Category Archives: Quirky

The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

Posted on August 26, 2014 | 6 comments

the hotel new hampshire

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: A family of misfits.

Note: This review is part of the 1984 blog-a-thon series over at Forgotten Films.

Win Berry (Beau Bridges) is unhappy with his teaching job and feels he is not making enough money so he decides to start a hotel and make it a family venture. Tagging along with him is his mouthy daughter Frannie (Jodie Foster) who has an unhealthy lust for her brother John (Rob Lowe) and he in her as well as Frank (Paul McCrane) who is gay and Lily (Jennifer Dundas) who has stopped growing and unhappy with her short height. After many misadventures the business goes under so they move to Vienna, Austria and open up a new hotel and continue to get into a wide range of weird scenarios while also coming into contact with Susie (Nastassja Kinski) who likes to disguise herself as a bear and the blind, but quite wily Freud (Wallace Shawn).

The film, based on the John Irving novel who also co-wrote the screenplay, is something you are either going to like or hate. The narrative structure is quite odd and filled with goofy side-stories that have no connection to anything else. It’s similar to director Tony Richardson’s The Loved One, but that film at least had excellent satire that tied it all together while this thing gets nonsensical for no real reason. Mixing quirky humor with trenchant drama doesn’t work and certain plot twists like death of family members, sudden blindness and even gang rape become like throwaway pieces that are just glossed over and then soon forgotten. The superficial tone is annoying and the ‘lovably eccentric’ characters eventually become irritating.

Foster is outstanding as she plays the bratty, foul-mouthed, rebellious teen to an absolute tee. The lesbian scene where she goes to bed with Kinski and kisses her on the mouth is on an erotic level not bad. Kinski also shines with a similarly bitchy attitude, but I got real sick of constantly seeing her in that hideous bear outfit.  Dundas as the youngest female member has an adorable face, but delivers her lines in too much of a one-note way.

Lowe is surprisingly strong and his best moment comes with the facial expressions he gives at trying to lift a barbell that is too heavy. I also liked Mathew Modine being cast against type. Typically he plays the kind and gentle types, but here he’s a real nasty, callous guy who rapes Foster and then later shows up in the Vienna scenes in a dual role as an underground pornographer with a Hitler-like mustache.

Bridges is good, but his boyish face makes him look too young to be the father of the grown children. Wilford Brimley is also miscast as the grandfather as he was only seven years older than Bridges and had no gray hair, at least not on his head.

The scene where the Foster character has wild sex with her brother may be too much for some, but most likely those same viewers will have gotten turned off by it long before it even gets there. I admit it was getting on my nerves most of the way as well, but then strangely it ended up having a certain appeal, but only enough to give it a passable rating. Richardson’s direction is for the most part slick and the one things that saves it although with this thing personal taste will be one’s own barometer.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Richardson

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Quirky, Rape/Revenge

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Brewster McCloud (1970)

Posted on May 2, 2014 | 7 comments

brewster mccloud 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Flying in the Astrodome.

Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) is a young man who lives and hides inside the giant Astrodome in Houston, Texas. He dreams of one day flying like a bird and secretly works on building a contraption that will help him do it while being aided by a mysterious guardian angel named Louise (Sally Kellerman). Meanwhile strangulations start occurring all over the city and the police become convinced that Brewster may have something to do with it. As he gets ready to ‘spread his wings’ and fly for the first time the police surround the place and try to arrest him.

This film is reportedly director Robert Altman’s favorite out of all the ones that he did and it is easy to see why. The quirky, offbeat script by Doran William Cannon nicely compliments Altman’s free-form, cerebral style. The film works on many different levels with every shot and scene being unique and a kind of story in itself. The dream-like quality is nicely balanced with harsh realities creating an interesting theme that touches a wide array of senses. Although this film is never mentioned in relation to car chases the one that is has is exciting and well photographed without any of the jump cuts that you normally see.

The city of Houston gets captured well and I liked the fact that Altman stayed away from the downtown and instead focused more on the neighborhoods and city streets. The filming of the inside of the Astrodome is the most impressive and the building becomes like a third character. It may seem hard to believe now, but at one time it was considered ‘the eighth wonder of the world’ and was the very first dome stadium in existence. Watching Cort fly around on the makeshift wings he creates gives off an exhilarating feeling especially with the way Altman captures it against the backdrop of the stadium’s ceiling filled with skylights. The best shot in my opinion though is the bird’s-eye view of seeing Kellerman walking the entire length of the field and out the exit.

