Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980)

Posted on March 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Chong meets Cheech’s cousin.

Chong (Tommy Chong) and Cheech (Cheech Marin) have moved in together in a decrepit place that puts new meaning to the word pigsty. Chong doesn’t have any interest in finding a job and spends his days playing his electric guitar at an ear-splitting level that disrupts the rest of the neighborhood. Cheech does work but gets fired forcing the two to go to the unemployment office where Cheech meets-up with his old girlfriend Donna (Evelyn Guerrero). The two get-it-on inside her office, which soon gets her fired. She then calls Cheech later on and the two agree to a date at his house. To get Chong out of the way Cheech has him get together with his cousin Red (Cheech Marin). Red is getting kicked out of his hotel room for nonpayment, so Chong helps him get his stuff out including a 20-pound bag full of marijuana (in the edited TV-version it’s described as a bag full of ‘diamonds’). The two then spend the rest of the night meeting up with different people and attending various nightclubs before ultimately being kidnapped by some outer space aliens while Cheech sits home alone dreaming of his rendezvous with Donna, who to his knowledge, never gets there.

This is, in my opinion, the best installment of the Cheech and Chong film series and an upgrade from their first film. This one has the same cinema vertite approach as that one but is able to tie it in better with a more consistent atmosphere that at times becomes almost surreal. Chong travels with Red late at night and the goofy people they meet along the way becomes very similar in theme to After Hours, or at least the Los Angeles version of that and had it been amped up just a little more it might’ve been just as good and memorable but just misses the mark yet kooky enough to keep it engaging. Thomas Chong’s direction is leisurely paced, which helps add to the offbeat vibe and his character is more engaged. In the first film Chong was strung-out most of the time making him boring and giving all the funny lines to Cheech, but here it’s more equal, making it a true buddy movie. The drug use isn’t emphasized as much either and doesn’t come off like it’s promoting the use of it like in the first one.

Some of the set pieces are impressive especially their messy house, which is so dirty and unsanitary that it’s almost like an art form the way the production team got it to look that way. I’ve seen some cluttered places before in movies, but never in quite the authentic way as here as it seems great care was taken to give it a legit look and making the scenes shot inside the place both fun and jaw-dropping at the same time. There’s no doubt though that had slacker stoners with no cleaning skills moved in together it would end up looking very similar to the place here. I also enjoyed seeing their neighbor’s place, played by Sy Kramer, who’s overly efficient ways are a far cry from theirs and the confrontations between them needed to be played-up more especially after the two steal and destroy his car and while his vehicle does get returned to him it’s in a highly damaged state, but without seeing his reaction shot we miss half the comedy potential.

It’s fun seeing Cheech play dual roles, speaking in a voice that sounds entirely unlike his own and proving he’s a much more talented actor than one might initially suspect. Edie McClurg gets one of her best roles as a rich uppercrust suburbanite who with only a few drinks becomes increasingly ditzy as the night wears on. Paul Reubens is entertaining as a no-nonsense hotel desk clerk and Michael Winslow has some engaging moments doing ‘sound effects’ while inside the unemployment office and old man John Steadman laughing at every single thing Winslow does.

This film also supposedly is the final onscreen appearance of veteran actress Mary Anderson, who is probably best known for her work in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Lifeboat. Here she has an uncredited bit as an old lady inside a music store, but the woman is seen for less than two seconds and within a group of other people making it hard to fathom why she’d come out of retirement, her first acting work in 15 years, just to give off an annoyed expression for a brief second and then call it a day. The woman doesn’t really look like her either making me think that since Mary Anderson is a very common name, they got the wrong one and it’s a different actress entirely.

I also can’t end this review without mentioning a glaring continuity error in which the car that Chong and Cheech are riding in goes out of control and ends up crashing into somebody’s front yard but the fence surrounding the yard remains intact. However, for the car to have gotten onto the lawn it would’ve had to have crashed through the fence, so showing it with no damage at all makes no sense.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 18, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tommy Chong

Studio: Universal Pictures

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Crude Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat, Sequels

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Up In Smoke (1978)

Posted on March 21, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Two stoners become friends.

Anthony (Thomas Chong) is told by his father (Strother Martin) that he must find a job, or he’ll be kicked out of the house. Anthony then hitches a ride with Pedro (Cheech Marin) and the two quickly become friends based on their mutual interest of getting high on drugs. Soon they’re involved in many adventures including being shipped off to Tijuanna. In order to get back into the country they agree to drive a van that unbeknownst to them, is made completely of hardened marijuana, which gets them quickly put on the radar of Seargent Stelko (Stacy Keach) who along with his crack team of incompetents chases the two relentlessly in order to haul them into jail and make the country’s streets safe again. 

Cheech Marin was trying to avoid the draft when he went to Canada in 1969, which is where he met Thomas Chong, already a Canadian citizen who was starting up his own improv called ‘City Works’ after seeing Second City improv in Chicago while touring as a musician. The two became a comedy team who would come out to warm up audiences before concerts, but in many cases were more popular than the bands they were introducing. This then caught the attention of producer Lou Adler, who signed them to a contract to create record albums, which were so profitable that they graduated into making a movie, which Adler directed, that recreated many of the same skits they had used during their stage routines.

