Square DANCE (1987)

Posted on September 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

square

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Moving to the city.

Gemma (Winona Ryder) is a country girl whose never known life beyond the small Texas farm that she lives on with her grandfather (Jason Robards). She at times though does think about her mother (Jane Alexander) who lives in Dallas and what city living would be like. One day her mother takes a rare trip to the farm and invites Gemma to come live with her. Gemma is turning 13 and intrigued to spreading-her-wings. While she loves her grandfather she’d be interested in trying something new, so she agrees to go with her while promising to write home to her grandfather regularly. Once there she finds the jaded lifestyle of her mother and the people around her not to be to her liking as Gemma is quite religious and reads her Bible often. She does though meet-up with Rory (Rob Lowe) a young man who is mentally handicapped, but professes to love her and the two plan to one day get married despite the opposition by her mother and those around her.

This was a film produced by Michael Nesmith better known for being a part of the Monkees rock band in the 60’s. Some of the other films he produced were of a comical/surreal nature, but this is one of the few dramas that he did (the film was also co-produced by co-star Jane Alexander and actor Charles Haid) and while some of his comedies weren’t so great this thing could’ve used some laughs to help liven it up. While the intentions may have been laudable the result is mostly tedium as its attempts to reflect the slow lifestyle of country living backfires creating a movie that’s too methodically paced to ever become interesting and the fact that it managed to only recoup $225,000 at the box office out of its initial $4 million budget is no surprise.

If you watch this movie for any reason do it for the acting, which is exemplary. Ryder, in only her second film appearance, crafts a shy, awkward and sheltered teen quite well and her performance helps guide the viewer through the lulls. Robards and Alexander are equally fine, which is to be expected, but Lowe is probably the most impressive playing against type. Usually he played cocky, worldly-wise types, but here shines as a kind, but dim-witted soul though his delivery, in retrospect, comes-off too much like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. Granted this one came out 6 years before that one, but since that film is more famous than this one you can’t help but compare the two and come away feeling, despite Lowe’s best efforts, that his acting here is a bit affected.

The story is too minimalistic as not enough happens to justify sitting through 90-minutes of it. I had a hard time buying into Gemma believing she could marry a mentally handicapped man and having it work out. Granted she’s not worldly-wise and lacks sophistication, but I felt this type of thinking was too naïve even for someone with her background. Wanting to help the man and take care of him possibly as a guardian of some kind would be fine, but the love aspect gets overblown and makes the film come-off as overly idealized and not realistic.

None of the characters, with the exception of maybe Lowe’s, goes through much of a transition. I was expecting Gemma to become corrupted by the jaded ways of the people she meets and possibly even becoming less religious, or even beginning to question her faith, but none of that happens. Gemma basically remains the same, even after a few tussles, and returns back to the farm like nothing happened, which made me wonder what was the point. There’s way too many loose ends that are left open like the grandfather’s lingering racism and his inability to get along with a black friend he used to play with when he was a kid. Gemma invites the black man over for dinner, but the film fails to show us whether the two men begin talking, or remain silent. A good drama should give us some conclusion to things and see the characters grow, which in this case it doesn’t do making the whole thing seem half-baked and not worth the effort or time.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: January 16, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Daniel Petrie

Studio: Island Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in Texas, Obscure Movies

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The Twelve Chairs (1970)

Posted on September 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

twelve

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Which chair has fortune?

Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody), an poor man living in 1920’s Russia, is summoned to the deathbed of his mother-in-law. She confides in him that there’s a stash of priceless jewels sewn into the seat cushions of one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dinning room set. Unfortunately the newly formed Russian state has appropriated all private property and it’s up to Vorobyaninov to track them down. He teams up with Ostop (Frank Langella) a local con-man to help him, but they have competition. Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), a priest, also becomes aware of the jewels when he goes to the mother-in-law’s home to give her the last rites. All three go on a mad dash to retrieve the jewels, but the more chairs they manage to find the more frustrated they become.

The film is based on the 1928 Russian novel of the same name by Ilf and Petrov a famous duo who were quite popular during the early soviet period and wrote not only many satirical novels, including this one and its sequel ‘A Little Golden Calf’, but also several short stories, articles, theatrical plays, and even screenplays. The Twelve Chairs novel though was their most popular and has been made into a movie 18 different times. It had already been done 6 times before Mel Brooks did his with the first version being in 1933 and the most recent rendition of it done in 2013 in Italy.

