Fever Pitch (1985)

Posted on December 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

fever1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sportswriter addicted to gambling.

To commemorate the sad passing of Ryan O’Neal just last week we here at Scopophilia decided to review one of his more infamous outings in a film that helped to ultimately bring in his career downfall, which was already fading at the time anyways, but this one was the nail in the coffin. He plays Steve Taggart a popular sports journalist who wishes to do an expose on the gambling epidemic. His editor (John Saxon) gives the okay and so he proceeds to write articles dealing with a ‘Mr. Green’ whose addiction is ruining his life and career. Unbeknownst to his editors Mr. Green is actually Steve whose gambling habit is so out of control that he owes $31,000 to a bookmaker named The Dutchman (Chad Everett) who has a henchman named The Hat (William Smith) that follows Steve around and threatens him with violence if he doesn’t pay up. Steve’s recourse is to simply gamble more hoping somehow to get on a lucky streak and be able to pay it all back when instead he just continues to drown in an even more widening debt.

Writer/director Richard Brooks became fascinated with the topic of gambling while recovering from a heart attack and spent years writing the script, where he intended to have Sam Shephard play the lead. Unfortunately despite his great success with other films this one ended up becoming a giant flop that cost the studio over $7 million to produce, but only recouped a paltry $244,000 at the box office. Derided by both critics and viewers its become a ‘so bad it’s good’ type movie that in the ‘Official Razzie Movie Guide’ gets listed as the 100 Most Enjoyable Bad Movies Ever Made.

The movie would’ve been better had they got Shephard in the lead role as intended instead of the wooden O’Neal who doesn’t show enough emotion, or nuance to make his part interesting. The character would’ve had a better arch had we known him before he got into gambling and could see his downfall right from the beginning versus coming into it when he’s already starting to hit rock bottom. Having the viewer fooled into thinking Mr. Green was a real person might’ve made an interesting twist versus giving it all a way at the start that it’s Steve.

The dialogue is badly overwritten with the character’s regurgitating out gambling statistics like they’re a computer and there’s no conversational quality in anything that gets said. Despite being supposedly this ‘hard-hitting’ look at what goes on in Las Vegas it instead comes-off more surreal as it shows only people who are ‘captivated by the madness of gambling’ like these are the only type of people who exist without countering it with others who are not into it and thus giving it a better balance and perspective.

The story also suffers from too many coincidences and extreme dramatic arcs. The most notable is when Steve finds a soldier (Patrick Cassidy) inside a bathroom stall ready to shoot himself with a gun as he’s so depressed about losing all his money, but Steve stops him from doing it. Then gives the soldier money for airfare and a little bit extra for spending cash. The soldier uses it to continue his gambling where he wins it all back at the craps table making it seem like a ‘happy’ ending and going against the film’s own narrative that wants to show the ‘evils’ of the addiction only to laugh it all away when somebody gets on a magical win streak that somehow makes it all better. Going from potential suicide victim to happiest guy on earth in the matter of only a couple of hours is a bit of a stretch.

Having Steve get physically attacked by The Hat inside a gambling lounge as he has both his shins kicked-in and then miraculously having Flo (Catherin Hicks), a cocktail waitress whom he had a fling with, walk by at the exact same instant when The Hat leaves, so she’s able to help back to her room seemed way to coincidental and convenient. The fact that he doesn’t go to a doctor and able to still walk using only some pain pills to get by was even more absurd. What gets even dumber though is that during the melee Steve injures The Hat, using non other than salt and pepper shakers, causing him to wear a over-the-top neck brace as he goes around town trying to ‘even the score’ with Steve by attempting to kill him, but unable to do so at every turn like he’s morphed into the live action version of Wiley E. Coyote.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest laugh, or most nauseating moment depending on your perspective, comes at the end when Steve is supposedly ‘cured’ of his addiction by having attended a Gambling Anonymous meeting only to, at the airport waiting to go home, decide to put one last quarter into a slot machine called ‘Bet a Buck for God’ in which he amazingly wins a massive payout and having his winnings immediately handed to him by a woman dressed like a nun. I thought for sure this was some sort of dream, but to my shock it’s not and we’re all supposed to take it seriously.

It then gets even worse as Steve goes on one last hot streak and able to win back all the money he’s owed and thus get out of his predicament, which does a complete injustice to the subject. Many other victims of gambling aren’t able to do this as the movie even says itself the odds are the house will ultimately win making the wrap-up completely false and thus the film’s notorious cornball status is highly deserved.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Brooks

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: VHS, DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Obscure Movies

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The Devil’s Honey (1986)

Posted on December 9, 2023 | 1 comment

devilshoney

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge on a doctor.

