Category Archives: Adolescence/High School

Absolution (1978)

Posted on April 17, 2024 | 1 comment

absolution

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pranking a strict priest.

Father Goddard (Richard Burton) is the head of an English Boy’s School and uses his influence to control those who attend and is unflinching on his policies. Goddard constantly displays a cold and detached demeanor particularly with Arthur (Dai Bradley) a handicapped student that the Father doesn’t seem to care for. Benjie (Dominic Guard) on the other-hand is the teacher’s pet and routinely shown favorable treatment. Benjie though grows to resent the Father’s stern ways when he’s told he can no longer visit with Blakely (Billy Connolly) a motorcycle riding vagabond who has set-up an encampment just outside of the school grounds. Benjie decides to play a prank on the Father after hearing the lecture about the seal of confession, which a priest cannot break even if what he’s told is about a murder, so during confession Benjie tells Goddard that he’s murdered Blakely. Goddard initially doesn’t believe him, which sets off a myriad of twists that soon sends Goddard’s life, career and even his sanity spiraling out-of-control.

After the success of The Wicker Man, Anthony Schaffer was commissioned by director Anthony Page to write another script that could be made into a movie and Schaffer decided to choose one that had initially been meant as a stageplay, but had never been produced. However, once Schaffer had completed his adaptation Page was unable to find a studio willing to fund it and he was ultimately forced to use his own money and Burton agreeing to slash his normal fee in order to get it made.

The lack of a budget is sorely evident at the start featuring a grainy print with faded color and what initially seems like misplaced banjo music that would be considered more appropriate for a film set in the American south instead of England. Having it shot on-location at Ellesmere Collage helps as many of the local pupils played the students here and the film gives-off a realistic atmosphere about what a boys school would be like with all of the kids looking age appropriate for their grade level and not like, as with other teen school movies, older actors in their 20’s trying to come-off as if they were still adolescents.

Billy Connelly, in his film debut, is terrific and it’s fun seeing Bradley, who was better known for his starring role in Kes. Burton though is the standout as his jet setting persona that he had at the time with Elizabeth Taylor gets completely erased and he fully sinks into his role of a steely-eyed, cantankerous man who rules with a rigid, iron-fist and whose simple presence wields terror in the boys as he walks-by and to some extent the viewer too. It’s a commanding performance that helps the movie stand-out.

Spoiler Alert!

The story though, while intriguing, doesn’t fully work. It becomes obvious that Goddard is being tricked by the boys, but you feel no empathy for his quandary. He has spent so much time up until then being a jerk that you end up siding with the boys, at least initially, which seriously hurts the tension as normally in a thriller/mystery such as this you’re supposed to side with the protagonist and want to emotionally see them get out of their predicament. Here though you like his mental breakdown and not as invested in finding out the resolution beyond it. The final explanation, dealing with the Arthur character supposedly disguising his voice to sound like Benje’s is too much of a stretch and ultimately hurts the credibility.

Shaffer stated in interviews that this was not meant to be an anti-Catholic movie, but I feel he said this in order not to alienate potential viewers as it’s clearly written by someone who grow-up in the church and had many problems with it. Father Goddard is more a caricature meant to represent Catholicism as a whole and how the religion with its very rigid rules ends up trapping those who follow it with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you don’t scenarios leaving its followers in a perpetual state of guilt and paranoia. This becomes quite evident at the end where the Father feels unable to break his seal of confession for fear of divine wrath, but also fears it for the murder he committed and his thoughts of suicide that would equally lead him to hell, per the teachings, making him more a victim of the religion than of the boys, which I feel was the whole point.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 8, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Anthony Page

Studio: Bulldog Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Spiritual Movies

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The Double McGuffin (1979)

Posted on April 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

double

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Briefcase full of money.

Homer (Greg Hodges) is walking outside one day behind the boarding school that he attends where he comes upon a briefcase that’s full of a lot of money. He then runs to tell his friends, Specks (Dion Pride), Billy Ray (Jeff Nicholson), and Foster (Vincent Spano) about it, but when they return to the spot where Homer hide it it’s gone. They then see a man named Sharif Firat (Ernest Borgnine) walking about town carrying it. They track him to a nearby hotel where he’s staying and bug his room to find out that he has hired three gunmen (Lyle Alzado, Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones, Rod Browning) to carry-out an assassination. The boys though don’t tell the local sheriff (George Kennedy) because they’ve played some practical jokes on him in the past and fear now he won’t believe them, so they go about investigating the case on their own with the help of Jody (Lisa Whelchel) who is a student journalist and good at taking pictures with a camera as well as Arthur (Michael Gerard) who’s an uptight nerdy kid, but a whiz with computers.

