Category Archives: Comedy/Drama

That’s Life! (1986)

Posted on March 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

thats1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wife frets over biopsy.

Gillian (Julie Andrews) is a singer who detects a lesion in her throat and goes to the doctors to have a biopsy done to see if it’s cancerous. The results of it won’t be ready until Monday forcing her to have to worry about it over the weekend. In an effort not to ruin things for the rest of her family she doesn’t tell them about it and puts on a facade like everything is fine. Meanwhile the other family members have their own problems. Harvey (Jack Lemmon), her husband, is depressed about turning 60, and not excited about the impending birthday celebration, or even being reminded of it. Her oldest daughter Megan (Jennifer Edwards) is going through the stresses of being pregnant while her younger daughter Kate (Emma Walton) fears that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

This was writer/director Blake Edwards first attempt at drama since the Days of Wine and Roses, which had also starred Lemmon. It was independently produced and thus requiring both the cast and crew to agree to work below scale, which caused controversy with the cinematographer’s union and created picketing at theaters in Hollywood when the movie was first released. The story was inspired by real-life events and problems that Edwards and his wife Julie were going through at the time as well as things that were happening with their grown children and the whole thing was shot on-location at the family home in Malibu.

Lemmon, the movie’s promotional poster is a play-on the one for Save the Tiger, the movie he won the Oscar for as Best Actor, is the only fun thing about it. His constant bitching about everything is amusing without being forced and his presence helps give it some needed energy and it’s great seeing him do a few scenes with his real-life son Chris Lemmon, this was the only project they did together unless you count Airport ’77 though they never shared any scenes in that one, who also plays his actor son here. The only drawback is that he completely overshadows Andrews to the point that you start to forget about her even though technically she’s the protagonist that we’re supposed to be the most concerned about.

While the movie is meant to analyze the day-to-day realities of the human condition it does throw in some ‘comical’ side-stories that are really lame and end up dragging the whole film down. The first is Harvey’s relationship with Janice (Cynthia Sikes) a woman who has hired Harvey, who works as an architect, to design her dream house though her demands are constantly changing and many times unrealistic. Had this segment stopped there then it would’ve been insightful and humorous as many clients can make unreasonable requests, but since it’s ‘their money’ the person working for them feels the need not to speak up and go along with the crazy demands for fear they’ll lose out on the deal, which happens more than you think. However, the scene also has her coming on to him sexually, which made no sense. Harvey was significantly older than her, looking more like he was 70, with no guarantee that he could perform, which he ultimately can’t, so unless she had some sort of grandpa complex why would this highly attractive young woman, who could easily find a good-looking guy her age, even think about getting it on with this old duffer that virtually any other woman her age would consider ‘gross’?

The second ‘comical’ scenario is equally stupid as it features Lemmon’s actual wife Felicia Farr playing a psychic who has a sexual encounter with him at her place of business all for the measly price of $20 for a ‘reading’, but how often does this type of thing occur. I mean I’ve gone to a psychic a few times in my life, but it never turned hot-n-heavy; am I just missing out? She later has sex with one of Harvey’s friends making it seem like sex was all that she was into, but how long could she realistically retain the psychic facade before it all came crashing down and she was known simply as being the cheap neighborhood hooker? Why does she even bother with the phony psychic act at all? Why not just become a high-paid escort where she could be making a hell of a lot more money.

The third side-story deals with Harvey finding that the priest, played by Robert Loggia, whom he is confessing his infidelities to is actually his former college roommate that he hasn’t seen in decades, which again is pushing long odds not very likely to happen. The old friend angle doesn’t add much and actually would’ve been funnier had the priest remained someone he didn’t know and Harvey could feel that his confessions were completely confidential only to then get called up to the pulpit during a church service, like he does here, to read a Bible passage about infidelity, and thus getting the shock of his life that this supposedly benign man of the cloth may be on to him and his divulged sins not so safely protected.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s wrap-up has all the problems getting neatly resolved, which gives it a sitcom quality. I was okay with Andrews learning that the lesion was not cancerous, but some of the other dramatic tangents that the family members went through should’ve not all worked out so nicely, because in real-life, which this film is attempting to be, things don’t always have happy endings. In fact this is what works against it as it’s too sterile for its own good. Nothing stands out making it a shallow, flat drama without much depth. Much like Gillian’s lesion it ultimately becomes benign.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD-R, VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Obscure Movies

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Take This Job and Shove It (1981)

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

job

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Modernizing a beer factory.