Jessica (Blanca Marsillach) is madly in-love with Johnny (Stefano Madia) who’s a famous saxophonist. The two share many kinky moments and have sex in the wildest of places. Wendell (Brett Halsey) is a surgeon who no longer has sex with his wife Carol (Corinne Clery) and instead seeks out prostitutes though even here the arousal is brief as he can’t achieve an erection for any extended period of time. Carol finds out about his philandering and asks for a divorce, which sets Wendell into a panic as he still enjoys having his wife around as a support system even if it isn’t for intercourse. As this is happening Johnny falls unconscious during one of his recording sessions due to a bump he got on his head while falling off his motorcycle earlier. He gets rushed to the hospital where Wendell is on-call, but he’s unable to concentrate on the surgery due to the stress of his marriage and Johnny ends up passing away. Jessica is outraged by this and sets a vendetta on Wendell to punish him for killing her boyfriend. It begins by her calling him constantly, but eventually she kidnaps him by taking him to her place and tying him up. She tortures him sexually, which strangely both of them begins to enjoy.

This was cult director Lucio Fulci’s return to a sex themed film, which he had started his career out as and away from the gory giallos he had become most known for. The attempt is not without merit as the sex is explicit and almost like a porn film with brief interludes of dialogue before it goes right back to the sexual imagery. Unfortunately on the erotic end it’s not all that titillating. The scene where Johnny blows his saxophone up Jessica’s vagina looked more laughable than kinky. The segment where he tries to get her to fondle his penis while they’re riding on a motorcycle, which almost gets them into a bad accident, I found genuinely cringey and not sexy at all. The fact that she’d be so into a guy that’s rather controlling and degrading to her seemed a mystery though it might’ve been meant as a quirk to her personality, but never explained sufficiently.

Outside of the sex the drama is weak. The moment inside the studio where he complains about having a headache, but the producer tells him to keep on playing anyways, so he blows out a few weak notes before tumbling to the floor came-off as unintentionally funny and had me laughing. Jessica’s distraught reaction where she bangs on the glass that separates the control room from the studio was ridiculous as she should’ve run into the studio to try to physically come to his aid, which had a better chance of actually helping him than just pounding on a window. I also got sick of hearing Johnny play the same piece over and over until it became nauseating.

Things improve with the presence of Halsey an American actor who appeared in many B-pictures during the 60’s and 70’s, but eventually went abroad by the 80’s when the film offers here began to dry up. While his face is chiseled and good-looking the hollow look in his eyes perfectly fits the character and thus becomes  a memorable image. Watching Jessica harass the hell out of him is kind of fun though no explanation for what the substance was that she used to knock him out, nor where she managed to attain it.

Spoiler Alert!

The third act has some tension though it gets ruined by all the flashbacks. Wendell’s wife also disappears completely and no scenes showing her reaction to the news that her husband’s been kidnapped. She had figured prominently in the first two acts and therefore we should’ve seen some sort of response from her in the third. Whether she was happy to have him gone, or had a change-of-heart and became upset is something we should’ve seen. There’s also no answer to what ultimately becomes of the new couple who end up liking the abuse that they give to each other. Do they go on cohabitating and if so does Wendell go back to being a surgeon and if not how do they survive financially? There needed to be more of a conclusion and just leaving it all hanging is not satisfying.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lucio Fulci

Studio: Selvaggia Film

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Erotica, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies with Nudity, Sex, Thrillers/Suspense

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Made for Each Other (1971)

Posted on December 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

made

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple argues a lot.

Pandora (Renee Taylor) is an out-of-work actress still clinging to her dreams that she’ll one day become famous something she has hoped for since she was a child. Gig (Joseph Bologna) suffers from not being able to find a stable relationship and guilt-ridden over sending the last one into attempted suicide. Both Pandora and Gig attend a group therapy session and this is where they meet. Initially though things are rocky. Gig does not like Pandora’s stand-up act, something she’s been working on for years, and openly tells her it’s awful. They then break-up, but Pandora eventually returns telling him that he was right and she’s worked out the ‘kinks’ from her act, so it’s now improved. To celebrate Gig takes her to his parents (Paul Sorvino, Olympia Dukakis) for Thanksgiving. The parents though don’t approve of Pandora since she’s Jewish and they’re Catholic and they eventually drive her out of their apartment. Gig and Pandora continue to argue once they’re back in the car, but find, strangely, that no matter how the other one annoys them they still like each other’s company.

After the runaway success of Lovers and Other Strangers, which Bologna and Taylor wrote initially as a play, but then turned it into a movie, Hollywood studios were interested in them trying another script and gave them upfront money to do so. The first film had been based on their real-life experiences of dealing with all of their in-laws during their wedding, which occurred in 1965, and so they decided to base this one on their lives as well, namely what brought them together. Like with their first project the script is quite broad and focuses in on many different people including the parents of each character who have quite a bit of screentime, particularly Sorvino and Dukakis, and who are quite funny. The film also shows the leads when they were infants and many of their childhood experiences, which gets shot in black-and-white, that is also both insightful and amusing.