The broad and amusing characterizations are fun and Altman gives his actors wide range to create them. Some of the best ones are Stacy Keach who is unrecognizable under heavy make-up as an elderly, cantankerous and greedy landlord who goes reeling down the city streets in nothing but a wheel chair. Bert Remsen is good as a corrupt and racist policeman who even beats and berates his own family. Michael Murphy is interesting as a narcissist, hotshot detective who ends up killing himself and Rene Auberjonois as the lecturer who slowly turns into a giant bird as the film progresses. There is even the aging Margaret Hamilton who says a few curse words and dies while wearing her ruby red slippers.

The film is one-of-a-kind and perfect fare for those looking for something offbeat and diverting. The kooky opening and ending title sequences alone make it worth it. My only real complaint would be the fact that supposedly a bird is committing all these strangulations, but we never see how. All the viewers see is the victims getting bird poop on them and nothing more. I realize this might have been technically difficult to film or visualize, but for such an otherwise creative movie this seems like a bit of a cop-out.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: December 5, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: MGM

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with Nudity, Quirky, Surreal/Fantasy

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The Tiger Makes Out (1967)

Posted on March 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

tiger makes out 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Mailman kidnaps suburban housewife.

Ben Harris (Eli Wallach) is a middle-aged mailman living in a crummy, rundown basement apartment. He is bitter and angry at the world around him, which he feels is filled with a lot of vapid followers to a rigid and dehumanizing system. When his upstairs neighbor puts a hole in his roof and both his landlord and the housing authority refuse to do anything about it he decides to kidnap a young beautiful women as a form of insurrection. Instead he mistakenly nabs middle-aged housewife Gloria (Anne Jackson) who has similar issues and the two slowly form a budding friendship.

The screenplay is written by Murray Schisgal and is based on his one-act, two-character off-Broadway play ‘The Tiger’. The film is filled with a lot of diverting, offbeat humor some of which works and some of it doesn’t. I liked the part where Gloria’s neighbor Leo (John Harkins) gets his entire family on their knees to pull out crabgrass from their otherwise ‘perfect’ lawn and we eventually see them tear the entire lawn to bits from a bird’s-eye view and in fast-motion. Wallach’s confrontation with Sudie Bond inside the housing authority office is also amusing, but his attempts at kidnapping a woman come off too much like Wiley E. Coyote trying to get the roadrunner and turn the film into an ill-advised live action cartoon.

Director Arthur Hiller does a fabulous job of disguising the fact that this was originally a play. The editing is quick and the locales varied particularly at the beginning. The pace has a kinetic late 60’s feel, which gives it a certain time capsule quality. However the choice of music, which includes a studio group singing the film’s theme, is quite sterile.

Wallach gives a flawless performance and Jackson is also good. The two have been married since 1948 making them Hollywood’s longest lasting couple. Unfortunately the scenes of the two of them inside the apartment are rather stagnant and the one-time that the film gets boring.

There are also some great supporting performances including Rae Allen as a paranoid woman who thinks every man is a potential stalker and Charles Nelson Reilly as a goofy college registrar. The film also marks the film debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Mariclare Costello as his jilted girlfriend, Bob Dishy as an exasperated husband and John P. Ryan as an escort to a female impersonator. You can also spot a young Joe Santo inside the housing authority office and Frances Sternhagen as a passenger on a bus as well as Barbara Colby who in 1975 ended up getting murdered in mysterious and yet unsolved circumstances.

The one error that I noticed in the film is the gaping hole in Ben’s apartment ceiling somehow gets strangely taken care of and is nonexistent when he comes back to the place with his victim. I realize this movie borders on the bizarre and quirky to begin with, but I still felt there needed to be some explanation for that and none is given.

tiger makes out 2

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 18, 1967

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 60's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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Sitting Ducks (1980)

Posted on December 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

sitting ducks 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Running from the mob.

Simon (Michael Emil) and Sidney (Zach Norman) are two average guys with vastly different temperaments who decide to rip-off the mob by stealing their entire day’s collections. They then hide the money in the tires of their car while driving off with it to Florida where they hope to catch a chartered flight that will take them to Costa Rica. Along the way they meet up with two ditzy ladies (Irene Cagen, Patrice Townsend) as well as a chauffeur (Richard Romanus) who dreams of being a singer.