The movie upon its initial release with its open drug use was considered quite controversial and lead to many critics at the time to condemn it but nonetheless proved to be a big money-maker grossing $104 million on a $2 million budget.  Today the film is seen in a much softer light and in 2024 was elected for preservation by the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

I remember watching this when it came out and laughing at much of it particularly the car scene where the two smoke a giant marijuana cigarette and then get pulled over by the police. The film also does a terrific job of showing the East L.A. vibe possibly better than any other movie out there. You feel immersed in the culture and get a vivid feel of the era and setting especially at the end when the two go onstage and take part in the Battle of the Bands at the Roxy Theater. The film also has a leisurely pace, much like a French film, where it doesn’t feel the need to have a highly structured plot like in most American films and putting the emphasis more on atmosphere, which is a refreshing change of pace. Some of the supporting players, including Strother Martin who refers to his son as the ‘anti-Christ’ and Stacy Keach as the hardnosed police detective as well as his loyal, but bumbling deputy, played by Mills Watson, but without his patented mustache, who later went on to play the same type of role in the TV-show ‘The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo’, are all perfect and help add to the fun.

On the negative end the two leads and their interactions, are poor. Cheech never even bothers to learn his buddies name and just continues to refer to him as ‘man’ for the duration of the pic, which might be the intended comedy, but offers no character development. They never grow or change and instead are paralyzed in a permanent caricature. Marin is funny, and in fact the only source of the humor, but Chong is underdeveloped. He spends most of the time strung out on drugs, or going through a bad trip, to the point that he seems catatonic and allowing all the energy to go to Marin, which is fine as he makes the most of it, but it barely seems like a buddy pic when it’s only one guy getting all the laughs. 

Without sounding like somebody’s old-fashioned parent I must agree with the initial sentiment that found this movie to be glorifying drug use and thus toxic to the day’s youth. The film acts like using drugs is just harmless fun. The scene involving actress June Fairchild, who later became homeless due to her own real-life addictions, where she sniffs some Ajax by mistake thinking it’s cocaine, but has no bad reaction to it and instead gets just as an enjoyable high is a problem. Granted I realize it’s supposed to be ‘funny’, but I could see a parent being concerned that it’s sending the wrong message to impressionable teens. 

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 15, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lou Adler

Studio: Paramount Pictures

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Buddy Movies, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies

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Diversion (1979)

Posted on March 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sex fling becomes problematic.

Guy (Stephan Moore) is a writer who is happily married to Annie (Morag Hood) with a toddler son named Charlie (Dickon Horsey). Annie decides to take a trip with Charlie to visit her parents and Guy stays home to work on a writing assignment. While he’s typing away, he remembers meeting Erica (Cherie Lunghi) at a party some months earlier where she gave him her phone number. Now with the wife gone he concludes this would be a good time to give her a call. Erica is excited to hear from him and they go on a mini date before ultimately ending up in her bed. The next morning, he tries to leave but she won’t let him go easily and insists that she’s not a one-night-stand material and instead wants to have a relationship with him. Guy reminds her that he’s married, but she says he can divorce her, which Guy is reluctant to do as he still considers himself content in his marriage and simply had sex with another woman as a diversion. Erica continues to call him, and his phone is constantly ringing even after Annie returns. Guy tells her it’s a wrong number, but Annie becomes suspicious and the next time Erica calls she decides to pick-up. 

If this synopsis sounds familiar it’s because it was the basis for Fatal Attraction. Producer Stanley R. Jaffee became aware of this short film and was convinced it could be expanded into a feature length movie. He even hired James Dearden, the writer-director of this one, to write the script. However, Paramount, the studio that agreed to finance the film, ordered all existing copies of this one to be destroyed, but fortunately a few survived including a bootleg version that was recorded straight off of an A&E broadcast from several decades back. 

I’m a big fan of Fatal Attraction and didn’t feel this version was as good. Too much time is spent at the beginning of Guy taking his wife and child to the airport, which I didn’t think was necessary. The party scene where Erica gives Guy her phone number should’ve been shown in flashback and the Guy character comes off like a geek that probably would only be able to fantasize about having sex with a hot woman like Erica, but not brazen enough to follow through nor would a woman like Erica want to go to bed with him as she could’ve found a better looking guy just about anywhere. In Fatal Attraction, both participants were equally attractive and working at the same firm, so their fling was more organic and made far better sense. 

Fortunately, in this one we don’t see any of the wild sex, which I felt was good as I thought that got in the way in the remake and became a distraction from the main story. Much of the dialogue though between Erica and Guy is almost word-for-word from what gets said between Glen Close and Michael Douglas though here Erica is portrayed as being this cold psychotic while in the other one Close played the role more as a desperately lonely woman, which humanized the character and helped the story be three-dimensional. 