Frank (Robert Hays) is hired by a conglomerate called The Ellison Group to find ways to improve a beer factory that they own and get it in the black. Since Frank is originally from the small town where the factory is located he excitedly takes-on the task, but soon finds himself at odds with many of the workers, some of whom he was friends with in highs school, but who now look at him as a threat to their jobs. While the ideas that he implements are at first resisted the situation in the factory improves and the place begins turning a profit. Unfortunately it becomes such a success that The Ellison Group decides to sell it to a man with a background in the oil business, who doesn’t know the first thing about beer production, which gets everyone in the factory to rebel from the acquisition in very physical ways when the new owner and his cronies arrive for a visit.

The movie was filmed at an actual beer factory, The Dubuque Star Brewery, in Dubuque, Iowa, that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and although no longer functioning as a brewery it still stands today. The history of the place is similar to the movie as it was bought by Joseph Pickett in 1971 who implemented a massive renovation when he found that it was still using equipment from the 1930’s. The story itself was inspired by the hit country song that sat on top of the country charts for 2-weeks and was performed by Johnny Paycheck and written by David Allan Coe, both of whom appear in the movie.

The production has some nice on-location shooting of not only Iowa, but also the Twin Cities and I really dug the basketball court in the mansion owned by Eddie Albert’s character. The working class issues and the gritty nature of their jobs and lifestyles is basically on-target, but the movie bills itself as a comedy, and the trailer makes it seem almost like it’s going to be a farce, but in reality it’s more of drama with very little action until the end. There’s not much that’s funny either and the thin, predictable premise gets stretched-out longer than it should ultimately making it boring and a strain to sit through.

The main defect is the Robert Hays character. While he performs the part well he’s not enough of a jerk, or nemesis and thus the confrontational drama is missing. Having him from the area originally was a mistake as he seems too different from everyone else around him and creating him as an outsider from the big city that had little to no regard for the people working under him would’ve created the necessary fireworks that this otherwise benign film lacks. It also would’ve made a more interesting character arch where he’d go from arrogant, city-slicker to a humble man who would learn to appreciate those that he initially looked down on instead of having him already a semi-part of the group to begin with. It also hopelessly wastes the talents of Barbra Hershey, who gets cast as an idealistic, pro-labor lady, a perfect part for her, and I was expecting the two to quarrel over their contrasting viewpoints, but it never gels and she’s seen far too little.

The script also suffers from logic loopholes and continuity errors. While a hotel room door may seem like a minor thing to quibble about it became a big deal for me. The scenario starts out funny enough, possibly the only amusing bit in the movie, with Fran Ryan playing the owner of the hotel touring him around the cramped, rundown room and acting like it’s a more ritzy place than it really is. Later though while Hays is asleep, his buddies from the factory rip the door off its hinges by attaching a chain to it that’s connected to a pick-up truck, but there’s no scene showing, or explaining, how the door ends up getting reattached. The door is also apparently always unlocked as both Hershey and the Martin Mull character walk into the room from the outside unheeded, but most if not all hotel room doors automatically lock when they’re closed, so why doesn’t this one? In the case of Martin Mull he walks in on Hays while he’s still asleep, but you’d think Hays definitely would’ve locked the door from the inside and put the security chain on it before going to bed, so again how is Mull able to just open it? He doesn’t even bother to knock, which is absurd too since he’s never been to that hotel before, so how would he even know for sure he had the right room and wasn’t walking in on a stranger?

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 1, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gus Trikonis

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Songs, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with a rural setting

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The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1981)

Posted on January 18, 2023 | 1 comment

night

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Not like the song.

Travis (Dennis Quaid) is an aspiring singer with some talent, but little discipline. He’s achieved one hit song,but his drinking and partying keeps getting him in trouble. Amanda (Kristy McNichol) is his younger sister and though she’s only 16 she is more mature and responsible. She tries to manage Travis’ career by getting him to Nashville, so he can cut a record and get an agent, but his wild ways and their lack of funds, keeps preventing them from getting there. Eventually he gets arrested for public drunkenness and in order to pay the fine is forced to get a job at a local bar. It’s there that he meets Melody (Sunny Johnson) and tries to pursue a relationship, but becomes aware that Seth (Don Stroud), the deputy sheriff, has a thing for her as well and he won’t allow any other guy to talk to her as he’ll fly into a jealous rage and warns Travis of this, but Travis being reckless as always doesn’t let this phase him. As this goes on Amanda begins a romance of her own with with Conrad (Mark Hamill) who works as a state trooper.

