Educating Rita (1983)

Posted on November 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to better herself.

Rita (Julie Walters) is a young working-class woman who finds her job as a hairstylist and marriage to Denny (Malcolm Douglas) to be unrewarding. Denny wants her to have a child, but she fears that will just tie her down more. In an attempt to ‘better herself’ she decides to enroll in Britian’s open university where she takes a course in English literature.  Frank (Michael Caine) is a disillusioned college professor who lost the zeal for his job years earlier and has now taken to the bottle. Rita wants him to be her tutor, but Frank initially resists only to eventually agree. Despite their contrasting personalities the two ultimately form a bond and Frank uses Rita’s passion for learning to reignite his own dormant desires that allows him to breakout of his loveless relationship.  However, Rita too begins to see things differently when her roommate/friend tries to commit suicide and she realizes that things aren’t always greener on the other side of the fence.

The film is based on the play of the same name by Willy Russell that premiered in London in 1980 and also starred Walters in the title role. Unlike the movie the play had only two characters and everything took place inside the tutor’s office.

The story’s theme does have an inspiring quality, which is what galvanized the critics to it, but the main character and her transition is a bit hard to believe. On the surface she’s quite likable and well played by the star, but her ambition seems awfully extreme. It would’ve helped had we seen the moment when she first got the idea to go back to school versus having it just briefly be discussed. Wanting to learn a trade in order to make more money and move out of one’s humble surroundings is both commendable and understandable but becoming well versed on the plays of Henrik Ibsen isn’t really going to do that. To pay the bills she’s still going to be stuck working as a hairdresser, which was supposedly the boring routine she wanted to get out of. Expanding one’s literary knowledge may allow her to have lofty conversations among elites at posh parties, but as a whole she’d still be in her same predicament financially.

The Pygmalion-inspired theme was unnecessary. Without sounding snotty I couldn’t buy into the idea that this working-class woman with a limited education could learn to fully appreciate the great literary works or would even want to. The story acts like all that is needed is a great deal of enthusiasm and you can do accomplish anything, but history is full of people who jump into lofty goals with the best of intentions and still fail. Realistically I think this type of person would’ve eventually gotten overwhelmed and realized she was in over-her-head. To solve this the character should’ve been modified to being someone who was middleclass with a literally background, but who had to drop out because her parents died forcing her to go to work at the factory in order to make ends meet, but still longed to get back into what she really enjoyed and thus hired a tutor to help her, which would’ve been for the discerning viewer easier to swallow.

Rita’s ultimate transition is more off-putting than inspiring. I didn’t like her change in hair color where she goes from blonde to brunette, which makes her seem like a different person instead of someone who’s evolved. There needed to be more challenges and roadblocks. A brief spat with her husband, in which he throws her books into a fire, blows over too quickly and she’s able to grasp the complex material, even able to write in depth term papers with a relative ease that didn’t come off as wholly believable. Having her get a bad grade in a course and using this to reassess her goals would’ve allowed in a broader angle and not have been so fanciful, which the film starts to become.

Caine plays his part wonderfully and he certainly is much more into this role than he was in Blame it on Rio, which he did the same year. However, his character’s motives were difficult to understand. I thought this would’ve been the classic case, which can occur with a lot of academics in higher education, where the students aren’t into learning and are apathetic, which frustrates the professors, and this then turns them to alcohol. Here though that didn’t seem to be the case making him come off more like he was just tuning out on his own accord and thus making him less relatable. I also felt he should’ve been fired much sooner as the young adults attending his classes knew that he was drunk, even verbally said as much, so he likely would’ve been reported, and for him to then on top of this get a second chance when he fell over inebriated during a speech, seemed rather implausible.

I did enjoy the scenes involving Frank’s girlfriend Julia (Jeananne Crowley) and her relationship with a married man named Brian (Michael Williams) and how every time Frank comes into the room, and they are there Brian pretends, as a ‘cover’, that he is speaking to someone on the phone. These scenes, which becomes a running-joke, were amusing, but near the end Frank informs Brian that the phone was disconnected and thus revealing that he was in on their charade. This though doesn’t jive because with the old fashioned rotary phone, such as the ones shown here, there would always be a dial tone when one put the receiver to their ear, except of course if the service had been cut and thus Brian would’ve already known that it had been disconnected when he didn’t hear the tone and no need then for Frank to explain it.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, College Life, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays

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Hitch-Hike (1977)

Posted on November 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple picks up killer.

Walter (Franco Nero) and his wife Eve (Corinne Clery) are constantly bickering about Walter’s alcoholism. They go on a trip to Los Angeles and on the way pick-up Adam (David Hess) whose car is stranded on the road. Unbeknownst to them he’s a robber who has doubled-crossed his partners and absconded with a suitcase full of $2 million dollars. It doesn’t take long before Adam has a gun to both of their heads demanding they take him to Mexican border where he plans to escape while also killing them in the process. As the two try desperately to figure a way out they are also being secretly followed by the two young men whom Adam betrayed and who are now intent on extracting a revenge.

One of the biggest problems I had with the movie is that it’s supposed to take place in California but was actually shot in the mountains of Gran Sasso in Italy, which looks nothing like the state. I realize that California has a varied topography but the locales here are screaming southern Europe and the highway signs are done in blue, which anyone living in the U.S. would know is fake as here they’re green, which only accentuates the off-kilter look of the production. Since where they’re driving to makes no real difference to the plot I would’ve just had it be some city in Italy like Rome, which would’ve helped the authenticity.