This version is the most popular and a bit of stretch from Brooks’ other films, which relied on a lot of gags and slapstick. This one has its fair share of those though the first act is quite talky and not too much going on. Brooks himself appears as a character, but he can’t really enliven it. It’s not until the men finally come upon the chairs and start tearing them up one-by-one that it really starts to get funny. The chair thing could’ve gotten redundant as the men rip open the seat cushions in pretty much the same quick way, but Brooks manages to approach each of these scenes in a creative way, so instead of becoming monotonous it remains fresh and comical. My favorite of these is when Ron Moody and Frank Langella chase Dom, who has one of the chairs, through an open field that’s done in stop-action.

The film’s detraction though is the casting of the two main characters. Langella is a terrific actor, but not in comedy. He did appear in the dark comedy Diary of a Mad Housewife, where he was very good, but that took advantage of his glib demeanor and pouty expression and his character there was meant to be unlikable. Here though he has nothing amusing to say and remains a complete jerk the whole way. There is one point where he and Moody are in a row boat and Moody states that he’s cold and Langella gives him a jacket to wear, which I guess was Brooks’ attempt to make him likable, but it’s not enough and the movie is really hurt by spending so much time focused on a guy who’s one-dimensionally cold and responds to antics around him in the same sneering way. He was recommended to Brooks by his wife Anne Bancroft who had performed with Langella in a Broadway play that had a short run, but I felt this is one time when he shouldn’t have listened to her.

Ron Moody, a talented actor as well, has the same issue. The character is meant to be dim-witted, but it doesn’t come-off in a natural way. His banter with Langella is flat and annoying with the bickering doing nothing but slowing up the pacing. Without question DeLuise is the funniest. He’s just as conniving and greedy as the other two, but for whatever reason it doesn’t seem as ingratiating. His character’s ineptness had me laughing and he should’ve been the star while Langella and Moody could’ve been shown only sporadically as the occasional nemesis.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is much different than the one in the book. In the novel version Vorobyaninov kills Ostap by slitting his throat with a razor in order to keep the loot for himself only to find that it’s not there, so he then goes insane. In the movie Vorobyaninov and Ostap team up to become beggars on the street by pretending Vorobyaninov has an epileptic condition and requesting people throw money at him to help him. Wikipedia, in a line that has since been deleted, stated that this was a ‘happier’ ending though trying to make a living being a street beggar all day can’t be all that fun.

What amused me though is that in both versions the jewels are never recovered by the two men. In the movie the jewels were found first by someone else who used it to build a clubhouse for pompous old men making it seem like greed was inevitable. In the book though the money gets used to build a recreational center that can be used by the entire community and thus giving it more of a pro-communist bent.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 28, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Mel Brooks

Studio: UMC Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Farce, Movies Based on Novels

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The Squeeze (1987)

Posted on September 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

squeeze

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They rig the lottery.

When struggling artist and conman Harry (Michael Keaton) goes back to his ex-wife’s apartment to retrieve a mysterious package she had forgotten he finds a dead body and immediately becomes entangled in a complex mystery as well as a target of a secret organization. He enlists the help of private investigator Rachel (Rae Dawn Chong) and together they come to realize that the package that everyone is after is a large magnet that can be used to rig the lottery as it can manipulate the ping pong balls that display the winning numbers since those numbers are painted using a metallic substance. They proceed to try and stop the live broadcast of the lottery, which is being held onboard a naval ship and being hosted by the secretly nefarious Honest Tom T. Murray (John Davidson).

The film has come to have a notorious reputation on many levels. Not only did it sink at the box office where it managed to recoup a paltry $2 million from its $22 million budget, but the film’s promotional poster has star Keaton being squeezed between the World Trade Center buildings, which ultimately went down on 9-11. Even worse is that behind-the-scenes stunt driver Victor Magnotta, the movie is dedicated in his memory, died when the car he was driving went into the Hudson river on its side instead of flat, which trapped him inside the vehicle and unable to get out before he drowned though the stunt itself is left in.

While many critics and even commenters on IMDb have very little to say that’s nice about it I kind of felt that the movie was misunderstood as I saw it more as a parody of spy espionage stories and in that vein I think it works well, but since American audiences aren’t all that adept to satire and many times don’t get it, or take it seriously when they shouldn’t, it’s easy to see why this thing fell through the cracks. It does though have a few memorable moments including an unusual car chase where instead of having the hero speeding away from the bad guys they instead play a game of chicken where they intentionally crash their vehicles into the other one until both cars are left almost inoperable. I also thought the giant sized bull that Keaton created inside his apartment and made-up of a bunch of television sets was pretty cool too.

Keaton is certainly quite likable and without him the movie would’ve done far worse than it does. His engaging ability to make a joke, or even an insult, to someone, but always able to get away with it, by displaying his boyish trademark smile, is what makes his screentime entertaining though I felt the running conversation involving the old TV-show ‘Bonanza’ was a mistake. Young people of today won’t even know what that show was and even back then during the 80’s many teens would have only a vague idea of the series was as it had already been off the air since 1972 and didn’t do well in syndication and thus making the humor and inside jokes about it as out-of-touch and dated even for its own time period.