Michael Emil, who is the brother of the director Henry Jaglom, is a very poor actor and comes off as a third-rate Woody Allen. He talks incessantly about all his neurotic problems in a monotone style that has no voice inflections or facial gestures and ends up becoming more boring than funny and he is easily outperformed by his co-star Norman. Townsend, the director’s then wife, is not much better. She shows no ability at creating a character and seems to just mouth all her lines while having this big smile plastered on her face. The overall production has an amateurish look and the story itself seems like two movies rolled into one. The first part starts out like an intriguing crime caper and then the second part becomes this free spirited road movie. It would have worked better had they taken just one of the story lines to its satisfying conclusion instead of having two unsatisfying half stories. The set-up is great, but then doesn’t go anywhere with it and the ‘big’ twist that occurs near the film’s final fifteen minutes doesn’t work and has a bunch of loopholes in it that are a mile wide.

I did like the film’s free-form style that is lacking in many of today’s Hollywood produced movies that have too much of a rapid fire pace. The characters all have a wide assortment of fun quirks and their offbeat conversations are amusing. Richard Romanus, as the group’s chauffeur and struggling musician, comes off best and his songs aren’t bad either and the scene where Simon and Sidney try to have an ‘important’ discussion while walking through a field of cackling chickens is a gem.

This forerunner to the independent film movement has a few good quirky moments and characters, but it never comes together enough to be completely satisfying. Although overall it is still enough to find enjoyable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 4, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Rated R

Director: Henry Jaglom

Studio: International Rainbow

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Heist Movies, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies that take place in the South, Quirky, Road Movies

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The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)

Posted on December 6, 2013 | 1 comment

the magic garden of stanley sweeheart

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: An aimless, carefree lifestyle.

Based on the novel by Robert T. Westbrook who also wrote the screenplay the film centers on Stanley (Don Johnson in his film debut) an underground filmmaker living in an apartment that is almost continually bombarded with the noise of a construction site next door. He has big dreams and ambitions, but at times seems awkward and unsure of himself. He meets Cathy (Dianne Hull) who he initially is just interested in for sex, but then he starts to fall-in-love with her and when she breaks up with him he finds it hard to handle.

The movie starts out well. I enjoyed the free-style direction and narrative. Cutting back and forth showing things as they are versus how Stanley would like them to be is fun, but the film deviates away from this when it would have been more interesting had it stayed this course all the way through. There is a certain element of one of Andy Warhol’s anti-movie movies here where the film tries to challenge the viewer’s conventional understanding of protagonists, plot, character development and all around narrative structure and it is no surprise that Warhol really liked this movie. It does have a strong cinema vertite approach that gives you a feeling like you are right there with the characters and to a certain extent helps bring the 60’s back to life.

Unfortunately the direction is too lackadaisical and unfocused and the story is uninteresting. Looking more at Stanley’s underground films could have given it a little more bite, but we only get a glimpse of one of his movies and then that thread is pretty much forgotten. The second half of the film centers on Stanley’s relationship and ultimate break-up with Cathy, which is too contrived and does not compliment the film’s otherwise offbeat approach. Funky and irreverent moments of humor are lost with a storyline that doesn’t seem to know where it wants to go or what to say. Tighter editing could’ve helped avoid some long stretches where nothing seems to happen.

The film though still has some interesting and unique scenes. I got a kick out of Stanley’s cluttered apartment and how he has to smell his food in his refrigerator to see what is still edible and for entertainment he stamps on cockroaches crawling across his floor. The part where he masturbates in a bathtub while reading a letter written by his mother is hilarious. His attempts at making a porno by getting his actress (Holly Near) good and drunk only to get her hornier than he is amusing. The naked body painting sex orgy that he has with two young nubile roommates has a nice sensual quality.

Don Johnson is excellent and the one thing that keeps this wandering film together and he can be seen totally nude from both the front and back. Hull allows for some diversion as a sheltered young lady who is initially shocked by the open sexuality around her, but eventually learns to embrace it. Native American actress Victoria Racimo is hot with her clothes on and off and reminded me a lot of 70’s adult film star Hypathia Lee. Brandon Maggart makes the most of his small bit as a gay man trying to come onto Stanley while inside a café. Michael Greer offers some edginess as Stanley’s slightly menacing friend Danny. His violent death that occurs near the end of the film and in front of his shocked mother does leave an impression, but we don’t know enough about the character for it to make much sense and just another thing put into the film without seemingly much thought.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 26, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 50Minutes

Rated R

Director: Leonard Horn

Studio: MGM

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Quirky, Sex

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Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983)

Posted on September 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

can she bake a cherry pie 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Fighting keeps them together.