The other problem I had is that, at least the version I watched, it’s spoken in Italian. Normally I prefer movies that are subtitled versus dubbed, but I could’ve sworn years ago I saw it in English, but what’s available on YouTube, which is the only service currently streaming it, doesn’t offer that, which is a big shame. Not so much because of Nero or Clery, but more Hess as his own voice is not used, which then defeats the whole reason for having him. He’s best known for playing the sadistic killer in The Last House on the Left, and he has an excellent way of being menacing, but because we don’t hear him actually speak in his native tongue all of that gets lost and the creepy energy that was supposed to be there by casting him gets completely wasted.

Spoiler Alert!

The story, which is based on the unpublished novel ‘The Violence and the Fury’ by Peter Kane, doesn’t get off to a good start as it features two people, particularly Nero, who are not likable, and thus the viewer really doesn’t care about their predicament making the tension mediocre at best. There are also elements that are stolen from better known movies like the mysterious truck that keeps chasing them during their drive, with the identity of the driver hidden, that’s taken straight from Duel. Loopholes abound as well as we later learn that Hess is the driver of the truck, but how was he able to avoid being shot by his cohorts earlier with a gun aimed right at him and how was he able to hijack the truck as he had been without any vehicle? Maybe he was able to hitch a ride with a truck driver, just like he did with the couple, and then do away with the driver once inside, but this is stuff that needs to be shown as otherwise it comes-off like the filmmakers are just making up the rules as they go with no concern whether it’s logical.

The twist ending is limp as it features Nero setting the car on fire with his injured wife inside and putting Hess’s dead body next to hers in an attempt to make it look like both he (Nero) and she died in the blaze, but there were such things as dental records back then, so after the coroner examined the charred bodies he/she would determine that it wasn’t really Nero who died and thus the authorities would continue to search for him. Seeing him then become a hitchhiker himself leaves open too many questions and comes off like a cop-out where the filmmakers ran out of ideas and thus decided to just end it there.

End of Spoiler Alert!

The moment where Nero is forced to watch Hess make love to his wife, and witnessing the humiliation and anger in his eyes, is the film’s best moment. Watching Clery, the only person you sympathize with, is entertaining both with her clothes on and off. However, the film lacks any character development, and the plot is quite strained with a lot of moments where the story, much like with the car ride, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and if anything, just driving itself around in circles.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Pasquale Festa Campanile

Studio: Explorer Film ’58

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Porky’s (1981)

Posted on November 21, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge on nightclub owner.

Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) is a teen living in the Florida everglades during the 1950’s who suffers from a small penis size, which has prevented him from losing his virginity. He and his high school pals have hatched a plan of pooling their money together and then hiring a prostitute, which they can then all have sex with. Their first attempt doesn’t work out, so they decide to go to a nightclub that sits in a lagoon on stilts and is called Porky’s, which is the nickname of the owner of the establishment, ‘Porky’ Wallace (Chuck Mitchell) that he attained for being overweight. The boys feel they’ll be able to hire one of the strippers at the club to have sex with and Porky agrees to ‘set it up’ and takes their money only to then have the teens fall through a trap door and into the water below. This enrages Mickey (Roger Wilson) who set-up the deal and he becomes consumed with getting revenge on Porky, but when he goes there to ‘settle things’ he gets badly beaten-up, which sends him to the hospital and convinces his friends that even sterner justice is needed in order to get the proper payback.

I remember when this movie came out and there were TV ads capturing people as they left the theaters and getting their first reaction. At the time this was considered ‘outrageous’ and many of the folks in the ad seemed either shocked or embarrassed. Nowadays though it’s unlikely most will consider it extreme, and some might even call it boring particularly in between the moments when it’s raunchy. The idea for it was conceived in 1972 by writer/director Bob Clark who based the story on his own experiences as a teen going to school in rural Florida during the 50’s. The studios though didn’t like the script, and it got shopped around for years before finally getting modest funding out of Canada where it could be used as a tax write-off and thus even though it was filmed in the U.S. by an American director it still gets labeled as one of the highest grossing films in Canadian movie history.

The critics like with the studio heads, didn’t care for it with both Siskel and Ebert naming it one of the worst movies to come out of the 80’s though when compared to the other teen sex comedies from that decade this one doesn’t seem all that bad. The characters have distinct personalities and much of the dialogue while raunchy seemed realistic for that age group and not all that different from what got talked about during my own high school days. The film also manages to tackle some serious topics like antisemitism, which was also a part of that era, so it has an adequate balance and doesn’t just stay hyper-focused on the sex.

On the negative end Nancy Parsons as the female coach version of Nurse Ratched is one-dimensional and Kim Catrall, playing a cheerleader nicknamed ‘Lassie’, plays too much of the bimbo caricature to be even remotely interesting. Neither is the fault of the actresses, who are okay, but more the writer. On the other hand, I loved the bit part of Susan Clark playing a prostitute. She had been in a few Disney movies just before this and later the TV-show ‘Webster’, so seeing her playing against the family image is fun.

I also loved Kaki Hunter who seems just as dirty minded as the guys and how she’s very average looking as I’ve found those types tended to be a little more ‘easy’, as evidenced by her doing it with Pee Wee, in order to get the guys’ attention and make up for not being as attractive versus in other teen flicks where it’s only the super-hot ones that sleep around. In that vein too I enjoyed the fact that during the shower scene when the boys are peeping at the girls there’s an overweight one impacting Pee Wee’s ability to see the thin ones, which is realistic too as in most high schools there’s a mix of body types and not all skinny like most other teen comedies would make you believe.

