Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Wild Beasts (1984)

Posted on July 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

wild beasts 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Animals attack innocent people.

The water of a major metropolitan area becomes contaminated from all the garbage littered along the beaches. The animals of a local zoo drink it and soon go on a rampage. When the zoo’s security system fails the animals get out and start to attack the local citizens. Animal expert Laura Schwartz (Lorraine De Selle) and zookeeper Rupert (John Aldrich) work together to stop the carnage by tracking the animals down and corralling them back to safety.

The film was directed by Franco Prosperi who along with Gualtiero Jacopetti where noted for their quasi shockumentaries of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s that emphasized a lot of violence and nudity and this production works along the same vein. In fact it’s the graphic gore and a camera that lingers on the carnage that helps the film stand out from the rest of the tacky, low budget horror films from the ‘80’s. However, the film also shows a lot of animal cruelty including a mother tiger going into violent convulsions after being put to sleep and rats screaming in pain after being set on fire.

The attacks themselves become quite mechanical and monotonous. The main characters are wooden and seen only in brief intervals, so the viewer never becomes emotionally attached to anyone on screen, which seriously lowers the tension. The film actually only becomes interesting at the end when some children staying at a school drink the water and then become violent towards the adults, which has a nice creepy quality to it and the movie would’ve been better had it chosen this story thread over the other one.

The idea that showing all these discarded heroin needles along the beach and implying that this would be enough to contaminate the city’s water supply is lame and the film’s ‘important’ message about pollution is silly as well. There is also no explanation why none of the adults go crazy like the animals and some of the children do as they would presumably be drinking the same water. The opening sequence shows shots of Seattle where this story supposedly takes place, but the rest of the film was clearly shot in a European city. The production suffers from being convoluted and overblown and lacking any singular vision, which is due in large part to being financed by backers from several different countries.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 15, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Franco Prosperi

Studio: Shumba International Corporation

Available: VHS, DVD (Region 2)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Exploitation, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Slasher/Gore

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Compromising Positions (1985)

Posted on June 29, 2015 | 1 comment

compromising positions

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who murdered the dentist?

Bruce Fleckstein (Joe Mantegna) is a successful dentist who puts new meaning to the term ‘bedside manner’ as he flirts with all of his female patients and has affairs with many of them. When he turns up murdered it becomes a question of which of the many suspects did it, which intrigues housewife Judith (Susan Sarandon) and propels her to start her own independent investigation much to the consternation of her husband Bob (Edward Herrmann) who thinks it’s too dangerous. As the clues accumulate so do the advances of police detective David (Raul Julia) that she is working with, which quickly puts her marriage into jeopardy.

The film was produced and directed by Frank Perry who made many influential films during the 60’s and 70’s with his screenwriter wife Eleanor, but after their divorce the quality of his films diminished considerably. The last two that he made were in collaboration with Susan Isaacs with this one based on her novel of the same name. To an extent it works as the mystery angle is realistic enough to be interesting and the dark humor keeps it mildly entertaining.

Sarandon’s presence helps a lot and without her it wouldn’t have worked. Julia plays against type and it’s fun seeing him in more of a subdued type of role. The real scene stealer though is Judith Ivey who has some funny sarcastic lines and should’ve been seen more.

I also really liked how Sarandon’s character remains faithful to her husband despite her conflicts with him and the many advances that she gets from the police detective. Too many Hollywood pictures give the impression that marriage should be one long blissful union and the minute one partner isn’t completely receptive to the needs of the other then that entitles the other to cheat on them. Herrmann’s character is a borderline jerk, but he has legitimate reasons for why he feels the way he does and the movie refreshingly even gives him a moment to vent and explain them. I also thought that Julia’s character comes onto Sarandon much too quickly and the way he barrages into her bedroom while making aggressive advances seemed almost creepy.

The story does have a dated quality. Fleckstein is found to be distributing and printing porn, the kind with consenting adults and not kids, which the film portrays as being a ‘shocking revelation’ even though these days with the proliferation of it all over the net it is nothing but an afterthought to most. I also thought the idea that this guy would have BDSM sex with a lot of married women and even take explicit pictures of them, but still turn around and throw them some lines that he ‘loved’ them and they would all fall for it was ridiculous and unfairly portrayed women as being too easily manipulated and unsophisticated.