Chong is miscast, the part was intended for Mariel Hemingway who unfortunately got fired early on. While Chong can be great playing strong minded, outspoken characters she’s not as adept as a romantic lead and I failed to see much chemistry between the two. She falls-in-love with the guy a bit too quickly especially since they don’t get off to a good start. Having her come back to Keaton’s place and become outraged at seeing him in bed with another woman was out of place as no relationship had been established at that point. If anything she would’ve masked the feelings she had for him when seeing him with another lady and played it cool in order to avoid embarrassing herself when it became painfully obvious, at least at that point, that she was more into him than he was in her.

Ronald Guttman as the chief villain is a total bore and with his greased back hair looks more like a model for an Italian chick flick romance than a bad guy and his collection of shrunken heads doesn’t get played-up enough to be interesting. Meat Loaf though as his henchman is great. He has no lines of dialogue until he gets killed, via the pointy needle of a giant sized replica of the Empire State Building, which is pretty cool, though what he does say is very funny.

The film does at least give one a vivid feeling of what living in New York is like as it captures all the different levels of the city from its skyline, to the river, to its neighborhood shops and even the skid row area. Even this though does get botched as there are segments done late at night where there appears to be no other cars on the street, or pedestrians giving it a surreal look that isn’t realistic as New York is known as the city that never sleeps and thus portraying it as being virtually empty just because the action takes place in the wee hours of the morning isn’t authentic.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 10, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Roger Young

Studio: TriStar Pictures

Available: Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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The Last Word (1979)

Posted on August 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

lastword1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: He won’t move out.

Danny (Richard Harris) is a stubborn and eccentric man who refuses to move out of an apartment building that has been marked for demolition. After his attempts to get a lawyer and also collect welfare prove futile he decides to kidnap the Marshal (Jorge Cervera) who comes to his apartment to serve him his eviction notice. He chains the Marshal to a pipe in his bathroom and then barricades himself and his three children inside. A TV news reporter (Karen Black) feels this will be a juicy story and gets permission to go up to Danny’s place in order to interview him live on the air while the police captain (Martin Landau), who was at one time an old friend to Danny, plots on a way to get him out even if it means deadly force.

This stale drama borrows on a lot elements that have been done before and fails to add anything interesting to the mix. The chief flaw is that there isn’t any explanation for why Danny won’t move out when everyone else in the building does. The apartment itself is quite cramped and nothing special and chances are he could’ve found something bigger, or just as adequate. Without proper motivation the protagonist’s quandry becomes rather irrelevant and even selfish as his stubbornness puts the rest of his family through a lot of needless stress and trauma and having the character be someone who is old and on a fixed income with nowhere else to turn, as much of a caricature as this is, would’ve at least gotten more emotional appeal from the viewer, which with the way it gets done here you really don’t get.

Harris execellent acting helps, but all his inventions start to become a bit cheesy especially his ‘gas masks’ which is nothing more than paper folded around the face with a Campbell’s soup can taped to the bottom, which apparently should be ‘sufficient’ to breath through if under attack, but look laughable and most likely the gas vapors would seep through the paper and thus making them a poor defense. Black, who would co-star with Harris 6 years later in Martin’s Day, plays a serious career driven woman, which is a nice variation from her usual flaky, ditzy types, but her character is unlikable, who initially tries to exploit Danny’s situation for her own gain and having her ‘come around’ at the end to be on his side isn’t enough to make up for it and she should’ve been portrayed as being more emphatic from the beginning.

His three children, played by Penelope Milford, Dennis Christopher, and Natasha Ryan all display the same type of personality and thus become indistinguishable and boring. They all seem to love their father quite a bit and are very loyal and yet refer to him as Danny instead of Dad, which is a bit weird. Landau displays a nice acerbic quality, and the first film where his hair begins to show a few spots of gray, but his character should’ve been the one to go up to the apartment and break into it, especially since he and Danny had a history together, versus having him remain on the ground while his men did the task, which loses out on what could’ve had more dramatic impact.

Spoiler Alert!

The first act is a strain to sit through and is approached in a way that would’ve made it better served as a TV-movie. The second act gets a little more tense when he barricades himself into the apartment and the way he uses all of his different inventions to stop the cops from getting inside is marginally entertaining, but the film leaves way too many things open ended. He eventually gets cuffed and arrested, but no closure as to what happens to him after that. Does he go to trial and win his case? Does he and his family get a new place, or does the building get saved and what happens to the Governor (Biff McGuire) who was exposed as being corrupt? None of this gets answered, which makes the ending like the rest of the film quite unsatisfying.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ray Boulting

Studio: Variety International

Available: None

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Obscure Movies

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The Last Hard Men (1976)

Posted on August 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

lasthard

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kidnapping a lawmen’s daughter.