I did have some problems though with the nicknames mainly with Pee Wee and ‘Meat’ the name for Tony Ganios’ role. Supposedly this is for their penis size, but how would anyone know what their penises looked like? Normally one gets nicknames for physically attributes that everyone can see for instance if they’re a short height they could be called ‘shorty’. Yes, there is a scene where all the boys strip naked together, but their nicknames had already come about long before then. One could argue that maybe it started while they took showers after gym class, but in my high school if some guy was caught looking at another’s genitals, they’d be accused of being ‘gay’, which during that time period would be considered a stigma.

While the plot is lean and there are a few lulls there are enough comical moments to keep it afloat. The segment dealing with Nancy Parsons character going to the principal to ‘report’ seeing a penis in the girl’s shower and advocating for all the boys to undress so she could spot which one had a dick with a mole on it, is a gem especially with the way the camera zooms in on a hanging portrait of a smiling Dwight Eisenhower like even he too is in on the humor. The demolishing of Porky’s bar, which comes near the end, isn’t bad either and helps to make this thing a minor cult classic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 13, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity

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Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976)

Posted on November 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: A corrupt ambulance company.

Mother (Bill Cosby) is a part of a team of ambulance drivers working for Harry Fishbine (Allen Garfield) who runs the F & B Ambulance company that is competing with Unity ambulance to get a contract with the city of Los Angeles. Harry is willing to do any underhanded deal that he needs to in order to keep the company competitive, which many times is at the patient’s expense. Tony (Harvey Keitel) is a former cop whose been suspended due to allegations of him dealing cocaine and thus gets hired to partner with Murdoch (Larry Hagman), a man whose compulsion for sex seems to know no bounds. Jennifer (Raquel Welch), nicknamed ‘Jugs’ due to her ample breast size, mans the switchboard, but longs to be a driver and is excited to finally get her certification, only for Harry to refuse to hire her due to sexist reasons.

The disco song ‘Dance’ by Paul Jabara, which gets played over the opening credits, may get some viewers to think it’s a silly 70’s flick, which it definitely isn’t. The concept was inspired by cartoonist Joseph Barbera, who after taking an ambulance ride, became intrigued with the idea of doing a movie about an ambulance company and hired noted screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz to write the first draft. Mankiewicz had plenty of success writing James Bond movies but was at a loss at how to approach this one and only after tagging along on some ambulance rides over a span of three nights was able to come up with the plot. He then bumped into Peter Yates at a party. Yates, best known for having directed Bullit, was interested in a change of pace by doing a comedy, but one that he hoped had ‘some bite’. Mankiewicz then immediately ran out to his car and dug the script out of his trunk and handed it to him and by the next day, after having read it during his flight back, Yates was solidly onboard.

As dark comedies go this one has to be one of the darkest and is compelled to look at every grim aspect of the human experience from drug addiction to poverty and the basic apathy people feel about their jobs and the little things they have to do and tell themselves in order to get through it. What surprised me though was that it was only given a PG-rating. Granted they never say the word ‘fuck’, nor is there any nudity, but it’s still very adult, nonetheless. Because it stars Cosby, who at the time was known for his family-oriented comedy it could’ve given parents the mistaken impression that this would be safe for kids, but it’s definitely not. There’s a lot of caustic humor including Hagman making jokes about having sex with 13-year-old twins and one moment where he attempts to get-it-on with a comatose patient. There’s even a shocking scene where somebody gets shot and killed, so what Jack Valenti and his MPAA board where thinking when they viewed it, I don’t know, but this is certainly not material for young eyes.

Mankiewicz’s acerbic script hits all the right targets, but the acting scores as well. Cosby is terrific as a sort of anti-hero who drinks while he’s driving and harasses nuns but also shows the required proportionate jaded sensibilities to handle the grim challenges. Hagman is outrageously crass but countered nicely by Bruce Davidson and Keitel, who manage to bring some likable qualities into the cast. The funniest person though, despite everything, is Garfield, who’s the perfect caricature of a shyster owner more than willing to do whatever it takes to stay afloat and his motivational rants, particularly the one that starts things out, are hilarious.

The only one that seems miscast is Welch, who despite being easy on the eyes, has never really shown to have much of an acting range. I did like her character’s arch where she’s finally given the chance to go on an ambulance run and learns the hard way that not every life can be saved, as well as a scene where she takes an ambulance on a joyride and gets pulled over by the cops, but sympathetic wise she’s kind of cold. She just doesn’t seem to have the ability to show vulnerability, which is what her character required it’s just a shame the part wasn’t played by Valerie Perrie, who would’ve been perfect, but she declined due to her unwillingness to accept a deferred payment.

Spoiler Alert!

My one caveat is the ending, which has Hagman taking some narcotics that causes him to have a psychotic reaction where he holds the owner’s wife Peaches, played by Valerie Curtin, hostage at the station, but this came off as too jarring. While Hagman’s character certainly had a creepy factor it was still done in a humorous way making him benign and just ‘one of the gang’, so having him go nutso without any type of forewarning didn’t make a lot of sense. Would’ve been better had some addicts looking for drugs robbed the station and held Hagman and Peaches at gunpoint and thus requiring the rest of the employees to work together to find a way to save them.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 26, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Yates

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy

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The Premonition (1976)

Posted on November 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wanting her child back.