Although in theory it’s ‘inspired’ by the song of the same name it technically doesn’t have anything to do with it. In other films that were made from songs like Convoy, Harper Valley PTA, and Ode to Billy Joe, the central theme was maintained and then expanded on, but here we don’t even get that. The song, with lyrics written by Bobby Russell and then sung by his then wife Vicki Lawrence, had to do with a man getting executed for killing another man who had an affair with his wife even though it was really his kid sister that did the crime. A plot like that could’ve had great potential for being an interesting movie, so why the producers didn’t just go with that original concept I don’t know, but it seems like a travesty for them to retain the song title and I’m surprised the producers of the record didn’t sue.

The plot, as it is here, is limp and uninspired. It basically feeds off of a lot of predictable shenanigans like Travis getting caught in a hotel bed with another man’s wife and then being chased around both on foot and in a vehicle until both he and Amanda are able to get away. In between we get treated to a lot of songs, which normally I’d say was nothing more than filler, which it still is, but since the rest of it is so lame, it comes off more like the best thing in it. Quaid and McNichol do all of their own singing and even wrote their own lyrics and they give energetic performances when onstage, so if you decide to see this thing then I’d suggest fast-forwarding through the rest of it and just stick with the music and you might be pleased.

The acting by Quaid is excellent and Don Stroud is great as the nemesis. McNichol is alright, at least when she’s singing, but otherwise gets pushed to the background and with her super short hair and nagging personality lacks sex appeal and at times looks almost like she could’ve been Quaid’s kid brother instead. The fact that they’re so close and do everything together would make one wonder if there’s something incestuous going on. In the more innocent times of the early 80’s maybe this wouldn’t be the first thought that would pop into people’s minds, but these days I’d suspect others would be wondering the same thing. There’s also no explanation for what happened to their parents. At one point McNichol mentions that she’s orphaned, so there really needs to be a backstory showing of what caused that.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest gripe though is with the ending in which Travis gets shot and killed by Seth, who also dies in the gunfight. It then concludes with McNichol getting with Hamill, who quits his job as the state trooper, and the two drive-off in her rickety old truck to God knows where. Since the story was mainly about the brother/sister relationship then I felt that’s where it should’ve ended with them in Nashville either getting the record deal, or not. The Hamill character is bland and seemed to be added in with no other purpose, but to extend the already anemic plot. There’s also the fact that he was 29 at the time while McNichol plays someone who was only 16, so them getting into a relationship doesn’t exactly look kosher. Granted the age of consent in the state of Georgia is 16, so I guess in the eyes of law it’s okay, but many today will consider this kind of romance to be cringey, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s the main reason why this film has never had a proper DVD release nor any streaming option.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 5, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ron Maxwell

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Songs, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Stigma (1972)

Posted on July 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

stigma1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Venereal disease on island.

Calvin (Phillip Michael Thomas) is a doctor recently released from prison who gets a job assisting Dr. Thor (David E. Durston) at his island clinic. When Calvin gets there he’s given a cold greeting by the islanders who do not like a man of color, nor does the town’s racist sheriff (Peter Clune). When he arrives at the clinic he finds that the doctor has already passed-away as well as a tape he left behind warning of an epidemic on the island, but not saying specifically what it is. While staying at the clinic he’s met late one night by Jeremy (William Magerman) an old man residing at the nearby lighthouse. He complains about being in a great deal of pain and upon further testing is found to have syphilis. Calvin tries to go on a crusade to warn the others while also searching for who else may have it, which ultimately leads him to the sheriff’s rebellious daughter D.D. (Josie Johnson).

It’s always interesting seeing how low budget films from a bygone era before the advent of computerized special effects could succeed or fail on the merit of story alone. This one, which was done by David E. Durston who had previously directed the cult-hit I Drink Your Blood just a year earlier, manages to for the most part, blemishes and all, to hold it together. The difficulties though of filming on a shoestring is still widely apparent especially at the beginning where there’s a lot of shaking camera movement and jump cuts. Where Calvin goes to hitch a ride is particularly amusing. Since they didn’t have money to get a permit, or hold-up traffic on a legitimate highway, the scene had to be done on an isolated dirt road that looked like it hadn’t been traveled on in 10 years and normally Calvin would’ve had to have stood there that long with his thumb out before he ever saw a car and yet here this non-descript road gets quite busy by using the film’s crew members driving by with their own vehicles in order to give it a well-trafficked look.