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest grievance is that it leaves open too many loose ends. There is one scene where Guy calls Annie, while she’s still on her trip and supposedly knows nothing about what is going on, to touch base, but Annie is strangely aloof, and Guy doesn’t know why. She had always been very peppy before, which made it seem like Erica had called Annie and informed her of the affair, at least that’s what I thought, but this never gets confirmed and Annie arrives home later back to her perky self, so why did she behave differently during that one call?

The ending works like a gimmick as it has Annie answer the phone, which may or may not be Erica, while Guy stands nervously by. However, once Annie picks-up the receiver the film cuts to the closing credits, so we never know what happens next, which to me was a cop-out. 

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Runtime: 40 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: James Dearden

Studio: Dearfilm

Available: None at this time. 

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Obscure Movies, Short Films, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1978)

Posted on March 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Family battles the winter.

The Robinson family (Robert Logan, Susan Damante Shaw, Heather Rattray, Ham Larsen), who moved from Los Angeles to the wild of Colorado during the summer, now must contend with their initial winter there. The first snowfall they find beautiful and enjoy sledding down the hill, but once the holiday season has passed, they face the coldest month and excessive snow. This brings out a hungry pack of wolves lead by ‘Scarface’, which is a black wolf with a disfigured appearance. The wolves are so desperate for food they try breaking into the cabin while the father is away forcing the young boy of only 8 to try to shoot them with his rifle while his sister and sick mother take cover.

At this point it’s hard to believe that the family ever even lived in a city as they seem so well-adjusted to the wild it’s like they must’ve been born there. In fact they’re more able to rough-it than Boomer (George ‘Buck’ Flower) an old-timer who has been living in the mountains his whole life and yet when he sleeps alone as a guest in their back cabin and he becomes scared at seeing bear cubs and raccoons come in during the middle-of-the-night it’s actually the family that is shocked why that should bother anyone even though you’d think them originally being from an urban area it would be the reverse. The father also displays an uncanny knowledge like knowing that when a wolverine sprays a scent onto some meat that they had stored they can no longer eat it, but how the hell does somebody who had lived in Los Angeles his whole life prior be aware of that fact? It’s like he has a direct line to Wikipedia before cellphones, internet, or wi-fi was even a thing.

Like in the first there are more animal attacks though this time it all comes from roaming pack of wolves. However, since they had been through some hair-raising attacks before you’d think they wouldn’t venture back outside unless everyone was armed with a rifle. Yet they foolishly go out in the snow with no guns and then become frozen in terror when the wolves move in, but how many times does this same thing need to happen before they learn to come prepared? The previous attacks from the first movie had been so traumatic I was surprised they weren’t looking over their shoulders at every second versus frolicking around in the open without a care in the world until of course it’s too late.

The mother continues to be the only one who has any misgivings about the move, but then all the father needs to do is remind her of the traffic jams of the city and she immediately backs-off. However, those aren’t the only choices. They could just move to a small town, which wouldn’t have traffic congestion either, but still have running water, electricity, neighbors, and no wild animals breaking into their home in the middle of the night, so why not consider that option?

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic sequence is quite similar to the first one where the two kids and the mother are left fighting off animals’ intent on getting inside though here the anti is upped a bit by having the mom bedridden with illness and a raccoon accidentally setting fire to the place, which just makes it more contrived and isn’t gripping, or exciting. What’s worse is that a doctor flies in afterwards via a helicopter to take a look at the ailing mom and announces she is suffering from pneumonia, but then instead of taking her to a hospital he just leaves her there in the cabin with a big gaping hole in the roof with snow and cold pouring in, which will only make her condition worse.

End of Spoiler Alert!

I’ll give some credit to the picturesque wintertime scenery, but the corny song segments, sung by Barry Williams better known for having played Greg on the ‘Brady Bunch’ TV-show, act as nothing more than filler, which bogs an already anemic story down even further. Young children may be a little more forgiving, but adults should find it flat and one-dimensional. What’s worse is that they actually went on to make a third installment, which will be reviewed next.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: November 15, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Frank Zuniga

Studio: Pacific International Enterprises

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Tubi, Freevee, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors, Sequels

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The Adventures of the Wilderness family (1975)

Posted on March 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Living off the land.

Skip (Robert Logan) is a married father of two who finds his job as a construction worker a thankless routine. The smog of Los Angeles, which is where he and his family reside, is affecting his daughter Jenny (Hollye Holmes) who’s having breathing issues and nothing her doctor has prescribed is helping. He’s also tired of the traffic, which is why one day he tells his wife Pat (Susan Damante-Shaw) that he wants to get out of the city and move to the countryside. After some brief thought she agrees. The family then takes residence in an isolated Colorado cabin that’s rundown and filled with rodents. They’re able though to build a new cabin and move in but then must learn to fight the elements including mountain lions, wolves, and even grizzly bears.