Andrea (Ellen Barber) is a woman who was institutionalized and lost custody of her child Janie (Danielle Brisbois). Janie was then adopted by Sheri (Sharon Farrell) and Miles (Edward Bell) who became her foster parents. Andrea though gets released from the hospital and manages, along on with her boyfriend Jude (Richard Lynch), who works as a circus clown, to track down where Janie is currently living. Andrea wants Janie back and the two conspire to kidnap her, but their initial attempt backfires. Jude becomes irritated at Andrea’s inept abilities to retrieve the child, along with her obsession over a doll that she treats as being a real baby, which sends him into a rage that ultimately kills her. Now, Sheri begins having weird visions of Andrea tormenting her from beyond the grave, but when she complains to her husband about it he refuses to believe her insisting that it’s simply hallucinations from all the stress.

Odd film that seems to be a hybrid between sci-fi and thriller, with just a drop of dramatic character study, that doesn’t fully work despite some moments of potential. The on-location shooting, done in Jackson, Mississippi, allows for some visual flavor, but the story isn’t fleshed out enough to be impactful. There are some shades of an early version of Nightmare on Elm Street, but the film doesn’t go far enough with it. In fact, on a creepy level, it’s very low. The one and only slightly scary moment comes when an eviscerated, ghostly Andrea appears in Janie’s bedroom and tries to scare Sheri, but the scene is too brief and doesn’t go anywhere. The only other ‘spooky’ parts entails when Sheri watches her bathroom mirror fog up as well as the windshield of her car, but that’s literally it. No other scares or shocks to speak of making it confusing trying to figure out what type of audience the producers were going for.

Story-wise it’s muddled. No explanation given for how Andrea and Jude where able to track down where the kid was currently living and Andrea’s ability to get inside the house, where she simply turns the knob of the front door and is able to sneak right in, was too easy. Most people lock their doors at night, and this couple especially should’ve since Andrea had already been spotted by Sheri harassing Janie earlier at the school playground, so having them forget to do this makes them seem dumber than dumb it also hurts the tension. Forcing Andrea to come up with creative ways to get in the home, like maybe trying to slide through the basement, or attic window, would’ve given this segment more intrigue.

There’s also no suitable reason for how Sheri is able to receive the premonitions that she does, or how Andrea is able to give them off. Did Andrea at some point dabble in the occult? Or has Sheri always showed signs of ESP all her life and therefore making her susceptible to Andrea’s ‘messages’? None of this gets even remotely addressed, which ultimately makes the movie poorly thought out. 

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is particularly goofy as it features Sheri performing a musical piece written by Andrea in an attempt to appease Andrea’s angry spirit and get Janie back. However, this all gets done late at night while on the steps of the Mississippi state capitol where a small piano has been placed that Sheri plays while in front of a crowd of curious onlookers. The police then stand-by waiting for any ‘suspicious’ people to arrive, so they can be arrested, but the chances that the authorities would allow such an insane ‘show’ to take place on government property, or believe in evil spirits and visions to begin, with is highly unlikely.

End of Spoiler Alert!

I did though enjoy the acting. Farrell is quite good as the distraught mother and Brisebois, who’s probably best known for playing Stephanie on the ‘Archie Bunker’s Place’ TV-show, is cute and looks to be no more than 3 or 4. Lynch is fantastic playing against type as his character has moments where he seems genuinely concerned and I loved the scene where he dresses in mime make-up and does a silent routine while taking someone’s picture. The best though is Barber who’s unnerving as the unhinged woman, and I wished her role had been bigger.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a payoff. Too many questions get left open and the story doesn’t explore enough angles to make anything that occurs here either memorable or riveting. Some may say this was a precursor of better, more well-known thrillers/horror/sci-fi films to come, and they may have a loose point, but it doesn’t do enough with the material to deserve any recognition. 

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 5, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Schnitzer

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies that take place in the South, Thrillers/Suspense

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Inside Out (1975)

Posted on November 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Tracking down nazi gold.

Harry (Telly Savalas) is head deep in bills when he comes across a letter from Ernst (James Mason) an old friend inviting him to meet him the next day at a hotel. Since Harry has nothing to lose he shows up at the agree upon location and learns that Ernst has plans to retrieve some gold that had been misplaced during the war. The problem is that the only one that knows the exact location of where it’s hidden is Holtz (Wolfgang Lukschy) who is locked up in a high security prison. Harry must then hire a team of men that can not only find a way to infiltrate the prison, but also trick Holtz into giving away the secret and then dig up the loot despite it being behind enemy lines.

The film, which was surprisingly written directly for the screen and not based on any book even though I think it would’ve made a great novel that could’ve been actually better than the movie, approaches the material in all the wrong ways. I’ll admit it’s a great concept, but director Peter Duffell unwisely decided to enter comedy into the proceedings, which wasn’t necessary. He also implements a goofy sounding music track that would’ve been better suited for a TV-sitcom. The facility that houses Holtz was shot at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin, which looks like an old rundown building that is barely able to stand on its own and like it’s ready to crumble at any minute. To really make it exciting and daring the place should’ve been modern and state-of-the-art and thus making it more of a challenge to break into.

Spoiler Alert!

