, which was chasing after the elusive Bandit. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer him a deal to get back into the swing of things. They bet that he can’t drive his police car from Miami, Florida to Austin, Texas, a total of 1,400 miles, in two days with a stuffed fish tied to the top of the car. If he’s able to succeed at the challenge he’ll make $250,000, which Buford readily accepts. To keep him from getting there the two Enos brothers set-up traps along the way in order to stymie his progress, but Buford and his dim-witted son Junior (Mike Henry) manage to get out of each predicament that gets thrown at them, so the Enos brothers decide to call-in Snowman (Jerry Reed) to help them. Snowman is a trucker, but in this instance he gets to pretend he’s the Bandit and even dress in his get-up and drive Bandit’s fancy black and gold Pontiac Trans Am. The new Bandit, who picks-up Dusty (Colleen Camp), a disgruntled used car sales woman along the way, soon catches up with Buford and son and steals their stuffed fish, which turns-the-tables and forces Buford to go after them.

By 1982 both Hal Needham, who had directed the first two installments, and Burt Reynolds, who had played the Bandit in the first two go-arounds, were no longer interested in getting involved in the project for another time as both were already busy working together on Stroker Ace. The studio though didn’t want to give up on the idea of a third installment since the first two had made a lot of money, so they signed-on Gleason to reprise his role as Buford with the promise that he’d have full script approval, which proved difficult as he didn’t like any of the scripts that were handed to him and at one point made the glib remark “with scripts like these who needs writers?’. After going through 11 rejections the writers finally hit on the idea of letting Gleason play dual roles of both the Bandit and the sheriff. Initially Gleason didn’t like this either, but the prospect of hamming up two different characters, which he had already done in Part 2 where he played Buford’s two cousins Gaylord and Reginald, got the better of his ego, so it received the green light.

In October of 1982 the script with Gleason in both roles was shot, but with no explanation for why he was playing the Bandit and everyone else in the story playing it straight like they didn’t see the difference. Eventually upon completion it was sent to a test audience in Pittsburgh where they gave the film unanimously negative feedback convincing the studio that the experimental novelty wasn’t going to work. They then hired Jerry Reed, who wasn’t even in the project before then, and asked him to reprise his role as Snowman who would then disguise himself as the Bandit. Then every scene that originally had Gleason in the role as Bandit was reshot with Reed now doing the part, but all the rest of the scenes that had already been filmed without the Bandit remained intact. The reshot Bandit segments were filmed in April of 1983 and the film eventually got its release in August of that year where the response of audiences and critics alike remained just as negative.

For years this was considered by many to be an urban myth as no footage with Gleason as the bandit was ever seen, but then in 2010 a promo of Gleason playing Buford, but talking about becoming the Bandit, or ‘his own worst enemy’ appeared on YouTube with the title of Smokey IS the Bandit Part 3 and Jerry Reed’s name not appearing anywhere on the cast list. Then in 2016 the actual shooting script that was shot in October of 1982 was downloaded to IMDb’s message board (back when they still had them), which plainly detailed Gleason as the Bandit, but had no written dialogue for those scenes since Gleason was routinely allowed to ad-lib his lines. The lost footage of Gleason in the Bandit scenes is purportedly in the control of the Gleason estate where it’s kept under wraps never to be shown to anyone again by apparently Gleason himself who felt humiliated by the test audiences negative reaction.

As it is the movie is not funny at all and unsurprisingly did not do well at the box office. Nothing much makes sense and the humor is highly strained including a drawn-out segment featuring the Klu Klux Klan, which I found downright offensive. Having a Blu-ray release of the lost footage of Gleason in dual roles would most likely be a big money maker as through the years it’s built up a lot of curiosity. It might be confusing and weird just like the original test audiences said it was, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we ultimately get here, which is as bottom-of-the-barrel as they come.

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My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 12, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dick Lowry

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Sequels

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The Woman Inside (1981)

Posted on November 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

woman2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: From man to woman.

Hollis (Gloria Manon) is a Vietnam Vet. whose suffers from gender dysphoria and decides to begin the process of gender transition with Dr. Rosner (Dane Clark). The first part of the procedure works perfectly as Hollis, who changes the name to Holly, resembles a woman physically and even takes voice lessons so that her voice is higher pitched. She still has a penis, but that doesn’t prevent her from beginning a relationship with Nolan (Michael Champion) though they don’t sleep together and she’s reluctant to tell him about her condition. Eventually she schedules the surgery while telling Nolan she’ll be gone for a couple of months, but when she returns they’ll be able to fully consummate their relationship. In the meantime she begins to question her decision when she joins a therapy group with other people who’ve had the procedure while also enduring verbal abuse from her Aunt (Joan Blondell) who doesn’t agree with the transition and openly mocks Holly for going ahead with it.