This is also one of those films were the genre is unclear. Some have listed it as a horror film while others label it a drama, or even a comedy. My guess is that it was intended as a drama with some side comedy thrown-in as ill-advised ‘comic relief’. The story though never gets tense enough to need a lighthearted moment and the funny bits are eye-rolling making the production seem even more amateurish than it already is. There’s also a surprisingly graphic moment where pictures of actual syphilis patients are shown including close-ups of their sores and deformed noses, which some could find genuinely stomach-churning.

Thomas is best known for his co-starring role in the 80’s cop drama ‘Miami Vice’, but I found him far more engaging here. Magerman is memorable playing a mute with no teeth, who never says a word, but does have an amusing giggle. Johnson is certainly beautiful, which makes up for her lack of acting, but Clune as the villainous sheriff is all-wrong. He may have looked the part of an aging bigot, but he never gives the role the necessary energy or panache. Lawrence Tierny was original choice for the part, but due this drinking problems was eventually passed over, which was ashame.

In recent years this film has gained notoriety due to it being directed by David E. Durston (1921-2010) and some movie podcasts connecting him to the mysterious deaths of both Diane Linkletter (Art Linkletter’s daughter) and actress Carol Wayne. Durston was with Diane the night she jumped to her death from her apartment window in 1969, which authorities deemed a suicide though some wondered if Durston may have pushed her out. Durston was also dating Carol Wayne in 1985 when the two had an argument while vacationing in Mexico and she left their hotel room only to be found drowned in a lake later on. Further research though has concluded that the man in question in both of these events was Edward Dale Durston, a Los Angeles car salesman born in 1942, and no connection with the film director.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 18, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: David E. Durston

Studio: Cinerama Releasing

Available: DVD-R (Code Red)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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The Rubber Gun (1977)

Posted on May 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

rubber1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Making cash dealing drugs.

Steve (Stephen Lack) is a cash-strapped would-be artist who hasn’t made any money with his art exhibits in the past 5 years and has turned to drug dealing in order to bring in some income. He lives in a cramped, rundown studio apartment in Montreal with his makeshift ‘family’ who are also dealers as well as addicts. Bozo (Allan Moyle) is a student at nearby McGill University who is doing a thesis paper on drug use with the controversial position that it has positive effects and chooses Steve’s family as his subject, but without letting them know what he’s doing. Steve though is beginning to have second thoughts about being in the business as he sees what it does both on himself and those around him especially Pierre (Pierre Robert) a bi-sexual heroin addict who’s the father of a young daughter that he doesn’t seem able to take care of and whose addiction has caused him to become a narc with the police feeding him heroin in order to get info on Steve and the family.

Fascinating, experimental film that’s quite similar to Dealing, but with much more of an avante-garde flair. Director Allan Moyle, whose first film this was, takes the Paul Morrissey approach where he gives the actors a general idea of what the scene was about, but then lets the performers ad-lib the lines. The result is much more of a conversational quality where discussions ramble on a bit, much like in real-life, but remain revealing and amusing throughout.  Instead of feeling like you’re watching a movie it seems more like a documentary giving one a rare vivid view of the counterculture movement north of the border.

Probably the biggest surprise is Stephen Lack, who also co-wrote the screenplay and co-produced. I saw him in Scanners, which he did 4 years after this one, and felt he gave one of the worst performances of a leading man I had ever seen and one of the main reasons that film didn’t succeed as well as it could’ve. Here though he’s amazingly engaging. Maybe it’s because he’s playing an extension of himself as I have no doubt that this is loosely based on his own experiences as a struggling artist, but the guy is quite funny in virtually everything that he says and does and I enjoyed how we see all different sides to his character from his partying one to more of a responsible one and by the end disillusioned with dealing. He even has a scene where he talks about regularly visiting his parents each week, who are quite conservative and unaware of his ‘occupation’, though it would’ve been even more fun to see the actual visit versus just discussing it.

My favorite character was Rainbow a small child, the daughter of Pierre and his girlfriend, who couldn’t have been more than 3 who goes on with her playing as the grown-ups in the room talk about drugs and other things. The image of innocence inside a room of jaded debauchery is darkly amusing. What’s better is that unlike most other movies she’s not given any cutesy lines to say and simply allowed to be herself, which makes her all the more engaging. Despite what’s initially perceived as ‘bad parenting’ you still get the feeling that these fringe adults do love the kid and in their dysfunctional way care for her, which ultimately makes the characters more appealing to the viewer instead of less.