The resolution is limp and the film lacks anything that would help make it distinctive or memorable. The humor gets lost by the second half and the Ivey character should’ve been given more screen time and possibly even used as Sarandon’s investigative partner as her caustic take on things are the best thing about it.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 30, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated R

Director: Frank Perry

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Dry Humor, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama

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Witches’ Brew (1980)

Posted on June 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

witches brew 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Witch has ulterior motives.

Margaret (Teri Garr) will do anything to help her husband Joshua (Richard Benjamin) get a promotion at a local college, so she decides to resort to witchcraft with the help of Vivian (Lana Turner) who is an expert on the matter. The problem is that two of Margaret’s closets friends Susan (Kathryn Leigh Scott) and Linda (Kelly Jean Peters) also have husbands that are vying for the same position, so they begin to practice witchcraft of their own, which conflicts with Margaret’s and causes Joshua to have a streak of terrible luck and even near tragedy. Vivian comes to their aid, but only because she harbors a dark secret that could cause Margaret her life.

This is a remake of 1944’s Weird Woman that starred Lon Chaney Jr. and Evelyn Ankers, which also got remade before in 1962 with Burn, Witch, Burn! Out of the three versions this one is considered the weakest. The set-up is alright, but the second half in which the cynical Joshua slowly comes to terms with the reality of witchcraft goes on way too long. The comedy and effects are much too restrained and do not take enough advantage of its wild concept. The final third does manage to have some interesting twists, but the climatic sequence is full of loopholes and unfinished story threads that left this viewer feeling unsatisfied and confused when it was over.

I’ve enjoyed Richard Benjamin and his sarcastic wit in other films, but here he comes off as a borderline jerk and has such a radically different temperament from his wife you wonder how they ever got married in the first place. Garr is far more appealing and should’ve been given the most screen time. Turner whose last film this was, doesn’t have all that much to do and locked into a role that is limited and rather thankless.

Director Richard Shorr was fired midway through the production and replaced by Herbert L. Strock, which may explain the film’s disjointed feel that never really comes off as the intended spoof that it wants to be and in some ways far edgier than you’d expect including one scene that has a disgruntled former student climbing to the top deck of a parking ramp and shooting at Joshua below in a Charles Whitman-like attack. There is also another segment that has a giant devil-like bat hatch from an oversized egg that might’ve worked had the special effects been better. In either case this film, which starts out with good potential never comes together and becomes rather flat and forgettable.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 10, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Shorr, Herbert L. Strock

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, College Life, Movies Based on Novels, Obscure Movies, Remakes

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Door to Door (1985)

Posted on June 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

door to door 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Schmuck can’t sell shit.

Leon (Arliss Howard) has taken a sales job, but is finding very little luck with it. He meets by chance Larry (Ron Leibman) who is a more seasoned sales professional and who promises to take Leon under his wings and ‘show him the ropes’. Unfortunately for Leon Larry is not very ethical and sells vacuums for a company that he does not actually represent forcing the two to go on the run from a bounty hunter (Alan Austin) who has been hired by the vacuum company to track them down.

I’ve worked in sales at various points in my working life and can attest that it is usually quite thankless and never lives up to the great promises of a high lucrative potential salary that the ads always suggest. The movie lightly touches on these aspects as well as a ‘motivational’ speech given to a group of sales people to get them ‘pumped up’, but it doesn’t go far enough with it. What starts out as a satirical look at life in the sales world quickly devolves into just another contrived and generic comedy/romance.

The plot is also highly illogical, which includes a tidy wrap-up that makes no sense at all. The biggest issue is that Larry pays this bounty hunter not to turn him in, but why bother? Larry has proven to be successful at sales, so why not get a legit sales job as there are always a ton of them around and quit the charade while spending half of his earnings paying off someone that he doesn’t need to. It also doesn’t make complete sense for the bounty hunter to keep accepting the payoff either as eventually the company is going to quit employing him when he is unable to ever manage to find Larry and hire someone else who can, which means Larry will no longer have the need to keep paying him and eventually cut off both of the bounty hunter’s income streams.