Unlike with most movies the scenes are quite extended and seemed better primed for a stageplay. The elusive Robert B. Bean gets credited as director, but he never did anything else, which seems a bit curious and there’s been rumors that he was just a pseudonym for Bologna who took over as the actual director. The long takes though are effective and enhance the comedy. The scene inside Gig’s parents house where the tension builds when they slowly realize that Pandora is ‘not their kind’ is quite good and not unlike what could happen in many families homes of that era who closely identified with their particularly religions and not privy to having their kids marry outside of it. Gig’s inability to appreciate Pandora’s stage act and his blunt assessment of it while at a late night cafe is comically on-targe too as any fledgling artist will tell you sometimes family members, friends, and even those really close to them won’t always connect with their artistic endeavors and regrettably become their biggest critics.

Sorvino scores as the abrasive no-nonsense father though ironically he was actually 5-years younger than Bologna who plays his son and for that reason his hair should’ve been made more gray. Dukakis is equally on-target as the super religious mother whose strong faith amounts to a lot of rituals and ends up inadvertently harming her child psychologically like when she catches him masturbating and informs him that if he continues his ‘little thing will fall off’. Helen Verbit as Pandora’s mother is equally amusing playing the over-protective type who wants so hard to shield her daughter from harsh reality that she tells her that her stage act is ‘brilliant’ when it really isn’t and that because she’s her mother that somehow makes her opinion ‘objective’.

The film’s one drawback is the yelling, which there is a lot of. Sometimes confrontational comedy can be quite amusing and this one works most of the way, but how much the viewer will enjoy is up to each individual. Bologna’s shouting is particularly loud and abrasive. It’s meant to funny and done only out of aggravation, but it does tend to get extended especially by the end. Had Taylor shouted back then it would’ve seemed like a ‘fair fight’, but having her run away and cry takes humor out of it and may ultimately ingrate on the audience. The intent is for there to be an offbeat charm, but not everyone may see it that way and thus this thing won’t be for all tastes.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 12, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Robert B. Bean

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R (Fox Cinema Archives)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies, Offbeat, Romance

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Tribute (1980)

Posted on December 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

tribute

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father reconciling with son.

Scottie (Jack Lemmon) has been working in show business for decades and has built up many friends and fans, but finds it all come crashing down when, at the mere of age of 55, he gets diagnosed with leukemia. His greatest regret is not having a close relationship with his now grown son Jud (Robby Benson). He wants to reconcile, but not make it obvious that’s it’s because he’s about to die. When Jud comes over for a surprise visit with his mother (Lee Remick), whom Scottie has long since divorced, he tries to mend things and become the father he never had, but the hurt runs deep and Jud proves to be resistant to everything Scottie tries making him feel even more hopeless and forcing him to come to terms with his personal faults and inadequacies.

The film is based on the stageplay of the same name, which also starred Lemmon, and got sold into a $1 million movie deal before the stage version ever hit Broadway. On the surface it’s deemed a drama, but the script by Bernard Slade, who also penned the play, comes off more like a desperate comedy akin in tone to Same Time Next Year, which is Slade’s most famous work that had a strong dramedy vibe to it. This works on that same level as it attempts to lighten the poignant moments with comical bits, but it fails miserable.

Had some of it managed to actually been funny I might not have complained, but it amounts to cringe instead. The most eye-popping moment is watching Lemmon in a chicken costume run around his place going ‘balk-balk’ and even lay a giant egg on the sofa, which I felt was a career low point. What’s even dumber is his wooing of a young woman, played by Kim Cattrall, who’s also a patient at the hospital. He gets into her room by pretending to be a doctor and then gropes her breasts in a feeble attempt to check her heart rate. A normal woman of today, and even one back then, should respond with outrage for him copping-a-feel by disguising himself into being someone he isn’t, but in this stupid movie she’s instead ‘charmed’ by his antics and it’s enough to get her to go to bed with him later.

What’s worse and even more outlandish is that Scottie then sets her up with his son to have them conveniently ‘bump into each other’ in public and then begin going out. Yet how many sons are going to be cool with Dad sleeping with their girl first? Of course Scottie never tells him that he’s already ‘tested her out’, but it does end up showing inadvertently what a conniving jerk the old guy is and what the film considers to be nothing more than an amusing comic side-story really hurts the likability of the character if you think about it.