Loosely based on the true-life story of a family that moved from Los Angeles to the remote regions of the Pacific Northwest that was written about in a 1974 New York Times article the film takes too much of a glossy approach to what should’ve been a deeper, more complex drama. The family makes their decision to move too quickly, literally on a ride home while in their pick-up. No scenes showing them having to say goodbye to their friends, selling off all of their belongings, or how they come about choosing the piece of open land that they eventually settle on. I felt for satisfactory emotional impact; to be able to fully appreciate the changes this family was going through those scenes should’ve been shown.

There’s also too much agreement amongst them. They’re all cool with leaving the city and don’t show even a fleeting second thought about it. As a kid that would mean giving up all their friends and playmates, TV-shows, and music and all the other conveniences of suburban living that I’m just don’t believe most children would roll with like here. It would’ve been much more of an interesting story had at least one of the kids been opposed to the move or put up a big fuss only to then maybe soften to the idea once they got out there. It could be done in reverse too with a child really excited to only to change their mind once they came face-to-face with the harsh reality of being in a wilderness long term. Going on a vacation to the woods is one thing but permanently leaving the only life you know to relocate to the middle of nowhere would certainly bring I would argue a lot of tears and adjustment and yet absolutely none of that occurs here making it vapid and lacking any type of character arch. 

What had me even more flabbergasted was that these kids get attacked by wolves and even bears and still don’t want to go back to the city. Yes, there would be smog, but I might be willing to begrudgingly accept that if it meant no more wild animal attacks. I was a kid once too, growing up in that time period, and if I got uprooted like that and went through all the hardships they did, I’d be screaming to go back home making the kids here seem unrelatable. The mother does to some extent put up a meek argument about wanting to go back, but it’s done in a light and gentle manner, and she immediately backs down when the others don’t agree, which makes for non-compelling interactions. 

The scenery is pleasant, filmed at the state park near Gunnison, Colorado, but it becomes like a nature propaganda movie where the only accepted opinion is that living in the country is great, even with the challenges, and no other point-of-view is allowed. Having a debate about the pros and cons of both would’ve added more subtext and made it less one-dimensional. The sappy songs done over the action is nothing but a time filler and proves how overall threadbare it is.

Sure there are a few intense moments including the climactic bear attack with the mother and children trapped in a cabin trying valiantly to fight him off, but whole thing works in a loop where every 10-minutes or so there’s some sort of confrontation with a wild animal, the family then considers giving up on the whole wilderness thing, only to agree to stay and then it starts all over again. Eventually by the third act it becomes quite uncompelling.  

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Steward Raffill

Studio: Pacific International Enterprises

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Tubi, Freevee, Plex, Roku, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors

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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Posted on February 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Fighting for nuclear disarmament.

Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) escapes from prison with the help of his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer). He is then able to create a powerful villain named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) by stealing a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum and using its code to create a genetic matrix. Nuclear Man has many of the same powers as Superman, but, unbeknownst to Superman, he’s only powerful when he’s in sunlight and without that he becomes weakened. Meanwhile Clark Kent is having battles of his own when the newspaper he’s working for, The Daily Planet, gets taken over by a rich tycoon named David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) who degrades the paper’s integrity by insisting only stories with a salacious bent get printed. David’s daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway) takes a liking to Clark and the two soon become an item.

The fourth installment was the first not to be produced by the Salkinds who decided to give up on the franchise after the box office flop of Supergirl and sold the rights to the Cannon Group who were suffering financial strain, which caused the budget for this one to be cut from $36 million down to $17 million. Many have complained that the result of this compromised the special effects though I didn’t find the drop-off to be quite a bad as I feared. The biggest drawback are the flying scenes where it clearly looks like Superman is matted in front of a greenscreen and isn’t nearly as slick looking as the first two. The opening bit though that takes place on a Russian space station I thought was alright, but I did wonder how Superman was able to know that the cosmonauts were in trouble, as he appears to the rescue out of nowhere, and what would tip him off that they were in danger?

The dumbest addition is the Nuclear Man. In the 45-minute deleted footage there were actually two with the first one being portrayed by Clive Mantle and resembling the comic book villain Bizarro. This one gets defeated by the Man of Steel prompting Lex to create a another one. The second creation is the only one shown in the studio cut version and this one looks like a male model wearing a tacky get-up stolen from Clash of the Titans. He speaks with Lex’s voice and I’m not sure why it was done this way outside of actor Mark Pillow, who plays the second incarnation, not having any acting experience, so they had his lines dubbed by Hackman, but the explanation that he has Luthor’s voice because Luthor made him doesn’t make sense. Why just stop at the voice? If he’s going to replicate his creator then he should have the same eyes, ears, and body as Luthor as well.

I was happy that Margot Kidder gets more screentime as in Part III she was relegated to being not much more than a cameo appearance. However, having her Lois Lane character constantly getting into extreme danger, this time on a subway train where the driver passes out, causing the car she’s riding in to accelerate to dangerous speeds, starts to get a bit overbaked. How many times statistically can one person accidentally walk into a life-threatening situation? Once sure, could happen to anyone, but even just twice would be a stretch. However, this lady inadvertently falls into a scary mess seemingly every other day making her more like a walking-talking bad luck charm that everyone else should stay away from for their own protection.