After the success of Benji, a film that Joe Camp not only directed, but also wrote, produced and distributed, made over $30 million from a paltry initial budget of $450,000 he became motivated to further direct more movies for a family audience. This one though is definitely intended for adolescences and may even shock some viewers with a few of the scenes as it’s not exactly as family-friendly as Camp’s other films. One of the biggest jaw-droppers is that it features nudity, or in this case a glimpse of Elke Sommar’s breasts that occurs right at the beginning. There’s also some shots of the boys bare behinds when they go skinny dipping as well as scenes inside their dorm rooms where they are seen reading Playboy and drinking, or at least harboring, Coors Beer despite being underaged. They also swear though nothing worse than ‘hell’, which are all things that kids at that age would most likely do, or partake in, but some parents may still not be pleased and fear that it might be a ‘bad influence’ for the real young kids to see.

The four leads, which consists of country singer Charley Pride’s son, are an odd looking bunch mainly because three of them look like they’re senior high school age hanging around with this small kid named Homer who could easily pass-off as being a fourth grader. Seemed hard to believe that he’d be housed in the same room as these older guys and worse yet be playing on the same football team as he’d most likely be injured badly and better suited for the Pee-Wee division. His acting though is more dynamic than the rest, including Spano who may have become the most famous of the bunch, but here doesn’t really have much to do, so that may have been the reason he got cast despite his puny size. I also really enjoyed Whelchel, who later became famous for playing the snotty Blair on the TV-show ‘The Facts of Life’. who is engaging and looking quite young, like about 13 though at the time of filming she was actually hitting 15. Gerard as the pensive and androgynist Arthur has a few fun moments too.

The twists are entertaining for awhile though having the briefcase constantly appearing and disappearing gets tiring. Initially it’s kind of creepy and intriguing, but the segment where the boys open it to find a severed hand and they run a few feet away in fright and then go back to have it no longer there makes it seem like it’s almost magical and not realistic. Homer’s ability to unlock anything simply by using a pocket knife gadget gets played-up too much. It’s okay when he uses it to open the briefcase though you’d think something used to hold a lot of money would have a much more sophisticated lock in place, but when he’s able to continue to pick any lock in virtually any door he wants is a bit much to the point you start to wonder why does anyone even bother putting locks on doors if any kid with a small knife can easily pick-it.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s biggest downfall though is that not enough happens. The lack of action, especially for a film aimed at the younger set, is appalling. There’s only one chase, done on foot when Borgnine tries to catch-up with two of the boys, who you’d think could easily outrun him since he was 60 at the time and out-of-shape and also in broad daylight with plenty of pedestrians on the street who could’ve easily called-out for help, which makes this moment not very tense at all. The climactic sequence really fizzles as the shooters are apprehended inside their hotel room before the assassination even is attempted, which should’ve gotten played-out more. The concept had plenty of potential, but with so little that actually happens it’s quickly forgettable and hardly worth the effort to seek-out.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 8, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Joe Camp

Studio: Mulberry Square Productions

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Spy/Espionage

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My Bodyguard (1980)

Posted on December 31, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hiring protection from bullies.

Clifford (Chris Makepeace) is a new student at a tough Chicago high school who finds himself at odds with the bullies who are headed by Melvin (Matt Dillion), who goes by the nickname ‘Big M’. He and his cronies want Clifford to pay them ‘protection money’ in order to defend him from Linderman (Adam Baldwin) who is a big, loner kid that supposedly killed his own brother. Clifford refuses and thus gets constantly hounded by them, so he decides to go to Linderman and offers him a deal where he’ll pay him some money each week and even agree to do his homework if he’ll become his bodyguard. At first Linderman declines, but eventually comes on board, which is enough to get Big M and his gang to leave them alone. Then a few days later Big M returns with his own ‘bodyguard’ named Mike (Hank Salas), a big muscular guy, who challenges Linderman to a fight, which he at first resists.

This teen movie is unusual in that it was not based off of a novel as its source material, even though you’d be convinced it was, and although a novel version of the story was eventually written after the film was released, it’s ultimately an original idea by screenwriter Alan Ormsby. Ormsby was at that point better known for writing low budget horror movies, with a couple of them he even starred in, and seemed the least likely to have penned something as good natured as this. It also stands out from other teen movies in that its music isn’t some pounding rock score, but instead soft classical that helps give it distinction and let it stand-out from just about all the other high school flicks out there particularly those from the 80’s.

Kids today may not relate to a school where every student doesn’t have an I-phone, a laptop, or piercings, but if you were a teen back then this movie captures that experience to a T. Everything from the bland school lunches where you had to drink milk out of a small carton to the creaky old school buildings (this one was filmed on-location at Lake Forest High) gets recreated. The teens are all realistically geeky and awkward, even Joan Cusack, in her film debut, looks nerdish especially as she smiles exposing a mouth full of metal. Many who see this, or see it again, it will bring back a fondness to their own school days to the point it may even make you feel you’re right back there.