Everything comes off too easily and thus hurts any potential tension. The kidnapping of Holtz is especially problematic. The group is able to infiltrate the prison by dressing up in guard costumes, but those costumes wouldn’t be an exact replica of the real guard’s uniform and thus should be easily spotted by a prison employee, and yet that doesn’t happen.

They blackmail Holtz’s doctor Maar (Adrian Hoven) to agree to take Hotlz’s place in the prison cell and pretend to be him while disguising Holtz as the doctor in order to sneak him out, but it’s unlikely anyone would agree to stay in a prison for even a day and trust that this group, whom he really didn’t know, would come back and get him out and not just leave him there. Maar, is also much shorter than Holtz, so the real guards would notice the difference in height and realize he was an imposter, but for whatever reason they don’t.

The drug that they inject Holtz with, which is never named, is unusual in that it puts him to sleep, but still allows him to walk. Most of the time drugs that could knock a person out would make their limbs go limp and force the group to have to drag him away as he slept versus here where they are somehow able to get him to sleepwalk.

The sequence where one of them disguises themselves as Hitler, played by Gunter Meisner, in an effort to trick Holtz to divulge the location of the gold since he had sworn only to give it out to the Fuhrer himself is highly improbable as well since the man really doesn’t look all that much like Hitler and you’d think Holtz, even in the drugged state that he is in, would notice the difference and not share the secret, or give out incorrect information.

I’ll give the script some credit as it does come up with a few unexpected wrinkles, but all these do is stymie the group’s efforts slightly and don’t really put a monkey wrench into the whole thing. For instance, they learn that an apartment building has been constructed on the site where the gold is buried, which most likely would’ve ruined their chances of getting at it, but here they’re able to sneak into the building’s basement via an unlocked door (don’t facilities lock their doors in East Germany?) and then create a ruse to get the tenants out of the building so they can plant a bomb that will cause an explosion to crack the cement floor. There’s even a little boy who sneaks in to witness their efforts and risks getting injured but like with everything else it gets quickly resolved when Telly spots him at the last second and whisks him away to safety and then eventually back to his mother’s arms. However, what’s to say he won’t tell his mommy what he saw? Apparently here he doesn’t, but in reality, he probably would’ve and thus another potential loophole that the film glosses over.

I enjoy Telly more when he’s playing bad guys, but he’s still fun as the protagonist and something that helps keep the movie watchable. Overall though the direction should’ve been tighter and the complex mission gets pulled off too seamlessly and thus seeing them walk away with the fortune isn’t all that satisfying as the complication would’ve been too immense for it to have ever succeeded in real life.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: November 27, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Duffell

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive)

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Heist Movies

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I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Posted on October 31, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Assaulted woman gets revenge.

Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) is a writer who has decided to get away from the bustle of New York City by renting an isolated cabin by a river that’s just outside of Kent, Connecticut. It’s here that she hopes to finish her novel but finds it hard to do when she inadvertently attracts the attention of Johnny (Eron Tabor) a gas station attendant and two unemployed men named Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleeman) who routinely upset her quiet environment with their motorboat. When delivery boy Mathew (Richard Pace), who is mentally disabled and social awkward, comes back to the men describing how when he delivered groceries to her, he ‘saw her breasts’, it gives them the idea to attack her and then ‘offer her up’ to Matthew, so he can finally have sex with a woman. The men chase Jennifer down while she’s relaxing in her rowboat and take her to the backwoods where each of them takes turns raping her over an extended period. Once they finally leave, they give Mathew a knife and tell him to kill her while they wait outside. Mathew though is too afraid to stab her, so he lies and tell them he did when he really didn’t. Eventually, after several weeks, Jennifer recovers from her injuries, both physical and emotional, and decides to seek out the unsuspecting men by killing them off in gruesome ways one-by-one.

This film was and still is highly controversial, some might say it’s the most controversial film ever made and universally condemned by both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel on their show where they described it as ‘the worst movie ever made’. Ebert even went as far as to write in his review that it made him physically sick to watch it. His review though had a Streisand effect as it garnered it more attention and got people to come to the theater to ‘see what all the fuss was about’ eventually making it quite profitable and a cult classic that’s turned the franchise into marketable one that has given it several sequels and even a 2010 remake.

The inspiration for the story came in October of 1974 when writer/director Meir Zarchi was traveling with his friend and daughter in New York City neighborhood of Jamaican Hills where they came upon a naked, beaten-up woman who told them she had just been raped. When he escorted her to the police, he was appalled at the indifferent treatment she was given and he came home and almost immediately began writing the script.

Almost 2 years later, in August of 1976, he had acquired enough funding so shooting could begin. The argument though was whether this really was a ‘trenchant’ drama meant to expose the brutal nature of rape, versus sanitizing it as other movies at the time tended to do or was simply a cheap way to exploit a difficult subject for money. In a lot of ways, it seems to be the later as gang rapes like the one portrayed here don’t happen too often and it’s usually just one attacker. The fact that the men seem to go away and then suddenly reappear again unexpectedly out of nowhere makes it feel like it’s being played up for tension’s sake and attempting to get the most out of the horror then simply trying to intelligently examine the cruel event.

There’s also no scene showing Jennifer going to the police and being treated poorly, which was supposedly what enraged Zarchi so much during the real event. Without that element it’s harder to justify the plot and there really needed to be a segment showing that.