The film has an obvious low budget look, with faded color, grainy stock, muffled sound, and choppy editing. Some may consider this a detraction, but it also helps accentuate the fringe realism with a kick-ass soundtrack to boot. In an era now where everyone his trying to make a movie on their phones with virtually no money this film should be used as a prime example on how to get it done by creating multi-dimensional characters and then allow the actors to fill-out the details through their improvisation, which helped lead writer/director/star Moyle to a Hollywood contract where he went on to make even more interesting movies on a bigger budget.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 24, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Allan Moyle

Studio: St. Lawrence Productions

Available: None

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982)

Posted on September 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

i1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Daughter reunited with father.

Libby Tucker (Dinah Manoff) is a 19-year-old who decides one day she wants to go off to Hollywood to be an actress. While still living in New York she manages to take a bus to Denver and then hitch-hikes the rest of the way. Libby’s father, Herb (Walter Matthau) is a successful screenwriter living in Hollywood and she hopes to use his connections to get her big break, but unbeknownst to her Herb is at a low point in his career. He hasn’t been able to churn out any scripts lately and avoids making pitches to producers altogether. He lives in a ramshackle place with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Steffy (Annn-Margaret), but overall he’s lost his confidence and can’t seem to find it. He also hasn’t seen Libby in 16 years after he left her mother when she was only 3 years old. Libby realizes their first meeting will be awkward especially since he doesn’t even know she’s coming, but she hopes to make a bond with him as she feels it’s the one thing emotionally that’s missing in her life.

The film is based on the Broadway play of the same name written by Neil Simon that first premiered in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theater with Tony Curtis playing Herb, Joyce Van Patten as Steffy and Manhoff in the role of Libby. While the play received so-so reviews the feedback for the film was overall negative with Siskel and Ebert even selecting it as one of the worst movies of 1982.

One of the biggest problems is Libby who seems too naive for her age. Being a 6-year-old with wide-eyed dreams of becoming a movie star is one thing, but Libby is 19, a legal adult, with absolutely no experience in acting, a thick Brooklyn accent, and less than stellar looks and yet somehow expects to make it big almost overnight. Dreamers are okay, but they still have to have at least one foot in reality and this gal acts like she’s from a different planet. She also uses a flash camera and tries to take pictures into the dark night through the window of her bus, which any halfwit will tell you won’t turn out, and yet she’s gleefully unaware of this making it seem like she just popped out of the womb yesterday and lacking not even a smidgen of common sense.

Herb is another problem. He literally abandoned the family over a decade ago and has made no attempt to communicate with the kids since then. Most adult children who’ve been through that have no interest in meeting the absentee parent who was never around. If they do it’s only to learn a little about them, but not necessarily expecting them to be a part of their lives, or to have an emotional bonding and yet Libby does expect this, which again just makes her too goofy to be believable.

I was confused why Herb would even want Libby back in his life. This was a man who presumably could’ve cared less what she was doing for the past 16 years and yet now after she moves-in he becomes a nervous parent worrying when she stays out too late, but if he didn’t worry about her staying out late before when she was in New York then why now? I’d think if a father hasn’t seen his children in that long a time then they just don’t care and don’t want to be bothered. In reality this ‘reunion’, where only one member wants it to happen, should’ve been a far colder experience. Having the dad then turn his bachelor life upside down to accommodate her seemed forced and didn’t help to explain why Herb behaved the way he did for the past decade and a half, if at heart, he really was just a caring, swell guy.

Ann-Margaret is good playing the one character that seemed half-way relatable and helps balance things, but she’s not in it enough. The script has Simon’s sharp dialogue, which helps, but the plot is built on such a superficial foundation, and written by someone who clearly never experienced child abandonment himself nor cared to do any research on it and was simply using it as an excuse to create cheap, sentimental drama, that it’s hard to take seriously, or find compelling in any meaningful way.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 26 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Herbert Ross

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Dry Humor, Movies Based on Stageplays

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The Last Detail (1973)

Posted on August 17, 2021 | 3 comments

lastdetail

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Seaman escorted to prison.

Billy Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Richard Mulhall (Otis Young) are two navy lifers assigned the task of escorting an 18 year-old seamen named Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) to prison. Meadows had been caught lifting $40 from a charity fund run by a wife of a senior officer. In return he got court-martialed and given an 8-year sentence in the brig. Buddusky and Mulhall feel the sentence is too harsh and immediately take a liking to the soft-spoken young man who despite his tall height seems harmless and mile-mannered. During the trip, which is expected to take a week, the two men decide to show Meadows a ‘good time’ by taking him on many side-trips including a whorehouse where the young virgin has sex with a prostitute (Carol Kane). As the time grows near for them to turn their prisoner over to the authorities they start to feel reluctant about doing so, but the fear of being kicked out of the navy and losing all of their pay and benefits keeps them grounded in their responsibility even as Meadows tries several times to escape.

