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The Take (1974)

Posted on January 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

take1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Black cop accepts bribe .

Terence Sneed (Billy Dee Williams) is a San Francisco cop brought to Paloma, New Mexico to help take down local crime boss Victor Manso (Vic Morrow). The only problem is that Manso invites Sneed over to his place and offers him a significant amount of cash to get on his ‘payroll’ and thus allow him to get away with his crimes. Sneed is also informed that another top official in the police department, Captain Frank Dolek (Albert Salmi) is on the take as well. Sneed accepts the cash, but then double-crosses Manso by having Dolek secretly tailed where he finds out who all of Manso’s connections are and uses this info to try and bust Manso’s drug operation, which ends up being a tall order that gets Sneed in hot water not only with Manso, but with his police supervisor Chief Berrigan (Eddie Albert) as well.

The film is based on the 1970 British novel ‘Sir, You Bastard’ by Gordon Frank Newman, which became a bestseller and set-off a series of three books that he wrote around the Sneed character. There were though differences between the book and movie as in the novel Sneed was white and worked in Scotland Yard. The one thing though that remained the same was Sneed being unscrupulous and working outside the system.

The fact that the protagonist accepts bribes and most of the way it’s unclear whether he’s even a good guy at all is what makes the movie interesting and helps differentiate it from the other early 70’s cop action flicks. This is the complete opposite of Serpico where the cop refused all bribes and vigorously fought against it. Here we see the other angle. Instead of the main character being on the outside looking in he’s a part of the corrupt system and in order to survive in it must be willing to play along, which I found more realistic and insightful as someone who’s able to totally rise above the evil environments they’re in is rare and therefore we get more of an everyman’s perspective here. It also works against the ‘Save the Cat’ book, which has become the bible of today’s screenwriters, which insists that the main character must be likable for the movie to work. Here Sneed is anything but and at certain points when he forces an overweight suspect (Robert Miller Driscoll) to take-off his clothes and do jumping jacks in humiliating fashion to the amusement of the other cops he becomes downright nasty, but in-turn it makes the movie less formulaic, which too many movies today have become.

Williams’ skill as an actor helps to keep the character engaging and he gets great support not only by Eddie Albert as his exasperated superior, but also surprisingly by Frankie Avalon who has a small, but memorable bit as a drug dealer who initially comes-off as quite cocky, but melts dramatically once inside the interrogation room. Unfortunately for Vic Morrow, who’s played some classic villains in his career, his presence here doesn’t work. This is mainly from his get-up including dyed blonde hair and at one point a pseudo cowboy outfit, which looked campy. I also didn’t like that it’s shown right away that his character has heart problems, which telegraphs a major vulnerability that instantaneously sets the viewer into expecting that this will predictably lead to his eventual demise.

As for the action I felt it started well particularly the opening courthouse ambush, which is well choreographed with a funky score, but it becomes rather pedestrian after this. Having the main character misjudge things like when he tries the intercept Manso’s transporting of illegal goods, but ends up chasing down the wrong van each time, which were intentionally being used as decoys, was refreshing because in too many other police movies the hero cops always gets things right the first time and his hunches are never proven wrong, which again is just not how things work in reality. Either way it’s not as exciting as it could’ve been with a lot of car chases and action scenarios that ultimately prove to be generic in nature.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 5, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Hartford-Davis

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies Based on Novels, Police Drama

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The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1981)

Posted on January 18, 2023 | 1 comment

night

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Not like the song.

Travis (Dennis Quaid) is an aspiring singer with some talent, but little discipline. He’s achieved one hit song,but his drinking and partying keeps getting him in trouble. Amanda (Kristy McNichol) is his younger sister and though she’s only 16 she is more mature and responsible. She tries to manage Travis’ career by getting him to Nashville, so he can cut a record and get an agent, but his wild ways and their lack of funds, keeps preventing them from getting there. Eventually he gets arrested for public drunkenness and in order to pay the fine is forced to get a job at a local bar. It’s there that he meets Melody (Sunny Johnson) and tries to pursue a relationship, but becomes aware that Seth (Don Stroud), the deputy sheriff, has a thing for her as well and he won’t allow any other guy to talk to her as he’ll fly into a jealous rage and warns Travis of this, but Travis being reckless as always doesn’t let this phase him. As this goes on Amanda begins a romance of her own with with Conrad (Mark Hamill) who works as a state trooper.