On the flip side I was impressed with the film’s overall grittiness. It’s like Zarchi had watched Last House on the Left but decided to take out the ill-advised ‘comic relief’ scenes and weird music and just left in the unrelenting tension and to that level it succeeds. Having no soundtrack at all, outside of some organ music that gets played when Jennifer visits a church, helps give it more of a realistic effect almost like we’re watching a documentary where the camera is simply turned-on and whatever terrible things happen is allowed to simply play-out unabated. This along with Keaton’s dynamic performance, where she essentially plays two women, one a victim and the other the perpetrator, is what helps the movie stand out and gives it it’s legs.

Spoiler Alert!

The complaints I had comes more with the third act where Jennifer carries out her revenge. The segment where she entices Matthew to have sex with her again in the woods by the river, so she can put a noose around his neck and hang him, didn’t feel genuine. I would think anyone who had been raped that they wouldn’t want anyone to touch them, or get intimate after such a traumatic event, so allowing herself to get naked and letting a man, one of her former attackers no less, get on top of her, just didn’t seem plausible from a psychological perspective. On the physical end it didn’t seem possible that a young thin woman would be able to pull the rope tight enough to hang someone who clearly weighed more than she.

The second killing where she takes Johnny back to her place and they get naked in her tub had the same problematic issues. She had a gun in her hand when she got out of her car, so why not just shoot him then and get it over with? Why take the chance of bringing him back to her house where he could overpower her? Also, how dumb does this guy have to be that he would completely let down his guard and not think that this woman, who’s assault he happily took part in, could be completely trusted and not try to lure him into a trap?

Her final attack on the two other men is flawed as well as it has her swimming out to the boat that one of them is on, but she comes onboard carrying no weapon. She only gets her hands on the ax when the other guy accidentally drops it into her boat as she tries to side swipe him, but that’s still a very stupid and dangerous way to go about things. If she’s fully intending to kill the guy she should come prepared with something already in hand when she confronts him.

Alternate Title: Day of the Woman

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 22, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Meir Zarchi

Studio: Cinemagic Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, PlutoTV, Roku, Tubi, YouTube

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Rape/Revenge

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Posted on October 26, 2025 | 5 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: A really awful sequel.

It’s been four years since Regan (Linda Blair) had her bout of possession and is now living a seemingly normal life in New York City with her guardian Sharon (Kitty Winn). Regan does still see a psychiatrist, Dr. Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), who despite Regan’s denials that she can’t remember anything, is convinced that she does have some dormant memories that need to come to the surface. Philip (Richard Burton) is a priest who has been assigned to investigate the death of Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow), who was the priest who died while performing the exorcism on Regan. He meets with Dr. Tuskin and Regan and gets hooked up to a machine called the syncronizer, which allows Philip’s and Regan’s brainwaves to be connected, so he can explore the inner depths of her mind. It is here that he learns about the evil spirit Pazuzu, that was the one that inhabited Regan’s body years earlier, and how Father Merrin had rid a young boy named Kokumo of this same spirit while in Africa. When Philip learns that the now adult Kokumo (James Earl Jones) has developed a special power to defeat Pazuzu he travels to the continent to meet him.

Doing a sequel to the hit movie wasn’t a bad idea per say as there were still some open-ended questions like why did Pazuzu choose Regan’s body to inhabit instead of some other girls and what mental issues would Regan have to deal with after going through such a traumatic event? None of those were ever answered in the first film, but intriguing enough to me that I felt a second film was warranted and could’ve been quite compelling. Unfortunately, what we get wouldn’t even qualify as second-rate. Most of the problem lies with director John Boorman, who admitted in later interviews that his biggest crime was that he didn’t give the viewer what they wanted, which is the truth. I don’t mean to bash the guy as he’s helmed some classics in his own right, but when he professes that he was offered the job to direct the first installment but turned it down because he thought it was ‘repulsive’ then that should’ve disqualified him from getting any consideration to doing the second one.

Everything gets botched right from the beginning including a misguided reenactment of the final segment in the first film that honestly comes-off like a cheap parody. For one thing Father Merrin is seen standing at the end of Regan’s bed, when we know clearly from the first film that he was kneeling on the right side of the bed when he died. Also, due to Blair’s insistence that she didn’t want to go through the grueling routine of having to put on the demon make-up, so a stand-in took her place, but the results are clownish. The silly-‘synchonizer’ further hampers things as it appears more like a child’s toy and the cliched idea of simply attaching a few wires to each participant’s foreheads and that would be enough to get their mind’s ‘in-sync’ looks like something straight out of a tacky B-sci fi flick from the 50’s.

Not able to get Ellen Burstyn to sign-on really hurts though I can’t blame her for being reluctant but trying to use Kitty Winn as her replacement bombs. For one thing the Sharon character didn’t have that much of a prominent role in the first one, I barely even remembered her, and she was Burstyn’s secretary who didn’t interact that much with Blair, so for them to now be so ‘connected’ seemed like a stretch and having Winn sporting short hair, in an attempt I presume to make her ‘seem’ like Burstyn, was tacky. Von Sydow suffers a similar fate. He gets portrayed as being a younger version of his character here but only appears in flashbacks and doesn’t have much to say or do making it seem like it wasn’t even worth the effort.

Fletcher is good in that she played a cold, bitchy nurse in her previous film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but here shows her great acting ability at playing the total opposite and doing it convincingly. However, her character doesn’t help propel the action and is only there to react to things, which ultimately makes her presence one dimensional. Burton, whose talents I have always greatly admired even when he took less than stellar roles, but his appearance here has to be rock bottom. He admitted that he only did this for the paycheck, due to an expensive divorce he was going through with Liz, but the material doesn’t match his ability and it’s a career low even for him as he was known to make some bad project choices during the 70’s, but this was by far the worst.