Chris Makepeace is perfectly cast as a sensitive youth who must learn to ‘make connections’ or ‘network’ his way around the new environment and use what social skills he has to maneuver through the teen jungle. Dillon, in only his third movie, makes for a believable bully and Baldwin, in his film debut, is also excellent and while his character doesn’t say much he gives off a very effective almost creepy stare that proves memorable. In support I really got a kick out of Paul Quandt, who’s only film appearance this was, as a scrawny tyke who befriends Makepeace and always supplies funny side comments and reactions. You also get to see Joan and Jon Cusacks’ dad, Dick Cusack, as the school’s much put upon principal.

The only segments and characters that really don’t work are the scenes involving Makepeace’s home-life that are a bit unusual since he resides in a hotel that his father, Martin Mull, manages. He has no mother since she died in a car accident years earlier and Mull behaves more like a big brother, who is into looking at naked women with his son through their telescope, than any type of disciplinarian. Ruth Gordon plays Mull’s goofy mother and while Gordon is quite amusing her scenes go on too long and don’t have much if anything to do with the main plot. Mull’s moments don’t help either though one could argue that his scenes do have some outside connection to the theme as it shows adults have to deal with their own type of bullies in this case his crabby and demanding boss, played by Craig Richard Nelson, who is always threatening to terminate his employment.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is different too in that it essentially says fighting may sometimes be necessary though many administrators of today try to persuade against the idea that violence is the answer and there are other more constructive ways to tackle conflicts. Of course watching Makepeace clobber Dillon while Baldwin handles Salas is quite satisfying especially since the whole rest of the movie is watching the kids, including even Baldwin, getting humiliate by the bullies, so the bad kids do ultimately get a much deserved come-uppance. However, just because one person ‘kicks some other person’s ass’ means only that they were the more skillful fighter, or just bigger physically, and not necessarily the moral superior.

Still it’s a very pleasant movie that has a rites of passage/ fleeting moment in time quality. The situation is portrayed as a growing pains issue and not a dire one. This is well before mass shootings and all of the ugliness you see happening in schools today where everything spews out into the adult world. Here it was still done at a time where these problems were contained within the school walls, which is the best thing about it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 11, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tony Bill

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity

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The Wild Life (1984)

Posted on December 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

wild

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: One week before school.

The summer is winding down and the teens in suburban Los Angeles get ready to head back to school. Conrad (Eric Stoltz) has just graduated the previous year and is now planning to move into his own apartment, but finds it to be expensive and his salary working at a bowling alley doesn’t pay enough, so his buddy Tom (Chris Penn) volunteers to move in with him as his roommate and thus share the costs. The two though don’t see eye-to-eye on things particularly Tom’s penchant for wild parties, which Conrad fears will get them kicked-out. Conrad’s younger brother Jim (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) is fascinated with the Vietnam War and getting into trouble by smoking and underage drinking, which Conrad doesn’t like. Anita (Lea Thompson) is Conrad’s ex-girlfriend who’s having problems of her own as she’s still a teen, but having an affair with a cop (Hart Bochner) who is much older and also married.

The script was written by Cameron Crowe, who had great success with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and took about trying to emulate that one. Instead of being all about crude jokes and pranks like with most teen flicks of that decade Crowe centered it more on studying the individual teen characters, but unfortunately they’re all rather banal and not that interesting to follow. The first half suffers from a lot of segments that go on too long and doesn’t help the pace. It moves along so leisurely that 20-minutes in I started to wonder when it was going to get on with the story and if there might not even be one though there eventually is. The humor, while amusing at times, is too soft and subtle and could’ve been played-up more to give the thing a much needed jolt. The word ‘wild’ is in the film’s title, but what we end up getting is just the typical teen stuff that hardly lives up to its name. I also could’ve done without the cigarette swallowing, which happens a few times with different people. To me it looked dangerous and enough to make somebody sick and was surprised the characters didn’t puke it out.

Mitchell-Smith has the face of a teen heartthrob, but his squeaky voice is a distraction and I would’ve considered dubbing it though I suppose funny sounding voices at that age as they go through the ‘big change’ may just reflect the reality. His character  is a bit over-the-top with his bravado and at one point challenges a guy who’s much bigger than him to punch him and in another segment he lies down on the street in front of a moving car. This type of behavior seems too reckless and brazen and isn’t normal. Teens are known to take some unwise risks, but it usually catches up with them, but never does here, which I found annoying. Also, when someone shows extreme bravery in one instance they can, as human nature goes, be amazingly scared about something else, but we never are shown that balance and thus making the character come-off as unrealistic.