An emotional and neurotic Zee (Karen Black) has just broken up with her husband. Eli (Michael Emil) is an older man who enjoys calculating odds and averages. The two meet at a restaurant and become involved in an offbeat and tumultuous relationship.

The film at times tries a bit too hard to be offbeat. Zee seems almost like a walking cliché. She sobs so much she can’t even order her food at the restaurant without breaking into tears. She chain smokes and has a plethora of hang-ups and paranoia that seems to possess every eccentric movie character and makes the whole thing fall flat before it has even begun.

Fortunately once you make past the rather clumsy beginning it actually starts to click. Writer/director Henry Jaglom instills a wonderfully free-form style to the proceedings that allows one to become engaged without even knowing it. The cinema-vertite approach turns its low budget into an asset. It’s the little things that start to grab you especially the Michael Margotta character and his trained pigeon named Eddie or the brash  way he tries to pick-up women at cafes while their boyfriends are sitting right there at the table with them.

Eli and Zee’s quirky conversations are quite amusing especially Zee contemplating on getting pregnant. These is even a segment showing old home movies done by Jaglom’s parents where you get to see Jaglom and Emil, who are brothers in real-life, whey they were little kids.

Jaglom has seemed to have gotten to the very heart of why we watch movies, which is because we are all secretly voyeurs. We like that little window that opens up and allows us to observe other people and see how they respond and react to things without being told what to look for or what to think. The European style of filmmaking is a refreshing change of pace. The actors are allowed to freely improvise and when it is all over you feel like you’ve watched real people, which makes it seem more relevant and funny.

This is very similar to John Cassavete’s Minnie and Mokowitz, but this fairs better as it is not as strained or aimless. The characters also have a bit more appeal and didn’t ingrate on my nerves as much.

Black gives another intriguing performance. She even sings, which she does quite well and does it while wearing the same wig that she wore while singing in the classic film Nashville.

The only real negative that I had with it was the soundtrack, which was performed by street musicians and sounds awful. It eventually gets so overplayed that it becomes irritating.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 10, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Henry Jaglom

Studio: Pan-Canadian Film Distributors

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Quirky, Romance

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Bad Manners (1984)

Posted on September 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

bad manners 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Orphans on the loose.

Piper (Greg Olden) is the new kid inside a rough orphanage who befriends Mouse (Michael Hentz) who looks up to Piper as a sort of tough guy hero. When Mouse gets adopted by a snotty rich couple (Martin Mull, Karen Black) Piper convinces the orphans to break out of the orphanage and rescue him.

If there is one thing that can be said for this film, which is so obscure it is not even listed in Leonard Maltin’s Video Guide, is that it is lively. Director Robert Houston uses a lot of quick edits, interesting camera work and spinning tracking shots to keep things at a fast, irreverent pace. Piper’s sessions with his psychiatrist, which is played by Stephen Stucker is the funniest. Stucker is best known for playing the hyper air traffic controller in Airplane, but I felt he was more engaging and amusing here. The scene where Mouse swallows a small dinner bell and sends everyone into a panic is also a riot.

Unfortunately the film is unable to hold the balance between quirky humor and action and eventually devolves into a cartoonish, silly mess that becomes pretty much just an R-rated kiddie flick. I also didn’t care for the synthesized music score, which had a generic sound similar to ones used in 80’s porn flicks and only further cemented this as an uninspired B-movie.

The children characters are excessively crude and in some ways I prefer it a little more like this because I think it is realistic to how teens and pre-teens behave instead of as the wide-eyed sweet innocents that some other movies portray them as, but parents most likely will cringe and won’t want their own kids to watch it. A mean-spiritedness permeates throughout and although I am not sure if this was intentional or not but the two male leads and the one female are quite androgynous.