To top things off there’s James Earl Jones wearing a giant bug outfit that nearly had me laughing out of my seat. The numerous shots of locusts and the sandy African landscape make it seem more like a nature movie, but whatever it is it’s not scary. It’s so convoluted it’s not even good enough to fall into the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ category. It is cool though at least see a young Dana Plato playing an autistic child in a small but pivotal part.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Boorman

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Sequels

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The Exorcist (1973)

Posted on October 24, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 10 out of 10

4-Word Review: Possessed by the devil.

Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is a famous Hollywood actress living on location in a neighborhood of Washington D.C. known as Georgetown where the latest movie she’s working on is being shot. She’s renting a posh home along with her two servants (Rudolf Schundler, Willi Engstrom), her secretary Sharon (Kitty Winn) and her 12-year-old daughter Regan (Linda Blair). Things start out fine, but then Regan begins exhibiting odd behaviors. Chris takes her to several doctors as Regan’s anti-social traits continue. The doctors prescribe various drugs, but nothing works. At her wits end Chris, a non-believer, finally resorts to asking a local priest, Father Karras (Jason Miller) if he’ll perform an exorcism on her daughter. Karras though is going through a crisis of faith and doesn’t believe the archaic ritual will help her but becomes more convinced after he visits the girl who displays knowledge of his personal life that she would not have known about otherwise. Eventually he asks the church for permission to conduct one, but under the condition that he do it alongside Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) an elderly man with a heart condition who had done an exorcism many years earlier in Africa.

The film was based on the bestselling novel of the same name that in-turn was inspired by the true-life event that occurred in 1949 where priests performed an exorcism on a troubled 14-year-old boy named Ronald Edwin Hunkeler. Author William Peter Blatty, read about the incident while a student attending Georgetown University. After having become a successful screenwriter during the 60’s where he wrote mainly comedies for director Blake Edwards, he approached his agent about writing a horror novel about a child possessed but was initially talked out of it. Then in 1968 he watched Rosemary’s Baby, which he felt had a weak ending that he could’ve done better, so he brought up the exorcism concept to a book publisher while attending a cocktail party and he agreed pay him a $25,000 advance to write the book in 10-months. Upon publication the sales were at first sluggish, but then after an appearance on the ‘Dick Cavett Show’ they skyrocketed, which soon lead to a movie rights deal with Blatty commissioned to write the script.

The movie follows the book closely though in a more condense form with scenes that were groundbreaking in its level of explicitness and perversity including an infamous crucifix masturbation moment. However, it’s the angiography that many viewers found the most disturbing. While it’s shockingly explicit it’s also lauded by medical professionals as being highly accurate and for many years afterwards was used in radiological training films. Many critics at the time condemned the scene labeling it ‘irresponsible’ and ‘needless’, but I liked it. A good horror movie should put the viewer in an uneasy state right from the start and then continue to turn the screws tighter as it goes on. This moment clearly telegraphs to the audience that the filmmakers will not shy away from showing something graphic even if it’s outside of good taste and if they’re going to be this brazen with this scene then it makes it all the more unsettling about what’s to come next. 

In many ways, and I don’t believe it was intentional, but the film does become an inadvertent satire on the medical, psychiatric community as their ‘diagnosis’ on Regan are really just guesses and the extreme reliance on prescribing medications, which they feel will somehow ‘resolve everything’. I didn’t really have a problem with this as I think many doctors at the time, and maybe even now, would respond the same way if given such a bizarre case. My one issue though is that eventually one of them, played by Peter Masterson, gets up in front of a roundtable of other doctors and suggests that Chris take Regan to an exorcist. I don’t believe any real medical doctor would ever suggest it or certainly be met with pushback by the other medical professionals in the room. I realize the movie had to find a way to progress to the third act, so the idea of an exorcist needed to be brought up at some point, but it would’ve made more sense had it come from Chris’s servants, who were deeply spiritual already. Chris could’ve scoffed at it at first, but then after thinking and even reading up on it, would eventually relent. 

The performances are uniformly excellent. Burstyn was not the first choice as there were other actresses more famous than her at the time, but her ability to display distraught emotion and continue to do so as it progresses and still keep it fresh and genuine makes her the best person for the role bar none. Blair is quite good too though Mercedes McCambridge does voice the demon during the exorcism moments, which kind of affects things. Don’t get me wrong McCambridge’s deep vocals makes it scarier, but had the lines, which are quite obscene, been recited by Blair herself it would’ve made it more shocking. Plus, it would still allow credence for the doctors to say it was a mental illness and not a possession since whatever was being said was coming from her natural voice. 

The real star though is Father Karras as he’s the one that goes through an actual internal change during the course of the story, from a person who’s had a crisis of faith to ultimately regaining it. Miller, who’s perfect, was not the original choice as Stacey Keach had already been offered the role and signed on, but then director William Friedkin went to watch the play That Championship Season, which Miller had written and afterwards the two met backstage and Friedkin talked about his new project that got Miller to describe his own Catholic upbringing and his quarrels with it, which convinced Friedkin that he’d be the better actor and thus the studio bought Keach out of his contract. As much as I like Keach this was still a good move as Miller’s guilt-ridden face, which gets on full display every time he’s in front of the camera, leaves a lasting visual impression. I also liked the way the character remains skeptical until the very end versus other horror films that would have the people believing in the supernatural right away, or pretty quickly. However, in real-life there’s always going to be cynical people, so allowing in their apprehension through Karras makes the story stronger and more three-dimensional. 