Eric Stoltz has the same issue in reverse as he’s too clean-cut and responsible. Would’ve been nice and created a more three dimensional person had he been deviant at some point. Lea Thompson, who was already 23 at the time, looked too old to be playing a teen, and in fact just a year later got cast as the mother of a teen in Back to the Future, so I felt her appearance here didn’t work, I did however enjoy Chris Penn he’s definitely a doofus, but a lovable one and all his scenes elicit a chuckle. Robert Ridgely as the slick apartment manager, Hart Bochner as the corrupt cop with a mustache, and Rick Moranis as a preppy clothing store salesmen, with a puffy hairdo, are all funny too and help to give the proceedings a needed zing.

The third act does bring in a party, which gets out-of-hand, but not as much as it could’ve. Having all these people crammed into a tiny apartment should’ve created some fist fights when a boyfriend would catch another guy touching his girlfriend by accident due to having such little space between them. Spraying beer and food fights should’ve also followed, but never do, which makes these party goers too docile and well behaved. Having the guys break down the wall and evade the apartment next door and shock the neighboring couple (Ed Berke, Jessica Rains) was inspired, but we should’ve been shown these neighbors reactions the next day when the apartment manager surveys the damage. Overall though there’s just not enough here that stands-out especially from all the other teen flicks from that era and thus it’s easily and quickly forgotten.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Art Linson

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD-R (Universal Vault Series)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity

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Blood Lake (1987)

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

blood1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer stalks 6 teens.

Filmed on-location in Cedar Lake, Oklahoma by a bunch of young amateurs convinced they could make a horror movie just as good as the studios. Mike Berry, who stars as Mike, wrote the screenplay and then shopped around his script, but could find no takers until he bumped into Tim Boggs at a local retail store who agreed to take on the task of directing and even quit both of his jobs to do it. The shooting took place over a course of 10 days with the storyline revolving around 6 teens who go to the house of Becky (Angela Darter) whose parents are away, which will allow them to party for the whole weekend only to have it interrupted by a deranged killer (Tiny Frazier) upset because the house they’re in used to be owned by him.

When I hear about films like this I harken back to Harold P. Warren, who wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Manos: The Hands of Fate, which has become quite infamous as one of the worst movies ever made, but also started as a bet where Warren, being a local salesmen, bet famous screenwriter Stirling Stilliphant, who was in the El Paso, Texas area scouting for locations for an upcoming film, that he could direct a horror movie that could be just as good as anything Hollywood could churn out. Of course the results where abysmal, but you can’t help but feel that the cast and crew here were equally in over their heads.

On the positive side it starts out a heck of a lot better than the Warren film, which had extended shots focusing on the passing Texas countryside for no apparent reason and got visually boring quite fast. The excuse for this was that Warren had expected to shoot the opening credits over this, but for whatever reason it got botched leaving a lot extraneous and pointless footage. Here though they get it right with a nicely edited bit showing the kids driving in a car while the credits and music play over it. In fact the editing is quite good and helps equalize the cheap video look that was done via a VCR camera. The dialogue is also well done as director Boggs was smart enough to allow the teens to paraphrase their own lines to make it sound natural and thus the characters come-off as more believable than in most other bigger budgeted horror flicks, so we’ll score one for the Okies on that.

Unfortunately everything else is pretty bad. The big problem is that not enough happens. For a film with Blood in its title you end up seeing very little of it. There’s a quick killing at the beginning, which doesn’t show much gore, and then another 48 minutes before you see another one. There’s a teaser death where you see a body floating in a lake, but it turns out to being just a prank. I realize other 80’s slasher flicks would sometimes employ this, but when you’re a cheap production you can’t play with the audiences expectations like that and you got to get to the gore and violence pretty quick to hold their interest. Spending almost 20-minutes watching the kids go water skiing turns the whole thing into a snooze feast and it’s very unlikely anyone is going to want to stick with it after that.

Spoiler Alert!

The killings, once they finally get going, aren’t impressive and all done by a guy who doesn’t look frightening at all and has no distinguishing features to make him interesting. The knife he uses is quite small and having him use a sword, or ax, or something big and sharp would’ve elicited more terror. The reason for why he goes on a killing spree is that apparently he sold the house to the new owners, but they ended up ‘not paying for it’, but how does someone take possession of the home if no money transaction takes place? You can’t really ‘sell a home’ if no actual sale happens.

The ending is confusing too as the killer’s body disappears and then it gets intimated that he reappears inside the ambulance that’s taking the injured teens to the hospital though we don’t really see this as all that gets shown is the ambulance driving away with laughter in the background. The final sequence becomes almost surreal as the killer magically reappears at the home site only for him to see all the water in the lake drained out. Apparently this was, as the closing credits intimate, an ‘act of God’, but what does it have to do with the story?