Leibman has enough of an acting pedigree that he shouldn’t feel the need to appear in this transparent, low budget, obscurity simply to collect a buck, but with that said he still gives an energetic performance and can be seen sans his usual toupee. Jane Kaczmarek is attractive as the love interest, but Howard is dull in the lead and has a perpetually mopey expression that I found annoying.

A story dealing the trials and tribulations of working a sales job is ripe with comical potential, but this thing, which was filmed on-location in Covington, Georgia, doesn’t even touch the surface. The scene where Larry stupidly drives his Cadillac into a river is the film’s one and only mildly interesting moment, but otherwise this bland movie lacks any type of originality or imagination.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 3, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Patrick Bailey

Studio: Castle Hill Productions

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Comedy/Drama, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Obscure Movies, Romance

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Amazing Grace and Chuck (1987)

Posted on June 15, 2015 | Leave a comment

amazing grace

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kid stops playing baseball.

After touring a nuclear missile plant 11-year-old Chuck (Joshua Zuehlke) becomes traumatized at the prospect of nuclear war and wants to come up with some way to help prevent it. His solution is to quit playing little league baseball until there is complete nuclear disarmament as his pitching skills are impressive and therefore his talents will be sorely missed and thus make a strong statement to others about his commitment. After reading about him in a newspaper Amazing Grace (Alex English) a star basketball player for the Boston Celtics decides to do the same thing. He even moves to Livingston, Montana where Chuck resides so the two can carry on their self-styled protest together. Soon other athletes jump onto the bandwagon until a genuine movement is created that eventually gets the attention of world leaders.

The plot is indeed idealistic if not extraordinarily fanciful and has the stigma of being written by David Field who later went on to write the script for ‘Invisible Child’ a notorious Lifetime movie that has gained a cult following for having one of the dumbest plotlines ever and this one isn’t all that far behind. My eyes were already rolling before it even began, but I still wanted to give it a chance. Mike Newell’s direction is competent and Zuehlke’s performance in this his one and only film appearance is convincing and it even has a cameo appearance by coaching legend Red Auerbach.

I found it almost unnatural though that any kid could have such a strong resolve and commit to such a major sacrifice as at that age they can go through a lot of different phases and whatever they may be into one day can be something completely different just a few days later. Even responsible adults can have a hard time sticking to their commitments, so expecting a kid to do so seemed almost outlandish, but I forgave it because his Dad was a fighter pilot and therefore it made it more personal.

I was even willing to forgive the second act, which gets increasingly more strained and implausible by the minute because of the presence of Chuck’s father (William Petersen) who manages to keep things somewhat grounded by being the film’s only cynical character. However, the idea that a famous and successful player, which is played by an actual former NBA star who gives a wooden performance, would read a short article about a kid in a newspaper and that would be enough to ‘inspire’ him to quit everything and move to the middle of nowhere is just downright ridiculous as is Chuck being called to White House all alone and not accompanied by his parents, so that he could speak with the President (Gregory Peck) who begged him to start playing again because his stubborn stance has somehow hurt their bargaining power with the Russians.

The third act though is when it all gets to be too much and something that no logical or rational person will be able to swallow no matter how optimistic they may be. The film also enters in a side story dealing with Grace being stalked by a terrorist group threatening to kill him unless he goes back to playing basketball, which seemed to come from some completely different movie altogether and makes this already implausible story all the more absurd.

I’m all for a ‘feel-good’ movie, but there has to be some bearing in reality and when every player around the world quits playing and all the children quit speaking in order to show their solidarity for Chuck then this thing becomes just plain stupid and takes the concept of wish fulfillment to ridiculously new and embarrassing heights.