The acting is good. Lemmon is expectedly strong and so is Remick as his wife though her part is limited. I liked seeing Benson, who usually got stuck with immature parts due to his young, geeky features, play the mature and sensible, level-headed adult of which he does perfectly. Colleen Dewhurst has some strong moments as the caring nurse and Cattrall, despite the annoying nature of her dippy character, is pleasing enough. Yet the ultimate scene-stealer goes to Gale Garnett famous for the mid-60’s folk song ‘We’ll Sing in the Sunshine’, who plays a hooker and in one segment goes topless (looks great), but it’s a bit jarring when you realize it’s the same person who sang such a sweet-natured tune, tough in some ways you could say it’s also a testament that her creative talents are quite broad.

The third act, where they have this major tribute for Scotty has a touching potential, but gets overdone by filling-up an entire auditorium with all of his ‘close friends’, which even for a social butterfly seemed a bit exaggerated. The scene where the hooker gets a restaurant packed with all of her male clients who have ever slept with her has an amusing quality though again equally hard to believe that all of these men would be cool with everybody knowing that they’ve bedded a prostitute. I’ll give props though to the segment showing Scotty getting treatment in the hospital, which gets shown exclusively through still photos, which I found visually innovative.

Unfortunately everything else falls into second-rate melodramatics. It doesn’t even have the decency to tells us whether Scotty dies or not. When an entire movie deals with a character’s ultimate demise I think it should eventually get answered instead of leaving it open. It makes the whole terminal illness thing seem like a tease done to emotionally manipulate the viewer than an actual reality that it supposedly is.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1980

Runtime: 2 Hours 1 Minute

Rated PG

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies from Canada, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Dirty Little Billy (1972)

Posted on November 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

dirty

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: From awkward to outlaw.

Loosely based on the life of Billy the Kid the film centers on a young Billy Bonney (Michael J. Pollard) who moves to Kansas with his mother (Dran Hamilton) and her new husband Henry (Willard Sage). Billy and Henry don’t get along as Henry feels Billy is lazy and doesn’t help out enough with the farm chores. When Henry informs Billy one night that he needs to leave and never come back Billy does just that by hopping onto the nearest train that’s traveling back east only to at the last minute hop off of it and into a nearby small town where he encounters Goldie (Richard Evans) and his girlfriend Berle (Lee Purcell) who run a small gang of outlaws and are holed-up inside a bar run by Jawbone (Josip Elic). Initially Goldie and Billy are incompatible, but eventually Berle softens towards him and even allows him to go to bed with her. When Billy comes to their rescue when they have a confrontation with another gang he’s eventually welcomed into the group and ultimately becomes its new leader.

By the early 70’s the revisionist western, which portrayed the west in a less ideal way focused more on the realism and merged the good and evil theme so that it became less clear who the hero and bad guy were, became all the rage. Films like The Wild Bunch and McCabe and Mrs. Miller were critical darlings and set the standard for all westerns that followed. This film I considered to be one of the best and yet has strangely been overlooked and isn’t even in Wikipeadia’s list of revisionist westerns from that period, which is a real shame as this masterpiece deserves from more attention and if anything should be at the top of the list and figured prominently.

What’s even more baffling is that it was directed by Stan Dragoti a man that started out in commercial photography and had no aspirations for film directing until finally, at the age of 40, getting the offer to direct this one. The film is so highly stylized and has such a strong a precise artistic vision that I would liken this directorial debut to those of Richard Linklater, Quentin Tarantino, or Jim Jarmusch who burst into the film scene with a distinct style that took audiences and critics by storm while ultimately continuing each of their follow-up projects with the same unique approach and theme, but with Dragoti, who was married to supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, that was not the case. The films he did after this were all lightweight comedies that had a generic look and no resemblance to this one. How someone with no background in movies could helm something as flawless as this is hard to answer, but in the music world you have obscure bands who manage to make it big with one song and they end up being called one-hit-wonders and I guess in Dragoti’s case that’s what this movie was to him and his career.

The acting is masterful as well especially Pollard whose career was quite up-and-down. While he had been appearing in TV productions from as early as the late 50’s it wasn’t until his breakout role in Bonnie and Clyde that he came to the attention of audiences and studio heads alike. Trying to subsequently cast him in a film where he’d be the right leading man though was no easy task. The first attempt was Little Faus and Big Halsey, which did not do well at the box office and rumors of him fighting with his co-star Robert Redford didn’t help things. This role though, where his moody presence is put to perfect use, was a terrific fit and despite already being in his early 30’s his boyish face still gave off the late adolescence look that was needed. Lee Purcell is also fantastic in a sort of plain-Jane role where she wears no make-up, but still looks striking and her knife fight with another woman, played by Rosary Nix, is one of the movie’s top moments.