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Tim Boggs

Distributor: United Home Video

Available: DVD, Fandor, Plex, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Slasher/Gore

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Buster and Billie (1974)

Posted on June 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

buster2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dating a loose woman.

Buster (Jan-Michael Vincent) is a high school senior living in rural Georgia during the late 1940’s. He’s been dating Margie (Pamela Sue Martin), but finds her to be stuck-up and her unwillingness to have sex makes him frustrated. He begins seeing Billie Jo (Joan Goodfellow), who has moved into town and due to having limited social skills puts-out for the other boys by allowing them to have sex with her, one after the other, in the woods late at night. Buster at first dates her simply for the action, but eventually the two get into a serious relationship and he breaks-up with Margie. They begin going out publicly letting the whole town know that they’re a couple, but the other boys become jealous as they can no longer have easy sex like they use to and thus plot a dark revenge.

The story is based loosely on an actual event that occurred in Florence, South Carolina in 1948 that the film’s screenwriter Ron Turbeville remembered hearing about growing up. The recreation of the era though lacks style and this may be in large part due the film’s limited budget. While it gets a zero in  atmosphere I did at least like the way it doesn’t sugar coat things for nostalgic purposes. The teens behave in the same ways they do now and thus it’s gritty on that level.

The acting is good surprisingly even from Jan-Michael who in his other films tended to have a cardboard presence, but here he gives the thing most of its energy. He even appears, shockingly, fully nude and in fact this was the first mainstream American movie to show a male naked from the front, of which Jan stated in later interviews he was quite proud to expose of his well-endowed ‘equipment’. Goodfellow is also seen nude and is quite attractive though I wish she had more to say. Robert Englund, in his film debut, is the most memorable playing an albino with brown hair and his pale complexion makes him look creepier, at least I felt, than he did as Freddy Kruegar.

I didn’t understand though why Buster would risk his social standing for this ostracized girl. I got that Margie was annoying, so breaking-up with her wasn’t a stretch, and Billie was essentially ‘easy-pickings’, but why go public with it? It made more sense that they would’ve seen each other on the sly, but not wanting to risk the social scrutiny of letting everyone know about it. This would’ve clearly lost Buster’s social status not only amongst his friends, but the town as a whole including his own parents, so why add on all that needless stress? Billie too was very shy, so becoming center stage and having all eyes on her would be something she most likely would’ve wanted to avoid, which makes the second act overly idealistic.

It’s also frustrating that Billie doesn’t say much. You want to get to know this person, but never really do. The only time she’s ever given any insight is when Buster explains to his parents why she had sex with all the other guys (in order to be liked), but this is something we should’ve heard coming-out of her lips instead of his. By having Buster do almost all the talking, even when they’re alone together, makes it seem like she’s mentally handicapped, which I don’t believe was the intent and yet ultimately that’s how it comes-off and thus making their romantic moments sterile and uninteresting.

Spoiler Alert!

The final sequence though is where it really falls apart as the boys inadvertently kill Billie when they gang rape her (during a rainstorm even though the sky is still clear and sunny). Buster then tracks them down at a pool hall where he single-handily beats them up and ultimately kills two of them, but the guys just allow themselves to be beaten without attempting to throw a punch, which is not only unrealistic, but boring. Having a big brawl, where each side fights equally would’ve been far more exciting. The twist in which Buster somehow gets released from jail the day after her funeral, so that he can decorate her gravesite with all the flowers that he’s stolen from everyone else in town is far-fetched and overly forces the sentiment.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Daniel Petrie

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Circle of Two (1981)

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Old man/young teen.

Ashley St. Clair (Richard Burton) is an aging painter of 60 who has lost his passion and hasn’t either sold, or attempted to do a painting in over 10 years. Sarah (Tatum O’Neal) is an unhappy 15-year-old who’s tired of dating guys her own age as she finds them to be immature and only interested in one thing…sex. She then meets Ashley, first after she sneaks into an adult theater to watch an X-rated movie and then later at a coffee shop. Despite the extreme differences in their ages they still connect through their mutual interest in art. Ashley even begins to paint again and the two share an enjoyable, but platonic friendship. However, once Sarah’s parents (Robin Gammell, Patricia Collins) find out about they put an immediate stop to it by locking her in her room and and in protest Sarah refuses to eat.