Of course there are some who feel the ‘positive message’ outweighs its otherwise fairy tale-like theme. There is even one reviewer on Amazon who shows his students this movie as a way to teach them the importance of having a ‘cause’. I for one think this would be a bad thing to show to young viewers because it gives them the idea that fighting for social change will be a quick and satisfying experience while also making them ‘famous’ in the process, which seems to be setting them up for a tremendous fall when they actually get out into the real world and find things to be the exact opposite.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: May 19, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 56Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mike Newell

Studio: Tri Star Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Baseball Movies, Drama, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a rural setting

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Light Blast (1985)

Posted on June 10, 2015 | Leave a comment

light blast 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Erik Estrada saves Frisco.

A crazed scientist (Ennio Girolami) has created a laser gun that can melt people on contact. He uses it to kill a couple and then threatens to do the same to the entire city of San Francisco unless the mayor can come up with $10 million dollars. Rugged, renegade cop Ronn Warren (Erik Estrada) is assigned to track the culprit down and that he does while careening down the city streets in a race car.

The only interesting aspect about this movie is that it stars Estrada the one time big TV star from his heyday on the ‘CHiPs’ TV-series. I never cared much for that show and the only thing that I’ve seen him in where I enjoyed him was in the reality series ‘The Surreal Life’ where I found him to be humble and laid back, which I suppose happens to one when they have a long line of movies like these to their credit. I remember in the late 70’s he was considered an up-and-coming star and was known to have big ego fits on the set, which eventually lead to his co-star Larry Wilcox quitting. Then once the series ended he was trapped doing low grade stuff like this, which makes me wonder; can you really call it a ‘movie career’ if no one has seen the movies that you’ve done?

Overall if you approach this with decidedly low expectations then this film, which was produced by an Italian production company, but still filmed on-location in Frisco, is okay. Watching the laser melt people is entertaining as a sort-of cheap version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The action is choreographed well enough to be mildly exciting and the budget isn’t so low that it makes everything look cheap. Estrada’s manning of a race car down the city streets at the end is fun, but highly improbable that he would be able to drive into oncoming traffic and not be hit or be able to find a car that was being stored inside a truck that would conveniently have its keys in the ignition and fully tanked up with gas.

The film’s biggest transgression is that it’s too predictable. It’s like they’ve stolen every other formulaic element from every other cop movie and then crammed it into this one. Estrada is dull and the actor playing the bad guy is equally bland making this at best a passable time waster.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: August 13, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 26Minutes

Rated R

Director: Enzo G. Castellari

Studio: Overseas FilmGroup

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Low Budget, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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In God We Tru$t (1980)

Posted on June 8, 2015 | Leave a comment
IN GOD WE TRUST, Marty Feldman, 1980, (c) Universal

IN GOD WE TRUST, Marty Feldman, 1980, (c) Universal

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Monk travels to L.A.

With his monastery in desperate need of money Brother Ambrose (Marty Feldman) is sent out into the secular world for the first time in order to find donations to help keep the place solvent. Unfortunately he travels to southern California where the wild and jaded lifestyles of the people come as a shock to him. He meets Mary (Louise Lasser) a hooker who takes him into her home and the two eventually fall in love, but he also comes into contact with the nefarious Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Andy Kaufman) a televangelist who wants to exploit the naïve Ambrose for his own gain.

Feldman with his famous buggy eyes is a delight and the fact that he did all of his own stunts, some of which were dangerous including having him dragged down a busy city behind a truck while clutching a rope and standing on a skateboard does indeed deserve credit for bravery, but his character is too annoyingly naïve. A full grown man is going to know about sex regardless if he is a monk or not and he is certainly going to know what female breast are. By having the character so incredibly out-of-touch with the jaded world makes him seem inhuman and like an alien from another planet, which isn’t funny even on a farcical level and an insult to anyone who has chosen a spiritual or more isolated lifestyle.

This pretty much explains the problem with the whole film as the satire is too broad. Poking fun at corrupt street preachers and televangelists is nothing new and thus this thing becomes derivative and one-dimensional from the very beginning. The movie also shifts awkwardly from silly slapstick to parody with running gags that become tiring and certain other bits that seem better suited for a kiddie flick.