Overall, outside of the gritty visuals that have an almost poetic quality, what I liked most was how the characters didn’t seem locked into their time period like so many other historical type films. Too many other movies trying to recreate past eras end up having people who seem antiquated and not relatable while this bunch, particularly Billy and the outlaws came-off like people who could’ve easily fit-in with the hippies of the 60’s, or anyone that was living outside the system. They were simply looking for purpose and finding it by lashing out at a society that didn’t seem to want them, which in many cases is the common thread of most criminals of today as well.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: October 25, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stan Dragoti

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Moody/Stylish, Revisionist Western

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Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

Posted on November 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

broadway2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Talent agent becomes beard.

Danny Rose (Woody Allen) is a hapless talent agent who represents clients who are down-and-out, but seeking a comeback. Lou (Nick Apollo Forte) is a singer who uses Danny as his agent. Since he has some potential and might even get hired by a big star, in this case Milton Berle who plans on tabbing him as his opening act, Danny will do anything to keep Lou happy especially since Danny’s other clients tend to drop him once they become famous, which Danny doesn’t want to happen again. In order to appease him Lou has Danny acting as a ‘beard’, or a person who pretends to being a boyfriend to someone he really isn’t. In this case it’s to Tina (Mia Farrow) a woman whose been dating a gangster. Danny acts as her boyfriend to draw attention away from Lou, but her ex-gangster lover becomes jealous and thinking Danny to be the real boyfriend sends out a hit on him forcing both he and Tina to go on-the-run.

While this film did well with the critics I felt it was pretty much a letdown. What annoyed me most was the washed-up, aging comedians sitting around a cafe table and essentially telling the story, which gets done in flashback. I felt these comedians, who say nothing that is funny, or even slightly amusing, served no real purpose except for maybe padding the runtime, which was short already, and the scenario could’ve easily played-out without constantly cutting-back to these guys to add in their useless side commentary. This also cements Allen’s transition from being hip and edgy. which he was considered as during the 70’s, to out-of-touch with day’s youth and young adults by the 80’s as no one in this movie appears to be under 40.

It’s confusing too what time period this is all supposed to be taking place in. Supposedly the cutaways to the comedians is present day though with it being shot in black-and-white it hardly seems like it, and then the scenes with Danny are apparently things that happened in the 60’s. This though gets completely botched not only because of the cars they drive, which are of an 80’s variety, but there’s also a scene where Lou and Danny are walking on a sidewalk and go past a theater marque advertising Halloween III, which was  a film that was released in 1982.

On the plus side I enjoyed Mia’s performance of a hot-headed, highly oppionated Italian especially with the dark glasses and bouffant hair-do, which could’ve been done up even more. She’s known as being such a serious actress, who’s marvelous in drama, but to see her able to handle the comedy and even become the centerpiece is a real treat. Woody and her make for a quirky couple, she’s actually taller than him when they stand side-by-side, and she really gets in some good digs on him. Though with that said I actually wished that Nick had played the role of Danny as his amateurish acting made his doopy character funnier and the scenes between him and yappy Mia could’ve been a real riot.

There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, though it certainly takes it sweet time getting there. Watching Woody and Mia attempt to escape the killer by running through a field of tall grass I liked as too the scene where they are chased into a warehouse filled with parade floats and the hydrogen that escapes from them, due to the shooting bullets, causing their voices to become extremely high-pitched. The rest of the humor though relied heavily on Italian-American stereotypes that have been done hundreds of times before and isn’t original. I was also surprised that it has walk-on cameos by Howard Cossell and Milton Berle, who even appears in drag during the Thanksgiving Day parade, but are given no lines of dialogue.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: January 27, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Farce, Gangster Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

Posted on November 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

looking

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: School teacher sleeps around.

Theresa (Diane Keaton) is a young school teacher trying to get over the break-up with Martin (Alan Feinstein) a married college professor of whom she’d been in a relationship with for several years. Tired of living with her parents (Priscilla Pointer, Richard Kiley) and her domineering father she decides to get a studio apartment near the club scene. She picks-up Tony (Richard Gere) at a bar one night and takes him home. His volatile, drug induced behavior scares her at first, but eventually she enjoys his unpredictable ways. When he disappears for long periods she begins bringing more strangers home finding the one-night-stands to be a liberating change from her repressive catholic upbringing, but the more she partakes in this edgy lifestyle the more danger she puts herself in.

The film is based on the Judith Rossner novel of the same name, which itself is based on the true story of Roseann Quinn. Quinn was a school teacher living in New York City who had a propensity of bringing home men she’d meet from a bar that was across the street from her studio apartment. On the evening of January 1st, 1973 she invited John Wayne Wilson, a man she met at the bar, back to her place for intended sex, but instead it resulted in murder when he was unable to achieve an erection and he felt she was making fun of him.

Rossner read about the incident in a newspaper and became intrigued with the case and intended to write about it for an upcoming article in Esquire magazine, but the editor feared legal action since it was based on an actual case and reneged on the assignment, so Rossner turned it into a novel using fictional names for the real-life people. It got published in 1975 to rave reviews and instantly became a best seller, which caught the attention of writer/director Richard Brooks who had turned other true crime stories into hits such as In Cold Blood and felt he could do the same with this. In fact the film did quite well as it raked in $22.5 million and was the top movie in the country on its opening weekend.