It may seem amazing to believe now, but this film, which has won over almost universal appeal both from the critics and film viewers almost didn’t get made due to the fear from the studio that the word ‘fuck’ was spoken in it too many times. Screenwriter Robert Towne, who adapted the story from the novel of the same name by Daryl Poniscan, was pressured to take most of the uses of the profanity out of the script and in fact production was delayed while both sides had a ‘stand-off’ about it with Towne insisting that “this is the way people talk when they’re powerless to act; they bitch.” Eventually the script got green-lit with all the ‘fucks’ intact, which at the time was a record 65 of them. In retrospect I’m glad Towne held his ground as without the F-word being used, or some silly lesser profanity substituted in, would’ve given the film a dated feel when being watched by today’s standards where the word is said hundreds of times on social media and sometimes even in commercials where it’s only slightly bleeped-out. This is a problem when watching other films from the late 60’s and early 70’s where goofy slang gets thrown in to compensate for the lack of the F-word, which in turn hurts the film’s grittiness and edge, which thankfully got avoided here.

The story was a problem too as many studio execs considered it too ‘non-eventful’ to make for an interesting movie, but this is the whole reason why the movie is so special as it doesn’t try to throw in the cheap antics other Hollywood films might to make it ‘more entertaining’. The film remains low-key and fully believable throughout and may remind others, as it did me, of one’s own coming-of-age experiences when they were 18 and hanging out with others who were older and more worldly-wise. Cinematographer Michael Chapman, who appears briefly as a cab driver, insistence at using natural lighting only also helps heighten the realism.

The story takes many amusing side turns that manages to be both poignant and funny including a brawl that the three have with a group of marines inside a Grand Central Station restroom, though I did wish some of the other segments had been strung out a bit more. One is when the three men attend a group encounter, which features Gilda Radner in her film debut, to a bunch of chanting Buddhists. I felt it was weird that the men just stood in the background and didn’t assimilate with the group during the meeting and begin chanting alongside the others, which would’ve been funny. The scene inside the hotel room where Buddusky can’t get his roll-out cot to fold-out right and forcing him to sleep in a uncomfortable position should’ve been played-out more too. Are we to believe that he slept that way the whole night?

Of course it’s the acting that makes this movie so special. While I never pictured Nicholson with his over-the-top persona as being someone who would be a part of the regimented culture such as the navy I ended up loving him in it and felt this was the performance he should’ve won the Oscar for. I especially got a kick out of the way he would get all fidgety when outside in the cold, which I don’t think was acting at all as it was filmed on-location in the Northeast during the very late autumn/early winter and I believe he was really freezing as he was saying his lines.

While his character is not as flashy, Otis Young is every bit as excellent as it takes a good straight-man, which is what he essentially is, to make for a good funny man. The part was originally meant for Rupert Crouse, who unfortunately got diagnosed with cancer just as the production began forcing the producers to bring in Young as a last minute replacement, but he manages to deliver particularly in the scene on the train where he loudly castigates Buddusky for his misbehavior. Quaid is quite good too even though he goes against the physical characteristics of the character, who in the novel was described as being ‘a helpless little guy’, but director Hal Ashby, who can be seen briefly during a barroom scene, choose to cast against type by bringing in a tall, hefty fellow who looked like he could defend himself if he had to, but is just too sheltered to know how.

The ending is the one segment where I wished it had been a little more emotionally upbeat. It’s still a big improvement over the one in the book where Buddusky dies, which fortunately doesn’t happen here, but it still isn’t too memorable either. The film though overall does a good job of conveying the underlining theme of how the navy men where just as imprisoned as Meadows, at least psychologically, and unable to consider life outside of the navy box that they had spent their entire lives in and where thus locked-in more so than Meadows, whose sentence in jail would only last 8-years versus a lifetime like with Buddusky and Mulhall.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 12, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Hal Ashby

Studio: Columbia Pictures

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a train setting, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies

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Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970)

Posted on March 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: He learns to adapt.