While on the surface this may seem like a groundbreaking film it really isn’t as two movies The Christine Jorgensen Story, which came out in 1970, and I Want What I Want, which starred Anne Heywood and released a year after the other one all preceded this movie by a good decade. It also suffers badly, much like with the Heywood film, where the protagonist doesn’t really resemble a guy even though technically that was what he was biologically born into. Instead Hollis looks much more like a woman with short hair and padded outfits and in a lot of ways kind of like Nancy Kulp the actress best known for starring in ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ TV-show. Her attempts to speak in a lower voice doesn’t sound authentic and I felt it would’ve worked better had a biological male actor been cast in the part as the scenes with Manon trying to come-off as a guy is awkward and not believable.

The scenes where she goes back to the gas station, where she once worked when she was still a guy, and trying to get-it-on with Marco (Michael Mancini), a man she had a confrontation with earlier while she was Hollis, is ridiculous as well. Marco apparently doesn’t recognize her as the person he knew when she was a man, which I just couldn’t buy into, as Holly’s face is essentially she same as it was when she was Hollis except her hair’s is longer and she has a very distinctive facial structure, so there’s just no way someone that knew her in the past wouldn’t at the very least jog some Deja vu if ultimately connecting the two at some point and for him to go to bed with her without a single inkling is just not plausible.

Holly’s relationship with Nolan, particularly the way it begins, is highly problematic too. She works as a taxi driver and literally picks him up on a street corner at random while he’s in a drunken state, but why on earth would she suddenly fall for a guy, especially in that condition? She also comes upon him right after having a very scary and violent confrontation with another male passenger (Louis Basile) making me think she’d be so traumatized that the last thing she’d want to do is allow another male stranger into her car. Their relationship moves too quickly as they’re already talking about ‘love’ and long term commitment by only the next day. Nolan also transforms from a bum to a well-spoken respectable member of society overnight. The scene where they try to ‘outrun an approaching storm’ is stupid too as we see them madly riding their bicycles in an attempt to escape while above them is sunshine and blue skies.

Things improve a bit by the third act particularly the scenes involving the therapy group, which the movie should’ve had more of. Some commenters on YouTube, where the film is currently streaming for free, that also suffered from gender dysphoria seemed to appreciate the movie more than others, so if you personally connect to the subject matter you’ll most likely like it better, but on a technical end it’s botched.

This too marks, at least in most reference sites, as being Joan Blondell’s final film appearance though that’s not completely true. While this was the final film to be released with her presence, in fact it came out after she had already passed away, it was filmed in March, 1978 while The Glove, another movie she was in, was shot in April of that year, so technically that was her last film appearance even though it got released before this one.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 15, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joseph Van Winkle

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD-R (J4HI.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Drama, Movies with a Hospital setting, Obscure Movies

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Cat’s Eye (1985)

Posted on October 30, 2023 | 1 comment

cats

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories involving feline.

With a screenplay written by Stephen King the film is made up of three of his short stories with two of them taken from his 1978 novel ‘Night Shift’ while the third one was penned directly for the screen. The only connecting thread is a stray cat and actress Drew Barrymore who appear in all three tales though only have major parts in the third one.

The first segment is called ‘Quitters, Inc.’ and involves James Wood playing the part of a man named Dick Morrison who is trying to quit smoking and enters an agency that boasts a high success rate of getting their clients to stop. It’s run by Vinny (Alan King) who tells Dick that if he doesn’t stop smoking instantly that they’ll kidnap his wife (Mary D’Arcy) and put her into a room where she’ll receive electrical shocks. To prove his point he puts the cat in the cage and then through a glass partition Dick witnesses the feline getting shocked, which is enough to scare him into quitting on the spot. Yet as the days progress Dick finds himself constantly getting the urge to light-up, but Vinny warns him that he has people who’ll be watching him and if he does dare to backtrack they’ll immediately grab his wife and bring her into the cage. Eventually though the compulsion to have a cigarette gets to be too much and he sneaks a puff only to then face the dire consequences.

This segment tries for black comedy, but doesn’t go far enough with it. While Woods, who usually excels as the twisted types, is quite good as the straight man, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t go the police when his wife gets taken, or why any of the other clients didn’t either, which should’ve gotten the business quickly shut down and the owners prosecuted for running an unethical operation. Famously brash comedian Alan King isn’t given enough leeway to allow his cantankerous persona to go full throttle though watching him wearing a white leisure suit and lip synch the words to the song ‘Every Breath You Take’ makes it almost worth it. It’s interesting seeing James Rebhorn in a bit part as a drunken business man at a party as he later had a prominent role in the movie The Game, which had a very similar storyline to this one involving a business that overtakes their client’s lives and is constantly watching them.

The second segment called ‘The Ledge’ involves a man named Johnny (Robert Hays) who must walk across a thin, outdoor ledge along a penthouse wall many feet above a busy street. If he succeeds then the penthouse owner, Cressner (Kenneth McMillan), will grant his wife a divorce and allow her to marry Johnny whom she’s been dating.