Based on the novel ‘A Lesson in Love’ by Marie-Terese Baird this film marks the final one to be directed by famed Greek director Jules Dassin and in many ways this may be the weakest one that he did. The whole way the relationship gets going is very rushed and forced. Bumping into the same person twice in one day, in the big city of Toronto, doesn’t seem likely and then having Sarah fall so head-over-heels for him to the point she starts spouting out the ‘L’ word quite quickly is dingy. A more plausible scenario would’ve had Ashley teaching an art class (he no longer paints, but still has to bring in an income somehow) of which Sarah attends and then through the course of several months a bond is slowly created.

The sex angle is a complete mess. Fortunately Ashley makes no moves on her, but Sarah does aggressively begin to come-on to him and at one point stands completely naked in front of him. In her autobiography ‘A Paper Life’ O’Neal expressed great discomfort in having to do this scene though I didn’t detect this, but maybe that’s just because she’s such a great actress, but either way the scene was completely unnecessary.  It’s also inconsistent with the character as she broke-up with her boyfriend Paul (Michael Wincott) because he was trying to pressure her into having sex and she was still a virgin, so if she didn’t want sex with a guy her own age why would she want it with one who was way older and is this era of pre-Viagra how could she even be sure he could do it? A better scenario would’ve had sex never coming into play and it was simply their other mutual interests that connected them and it was only outsiders, like Sarah’s parents, that presumed the worst when it really wasn’t occurring.

The one bright spot is the acting with both leads being superb. O’Neal proves that her strong and memorable performance in Paper Moon was no fluke and the only thing that keeps the film watchable. Burton is excellent as well. Although he usually has a strong presence here he wisely takes a step back playing someone who’s weak and tentative, which in many ways reflected his own career at the time where many felt he was washed-up and the years of alcohol abuse certainly did age him making him look even older than 60 when he really wasn’t, and thus a perfect fit for the part. The only issue here is that Tatum seems way too mature for 15 both physically and personality-wise and having her play someone who was 17 would’ve been more appropriate.

While the film remains marginally compelling the talky ending in which Burton goes on a long speech like a tenured professor lecturing to a college class practically ruins it. I was also frustrated that we never learn much about the old man, played by George Bourne Sr., an elderly gentleman who agrees to let Ashley paint his portrait for a fee, which in-turn revitalizes his career and I felt this character should’ve been in it more, or at least a few scenes showing what they talked about as his portrait was being done.

Tatum’s abstaining from all food plays-out poorly as well. For one thing she doesn’t change physically, so we’d never know she wasn’t eating if it weren’t mentioned. She then travels to New York and I was fully expecting her to pass-out in the middle of crowded Grand Central Station from a lack of nutrients, but apparently in-between time she had eaten something, but this should’ve been shown and the fact that it isn’t is a sign of shoddy film-making, which despite Dassin’s previous output, this whole movie ends up pretty much being.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 7, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jules Dassin

Studio: World Northal

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Romance

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A Tiger’s Tale (1987)

Posted on November 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

tiger

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Falling for girlfriend’s mother.

Bubber (C. Thomas Howell) is a high school student who’s dating Shirley (Kelly Preston) yet becomes more interested in Rose (Ann-Margaret) Shirley’s mother. The problem is Rose is an alcoholic and scared of snakes, which Bubber has as a pet and tigers, which Bubber also has as a pet. Despite all this the two slowly hit-it-off while keeping it a secret from the increasingly suspicious Shirley. Eventually she catches them in the act when she sees the two running naked at a drive-in where they tried to make love outside, but got attacked by fire ants. To get revenge Shirley pricks a hole in Rose’s diaphragm, so that she gets pregnant with Bubber’s baby. Bubber though intends to move-in with Rose to help her raise it, but Rose considers an abortion.

It’s impossible to say where this movie goes wrong mainly because it never gets going in the first place. It’s based off of the novel ‘Love and Other Natural Disasters’ by Allen Hannay III, who was paid $80,000 to have the rights to it sold to Vincent Pictures, which was owned and run by Peter Douglas, the third son of Kirk Douglas and brother of Michael. Peter then converted it into a screenplay, but without having read the book I couldn’t help but feel that something got lost in the transition. This is a big problem when novels get turned into movies as films don’t have as much depth to the story and characters as books typically do, which is why most people who enjoyed the story in book form usually end up disappointed when they see it as a movie. The elements are there for something potentially interesting, but Douglas, who also directed, doesn’t have the ability to put it altogether, which is probably a good reason why he’s never written, or directed any movie since.

I liked the setting, filmed in Waller County, Texas, but it doesn’t give the viewer enough feel of the region. Just showing the exterior of the homes and the drive-in isn’t enough. We need to see the town that they live-in in order to understand the characters and learn what makes them tick and the environments they are brought up in can have a lot to do with that, but when that environment gets captured in an ambiguous way, like here, it doesn’t help.