Based on the 1971 novel ‘Gundown’ by Brian Garfield who’s better known for having written Death Wish, the story is set in 1909 and centers on Sam Burgade (Charlton Heston) a retired lawman living with his grown daughter Susan (Barbara Hershey) who is engaged to Hal (Christopher Mitchum). They though are tormented by Provo (James Coburn) and his gang who have just busted out of a Yuma prison. Provo seeks revenge on Sam because years earlier Sam killed Provo’s Indian wife during a shoot-out. Provo though doesn’t want to just kill Sam, but instead inflict the cruelest revenge possible by kidnapping Susan and then having his men gang rape her while both Sam and Hal are forced to watch.

A stale, unimaginative approach that lacks any atmosphere and makes getting into it rather hard. Coburn and Heston are given equal screen time, so it’s confusing who we’re supposed to be rooting for. Sure Coburn has dark motives, but he also at one point gets rid of one of his own men (Robert Donner) for being a racist, so he’s not completely bad. The film’s biggest transgression is that it never shows, via flashback, the crucial shoot-out between the two that caused Provo to get so angry. Just having Heston briefly describe the incident to his daughter is not enough we needed to see what happened for ourselves especially since Heston becomes downright skittish about what went on and like maybe he had something to hide. Without having it played-out the movie lacks much needed context.

Coburn is a personal favorite, but as the protagonist, which he always does quite colorfully. As the villain it doesn’t work and he seems unable, or unwilling to go to the nasty depth that the script demands and instead leaves this to his henchmen, played by John Quade. Heston is adequate and Mitchum (Robert’s son) certainly displays a youthful, wide-eyed quality and it’s intriguing seeing how he grows from a young man who doesn’t seem rugged enough to take on the challenge to eventually proving himself.

In support I enjoyed Larry Wilcox, but known for starring in the ‘CHIPS’ TV-show, as he’s one of the evil henchmen that manages to show some redeeming qualities and it’s genuinely sad when he gets shot. While I’m a fan of Hershey and appreciated how she took a stretch here by playing a part outside her comfort zone I still felt she was miscast. The character needed to be sheltered and helpless in order to get the viewer to care about her predicament, but she’s too savvy and streetwise from the start making it seem like she can handle matters and take care of herself, which lessens the tension. Having her grow into becoming this way during the ordeal would’ve been more interesting.

Spoiler Alert!

The third act does have a few moments that enliven things including a large bush fire that gets started by Heston that traps Coburn and his men, but the scene that really stood out is the gang rape of Hershey, which gets done in slow-motion on the side of a hill. I’ve seen many films that feature a rape, but never done in this way, which almost gives it a sort-of lyrical quality and the only thing from the movie that stands-out. Yet even this gets botched as Heston doesn’t run out from his hiding spot to save his daughter when it occurs making it seem like he might’ve been cowardly and this was a personality trait he had been hiding only for us to learn that it was because Mitchum who knocked him out, but this seemed implausible. Heston was much bigger than Mitchum and proved to be far more astute than him in everything else, so why would this be the one moment when the young kid would be able to overpower him?

The story would’ve been more intriguing had this moment exposed a flaw in Heston’s character, which would’ve given this otherwise one-dimensional story the depth and unexpected twist that was needed and it’s just a shame it didn’t take it. Certainly if put in better hands this is the kind of material that could have strong potential, but the way it gets played-out here, even with the violent moments, it’s boring and a disappointment.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 1, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Andrew V. McLaglen

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Westerns

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Roadie (1980)

Posted on August 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

roadie1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Truck driver and groupie.

Travis (Meat Loaf) and B.B. (Gailard Sartain) are two truck drivers out making deliveries when they come upon a disabled RV on the side of the highway. Initially they don’t plan to stop, but when Travis sees Lola (Kaki Hunter), a would-be rock ‘n’ roll groupie, peering out the RV window he decides he’s ‘fallen in love’ and pulls-over. His ability to fix mechanical issues using unorthodox tools impresses Ace (Joe Spano) who’s a road manager and wants Travis to drive them to Austin to set-up equipment for a Hank Williams Jr. show. Because of his fondness for Lola he agrees and promptly quits his job as a trucker to travel all over the country meeting such rock ‘n’ roll legends as Roy Orbison and Blondie while also awkwardly courting Lola who’s more infatuated with meeting her idol Alice Cooper.