The one thing that keeps it fun is the adult performers who seem more than up to the campiness. Murphy Dunne is delightfully hammy as the orphanage warden and Anne De Salvo is quite cute despite playing an oppressive nun. Mull’s glib one-liners are a perfect balance to the zaniness. Black is also great and practically steals the film at the very end when she goes on a spastic shooting spree. This also marks the final film appearance of Richard Deacon best known for playing Mel Cooley on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ who appears here in a brief bit as a ticket agent.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Alternate Title: Growing Pains

Released: November 4, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 22Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Houston

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Crude Comedy, Farce, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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Flirting with Disaster (1996)

Posted on August 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

flirting with disaster

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Biological versus adoptive parents.

Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) is a middle-aged man on a mission. He wants to find out who his biological parents are and is willing to travel the country to find them. His wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) isn’t too happy about being dragged along and his adoptive parents Ed and Pearl (George Segal, Mary Tyler Moore) find his journey to be an insult to them. He uses the aid of part-time adoption agent Tina (Tea Leoni) to try and locate them, but her help only proves to lead him to a lot dead ends.

With the exception of Leoni the three female leads are good. Lily Tomlin has a funny moment as she tries to talk down the Richard Jenkins character from a LSD trip. Moore is fantastic playing a takeoff of her rigid mother role from Ordinary People. Every scene that she is in is hilarious and had she been in a few more she could have easily stolen the film. She wears a short reddish haircut and at times looks amazingly like Carol Burnett. Although she is not all that amusing Arquette is also quite good simply because she is the most believable of all the characters. Jenkins and James Brolin also have their moments as a bickering gay couple and Brolin’s arm pit fetish is great. It is also nice to see Stiller actually doing some acting instead of just playing a dull, average guy that simply reacts to all the zaniness around him, which is what he seems to pretty much do in most of his other films.

However, the movie seems more focused on being offbeat than it does in actually being funny. There is a great deal more misses than hits and the ones that do hit aren’t exactly uproarious. Leoni’s character adds little to the proceedings and her propensity at constantly leading Mel to the wrong people gets old pretty fast. There is also a glaring goof where Segal and Moore end up driving off with Tomlin and Alan Alda’s car since both couples drive the same make and model vehicle. Yet somehow they are able to use their OWN keys to start up the other car and even get into the other car’s trunk, which would not be possible.

This film could best be summed up as being the ‘sophomore jinx’ for writer/director David O. Russell since his first feature Spanking the Monkey was quite original as was his third one I (Heart) Huckabees. This film though tends to be over-the-top absurd without having any message or point to it.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 22, 1996

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: David O. Russell

Studio: Miramax

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 90's Movies, Quirky, Road Movies

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Denise Calls Up (1995)

Posted on July 31, 2013 | Leave a comment

denise calls up 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Friends over the phone.

This is a highly original offbeat comedy dealing with a group of young urbanites living in New York who become friends over the phone, but never meet in person. There is Martin (Dan Gunther) who donates some of his sperm to a sperm bank and then gets a call from Denise (Alanna Ubach) who was impregnated with it and now calls to tell him he is the new father. Gail (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) tries to play matchmaker with Jerry (Live Schreiber) and Barbara (Caroleen Feeney) with the help of her former boyfriend Frank (Tim Daly). Linda (Aida Turturro) and Sylvia Miles as Gail’s nutty Aunt round it out.

The best thing about the film is that all the characters are very real and it makes concise observations on the young upwardly mobile Generation X. All of them possess a myriad of contradictions, insecurities, and neuroses just like people you know in real-life. They are technology savvy, but seem to hide behind it like it is a security blanket. The more options that they are given to communicate with more people the more isolated they become not only from the world around them, but from themselves as well.

I especially got a kick out of the Barbara character because I dated women who were just like her. She is interested in meeting Jerry and seems to like him, but every time he tries to move the relationship forward she backs away and then when he pulls away she goes on the offensive again. She reminded me of what a marriage counselor friend once told me for how he had managed to stay married for so long, which was ‘let them always think they are in control and also let them think that they have won every argument.’

The film is filled with many uniquely humorous scenes as well as sharp dialogue that are quite funny. My favorite part is when all the characters get on a conference call in order to offer support and give advice to Denise during her delivery.

Director Hal Salwen does a great job of keeping things visually interesting. I loved the extremes close-ups of some of the characters mouths as they spoke as well as the back drop of Jerry’s cluttered cramped apartment and the variety of settings that Denise is in when she calls Martin. Salwen was considered an up-and-coming director at the time, but has only done two other features since, which were quite original as well, but he really needs to do more.