While Rossner openly detested the film version I felt it does a great job of exposing the bleak, lonely existence of the 70’s single’s scene and how sexual liberation can end up being just as much of a trap, if not more, as monogamy. The dim, dark lighting, particularly inside Theresa’s apartment brings out the grim existence, and twisted personalities, of its characters nicely. The viewer feels as caught up in the depressing, aimless world as the protagonist and its the vividness of the 70’s young adult, city culture that makes this an excellent film to see simply to understand the motivations of the people who lived it. While on paper reading about someone that was a school teacher for deaf students during the day turning into a reckless, sexually promiscuous lady by night may seem shocking and hard to fathom, the film seamlessly fills-in-the-blanks to the extent  that you fully grasp, from her stifling family and religious upbringing as well as her painful break-up and insecure body image, to what drove her to it and thus cultivates a very revealing character study.

Keaton, Kiley and Tuesday Weld, who plays Theresa’s older sister who experiments with the wild lifestyle herself, are all stand-outs, but the film also has some great performances from actors who at the time were unknowns. Gere is especially good, quite possibly one of the best acting jobs of his career, as the creepy, but still strangely endearing Tony. LeVar Burton has very few lines, but still makes an impression with his pouty facial expressions as the older brother to one of Theresa’s deaf students. Tom Berenger though turns out to being the ultimate scene stealer as the psychotic who’s so on edge with his personal demons that he lashes violently out over the smallest of provocations.

Spoiler Alert!

While the film is known mainly for its notorious ending, which still packs a bit of a punch, its effect is muted by director Brooks unwisely telegraphing it ahead of time. Virtually the whole movie is done from Theresa’s point-of-view and yet at the very end it cheats it by having a scene between Gary and his gay lover giving the viewer an unnecessary warning about his mental state, which wasn’t needed. For one thing in the real-life incident the assailant was a married man and not gay, so adding in the gay subtext and using it to explain his psychosis could be considered homophobic and armchair psychology. It also hurts the shock value as the audience knows what’s coming versus having them as surprised as Theresa when he suddenly lashes out unexpectedly, which would’ve made for a more emotionally impactful, gripping finish.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 19, 1977

Runtime: 2 Hours 16 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Brooks

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Christmas Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity

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First Monday in October (1981)

Posted on November 23, 2023 | 2 comments

firstoctober

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: The first lady justice.

While Daniel Snow (Walter Matthau), an associate justice on the Supreme Court who leans heavily left on most issues, is on vacation in Alaska, he gets word that the staunch conservative judge has passed away. The President then decides to nominate a woman to the court by the name of Ruth Loomis (Jill Clayburgh). Unfortunately Daniel is not happy about this as she’s as conservative as the man she replaced. Once the nomination is confirmed the two are immediately at odds over such things as pornographic movies and corporations that pollute the environment. While they bicker and debate constantly they do end up becoming friends, which comes in handy when Ruth realizes that her late husband was involved in some unscrupulous matters and she considers resigning from her position though Daniel tries desperately to talk her out of it.

The film is based on the 1978 play of the same name written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, who also wrote the screenplay. Initially the play, which first starred Jean Arthur and Melvyn Douglas received such terrible reviews that it soon closed and was revamped with Henry Fonda and Jane Alexander, was considered a novelty as up to that time no woman had ever served on the nation’s highest court. That all changed when Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’ Connor in July of 1981 forcing this film, in an effort to appear timely, to move up its release date to August, but the timing didn’t work and the movie was overall panned by both the critics and public.

The only interesting aspect is watching it from today’s perspective where the Supreme Court has now become a toxic and divisive issue when back in the early 80’s that was not the case. When the Girl Scouts of America posted on Twitter commemorating Amy Coney Barret getting nominated and approaching it as an achievement for women it got a lot of pushback from those unhappy with her due to her conservative leanings. Yet in this movie the fact that the character is staunchly conservative is not considered a problem and feminists and other women are seen during the senate hearings proudly cheer her on and considering her nomination a landmark.

In some ways having the political drama that the modern day court holds today might’ve made the story more interesting as the thing is so genteel that it’s enough to put most people to sleep. The script would’ve had more intrigue had their been a bad guy, maybe like the producer of the porn movies who gets talked about, but never seen, or even the elusive head of a mysterious corporation whose case the court is set to hear, that should’ve been added in to create genuine conflict, which is otherwise sorely missing.