Quackser (Gene Wilder), a nickname given to him as an infant because he would make noises that sounded like a duck, enjoys his life working an alternative job that has him scooping up horse manure from the streets of Dublin, Ireland and then reselling it as fertilizer. His parents (May Ollis, Seamus Forde), of which he still lives with, feels this is not a suitable long term profession as it will never pay enough for him to live on his own, but Quackser refuses to work at the refinery where everyone else in his neighborhood does. He then meets Zazel (Margot Kidder) an American college student who’s studying abroad. He hopes to start up a relationship with her, but finds this to be a challenge when the milk company replaces all of their horse drawn carriages with trucks, which takes all the horses off of the streets. With no horses there’s no manure forcing Quackser to consider other ways to make  an income.

The script, by Gabriel Walsh, has a wonderfully unpretentious quality to it as it tells a story about a simple man living a simple life and on that level it succeeds and even stands out as so many other films seem to feel the need to jazz things up, but this one doesn’t. I particularly liked the on-location shooting done in Dublin that nicely captures Quackser’s humble economic settings and the starkness of his blue collar neighborhood and yet later in the film we see him inside a luxurious hotel, which is also inside the same city. I found this fascinating as it shows how close in physical proximity Quackser is to the more affluent area, but economically, and educational-wise, he was still a long way from ever getting there.

Wilder plays his part quite well if you can get past his thick Irish accent, which is off-putting at first. I liked how he approaches the character as not being this one-dimensional simpleton, but someone who, despite being an overall nice person, can have his angry and even arrogant side to him. Kidder is at her peak of youthful beauty and their quasi-romance allows for an interesting dynamic although I did find it put a strain on the plausibility.

My biggest complaint was that I couldn’t understand why this attractive young woman from a completely different socio-economic background would find this poor, less educated individual so fascinating, or why she’d want to bother to get to know him better. As a quant little friendship it might’ve possibly worked, but as a relationship, even a potential one, it was just too much of a stretch especially with such a drastic 15-year age difference. Sharing a passing kiss during a random moment is as far as this thing would’ve gotten in real-life, but to have her later on go to bed with him, not so much because she loves him, but more as a ‘pity-fuck’ before she leaves, is something that only happens in movieland. It’s also never clear whether she genuinely likes the guy, or has a secret cruel streak and enjoys setting him up for humiliation as there are times when it could easily be seen as going either way.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist ending where Quackser inherits a load of money from his cousin in the Bronx, which he uses to buy a bus in order to be a tour guide when he realizes he can no longer collect manure, doesn’t work. For one thing why did this cousin just out-of-the-blue give the money to Quackser not the other family members as well especially since the two shared no special relationship, or correspondence? Having him go to the Bronx like he was initially going to do and maybe get a job recycling trash would’ve been more of a connection to what he had done in the past. Even having him working in the refinery, which he dreaded, but finding it not as bad as he feared, or that he could do some function there different than the others, which would make him feel ‘special’ would’ve been a better ending, but either way it’s still a cute movie perfect for those looking for a working class ‘kitchen-and-sink’ drama without any of the fashionable dressings.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 13, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Waris Hussein

Studio: Universal Marion Corporation

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Romance

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Three for the Road (1987)

Posted on January 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Transporting politician’s bratty daughter.

Paul (Charlie Sheen) aspires to have a career in politics and is an ardent believer in the political system and the politicians who work in it. He becomes an aide to Senator Kitteridge (Raymond J. Berry) where he gets assigned to transport the senator’s rebellious daughter Robin (Kerri Green) to an institution for troubled girls. Paul’s writer roommate T.S. (Alan Ruck) comes along with him, but they face many hurdles keeping Robin under control. Eventually Paul bonds with her when he realizes her father isn’t really the great guy he pretends to be, but instead an abuser.

This film is yet another victim of a script, which was written by Richard Martini, that was intended to be far different than what it turned out to be. Originally the idea was to center it on the political angle where the father was a conservative who wanted to put Robin into hiding simply because she was a liberal activist stirring up trouble. Yet after extensive rewrites by three other writers the story becomes just another shallow romance-on-the-road flick that shifts to extremes from slapstick comedy to hackney drama.

One of the things that’s most problematic is the father asking a young man who he really doesn’t know to transport his daughter to some far off location and even gives him handcuffs to use on her just in case she gets ‘out-of-line’, but what sort of parent would hand his teen daughter over to a virtual stranger and trust he won’t rape her? A far more plausible premise would’ve had him entrusting his daughter to a longtime friend, who he at least had better reason to trust. Instead of having her go with guys around her same age, where sexual urges are high, the escort could’ve been middle-aged. Yes, this would take away the teen romance element, which quite frankly comes-off as formuliac and forced anyways, but it could also have brought up generational issues, which would’ve been more interesting.