Although in my mind I still consider the 90’s to be relatively recent I was really amazed to see how much the technology has changed since this was made. The phones are big and bulky and still require the use of a little antenna for reception. There was no such thing as the internet and faxes were used to send grainy black and white pictures. In some ways this makes it kind of fun to see how things have evolved, but unfortunately it hurts the film a bit because it gives this otherwise hip story a sort of dated look and feel.

The film also allows for a great chance to see young talented stars at the start of their careers. Ubach with her very expressive face is a standout and looks almost exactly like Donna Pescow. Miles is predictably hammy especially with the way she delights in describing the morbid graphic detail of the death of one of the characters that dies when she talks on the phone while driving.

Spoiler Alert!

The only real complaint I had with the movie is the ending when Frank decides to hold a New Year’s Eve party and invites everyone over to his place so they can meet, but everyone finds an excuse at the last minute not to show up. When one of the characters does arrive and rings his doorbell he decides not to let them in. To me this proves to be a bit false especially for a film that was so otherwise on-target. I get the idea that their laptops and phones are their cocoon and they can only function halfway normally when they hide behind them, but still everyone has to get out sometimes and deal with people in person. In my opinion a better way to have ended it would have been to have them get together, but have it be awkward and uncomfortable for all of them. Then have it cut to 5 years later and show how all of them have remained close friends, but still just over the phone.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1995

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Hal Salwen

Studio: Dark Matter Productions

Available: VHS

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Posted in 90's Movies, Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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The Trip (1967)

Posted on July 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

the trip

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: He tries some acid.

Jack Nicholson wrote the screenplay to this film which is based loosely experiences he had while taking LSD as well as the break-up of his marriage to actress Sandra Knight. The story centers on Paul (Peter Fonda) a director of TV commercials whose marriage to Sally (Susan Strasberg) is on the rocks. He has a need to ‘find himself’ and seeks help from his friend John (Bruce Dern) who is a self-styled acid guru. John gives Paul some acid while promising that he will stay with him during his drug induced trip. The rest of the film then deals with Paul’s experiences both in his mind and in his dealings with the outside world while he is hallucinating.

To prepare for the film Nicholson, Fonda and Dennis Hopper, who appears in a minor supporting role, all took part in a group LSD trip and the various visions that they experienced are incorporated here. Director Roger Corman also tried LSD at a different time to prepare for the film. The only one not to try it was Dern who was staunchly opposed to recreational drug use and in fact even his character doesn’t take any as evidenced by a scene where everyone is taking a puff of some marijuana and when it gets passed to him he simply passes it to the next person without trying even though everyone else does.

The scenes recreating the acid trip are not all that interesting or imaginative. It’s all pretty much what you would expect with a barrage of artsy colorful designs popping up at the viewer in split second intervals that reminded me very much of looking through a kaleidoscope. The images aren’t coherent, nor meant to be, and become vapid in the process. The scene involving Paul sitting on a merry-go-round while trying to justify his existence to Hopper who is dressed in a devil-like costume gets quite tedious.

Things improve during the second half when John, who promised he would stay at Paul’s side during his trip, ends up leaving him momentarily to retrieve some apple juice. During this time Paul escapes from the home he is in and goes out onto the city streets. The editing and effects here are impressive and ahead of its time. Some of the visits he has with the people he meets prove interesting including an offbeat conversation that he has with a lady that he meets inside a Laundromat as well as one he has with a very young girl inside her house.

Although he starts out shaky I felt Fonda’s performance was pretty good and this may be one of the best roles of his career. Strasberg who receives second billing appears just briefly and has very few speaking lines. Dern is always fun when he is playing eccentric or intense characters, but here where he is playing a relatively normal one he is boring. His part was originally written for Nicholson to play and I think he would have done better.

I was expecting some sort of tragic or profound-like ending especially with the opening paragraph that starts the film and is read by a narrator with a very authoritative newsman-like voice describing the ‘horrors’ of drug use and how it is becoming a serious societal problem. However, nothing really happens. The movie just kind of stops and that is it. The weak conclusion hurts what is already a so-so film making it like the drug itself an interesting experiment, but nothing more.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 23, 1967

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Roger Corman

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Quirky, Surreal/Fantasy

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