Although in theory it’s ‘inspired’ by the song of the same name it technically doesn’t have anything to do with it. In other films that were made from songs like Convoy, Harper Valley PTA, and Ode to Billy Joe, the central theme was maintained and then expanded on, but here we don’t even get that. The song, with lyrics written by Bobby Russell and then sung by his then wife Vicki Lawrence, had to do with a man getting executed for killing another man who had an affair with his wife even though it was really his kid sister that did the crime. A plot like that could’ve had great potential for being an interesting movie, so why the producers didn’t just go with that original concept I don’t know, but it seems like a travesty for them to retain the song title and I’m surprised the producers of the record didn’t sue.

The plot, as it is here, is limp and uninspired. It basically feeds off of a lot of predictable shenanigans like Travis getting caught in a hotel bed with another man’s wife and then being chased around both on foot and in a vehicle until both he and Amanda are able to get away. In between we get treated to a lot of songs, which normally I’d say was nothing more than filler, which it still is, but since the rest of it is so lame, it comes off more like the best thing in it. Quaid and McNichol do all of their own singing and even wrote their own lyrics and they give energetic performances when onstage, so if you decide to see this thing then I’d suggest fast-forwarding through the rest of it and just stick with the music and you might be pleased.

The acting by Quaid is excellent and Don Stroud is great as the nemesis. McNichol is alright, at least when she’s singing, but otherwise gets pushed to the background and with her super short hair and nagging personality lacks sex appeal and at times looks almost like she could’ve been Quaid’s kid brother instead. The fact that they’re so close and do everything together would make one wonder if there’s something incestuous going on. In the more innocent times of the early 80’s maybe this wouldn’t be the first thought that would pop into people’s minds, but these days I’d suspect others would be wondering the same thing. There’s also no explanation for what happened to their parents. At one point McNichol mentions that she’s orphaned, so there really needs to be a backstory showing of what caused that.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest gripe though is with the ending in which Travis gets shot and killed by Seth, who also dies in the gunfight. It then concludes with McNichol getting with Hamill, who quits his job as the state trooper, and the two drive-off in her rickety old truck to God knows where. Since the story was mainly about the brother/sister relationship then I felt that’s where it should’ve ended with them in Nashville either getting the record deal, or not. The Hamill character is bland and seemed to be added in with no other purpose, but to extend the already anemic plot. There’s also the fact that he was 29 at the time while McNichol plays someone who was only 16, so them getting into a relationship doesn’t exactly look kosher. Granted the age of consent in the state of Georgia is 16, so I guess in the eyes of law it’s okay, but many today will consider this kind of romance to be cringey, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s the main reason why this film has never had a proper DVD release nor any streaming option.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 5, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ron Maxwell

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Songs, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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The Disappearance (1977)

Posted on January 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

disappearance

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is his wife?

Jay Mallory (Donald Sutherland) is a professional assassin who works for a secret organization that contracts him out to do hits all over the world. After returning home from his latest assignment he finds that his wife Celandine (Francine Racette) is not there. Since they had a tumultuous relationship he initially presumes she left on her own accord, but then his friend and fellow hit man Burbank (David Warner) informs him that her disappearance may have something to do with his last hit. The organization that employs him now calls with another assignment, but this time they’re reluctant to give any details, which is unusual. Jay is afraid he’s being set-up as Burbank told him that the company is known to ‘retire’ those that are deemed no longer useful or trustworthy. He decides though to go through with the assignment as he’s curious how it will play-out and confident enough in his ability to get out of any jam, but soon finds himself faced with an entangling twist he never expected.

The film is a fascinating portrait of what can be done with creative direction. Stuart Cooper, who’s not exactly a household name and in fact this was his last theatrical film until 2010 when he did Magic Man, lends some interesting directorial touches that makes the story and characters more interesting than they might otherwise. What I especially liked was the non-linear narrative in which the movie cuts back and forth between the past to the present day. These types of storylines are typically frowned upon by Hollywood studios as they’re considered to be ‘too confusing’ for mainstream audiences to follow, but I had no such difficulty and felt it allowed in added nuance that would not have been present had the plot been approached in the conventional way. Nonetheless when the film tanked at the box office upon its initial release the studio insisted that the film be re-cut where the story would be presented in the standard linear format, but this version did even worse, so fortunately for the DVD/Blu-ray release it was brought back to its original way and labeled as being the ‘director’s cut’ though Cooper actually had no input on it, but eventually approved once he viewed it.

It’s also highly atmospheric particularly with the way it captures the cold, wintry climate of Montreal in the dead-of-winter. Having been born and raised in Minnesota I can tell a fake winter scene done on an indoor sound stage using artificial snow within seconds, but here the cold, including the mounds of snow drifts and nasty hollowing wind, is quite vivid and helps to symbolize the cold nature of the characters and the business they’re in.