I did like the scene where the judges get together inside a viewing room to watch the porno flick ‘The Naked Nymphomaniac’, but Matthau’s character should’ve been present during this and it’s less funny without him. Their subsequent arguments about whether X-rated movies should be allowed under the First Amendment seems quite dated as this issue had already been considered settled law and by the 80’s most video stores were offering adult films for rental and cable movie channels were showing porn late at night making the plot here woefully out of touch with the times.

Matthau and Clayburgh are great actors, but their performances here prove to be dull and lifeless. Having some sort of romance enter into the picture, it gets briefly alluded to when Matthau admits to having a certain attraction to Jill, but immediately dropped, might’ve given it a spicy angle, but just portraying them as friends with different viewpoints isn’t enough to keep it captivating. There’s  not too much that’s funny either. There’s a couple of semi-humorous lines here and there, but nothing that will make anyone break out into uproarious laughter. Matthau’s inability to eat his lunch using chopsticks while in a Chinese restaurant might amuse some slightly, but overall it’s a dull, empty ride. Very surprising that this thing received an R-rating. The only objectionable part is when they watch a porn flick, but nothing much in the way of nudity or sex is shown.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ronald Neame

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity

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The Big Bus (1976)

Posted on November 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bomb planted on bus.

Cyclops is the new revolutionary designed double-decker bus that because it’s powered by nuclear fuel will allow it to travel non-stop between New York and Denver. Just before it’s set to make its maiden voyage a bomb goes off within the facility it’s been housed in, which seriously injures the bus’s designer Professor Baxter (Harold Gould). The vehicle itself remains unscathed, so the Professor’s daughter, Kitty (Stockard Channing), takes control of the project and hires a new driver named Dan (Joseph Bologna) whom she had a relationship with in the past. Dan though is still fighting-off the stigma of having crashed another bus into the mountains, and after being stranded for many days ended up reverting to cannibalism by eating all the rest of the passengers. The trip faces further obstacles when unscrupulous billionaire Iron Lung (Joes Ferrer), who resides inside a iron lung due to having polio as a child, orders his henchmen Alex (Stuart Margolin) to plant a bomb on the bus, so that it will be destroyed and prevent nuclear fuel from overtaking gasoline of which he owns much stock. Will Dan be able to overcome both his past and personal problems to both find and prevent the bomb from going off, or will this become yet another disaster on his already checkered past?

While Airplane! is widely thought-of as being the original parody of 70’s disaster flicks it’s really this one that came out a full 4 years earlier that deserves the credit. While it didn’t do well at the box office, which essentially pushed it off into obscurity it still upon second look has a lot of funny moments and deserves much more attention than it has gotten.  Not every gag works and some do fizzle, but the script by writing team Fred Freeman and Lawrence J. Cohen has far more hits than misses. Some of the best bits are the indoor swimming pool on the bus as well as the bowling alley and disco and the radiation suit to put on in times of emergency including the reaction of the passengers when it gets hung down from the ceiling compartment during the flight instructions. The attempt to treat the bus like it’s a metaphor for an airplane, which was the mode of transportation used in most disaster flicks, is quite funny especially the scene where crews in a small town try to halt the bus, or essentially ‘force it to land’ by spraying the main street with foam in order to slow the vehicle down.

The acting is in top form with many familiar faces from both television and the big screen. Stockard was probably my favorite she pretty much plays her part straight, but still manages to be quite amusing especially during the segment when she gets stuck inside a room that fills up with soda, which she stated in later interviews she almost drowned in.  Richard Mulligan and Sally Kellerman are equally amusing as a soon-to-be-divorced couple who share a rather unusual love-hate relationship. Larry Hagman as a dubious doctor, Ned Beatty as a moody technician and Murphy Dunne as a caustic pianist all help to top-it-off. Even Bologna, whose normally brash persona doesn’t make him a likely hero, scores comedic points though John Beck as his co-driver with a tendency to pass-out the second he gets nervous steals away most of the scenes they share.

Spoiler Alert!

The actual disaster, where the bus precariously balances over a cliff, is nicely photographed in a way that makes it seem real with some good stunt work, but I was disappointed that this ends up being the only real exciting moment. I didn’t like either that at the very end, just before the final credits begin to roll, the bus splits apart, which creates screams from the passengers. This was the type of movie where despite their oddball nature I had grown kind of fond of the daffy bunch and wanted to see them arrive safely, which with the ending here doesn’t occur. Instead the viewer is left (no pun intended) hanging, which is a giant cop-out. Just about every disaster flick made offers a conclusion where we see if the people ultimately make it out alive, or not and doing it the way they do here makes the viewer feel like they’ve seen only half a movie, which could explain why this did poorly at the box office.