The scenes that she shares with Superman are stupid as he takes her on a flight with him into the night sky, but this was already done in Part I, so why redo it? Then when they land back at her apartment after revealing to her that Clark is really Superman, he does something that makes her forget that, but why even bother to let her know about his secret identity if he’s just going to make her lose her memory of it right after?

Initially I liked the addition of Hemingway as the new love interest as I thought the bratty persona of her character would lend some spice. Unfortunately, she loses her entitled attitude right away becoming benign and boring like everything else. The scene featuring her getting kidnapped by Nuclear Man, who takes her into space with him, is ridiculous because she’d never be able to survive outside of the earth’s atmosphere as there would be no oxygen, which along with the frozen temperature, would’ve had her dead instantly.

I really liked Hackman recreating his role as Luthor, who adds a much-needed campy charm. Cryer isn’t bad either as his young henchman and he does have the film’s one and only funny line. The story isn’t as political and preachy as I thought it was going to be either, which is good, but everything else falls flat. The initial runtime was supposed to be over 2-hours, but I was thankful it got cut down to a mere 90-minutes and even then, it was a drag to sit though. The franchise came to a merciful end after this, and I feel it was for the best.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Studio: The Cannon Group

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Sequels

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Superman III (1983)

Posted on February 21, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Computer whiz corrupts Superman.

August ‘Gus’ Gorman (Richard Pryor) is an unemployed man looking for a job and comes upon the idea of training to become a computer tech when he sees it advertised on the back of a book of matches. Much to his surprise he excels as a student and is soon able to use his newfound computer knowledge to hack other programs including the payroll department at his company where he’s able to give himself a large, unearned monetary bonus. Ross Webster (Robert Vaughan), the company’s CEO, becomes aware of what Gus is doing, but is so impressed by his computer skills that instead of firing him he hires him to hack a weather satellite that will cause a rain storm in Columbia that will destroy the coffee crops and allow Webster to corner the market, but Superman intervenes and tempers the storm, so it isn’t as bad. This causes Webster to realize how detrimental to his plans Superman is and orders Gus to come create some synthesized Kryptonite in order to impair Superman’s ability. Gus researches the elements that make up Kryptonite on his computer and finds all of them except for one, so he arbitrarely adds tobacco in it for good measure. Instead of weakening Superman it turns him into an uncaring, sinister person who ‘drops-out’ of the hero saving lifestyle and becomes an anti-social person who shows no concern for others.

When Richard Donner, who had directed the first installment and 75% percent of the second one, got fired, he was replaced with Richard Lester. Lester had a far different vision for the Superman films. He disliked what he considered the ‘dark tone’ that Donner had given the first two and wanted a humorous quality put in. While I don’t mind some campiness Lester clearly goes overboard including the segment done over the opening credits that features unending slapstick that makes a mockery of the Superman franchise and drives the whole thing down to such a silly level that I wouldn’t have blamed anyone if they had walked out of the theater and demanded their money back.

Pryor was a big fan of the first two Superman movies and said as much when he was a guest on the ‘Tonight Show’. The Salkinds, who had proved already to have an unhealthy proclivity to the so-called ‘star power’ by casting Marlon Brando in the first film and paying him an outrageous sum even though his acting was subpar and a lessen known actor could’ve done a better job at half the price. No one ever came to a Superman movie simply to see Brando nor any other big-name actor, but for whatever reason the Salkinds didn’t understand this, so when they heard Pryor was interested in being in one of their films and he was a trop draw at the box office at the time, they admittedly signed him up.

Pryor, for his part, is highly engaging, but his schtick is out of place here. The script centers too much on his character making Superman seem like he’s only a co-star in his own movie. The character he plays makes no sense either as he’s portrayed initially as being a dumb guy who can’t hold down any job and then suddenly becomes a super genius with computers. However, there needed to be something shown in his background that would connect this, like he was really good with math, or coding, but instead it’s never explained. The movie makes it seem like it’s ‘dumb luck’ that he’s such a programming whiz and even he himself doesn’t understand it, which is just plain ridiculous especially as he continues to become more and more sophisticated with it.

While I liked the gaudy set design of Webster’s penthouse, and his rooftop ski slope, as a villain he’s a complete bore and seems too similar to Lex Luthor and his ditzy lady friend Lorelei, played by Pamela Stephenson, coming-off as being simply a younger version of Luthor’s main squeeze Miss Tessmacher. Webster’s evil sister Vera, played by Annie Ross, is equally dull and I have no idea why she was even put into the story as she adds little and doesn’t play-up her domineering persona enough to be even remotely interesting or amusing. Her character shows the same flaw as Pryor’s where she becomes really good at running a complex computer system too easily and too quickly.