Sheen, who has described this film as being “a piece of shit that I wished didn’t exist and that I was terrible in”, is actually the best thing in it. I enjoyed seeing him play this straight-lace guy, which he is good at doing, that completely works against his real-life party-boy image. The only issue with him is that his character arc, where he starts out believing in the integrity of the senator father only to eventual grow disillusioned with him, is too predictable and obvious. Most people, even back in the 80’s, had a cynical take on politicians just like they do now. A far better arc would’ve had him cynical about politics, getting into it as an aide simply to boost his career, but not actually believing in the system, only to find much to his surprise that there actually was at least one politician that was honorable.

Green’s character plays too much into the ‘wild teen’ stereotype and her outrageous antics are more obnoxious than funny. She’s also too short and seemingly too young for Sheen, making the romance seem off-kilter. I also didn’t like that during the trip the main characters come into contact with the same people they’ve bumped into before. I’ve taken many long road trips and have never encountered this phenomenon and it really doesn’t add anything to the script especially since the person they keep crossing paths with is a brainless jock (Eric Bruskotter) that culminates into a silly car chase that just succeeds at making the whole thing even more inane than it already is.

There’s enough action and twists to keep it going, but it also becomes increasingly more strained as it goes along. The tacked-on drama along with the over-the-top prison break, which gets pulled-off in too easily a fashion, is particularly torturous and makes this one road trip you won’t mind missing.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 10, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: B.W.L. Norton

Studio: New Century Vista Film Company

Available: DVD

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

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Bread and Chocolate (1974)

Posted on January 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: He has no home.

Nino (Nino Manfredi) has moved to Switzerland to work as a guest worker in that country since he’s unable to find employment that pays a living wage in his homeland of Italy. In order to provide for his family he works various odd jobs and then sends the money back home to his wife and kids who he has not seen in years. There are many other foreigners from other countries competing for the same jobs as Nino including a Turkish worker (Gianfranco Barra) who vies for the head waiter position at a fancy restaurant that Nino also wants, but even though the two don’t get along they’re still forced to room together in a cramped attic apartment. Nino’s only source of companionship comes in the form of a friendship that he has with Elena (Anna Karina) a Greek who lives across the street from him in an equally small loft. He moves in with her and her son when he gets kicked out of his other place, but because she’s also a guest worker striving to make ends meet she has no time for a relationship making Nino feel like an unwanted outsider no matter where he goes.

This critically acclaimed film really allows the viewer to get to know their characters and the desperation that they feel. Many viewers today may be unaware of the guest worker program that many European countries took part in during the 60’s and 70’s, so watching this will be an educational experience as well as a good character study. What I found most fascinating though was the issue of racism. Most people wouldn’t consider Switzerland to be a ‘racist’ country, so it’s interesting to see how this element can creep in anywhere and it doesn’t have to hinge on one’s skin color either as the Swiss end up picking on the Italians simply because they aren’t from there, poor and ‘stealing their jobs’, so are therefore in their minds deserving of being looked down upon, much like foreign workers in this country can sometimes feel.

The film also makes keen observations in regards to the rich versus poor and how having a lot of money can sometimes make one a weaker person less able to handle challenges. This comes to a head with Nino’s friendship with an Italian Industrialist (Johnny Dorelli) who despite living a lavish lifestyle commits suicide after losing a custody battle with his ex-wife even though Nino hasn’t seen his family for years and lives in near squalor, but because he’s toughened to the hard times he’s able to preserve and remain upbeat where the rich man couldn’t.

There’s many memorable moments, so many that it would be hard to list as the story and characters are so multi-layered the laughs and insights come in literally just about every frame. Many will consider Nino’s visit with some farm workers who out of desperation have moved into a chicken coop and start behaving like the chickens they tend, which is funny and unique, as the film’s highlight. However, my favorite part came when Nino decides, in an effort to move up in society, to pretend that he’s Swiss and even dyes his hair blond and begins speaking in a Swiss accent. Then while at a bar he watches a soccer match between Switzerland and Italy on the TV and even though he initially cheers for the Swiss team he can’t help but eventually shout out in excitement when Italy scores a goal, which just proves the old saying: You can take a person out of their homeland, but you can never take the homeland out of the person.

The film’s most redeeming quality though is showing the strong bond that forms between the guest workers. Even if they’re at first strangers and from different countries they immediately offer support and friendship to Nino no matter where he goes simply because they are going through the same hardships as he, which becomes a wonderful testament to the hearty human spirit.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: January 18, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Director: Franco Brusati

Studio: Cinema International Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Italian Films

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