A  good way to have prevented this would’ve been to chop up the beginning, which has a lot of unnecessary back-story. The bombing of the facility wasn’t needed as all of the calamity should’ve been saved for the bus ride itself. Dan’s visit to a bar in which the patrons harass him about his notorious past gets cheesy, particularly the cartoonish barroom brawl. This should’ve been cut- out too. The rumors of Dan’s supposed cannibalism could’ve been brought up at the press conference announcing the bus’s initial trip and seeing Dan’s uncomfortable response would’ve been enough to make the audience realize he had personal demons to overcome. The rest of the time could then be spent on the various problems that the bus runs into as it travels on road, which would’ve allowed for more excitement versus having the disaster portion seem like a side-story to the barrage of jokes that don’t always work.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 23, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William Frawley

Studio: Paramount

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Disaster Flicks, Parody, Road Movies

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Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the Bandit?

Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) announces his retirement as sheriff after more than 30 years of service. He decides to spend his time in Florida where he expects to get some rest and relaxation. However, once he becomes a part of the senior community he doesn’t enjoy it and feels the need to get back to what he liked doing most, which was chasing after the elusive Bandit. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer him a deal to get back into the swing of things. They bet that he can’t drive his police car from Miami, Florida to Austin, Texas, a total of 1,400 miles, in two days with a stuffed fish tied to the top of the car. If he’s able to succeed at the challenge he’ll make $250,000, which Buford readily accepts. To keep him from getting there the two Enos brothers set-up traps along the way in order to stymie his progress, but Buford and his dim-witted son Junior (Mike Henry) manage to get out of each predicament that gets thrown at them, so the Enos brothers decide to call-in Snowman (Jerry Reed) to help them. Snowman is a trucker, but in this instance he gets to pretend he’s the Bandit and even dress in his get-up and drive Bandit’s fancy black and gold Pontiac Trans Am. The new Bandit, who picks-up Dusty (Colleen Camp), a disgruntled used car sales woman along the way, soon catches up with Buford and son and steals their stuffed fish, which turns-the-tables and forces Buford to go after them.

By 1982 both Hal Needham, who had directed the first two installments, and Burt Reynolds, who had played the Bandit in the first two go-arounds, were no longer interested in getting involved in the project for another time as both were already busy working together on Stroker Ace. The studio though didn’t want to give up on the idea of a third installment since the first two had made a lot of money, so they signed-on Gleason to reprise his role as Buford with the promise that he’d have full script approval, which proved difficult as he didn’t like any of the scripts that were handed to him and at one point made the glib remark “with scripts like these who needs writers?’. After going through 11 rejections the writers finally hit on the idea of letting Gleason play dual roles of both the Bandit and the sheriff. Initially Gleason didn’t like this either, but the prospect of hamming up two different characters, which he had already done in Part 2 where he played Buford’s two cousins Gaylord and Reginald, got the better of his ego, so it received the green light.

In October of 1982 the script with Gleason in both roles was shot, but with no explanation for why he was playing the Bandit and everyone else in the story playing it straight like they didn’t see the difference. Eventually upon completion it was sent to a test audience in Pittsburgh where they gave the film unanimously negative feedback convincing the studio that the experimental novelty wasn’t going to work. They then hired Jerry Reed, who wasn’t even in the project before then, and asked him to reprise his role as Snowman who would then disguise himself as the Bandit. Then every scene that originally had Gleason in the role as Bandit was reshot with Reed now doing the part, but all the rest of the scenes that had already been filmed without the Bandit remained intact. The reshot Bandit segments were filmed in April of 1983 and the film eventually got its release in August of that year where the response of audiences and critics alike remained just as negative.

For years this was considered by many to be an urban myth as no footage with Gleason as the bandit was ever seen, but then in 2010 a promo of Gleason playing Buford, but talking about becoming the Bandit, or ‘his own worst enemy’ appeared on YouTube with the title of Smokey IS the Bandit Part 3 and Jerry Reed’s name not appearing anywhere on the cast list. Then in 2016 the actual shooting script that was shot in October of 1982 was downloaded to IMDb’s message board (back when they still had them), which plainly detailed Gleason as the Bandit, but had no written dialogue for those scenes since Gleason was routinely allowed to ad-lib his lines. The lost footage of Gleason in the Bandit scenes is purportedly in the control of the Gleason estate where it’s kept under wraps never to be shown to anyone again by apparently Gleason himself who felt humiliated by the test audiences negative reaction.

As it is the movie is not funny at all and unsurprisingly did not do well at the box office. Nothing much makes sense and the humor is highly strained including a drawn-out segment featuring the Klu Klux Klan, which I found downright offensive. Having a Blu-ray release of the lost footage of Gleason in dual roles would most likely be a big money maker as through the years it’s built up a lot of curiosity. It might be confusing and weird just like the original test audiences said it was, but it couldn’t be any worse than what we ultimately get here, which is as bottom-of-the-barrel as they come.

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My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: August 12, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Dick Lowry

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Crude Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Sequels

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