There is very little that is genuinely funny although seeing two street preachers ram their vehicles into each other in a sort-of pissing match is amusing as is Peter Boyle’s ventriloquist act using a dummy made to look like Moses. The final scene with Richard Pryor as a computerized version of God and Feldman’s attempts to convert him to Christianity isn’t bad either.

The real scene stealer though is Kaufman who with a bouffant blonde wig plays the perfect caricature of a greedy preacher and I loved his meltdown during one of his religious broadcasts. I also got a kick out of his sink, which has one faucet for cold another for hot and then a third for holy water.

The casting of Lasser as a prostitute was great because she doesn’t fit the caricature of an 80’s Hollywood hooker and has more of the realistic and less flattering looks of an actual streetwalker. However, the film is a grab bag of hit-or-miss jokes many of which fall flat and with a runtime that is much too long for such slight material.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 26, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Marty Feldman

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Farce, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Obscure Movies, Parody

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Rappin’ (1985)

Posted on June 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

rappin 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rapper saves the neighborhood.

John (Mario Van Peebles) has just been released from jail and looking to stay out of trouble while living with his grandmother (Eyde Byrde) and finding a job. He reluctantly gets involved in trying to save his poor neighborhood from a greedy developer (Harry Goz) who wants to turn it into a shopping mall while also dealing with his former girlfriend Dixie (Tasia Valenza) who works for a record label and wants to sign him to a rap record deal.

This film was released at the height of the rap craze with the idea that any movie dealing with the subject would be a sure fire hit no matter how pathetic. Overall it’s as bad as it sounds and maybe even worse. The characters and scenarios are simplistic and contrived while having a family friendly tone to it that turns the rap art form into just another watered-down marketing ploy to get people into the seats.

Van Peebles, who is the son of renown independent filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, is extremely weak in the lead as he has too much of a clean-cut persona and unable to even do his own rapping as it was all dubbed by Master Gee. Valenza is quite cute as the love interest and I liked that they had an interracial relationship without it having to be a source of controversy or attention.  Ice-T can also be seen briefly during a rap audition and looking like he hasn’t aged at all.

The film does have the novelty of showing a ‘dance-off’ between two members of a street gang that is amusingly goofy. The climatic sequence has all the city council members joining in on a group rap and the credits, which is probably my favorite part of the movie, features the majority of the cast, which includes some of the older, white folks, doing their own rapping as their names get scrolled over the screen.

rappin 1

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: May 11, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Joel Silberg

Studio: Cannon Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Musical

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Road House (1989)

Posted on June 3, 2015 | Leave a comment

roadhouse

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bouncer cleans up bar.

After opening up a bar in a small town outside of Kansas City Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) looks to find a bouncer strong enough to handle the tough clientele and yet smart enough to run the staff and stay out of harm. He turns to Dalton (Patrick Swayze) whose reputation meets his standards. Dalton wastes no time in cleaning up the bar and making it profitable, but when the town bully who is a rich and unscrupulous businessman name Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) wants in on the action things become quite ugly quite quickly.

Had this film been done as a parody of all those macho 80’s action flicks this thing could’ve been brilliant as the over-the-top ingredients are already there, but instead it takes itself seriously and ends up being unintentionally funny. Everything gets played up to the extreme. The characterizations are broad while the story elements are predictable and formulaic. Even the fight sequences are stale and tiring although the scene where Wesley has a monster truck crash through a car dealership and crush all the vehicles isn’t bad.

The dopey script is filled with one implausible plot point or cliché after another. I found it hard to believe why Dalton, who makes $500 dollars a night and demands $5,000 upfront, would have to settle for an upper loft of a horse barn for his living quarters, which is too conveniently located across the pond from Wesley’s mansion. Strippers at a small town bar isn’t realistic nor is having a hot babe clientele who are provocatively dressed and looking more in tune for a posh nightclub in some hip cosmopolitan city.

Swayze is dull in the lead and his stoic ‘manliness’ comes off as boring. Sam Elliot who shows up later as one of Dalton’s pals from the past would’ve made the movie much more interesting had he been the star and about 20 years younger. He has a few great lines including the one that he says as he enjoys the derriere of Dalton’s girlfriend as she walks away “That girl has way too many brains to have an ass like that.”