The story seems to want to tap into the themes of The Graduate, but that was a brilliant film and if you can’t top that, or at least equal it, then it’s best not to even try. Ann-Margaret is supposed to be an alcoholic, but we only see her with a drink in her hand at the start and then the rest of the time she seems quite sober. I also didn’t like the way she see-saws between being vampish at one moment and then a mature adult who gets real preachy with Bubber the next. It’s like someone with a split personality who isn’t fleshed-out and the same can be said for Howell’s character too.

There was potential for some funny bits like when Rose goes over to Bubber’s house and tells him she’s really frightened of snakes and then gets undressed and into bed with him. The camera then pans down to show a snake slithering under the covers and I thought this was the beginning of a really hilarious moment, but then the film cuts away. Later on Rose is shown to be comfortable in the presence of Bubber’s snake, but we never witness her transition, which was a missed opportunity for character development.  The scene where Rose and Bubber going running naked at the drive-in is dumb too because apparently only Shirley notices them even though with the screaming that the two were making it would’ve made anyone at the drive-in look-up and not just her.

Even the reliable Charles Durning gets wasted and becomes as dull as the rest. In fact the only thing that  I did enjoy was the tiger. I must commend Howell for being willing to get into a cage with it and stick his hand inside it’s mouth, but I was confused why the tiger is playful one second and then proceeds to try and attack Howell the next. Also, why would Howell want to get back into the animal’s cage later after he almost got his leg bite-off before? Even with that in mind I still felt the tiger was cool, the scene where he kills and eats a pooch of some customers that were just passing through is amusing in a dark sort of way and when he’s eventually set free is the only memorable moment in what is otherwise a misfire.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 22, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Douglas

Studio: Vincent Pictures

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Romance

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Horror High (1973)

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

horror1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bullied teen gets revenge.

Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) is a geeky teen tormented by the jocks and teachers and who’s only solace is his pet guinea pig that he keeps in a cage at his school’s science lab. However, the cat owned by the school’s janitor Mr. Griggs (Jeff Alexander) keeps trying to get its paws on the rodent and Vernon is forced to constantly have to scare it away, which annoys Griggs as he sees this as harassing his pet. One night Vernon comes to the lab to find that the cat has gotten into the cage and injured the guinea pig while also toppling over a bottle of lab formula. While Vernon is removing the cat Griggs enters and attacks Vernon for what he thinks was intentionally injuring his pet. He also forces Vernon to ingest the spilled liquid, which turns him into a homicidal monster where he then proceeds to kill all those that have wronged him.

Up front this should’ve been a movie that got a bad rating. The film stock, even after blu-ray restoration, is quite grainy and faded with the technical aspects being not much better than a home movie. The script by J.D. Fiegelson, whose best known work is the creepy TV-movie ‘Dark Night of the Scarecrow’, is awkward mix of Willard and ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ that has all the predictable cliches and adds nothing new to the mix. However, I still found myself strangely captivated and never bored even during the slow spots.

Part of why it works is that it’s reenactment of student life is quite accurate. Many movies have attempted to show the high school experience, but many either underplay, or overplay it and rarely get it just right, but this is one hits-the-bullseye. Virtually the entire thing gets filmed inside the school with only a few short scenes done outside of it. Normally I’d consider this problematic as it makes the characters one-dimensional since we only see them in one type of setting, but here it clicks. I’m not sure if the lack of variety for the settings was intentional, or because of economic restraints as this was clearly done on a shoestring, but like with Heathers, it symbolizes how with teens the high school is their entire world and what happens outside of is ignored and not considered important.

The special effects are surprisingly gory and this film initially suffered an X-rating because of it. While there are a few jump cuts particularly with Vernon’s attack on Griggs, the killings look overall realistic and quite bloody though it seemed strange to have classes continue with students attending them like everything is normal even as the murders of the faculty mount and become more grizzly. Today classes would be halted, grief counselors sent in, as students immediately removed by their panicked parents. The only thing on the effects end that isn’t impressive is when Vernon turns into the monster where we never see his face, which remains shadowy and may seem like a cop-out to some, but in some way makes it scarier because the viewer is required to use their imagination to fill-in how he may look when in the monster form.

The type of victims are unique too as it isn’t just spoiled, good-looking teens that get offed like in so many other slashers. Here, it’s older teachers as in the case of Mrs. Grindstaff, which is played by Joye Hash, who was apparently only in her early 40’s at the time, but looks much more like she was in her 60’s and even pushing 70. Muscular Dallas Cowboys great John Niland, who plays the gym coach and also another of the victims, also goes against type, as very rarely are big, tough guys a part of the body count and he gets just as frightened and just as severely hacked-up, as if he were a blonde, bikini-clad young women.