Spoiler Alert!

I felt the ending, in which Chris pronounces Regan to be ‘cured’ and not remembering a thing and then driving away, to be a bit lacking. Chris was portrayed as being secular, but you’d think after what she saw her daughter going through would’ve changed that. This could’ve been done subtly by having her holding a crucifix, something she had despised her staff putting underneath her Regan’s pillow earlier or just shown wearing a small one around her neck. 

I also didn’t like the side-story dealing with the Burke Dennings character, played by Jack MacGowran, being apparently pushed out the window by the demon and falling to his death down a flight of cement stairs as this takes away the impact of when it happens to Father Karras at the end. Instead of Karras’ death being the shocking, unexpected twist that it should’ve it comes off more like a ‘here-we-go-again’ thing. If I had been the director I would’ve removed both Dennings death and Lee J. Cobb character completely as I really didn’t think he added much or helped progress the story forward. I would’ve still had the steps being shown in the early part of the film as a forewarning by having Karras runup them during his early morning workouts and this could’ve been when he first met Chris as they’d bump into each other one day while she was leaving to go somewhere. The head being twisted all the way around, which is described as happening to Dennings, but never shown, could’ve been revealed as occurring with Karras, possibly with his eyes glowing when the pedestrians come running to his aid, which would’ve been a good creepy final horror visual. 

My Rating: 10 out of 10

Released: December 26, 1973

Runtime: 2 Hours 15 Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Friedkin

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Screenplay, Classic, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Spiritual Movies

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Celia (1989)

Posted on October 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge for her rabbit.

Celia (Rebecca Smart) is a head-strong 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia during the end of the 50’s. She is mourning the recent loss of her grandmother while also fearing the hobyahs, which are mythical creatures she read about in school that she has nightmares about breaking into her bedroom late at night. When Alice (Victoria Longley) and her three children move in next door it allows Celia to get her mind off of things as she becomes fast friends with the kids and even Alice herself, but their relationship is soon hampered when Celia’s father, Ray (Nicholas Eadie), finds out that Alice and her husband are supporters of the Communist Party. Ray forbids Celia from seeing them and offers her a pet rabbit, something she’s wanted for a long time, as a bribe insisting that she can keep the pet as long she no longer socializes with the neighbors. However, this brings up more problems as the Australian government has deemed rabbits to be an invasive species and has outlawed anyone from having one. Burke (William Zappa), the local police Sargent, confiscates the rabbit in the middle of the night and then it’s later found dead while being housed at the local zoo causing Celia to come up with a devious plan in order to exact her revenge.

The film, which was inspired by a news article writer/director Ann Turner read when she was 24 involving the rabbit invasion that plagued Australia during the 50’s, is labeled a horror movie, though in a compromised form as IMDb calls it a ‘folk horror’ while other movie sources call it a ‘horror drama’. In any case fans of the conventional horror film may not take to this or find it off-putting as the typical scares and tension are not present. There are some creepy moments particularly the dream sequences involving the hobyhahs, which I wished had been in it more, and a segment dealing with Celia’s dead grandmother tapping on her bedroom window late one night, but overall, that’s about it. Most of the rest of the film comes-off more like a coming-of-age drama, which is excellent, but the real disturbing part doesn’t come until the very end. It’s effective and well earned, but whether all viewers will be patient enough to wait for it I’m not sure.

With that said it’s still a great movie with characters that are three dimensional, something that Australian cinema does very well, and the viewer gets wrapped up into the drama quite quickly. The best element is that the kid characters are genuine. These are like real children that I knew growing up where they could be cute and precocious one minute and mean and bratty the next. The inner rivalries that Celia has with the other kids in the neighborhood are quite real too. Kids don’t just automatically get along, there can be contrasting egos and personalities that can easily get in the way, just like with adults, that can quickly turn playmates into enemies. It’s rare that I can say this, but I really felt while watching this, that I had been transported back into my own childhood as the encounters and exchanges very closely reflected my own in many ways.

The adults are portrayed much better here too. Usually, movies that revolve around young people have the grown-ups stigmatized in one extreme or the other. Either they’re clueless dimwits that are totally out-of-it or overly controlling. Here though they’re well meaning, but so busy with their own lives that just can’t stay attuned with everything their kids are doing and much of the time is spent with them just trying to catch-up with the drama that they didn’t even know was occurring. Celia’s father isn’t mean here either, he simply has a different perspective of things and doing what he thinks is best for his child even as this gets Celia to hate him but like with many households this type of scenario can and does happen even with the best of intentions.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending should leave you with an unsettling feeling when it’s over. This is the rare time when if fully works too. No loose ends, or loopholes. Everything fits perfectly with the characters fleshed out so it all makes sense. This is also a unique film in that there really aren’t any villains. No one is ‘bad’, or ‘evil’. It’s just people, young and old, with different ideas about things and their inability, through no real fault of their own, to effectively communicate it to the other, or for the other to fully listen and understand, which is ultimately what makes it so horrifying as this could easily and believably happen anywhere.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: March 3, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Ann Turner

Studio: Seon Film Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies from Australia

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