Red West who made a career working as a stunt double makes for an affable everyman playing a shop owner who Dalton befriends. Kelly Lynch is gorgeous as Dalton’s girlfriend and I found her sex scenes with him and brief nudity amusing since she later went on to play the upset mother of a teen porn addict in the infamous Lifetime movie ‘Cyber Seduction’.

Spoiler Alert!

My favorite part was the ending when several of the townspeople get together and take turns shooting at Wesely before ultimately killing him, which is clearly inspired by the real life event that like in the movie occurred in a small town outside of Kansas City. The town was Skidmore, Missouri and on the afternoon of July 10, 1981 the townspeople upset with decades of violence from the town bully named Ken McElroy got together in the main street of town and shot and killed him as he sat in the cab of his pickup and then just like in the movie covered up for each other, so nobody was arrested. The town, which sits in the far reaches of Nodaway county as had a few more strange occurrences since then including a bizarre 2001 disappearance of an 20-year-old who literally vanished into thin air when he went outside to put some jumper cables into a shed and the 2004 killing of a pregnant woman who had her fetus cut out of her womb. I traveled to the place in 2007, but fortunately was able to get through it without incident.

End of Spoiler Warning!

Main street Skidmore, Missouri where the shooting took place on July 10, 1981. Where the white car is parked is roughly where Ken McElroy's pickup was when he was shot. Photo taken by me in 2007.

Main street Skidmore, Missouri where the shooting took place on July 10, 1981. Where the white car is parked is roughly where Ken McElroy’s pickup was when he was shot. Photo taken by me in 2007.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 19, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 54Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rowdy Herrington

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity

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Grace Quigley (1984)

Posted on May 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

grace quigley1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Granny hires hit man.

Grace Quigley (Katharine Hepburn) is an elderly lady living alone on a limited budget who’s being forced out of her apartment due to having a pet bird, which her slumlord (Harris Laskawy) does not allow. She has nowhere to go and feels like ending her life, but has tried suicide before with unsuccessful results including swallowing a bottle of pills and having her stomach pumped, which she promised herself she would never go through again. Then she meets hired hit man Seymour Flint (Nick Nolte) and feels he’s the solution. He can not only bump her off, but her other elderly friends who no longer wish to go on as well. The problem is that Seymour doesn’t want to do it as he has grown attached to Grace and even starts calling her ‘mom’.

The first 60 minutes aren’t bad and even a bit humorous, but the final 30 brings in a weird story thread involving a cantankerous taxi driver (Christophe Murney) that seems thrown in simply to pad the running time. The ending, which was changed from the one in the original cut, is flat and helps to make this potentially tart black comedy a misfire.

Hepburn herself is awesome. She plays against type as she is usually a forceful and independent minded character, but here is much more vulnerable and sympathetic. Her shaking/wobbling head, which became an issue and even a distraction during her later years, is strangely not as apparent. Nolte is okay, but his character is wracked with psychosomatic quirks that are too silly and it would’ve been more fun had the character been played straight as a typically cold, soulless hit man who only softens after his friendship with Grace.

There are a few funny moments with my favorite being the striptease that Seymour’s hooker girlfriend (Kit Le Fever) does in front of Grace’s elderly and shocked friends. The running gag of people getting bloody noses every time they feel guilty does not work and the bloody nose that Hepburn’s character gets almost looks like a giant bug coming out of her nostril. The climatic chase involving five hearses careening down the city’s streets is forced although the slow motion shot of one of them driving into the New York harbor merits a few points.

The idea that people would want to die simply because they are old just doesn’t ring true especially since these folks still had their health and friends (at least with each) and were not bound to a wheelchair. There are many seniors who enjoy their golden years and still excited about life and yet the film doesn’t balance itself by portraying any of those. The attempt at showing the more serious side of aging by having Grace take Seymour on a tour of a rest home exposes little and ultimately helps makes the film’s potential social statement weak and simplistic.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Alternate Title: The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley

Released: October 2, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes (VHS Version)

Rated PG

Director: Anthony Harvey

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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