While director Alan Rudolph has never had a box office hit his movies have usually achieved success amongst the critics except for this one, but  I considered it his most original effort. Roger Ebert described it as being ‘disorganized and episodic’ even though life on the road in a tour group works that way with new issues coming up almost hourly and like driving on the open road there can be many detours and speed bumps as well as fleeting faces, which in that context the film recreates, in quirky comic form, quite well. He also complained about the lack of character development and maybe in Travis’ case there wasn’t much, but he’s such a funny caricature that I didn’t think he needed any. With Lola though I felt there was and impressed me with how much depth she ultimately showed especially since she initially seemed like nothing more than a caricature too. I really liked that she wasn’t as into Travis at the start like he was into her, which can happen a lot, and she has to grow into liking him during their many adventures though still never really openly admits to it to either herself, or others, which I felt was a refreshing change from the ‘love at first sight’ thing in the Hollywood formulas. Ebert also complained that the songs were never played to completion though the ones that are about Texas are.

There’s many unique laugh-out-loud moments. Some of my favorites was the laundromat scene where Travis and Lola have a box of Tide that supposedly holds cocaine. The car chase in Austin done at night in front of the state Capitol building is amusing as is the barroom brawl. Granted there’s been a lot of those in movies, but like with everything else it has a quirky style unlike the others especially as Travis gets hit in the head and begins rambling out incoherent nonsense. The scenes at Travis’ boyhood home where his father (Art Carney) and sister Alice Poo (Rhonda Bates) are a riot including the telephone booth connected to machine belts that allows it to go from the exterior of the home to the inside and the BBQ chicken eating scene, which may be, at least visually, the best moment in the film.

It’s also nice to have a movie that’s all about Texas to actually be filmed in Texas. Too many try to cheat it, a few of them have been reviewed here recently, that mask the Arizona desert, or even the California one to Texas, but anyone from the Lone Star State could easily detect the difference. This one truly has the Texas look and you can see this from the very first shot which features armadillos crossing the highway and because of this it gets the honor of being put into the Scopophilia movie category of ‘Movies that take place in Texas’ versus the ones that say they are set here, but filmed elsewhere.

Spoiler Alert!

Probably the only thing that doesn’t quite work is the ending where Travis and Lola are kissing in the front seat of a pick-up only to see a bright light of a spaceship. I realize the intent was to do a parody of the ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ song and maybe if we had actually seen the ship, which got inadvertently destroyed before shooting began I might’ve forgiven it, or maybe even been impressed, but entering in a sci-fi genre that late becomes almost like a sell-out and too surreal for its own good. Something that stayed true to the playful quirkiness that came before it would’ve tied the bow better.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 13, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Alan Rudolph

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Movies that take place in Texas, Musical, Quirky, Road Movies, Romance

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Last Embrace (1979)

Posted on July 25, 2023 | 1 comment

lastembrace

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Someone wants him dead.

Loosely based on the novel ‘The 13th Man’ by Murray Teigh Bloom the story centers around Harry (Roy Scheider) a government agent who has a nervous breakdown after his wife gets killed during a shootout while he was on a secret mission. After spending time in a sanitarium he gets out to realize that his agency no longer has any assignments for him and he fears they may want him dead while trying to make it look like an accident. When he gets back to his apartment he finds that it’s been sublet to Ellie (Janet Margolin), a doctoral student at Princeton University. He tries to get her to move-out, but can’t and then starts to receive threatening notes in Hebrew and uses Ellie’s background in that language to help him decipher what they’re saying. Soon the two go on the run convinced that the same person after Harry may also now be targeting Ellie, but nothing is exactly as it seems.

Jonathan Demme, despite his immense talent and admirable film output, never received name recognition and for the greater part of his career failed to have a hit at the box office. In fact it wasn’t until the success of The Silence of the Lambs that he even became a sought after Hollywood commodity. Even then when most people think about that movie it’s Anthony Hopkins, or even Jodie Foster that comes to mind while Demme’s directorial efforts seem overlooked. In many of his interviews this was his biggest complaint and that no matter what he did he could never break-out of the bubble to have his name put over the title like with Spielberg, Scorssese, or Hitchcock. I could understand his frustration as his movies were step above your basic indie flick and while not perfect still had far more going for it than a usual B-picture and if anything this film should’ve been the one that got him noticed.