The Lois Lane character gets minimized to the extreme where we see her briefly at the start and then quickly at the end. Supposedly this was due to a falling out that Margot Kidder had with the producers, but the Salkinds insisted it was more because they wanted to explore Superman’s romance with someone else, but Lois and Clark Kent’s relationship had gotten quite intense during Part II, so there needed to be some explanation with why now they were in the ‘friend zone’ like maybe perhaps she had found another boyfriend. The film though never bothers to come-up with any answer making it feel like there was no story cohesion between this one and the other two. Annette O’Toole, who plays the new love interest Lana Lang, is benign and the romantic chemistry between her and Kent is nil. 

David and Leslie Newman’s script lacks understanding in regard to technology and extreme naivety with the way Pryor’s character is able to use his computer to hack into other programs. Viewers today, who are much more sophisticated about the topic, will find the stuff here to be quite antiquated. The way the giant supercomputer gets completed is absurd too as it’s never shown who builds it. Was it done by just the four villains single-handedly, or by a large crew? Even if a crew did do it, it would take months if not years to construct and yet here it’s done in seemingly a day, or two. When Gus and Webster create an economic crisis by redirecting oil tankers you’d think the U.S. government would certainly get involved and investigate and would have computer experts on hand to trace back how and where the hacking occurred and at some point the two would eventually, at the very least, come under suspicion and yet here that never happens, nor even gets touched upon.

Spoiler Alert!

Some have complimented Reeve’s performance as the evil Superman, which is good, but the giant showdown that he and Clark Kent have in which they use they’re individual superpowers to try and take the other down, is too reminiscent between Zod’s gang and Superman from part II and thus comes off as redundant instead of exciting. 

I didn’t agree with Pryor’s character getting off-the-hook at the end either. Yes, he did ultimately save Superman’s life, but he also stole money and got involved in nefarious projects that broke many laws, so instead of being transported to a new location where he could get another job and ‘start fresh’ he should’ve been taken to a prison to serve his debt to society. Even if he was at heart ‘a nice guy’ he still did some wrong things and should’ve had to pay some sort of consequence. 

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1983

Runtime: 2 Hours 5 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Lester

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Movies based on Comic Books, Sequels

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Superman II (1980)

Posted on February 18, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Superman loses his powers.

Superman (Christopher Reeve) flies to Paris in an attempt to save Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) who was assigned to go there to cover terrorists who’ve taken over the Eiffel Tower and threatening to detonate a hydrogen bomb unless their demands are met. Superman manages to take control of the bomb and lift it into outerspace where it goes off, but unbeknownst to him the explosion also releases Zod (Terrence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) from their imprisonment inside the phantom zone. The three now fly towards earth planning to take it over with the superpowers they’ve been given from the sunlight. Meanwhile Clark falls in love with Lois and admits to her that he’s Superman. He takes her to the artic to see his Fortress of Solitude and it’s there that he listens to a past recording of his mother Lara (Susannah York) advising him that if he wishes to marry Lois that he will then have to enter a crystal chamber where he’ll then lose his powers, which he does. Now that Zod and his evil associates have taken over the country by invading the White House he becomes powerless to do anything about it as he desperately searches for a way to regain what he gave up.

The production had many behind-the-scenes upheaval including run-ins between director Richard Donner and the producers who insisted that he was going over budget. Initially it was deemed necessary to film both the first segment and the sequel at the same time, but due to money concerns they stopped filming part 2 with 75% of it already completed in order to finish the first part and get it out to theaters. During the pause the producers then fired Donner and replaced him with Richard Lester. Lester was known more for his zany comedies and had a different directorial style than Donner. His approach was to insert campiness into the story and move it away from the dark elements. This caused several scenes to be refilmed some of which without the original cast including Hackman who refused to come back to do reshoots causing a few of his scenes to be dubbed while Brando had sued the producers for his share of the gross profits causing all of his scenes to be taken out completely and replaced mostly with York who ended up speaking the lines that he would’ve and for the most part does a far better job of it.

While the Donner version was released onto DVD in 2006 and is a bit different this review will stick with the one that was shown in the theaters and I felt is quite well done. Unlike with part 1 this one gets right to the action without the stagy back story from the first, which I found boring. The showdown between Superman and the evil three done on the streets of Metropolis as well as the massive destruction that the villains cause the small redneck town of East Houston are very exciting with great special effects that should please anyone. The comedy bits that Lester inserted I didn’t feel went that over-the-top and in some ways were helpful as it released some of the tension as these were some really nasty bad guys, who caused massive destruction, so inserting a campy chuckle here and there I didn’t feel was that out of order.

The script doesn’t have as many plot holes like in the first one. The only major issue to quibble about is when Superman goes into the chamber that sucks away his powers. Why though is it necessary that he should have to give up his powers just because he wants to get married is a whole different discussion that’s worth questioning, but I get that there needed to be a dramatic conflict, so we’ll roll with it. However, it’s never explained how Clark and Lois get themselves out of the artic and back to civilization as they ‘flew’ into the Fortress using his flight powers, but once he was made mortal, they couldn’t rely on that on the way out and without any other mode of transportation I wasn’t sure how they were able to travel and nothing gets shown, but should’ve.

Spoiler Alert!