This story is the best one mainly because it has McMillan who is one of the finest character actors of all time and supplies his role with an amazing amount of energy and dark campiness. The scenes of watching Hays trying to maneuver his way on the ledge while being simultaneously attacked by a pigeon and at times McMillan who throws things at him out his window, is really terrifying. You feel like you’re on the ledge with him and I cringed all the way through this one, but in a good way as I really got swept up in it though the twist ending is a letdown.

The third and final segment called ‘The General’ involves a young girl living in North Carolina, named Amanda (Drew Barrymore) who takes in a stray cat much to her nagging mother’s (Candy  Clark) chagrin as she feels the animal may attack Amanda’s pet bird named Polly whom she keeps in a cage in her room. Amanda though likes the cat, whom she’s named General, because he scares away the evil troll, who’s the size of a rat and sneaks into her bedroom at night through a small opening in the wall to steal away her breath while also attacking Polly.

This segment has some interesting special effects, but it’s hard to tell if this is intended to be scary, or comical. It’s probably supposed to be a mixture of both, but I wished it went more for the scares since the movie, which gets billed as being a ‘horror’ doesn’t really have much of them otherwise. This segment also doesn’t really have any twist to it other than the parents finally believing that a troll really does exist in their daughter’s bedroom, but then telling her not to tell anyone about it, but why? It seems like if there’s one of them there could be others and the whole home should be inspected and fumigated and if I were the homeowner I wouldn’t want to spend another minute in there until it was, so having this family just forget about it and go back to normal didn’t seem like a normal response. The troll is also too reminiscent of the devil doll in Trilogy of Terror, which was far more frightening.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Lewis Teague

Studio: MGM/UA

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies that take place in the South

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Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

Posted on October 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Angela commits more murders.

When Maria (Kashina Kessler), who has the words ‘milk’ and ‘shake’ tattooed to her breasts, goes off to camp, she is impeded by a truck driven by Angela (Pamela Springsteen) that runs her over and allows Angela to take on her identity. Angela then returns to the same campsite where she committed her atrocities from the last film, but which is now run by husband and wife Herman (Michael J. Pollard) and Lilly (Sandra Dorsey), who have turned it into a place to help reform teens with a criminal record and renamed Camp New Horizons. It doesn’t take long though for Angela to revert to her old ways and soon both campers and counselors begin disappearing with a frightening regularity.

While Part II was filming producer Jerry Silva was so impressed with what he was seeing that he immediately authorized another sequel with a script for this one being written while that one was still being shot and then only one weekend for pre-production. This also pushed the filming date back into October where not only were the leaves already changing, but in one segment you can see the breaths of the actors when they speak, which certainly does not give the viewer a summery feel.

The second installment had an okay balance between the black comedy and horror, but this one goes overboard into silly season. The initial killing is especially problematic as it has the victim chased down by a big truck in broad daylight. Yes, she eventually gets run over when she runs into a back alley, but the semi starts barreling down on her when she’s walking on an busy road with other cars, so other people would’ve witnessed what was happening and reported it making the odds of Angela getting away with it quite slim. Also, where does a woman, who was 13 when she got locked up into a mental hospital and been there most of the time until her recent release, find the time and money to learn how to drive a big rig and how was she able to steal one?

While Springsteen’s performance was slightly tolerable in the second installment I felt it got plain annoying here. She isn’t scary and even though this is meant as a dark comedy the villain should still have some frightening presence and she has none making for no suspense at all. She also has her hair dyed blonde, in order to resemble Maria, which has her looking even less like Felissa Rose who played the character in the first one and further way from the original concept making this seem like its own little movie with name-only connections to the other two.

The murders though are an improvement and the only thing that saves it. Part II put no creativity or imagination into the killings, but here we get a couple of memorable ones including Angela roasting marshmallows on a fire that’s burning two of her victims. Killing one of the campers via tying them up to a flagpole and then allowing them to drop many feet to the hard cement below was my favorite though the death by lawnmower, which apparently made some of the women members on the MPAA board, who were hired to give the movie its rating, physically sick, deserves honorable mention. Even here though there’s problems like when Angela stands over the body of a man and swings an ax on him, but then returns to the campsite wearing the same clothes she had, which would’ve been highly doubtful as they would’ve most assuredly been covered with blood splatter.

The only element I found interesting was the appearance of Michael J. Pollard who was at one time starring in Hollywood classics like Bonnie and Clyde and was even given a couple of leading man roles in  studio produced films, but here relegated to low budget direct-to-video fare. He isn’t even in it all that much as his character is one of the first to be killed though he does at least get to make-out with a hot young chick (Stacie Lambert), which may have made it worth it.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 4, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael A. Simpson

Studio: Double Helix Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freevee, Pluto TV, Tubi, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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