Pat Cardi, who was a famous child actor on TV-shows during the 60’s including in the classic episode of The Fugitive’ series entitled ‘In a Plain Brown Wrapper’ which was one of the first shows ever in TV history to advocate for gun safety, is excellent and looking effectively scrawny. This marked his very last acting performance to date as he left the business and went on to create MovieFone an app that lists movie information and showtimes. Austin Stoker also gives an energetic performance as the police investigator and it’s great seeing an African American playing a prominent role in what was otherwise an all white cast. The men who made-up his police staff were players from the Dallas Cowboys squad including future hall of famer Craig Morton.

While the film doesn’t offer anything new it does successfully deliver-the-goods on a horror level, which will most likely be enjoyed by gorehounds into B-slashers.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 20, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Larry N. Stouffer

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in Texas, Slasher/Gore

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Jennifer (1978)

Posted on October 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

jennifer

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: She can control snakes.

Jennifer (Lisa Pelikan) is a shy student from West Virginia attending to a preppy boarding school in California. She lives with her father (Jeff Corey) who suffers from mental issues and is a religious zealot. She cares for him while also helping him run their pet store. At school Jennifer gets on the bad side of Sandy (Amy Johnston) the spoiled daughter of a rich senator (John Gavin). Sandy and her snotty clique of friends try to make life miserable for her, but Jennifer knows something that they don’t. She has a special ability, since childhood, to communicate and control snakes and when the harassment gets to be too much she unleashes the snakes onto her enemies.

While Hollywood is well known for ripping-off hit movies, in this case Carrie, this one is quite possibly the most shameless and brazen as very little effort is made to differentiate it from the original and it seems almost intent to copy it in every possible way. Star Pelikan looks and speak almost identically to Sissy Spacek from the original, even has the same clear blue eyes and Amy Johnston is virtually the spitting image to Nancy Allen who was the mean girl from that one. Director Brice Mack even replicates Brian DePalma’s soft focus camera lens and lighting schemes though I will give this one some props for mentioning John Travolta.

Jennifer’s powers gets awkwardly handled too as it’s over a half-hour in before they even get mentioned and we as viewers should’ve gotten foreshadowing about them a lot earlier. The preacher’s kid getting killed by one of Jennifer’s snakes when she was 7, which is what forced them to leave the small town, should’ve been played-out and not just discussed and the flashback scene of her as a child getting in front of a group of churchgoers at a religious revival in order to demonstrate her powers over snakes should’ve been shown right at the beginning instead of 35-minutes in.

I did though appreciate that Jennifer isn’t quite as pathetic as her Carrie counterpart and is able to hold her own in social situations instead of pathetically slinking away. The fact that she does have a few friends and people sticking-up for her is nice too as watching all the kids, like in Carrie, being cruel to another for the simple sake of meanness can get a little hard to take. The writing team of Steve Krantz and Kay Cousins Johnson also do a good job of creating a likable main character and a really nasty villainous making you fully hate her and looking forward to the climatic showdown. It’s just unfortunate that Amy Johnston was a weak actress and unable to make her character, as spoiled and nefarious as she is, more interesting.

Pelikan on the other-hand is excellent and I found it ironic that she was, in real-life, married to Bruce Davison, who starred in a famous horror movie of his own, Willard, about a young man that could control and communicate with rats. Nina Foch is great as the corrupt school administrator and I really dug her big glasses. John Gavin is fun too in his last movie role before he left show business to get into politics and looking like he hadn’t aged a day since the 50’s when he was, at that time, considered an up-and-coming star. Bert Convy though, while a great game show host, proves to be yet again weak as an actor. He’s so bad that even the scene where he tells-off Foch, which should’ve been rousing, becomes boring and I was hoping that at some point his character, which was a bit too good-to-be-true, would’ve made a provocative pass to Jennifer when they were alone together simply to give the story a little bit of a darker subtext.

Spoiler Alert!

Caveats and all I found the ending to be super cool and I really wished it would’ve gone on longer. Real snakes were used and the shots of them growing to giant size is genuinely creepy and makes sitting through the rest well worth it. The only quibble is that it’s never explained how Jennifer is able to make snakes appear out of nowhere. I was okay with the concept that she had an ability to make them do as she wanted and attack those that she didn’t like, but getting them to pop-in was a bit much. To have helped avoid this issue the final sequence should’ve been done at the her pet store, where the snakes could’ve come out of their glass cages to defend her, instead of in a parking garage where there were no snakes until she somehow ‘zapped’ them in.

I was also surprised, just as a side note, with the level of nudity that you see in what is otherwise a PG-rated movie. Not that I’m complaining, and I realize 70’s standards in the rating system are different than today’s, but still it ends up being more than you might think.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 31, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Brice Mack

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Movies with Nudity

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