There’s been many Hitchcock imitations with a lot of them done by Brian Di Palma, but those seemed overdone while this one gets just the right balance. The on-location shooting is splendid with my favorite moments being at Princeton University bell tower and of course the climactic sequence at Niagara Falls. I’ve personally been to the falls, but found this movie made me feel closer and more immersed in it than in person especially with the sequences shot inside the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant and another done in the Cave of the Winds, which is what really makes the film stand-out. The music score by Miklos Rozsa, has the perfect blend of what would’ve been used by Bernard Herrman, which was Hitch’s main composer, which helps to make this seem like a movie Hitch himself could of very well done himself.

Scheider’s acting is good as he’s constantly cranky and irritable, which anyone going through his situation would be, so it was realistic and relatable, but I really hated the white suits that he wore. For one thing the guy was out of work and no longer a professional agent, so why he felt the need to dress-up all the time when he really wasn’t on the job anymore didn’t make much sense. Why they were all white was even more head-scratching. Outside of Pat Boone I don’t know of anyone who wears a white suit and it made him stand-out in all the wrong ways. If this guy is afraid that he’s being targeted then he should be dressing down so he could then blend-in, which in this movie he definitely wasn’t.

Margolin, best known for her work in the landmark indie flick David and Lisa, is good too especially with her dual personalities where she plays a nerdy student and her alluring, sexy vamp alter ego at other points. She though was not the original choice for the part as Demme wanted Lynn Lowry, who had been in his previous film Fighting Mad, but Scheider, who was dating Margolin at the time, preferred her and studio backed him on it forcing Demme to drop Lowry, but out of guilt he still paid her and allowed her to collect residuals despite her never appearing in any of it.

Spoiler Alert!

The plot is fast-moving and well crafted and keeps you guessing while also introducing a wide array of new twists without ever getting too confusing. The final twist though, in which we find that Ellie is the one after Harry and has been murdering other men as well in a revenge plot for what Harry’s and the other men’s grandfathers did to her grandmother who was gang raped by them at age 15. The idea was to tie the Ellie character to the Biblical avenger of Goel, which sounds cool, but ultimately an overreach. Had Ellie been raped directly by these men then I could see her going out of her way to seek rough justice, but doing it all for a grandmother she barely knew just didn’t seem all that believable. Also, how does this then ‘right the wrong’ by taking vengeance out on the grandchildren of the men who committed the actual crime? The grand kids had no control over what their grandparents did and weren’t even around when it happened, so how is any of this fair, or even make sense?

A better way to have ended it was to have Ellie portrayed as being a crazy kook going after these men due to a belief in some conspiracy theory only for the viewer to finally realize that she was an actual rape victim and Scheider, who we thought was this good guy, was instead the villain. Since she was raped at 15 her features could’ve changed, which would thus explain why Scheider didn’t recognize her initially. With a movie so compelled to have one twist after the other, this would’ve been the ultimate jaw-dropper. It’s just a shame they hadn’t chosen this route as the film, as slick as it is most of the way, leaves the viewer with an empty feeling after it’s over.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: May 4, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jonathan Demme

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Tubi

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Mystery, Rape/Revenge, Thrillers/Suspense

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Flashpoint (1984)

Posted on July 22, 2023 | 2 comments

flashpoint

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Digging up hidden money.

Bobby (Kris Kristofferson) and Ernie (Treat Williams) are border patrol agents who stumble upon a jeep buried in the sand. Once Bobby digs it up he finds a skeleton in the driver’s seat, a scoped rifle, and $800,000 inside a rusted toolbox. Both of them are unhappy in their jobs and Bobby thinks this would be the perfect time to skip town with the loot, but Ernie thinks it’s stolen money and needs to be investigated. Since the bills are all marked with the dates of 1962 and 1963 they presume this is around the time when the bank robbery, which is where they think the deceased driver got the money from, occurred, but upon an old newspaper research at their local library they can find no such robbery happening in the amount that they recovered. Soon they face more problems when a federal man named Carson (Kurtwood Smith) takes over the agency they work at and exerts extreme control over everything they do. Bobby feels Carson is somehow aware of the money they found and knows more about the driver’s identity than he lets on. While Bobby and Ernie hide the money they find Carson and his team of secret agents hot on their path as he sends them on dangerous missions in an attempt to kill them, so they won’t let on to anyone else about what they’ve found.

This is another example where an intriguing story idea, based on the novel of the same name by George LaFountaine, almost gets ruined by lackluster direction. The mystery is interesting enough to keep you invested but there are definite lulls and cheesy side stories that seem to be challenging the viewer to turn it off before it’s over. This was also another case where the setting is supposedly Texas, which gets mentioned quite a bit, and yet it was all filmed in and around Tucson, Arizona, which is a travesty especially since the deserts of Arizona and Texas have noticeably different characteristics. I also felt that if you’re going to have a story based in the desert you should then have the time period during the summer, instead of the winter like here, where the scorching heat could be used as an added element.