His long trek back to the Fortress in an attempt to retrieve the powers is equally problematic as he is shown doing it completely on foot, which could take many weeks, or longer to do. He’s also shown wearing nothing more than a light jacket while he does it without any head covering, which now that he’s human, wouldn’t be enough to shield him from the brutal elements and frigid cold and he most likely would’ve died before he got there from either frost bite, or pneumonia. How he’s able to get the powers back aren’t sufficiently explained either. Supposedly it’s because of a green crystal that Lois dropped and is still there when he returns, but if the control module was already destroyed then how would this get it to work again?

End of Spoiler Alert!

The acting is again what really makes it fun. Hackman is once more excellent as Luthor as here he plays it both ways as the ‘middleman’ between Zod and Superman where one minute he’s arrogant and confident and then the next he’s nervous and pleading. It’s a shame though that Perrine and Beatty, his cohorts in crime, aren’t in it as much as I felt the three together had a great chemistry. Gotta love Kidder as a brash Lois who manually squeezes oranges for Vitamin C as she’s become a self-described ‘health nut’ all the while a cigarette dangles from her mouth. Stamp is really good too as the main villain and his intense performance is what keeps the tension going, which again is why the comedy bits aren’t a problem here, though in Part III this does become a major issue, which will be discussed in the next review.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 4, 1980

Runtime: 2 Hour 7 Minutes

Rated PG

Directors: Richard Donner, Richard Lester

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sequels

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Superman (1978)

Posted on February 16, 2025 | 9 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: The Man of Steel.

As the planet Krypton gets set to be destroyed by its exploding sun, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) and his wife Lara (Susannah York) put their child on a spaceship that takes him to the planet earth. It is there that his spaceship crash lands into a wheat field that his spotted by Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha (Phyllis Thaxter) who take the child in and treat him as their own. The boy is named Clark (Christopher Reeve) and as he grows, he begins to show amazing abilities including running faster than is humanely possible and incredible strength. Once he becomes an adult, he gets a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet newspaper where he meets fellow reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). He even saves her, while dressed as a superhero, from a helicopter accident and becomes known initially as the ‘caped wonder’ before finally being coined as Superman. His publicity attracts the attention of criminal mastermind Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) who devises a plan to steal missiles and use them to create an earthquake along the San Andreas fault and thus casting off coastal California into the ocean and turning the desert land he purchased into prime real estate. Superman attempts to stop him, but Lex has found one thing that can stop him: a meteorite known as kryptonite.

At the time this film, which suffered from numerous behind-the-scenes problems and infighting, was made it was the most expensive one ever produced with a whopping $55 million budget. While the effects were mesmerizing for many back-in-the-day I don’t know if they still all hold-up. The flying segments particularly over the Statue of Liberty is impressive to a degree but can’t quite equal today’s technology and appears like two people in front of a greenscreen as does the giant red sun that moves in to destroy Kyrpton. Watching the young Clark Kent running alongside a train looks tacky too like he’s being held up by invisible wires, which he was, and his feet aren’t really ever touching the ground. In all fairness though the earthquake segment and the destruction of the Hoover Dam and the shaking of the Golden Gate Bridge remains top notch.

The script though, which takes on quite a lot and had to be slimmed down from its original 500-page version that was written by Mario Puzo, feels rushed at times and glosses over certain things that I felt should’ve been a little more drawn-out particularly when the Kents find the boy crash land in the field. The film makes it look like they just left the remains of the spaceship in the field making me think other people in the area would’ve also come upon it later and would start a panic that some alien had come out of it and invaded the town. Later on, we come to realize that the ship got hidden inside their barn, but there’s no scene showing them transporting it, or how they went about doing that, which I felt should’ve been put in for the simple sake of clarity.

Watching Superman orbit the earth in an attempt to get it to spin backwards and supposedly ‘turn back time’ is kind of cool to see and an interesting concept though not totally plausible. Making the world rotate the other way would certainly change some things like having the sun rise in the west instead of the east and have the ocean waves go in a different direction among other things, but causing everything to essentially ‘rewind’ and go back to the way they were even bringing certain people who had died suddenly back to life just wasn’t completely convincing though it’s not enough to hurt the movie as a whole.

Most fans will likely tell me I’m quibbling about the Clark Kent disguise though when you really think about it it’s not much of a disguise at all. I admit watching this muscular guy dressed in a suit and acting all clumsy and wimpy is amusing especially the way Reeve plays it but besides combing his hair in a different direction than when he’s Superman the only other difference is that he wears glasses. However, that would be tantamount to saying someone who does wear glasses but then comes to work one day without them would not be recognized by any of his friends, or co-workers especially when he’s still speaking in the same voice making me believe that Lois and Jimmy, played by Marc McClure, should and would’ve caught on to this pretty quickly. I realize the comic book did it this way, but when it got updated into a movie, they should’ve reenvisioned it a little by adding more to the Clark get-up like besides just glasses he’d also have a mustache, or goatee and speak a bit differently, so having those close to him not catch-on would be more understandable.