Kristofferson isn’t particularly well cast here in a part that was originally intended for Paul Newman. His laid-back style of acting isn’t riveting enough though I’ll give him props for the scene where he gets shot and must crawl several yards in the dirt with one arm that he can’t move due to it being paralyzed by the bullet, which looks quite arduous to do though he does it effectively and realistically. Williams is by far the superior actor and his distinct personality where he’s the idealist, plays-off well from Kristofferson’s more jaded mindset. You even get a full view of Treat’s bare ass, which comes near the beginning and while nobody necessarily asked for it and wasn’t needed to propel the plot some may enjoy it and as male asses go it’s not too shabby.

Rip Torn, whose hair is dyed gray, does well in support where his strong Texas drawl works nicely in the supposedly Texas setting. While he’s only seen sporadically during the first two acts, to the point where I started to wonder why he even bothered to take the role as it seemed miniscule and pointless, he does come on strong during the finale. Kurtwood Smith though is dull, which isn’t exactly his fault as the part is written too much like caricature, and every successful movie needs an interesting and memorable villain, which this one clearly isn’t.

While the action is fleeting it does have one good stunt, which features Treat trying to prevent a plane, which they think holds drugs, from taking-off by reaching in through the window of the cockpit and forcing the pilot to land it. It had me holding by breath, but it got ridiculous when the plane crashes and explodes, but Treat gets saved when he supposedly jumps off and into a lake, but you don’t see this occur and the other men all presume he went down with the plane only to have Treat jump out of the water intact, but if he had dived into the pool then the water would’ve had a ripple effect from where he went in instead of it being calm and placid like it is.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist at the end in where the money and driver of the jeep are connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy is cool though it leaves more questions than answers. Of course that might’ve been the intention, but still I feel this is a good enough story idea that it should be revisited with a better director and hopefully one day someone talented will decide to remake it in a way that’s more intriguing than what we get here.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 31, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Tannen

Studio: TriStar Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Movies Based on Conspiracy Theories, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Savage is Loose (1974)

Posted on July 19, 2023 | 1 comment

savage1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Shipwrecked family becomes incestuous.

In 1902 John (George C. Scott) and his wife Maida (Trish Van Devere) take their infant son David (Lee H. Montgomery) on a sea cruise. Unfortunately the ship hits some rocks and sinks killing all those onboard except for the young family who manage to swim ashore to a deserted island. They make a home for themselves and slowly begin to age. By the time David reaches adolescence (now played by John David Carson) he begins to have sexual urges especially as he watches his father make love to his mother late at night. As his sexual feelings grow stronger he begins to lust after his own mother and compete with his father for her affections.

Unusual production that was directed by Scott and financed mostly with his own money. After the disaster of The Day of the Dolphin you’d think he’d have learned his lesson and gone with a script with a more mainstream storyline, but instead he dove into something that was sure to offend many and then proved incredulous when it didn’t score well with either the critics, or the box office. Despite starting the decade with an Academy Award win his career, especially after two financial duds back-to-back, began to peter-out after this one and he was really never able to regain his star status, or get offered top parts afterwards.

The film runs hot-and-cold. The opening is a bit cheesy as it features only a painting of a ship hitting some rocks and sinking, most likely the budget was too small to recreate an actual shipwreck, which surprisingly, despite the compromise, kind of works especially with the sound effects of the people screaming particularly the young child. It’s once they get on land that the action really begins to sink. The huts that they build, which we never actually see them make, but can only presume, look too well crafted, when factored in all the utensils, eating bowls, table, chairs, and even bamboo blinds, to have been built by two people with limited resources. It’s also hard to understand, with the front end of the ship still always in view, why they didn’t bother to create a raft, since their carpentry skills are clearly quite superior, in order to leave the island and find help. They eventually do, with relative ease but only after coming up with the idea 18 years later, but why the hell did it take them that long to eventually consider it?

The characters are quite dull and don’t have much to say and it would’ve helped had there been a fourth survivor on the island with them to allow for some diverse dramatic perspective, or even for some much needed comic relief. Montgomery plays the young David quite well, but Carson is terrible as the older version and fails to effectively convey the intense inner frustrations of his character and his acting delivery is robotic. Van Devere is okay as an actress, but her character fails to age. The father and certainly the son do have their appearances change, as you’d expect during almost two decades, but the mother remains youthful and glowing. Maybe this was done to keep her looking ‘desirable’ to the two men, but in reality she should’ve taken on gray hair and wrinkles especially after having to deal with all the stress and hardships of being stranded for some many years.

The incest theme is not handled in any type of interesting way. Instead of being this shocking twist that we’re not expecting it gets telegraphed right from the start and even ponderously talked about amongst all three of the characters until the viewer is totally expecting it to happen and to a degree even waiting for it. It’s confusing too why the son only has his eyes set on the mother. If his quandary is really just trying to release this strong sexual urges and having hardly anyone around to do it with then why doesn’t he try having sex with some of the animals that inhabit the island, or even the old man? Why not have sex, or at least attempt to, with all three at different times? Again, the movie wants to force the viewer out of their comfort zone by exposing the animalistic urges people can have, which in civilization will be repressed, but out in the wild it won’t. With that in mind then why not go ‘all-in’ and explore all the various types of perversions besides just the mother-son one?

Spoiler Alert!

While it remains strangely captivating, despite lots of lulls and slow spots, the ending doesn’t get played-up enough to make it worth it. I commend the idea, showing the mother deep kiss the grown son, but since they’re going for shock value why not show them from a bird’s eye view on the sand, naked and humping? Movies succeed by having unforgettable images and that would’ve been one hard to get out of most viewers heads. Having the father view them going at it was a bit ridiculous as he had been tied-up just moments earlier and trapped by a fast moving fire and no chance for escape, so how he was able to survive it is not clear and doesn’t make much sense.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 30, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated R

Director: George C. Scott

Studio: Campbell Devon Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Movies with a rural setting, Sex

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Runners (1983)

Posted on July 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

runners

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Searching for teen daughter.

Tom (James Fox) is a suburban father who watches his teen daughter Rachel (Kate Hardie) ride off to school on her bike one day only for her to never come home. The police find her abandoned bike, but no signs of her, making it seem like she was snatched by someone driving in a car that was passing by. As the years go by Tom becomes even more fixated on finding her despite the lack of clues. His marriage begins to crack as his wife (Eileen O’Brien) feels it’s time to move on and that Tom needs to just ‘let it go’ though he refuses. He eventually moves out and into the city of London where he becomes determined to use what few leads he has to track her down on his own. Along the way he meets Helen (Jane Asher) a mother searching for her missing son and the two get into a relationship even as the challenges of finding their missing kids becomes even more daunting. Then one day by complete shock Tom finally sees Rachel and manages to corner her to have a brief conversation, but Rachel clearly does not want to see him and runs away again, but Tom becomes relentless to bring her home even if it means doing it by force.

Originally meant as a TV-movie the film did ultimately spend some time in theaters though it never managed to catch-on and was soon buried by bigger hits of the day. The film though still stands out as being the first appearance onscreen, outside of a brief cameo in a religious documentary from 1976, of actor James Fox, who left the movie scene after doing Performance, which was filmed in 1968, where he suffered a nervous breakdown. He then joined the Billy Graham ministries, known as The Navigators in England, and became a missionary, but found that his interest in acting never left and decided to make a foray back into it after 14 years and unlike other stars who drop out of the business and try to make a comeback, Fox found enviable offerings and even lead roles in major productions making it seem like he was still a much sought after commodity who had never left. His performance here is masterful and he looks like he hadn’t even aged a day as he’s clearly the one entity that helps carry the film and keep it interesting and insightful throughout.

Storywise I felt the first hour worked best and in many ways is highly gripping. The way it gets played-out has a certain spooky quality and the mystery element wraps you in and keeps you intrigued. The dynamics between the husband and wife are realistic and the film deserves props for examining how these situations can wear on people in different ways and how the ongoing stress can eat away at even the best marriages. Fox creates a compelling character and the viewer feels as emotionally worn-out as he does as he partakes on a grim search that manages to only give never ending bleak results.

Unfortunately the second hour is where it falls apart. To a degree it’s nice seeing him finally get a breakthrough, but there’s no explanation for why she ran away. In fact the daughter is almost like a ghost who says little and displays a continuous pouty expression and not much else. She’s shown passing out some sort of religious pamphlets, but we’re never told exactly what this literature says. Her motivations are vague as she expresses unhappiness with her upbringing, but never explicitly states what exactly they are. Without understanding what makes her tick, or why any of this happened, it hurts the film and makes it seem, despite its keen direction, as half-baked and ultimately empty-headed.

Apparently there was a rash of teens running away from home in England during the early 80’s and this film was produced in an attempt to tackle the subject as a sort of ‘ripped-from-headlines’ TV-movie of the week, but the filmmakers never made any effort to interview the kids to find out why they left home and without that understanding the rest of it is pointless. Showing things from the parent’s perspective is great, but at some point we need the kids point-of-view too and without that it lacks insight.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 9, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Charles Sturridge

Studio: Cinegate

Available: DVD-R 

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Obscure Movies

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