I think what I enjoyed most was Hackman, who didn’t play a lot of villains during his career but is highly enjoyable here. Initially he didn’t want to take the part as he felt playing a campy character would tarnish his reputation of being a serious actor, but the change of pace does him good and proves if anything how versatile he is. His refusal not to shave his head, as the Lex Luthor in the comic is bald, works in his favor as his hair gets styled differently in each scene in order to represent him wearing a wig, which creates a creative visual. Valerie Perrine is great too as his girlfriend Miss Teschmacher who helps contrast his delusional personality with her more grounded sensibilities and I just loved the way he’d yell out her name every time he got annoyed with her, which is the comedy highlight.

The rest of the supporting cast though, made up of big name starts like Trevor Howard, Maria Schell, and even Larry Hagman didn’t seem needed and given such few lines I was surprised why they’d even take the roles unless it was because of the money. Brando is an equal waste. He’s given top billing and paid an exorbitant amount of money including a percentage of the profits despite refusing to memorize his dialogue and even having his lines written on the baby’s diaper for him to read off of as he puts the child into the spaceship. Had the producers skipped the unimportant ‘star power’ and cast lesser knowns in these roles they could’ve saved themselves a lot of money, which in retrospect might’ve lessened the tensions they had with director Richard Donner for going over budget and ultimately lead to his firing and a very tumultuous follow-up Superman II, which will be covered in the next review.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 10, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Donner

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Classic, Disaster Flicks, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies with Nudity

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For the Love of Benji (1977)

Posted on February 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Secret code on paw.

Benji (Benjean) and his dog mate Tiffany along with Cindy (Cynthia Smith), Paul (Allen Fiuzat), and their nanny Mary (Patsy Garrett) arrive at the airport to board a plane that will take them to Crete, Greece where they plan to vacation. While waiting in-line Mary visits with the man standing behind her, Chandler Dietrich (Ed Nelson), who seems nice and she, along with the two kids, start-up a friendship. Unbeknownst to them he’s not such a swell guy but instead a spy who’s stolen a secret formula that can accelerate the production of oil. He sneaks into the baggage room and imprints this formula onto Benji’s paw while the animal is stuck in a cage. Things though don’t go as planned because Benji and Tiffany don’t arrive in Greece when the plane does causing much confusion. When he does finally get spotted by a baggage handler he escapes from his cage and runs through the city streets lost and alone. He manages to find the hotel that his owners are staying at but is afraid to go up to them when he sees they’re with Chandler. Once Chandler realizes that Benji is in the vicinity he buys a large Doberman dog to go sniff him out and thus retrieve the formula still imprinted on his paw.

For a follow-up this isn’t bad, and the change of scenery helps. The film also features some exciting chase sequences including the climactic one with Benji trying to escape Chandler who attempts to run him down with his sports car. The segments though dealing with Benji roaming the city streets I didn’t find interesting, nor does it have the gripping quality that they had in the first installment and to have added a dramatic quality to it the children should’ve been lost with Benji and thus caused even more of an urgency. Also, the opening scenes get done in Greek with no subtitles, so it’s impossible to understand what’s said and for the sake of clarity should’ve been spoken at the very least in broken English.

Garret is delightful as the tubby nanny and the scene where she tries to nervously hold a suspected criminal, played by Art Vasil, with a gun despite clearly not knowing how to handle one, is entertaining. The children however seem used only as props to get excited when they see Benji and despondent when they don’t. Surprised too that Peter Breck, who played their father in the first one, isn’t here. It’s stated that he’ll be arriving a week later, but his character was the only one in the first film that had any discernable arch as he initially didn’t like the dog but learned to accept it when the pooch saved the kids, so it would’ve been interesting to see how his relationship with the pet had progressed.

Nelson is the most effective as he’s a smart and cunning villain that creates quality tension every moment, he’s on screen and his somber eyes along with his salt and pepper hair create a creepy vibe. My only issue is that there’s no explanation for how he’s able to get into the baggage area without being detected. He’s in there for several minutes as he drugs the dog, so you’d think some employee would’ve walked in on him, but don’t. Did he bop a security guard on the head to gain access, or knock him out with the same drug he used on the dog? Either way it should’ve been shown as well as explained how he was able to just open the door to the room as you would think it would’ve been locked and a key, or pass code needed for entry.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic sequence gets a bit botched as Benji arrives at the hotel the family is staying at only to see it surrounded by police. Then Nelson drives up in his car with a gun pointed at Cindy’s head in an attempt to get the dog to jump into the vehicle. However, it doesn’t make much sense for Nelson to go into an area where police are visibly all over as there’s no real chance for escape. It would’ve worked better had the police not been seen up front making Nelson’s arrival seem more plausible as he’d be under the impression no cops were there and more tense as the viewer would think it was all up to Benji to save the girl and no one else to help. Once Benji bites Nelson’s arm forcing him to drop the gun then the police could’ve suddenly appeared by jumping out of the bushes, or wherever, and arrested him.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 10, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Joe Camp

Studio: Mulberry Square Releasing

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a Hotel setting, Sequels, Spy/Espionage

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