I was a little more lukewarm with the acting. Sutherland can certainly be an outstanding leading man, but he seems too kind and sensitive for a person making a living killing others for money though I did like the scene where he plays memory games with his wife while at home, which brings out how crucial paying attention to detail is for his line of work. The supporting players are all familiar faces though I felt Warner was a bit wasted and underused. Virginia McKenna, best known for her starring role in the classic Born Free, is seen for only a brief bit though her interaction with Sutherland is quite pivotal while Christopher Plummer doesn’t appear at all until the final 15-minutes, but still manages to come-off with a memorable presence.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s biggest downfall though is with the ending, which becomes one twist too many. Up until that point the twists had been a logical fit that made sense when you went back and thought about it. Then at the very end Sutherland gets shot and killed while walking home from the grocery store, but it’s never shown who did it, or why. Maybe it was the secret organization that wanted to ‘retire’ him, but this needed to be shown and explained. Just leaving the viewer hanging with a violent, but vague scenario isn’t satisfying and cheapens the rest of it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 17, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stuart Cooper

Studio: Trofar

Available: DVD (Region 2), Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Mystery

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Impulse (1984)

Posted on January 2, 2023 | 2 comments

impulse

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: The townspeople act crazy.

Jennifer (Meg Tilly) and her boyfriend Stuart (Tim Matheson) return to the small town she grew up in to help care for her mother (Lorinne Vozoff) who suddenly and quite impulsively shot herself in the head while talking to Jennifer over the phone. When they arrive they find the people behaving in strange ways by acting on their inner impulses without any social restraint. Stuart, who is a chemist, believes it may have something to do with what’s in the water, but when he tests it he finds nothing unusual. The people though continue to behave in a more aggressive manner where even the kindly old doctor (Hume Cronyn) who was looking after Jennifer’s mother in the hospital begins showing homicidal tendencies. The couple fear they might not be able to get out of there alive and begin to suspect that the ultimate cause has some connection to the earthquake that shook the town just days before they arrived.

The premise is certainly intriguing and there are a share of weird moments, but director Graham Baker approaches the material in the wrong way. The original screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, which was entitled ‘Animals’, was intended as a horror film and closely inspired by George Romero’s similarly themed The Crazies, which came out 11 years earlier. For whatever reason Baker didn’t pursue it with a horror bent and that in my opinion is where it all goes wrong. It’s hard to actually know what genre to place it in. At times it seems a little bit like sci-fi and other moments like a drama, but either way the tension is lacking. You see the townspeople doing crazy stuff, which initially piques your interest, but then it goes nowhere with it. The weird acts just continue to go on and on until it becomes redundant and ultimately boring until you really don’t care what the explanation is behind it.

Spoiler Alert!

It’s not until 45-minutes in before even gets slightly suspenseful when Jennifer finds herself trapped in a burning garage, but even this goes by too quickly. There was one moment where Jennifer’s former boyfriend, apparently jealous at seeing her with Stuart, decides to bend his own fingers back, as a sort-of self mutilation, until they break, which I found genuinely shocking and cringy. However, there are other moments, which I found to be unintentionally funny making me believe it might’ve worked better as a quirky comedy.

The ending though is the most annoying. The explanation for why this all occurred is that chemicals from a nearby toxic waste dump got into the facility that produced the milk that the townspeople drank. The leak apparently caused by the earthquake that jostled one of the overhead pipes that then leaked the toxins into the milk vat. Since Jennifer didn’t like the milk she wasn’t affected, but I felt it was a stretch that all 900 of the other people in the town did drink it, as there are many folks who aren’t into milk, so there should’ve been others like Jennifer, who didn’t behave nutty instead of her remaining the only normal one.

What I found really stupid though is that the movie acts like 900 people suddenly dying in a town is apparently ‘no big deal’ and the rest of the country just ‘moves-on’, which I found preposterous. There is simply no way the media would let something like this go unchecked and the rest of the nation would be demanding answers and a federal investigation. It would become the news story of the year if not the decade and something that would be heavily talked about.

Somebody would have to be held accountable at some point, which then brings up the final issue of who the hell was the organization that dropped the crop dusting poisons onto the town via airplanes that ultimately is what killed everybody? The movie doesn’t bother to answer this, which is really frustrating making the whole thing a big build-up to nothing and not worth anyone’s time.

End of Spoiler Alert!

On a lighter note I couldn’t end this review without mentioning Tim Matheson. As an actor I found his performance here to be incredibly dull. Granted the character he played was benign to begin with, but he certainly didn’t do anything to make him interesting. However, with that said, his bare ass steals it. Many ass aficionados have felt, and even debated, that Dabney Coleman’s bare behind seen in Modern Problems wins the prize for best ass put onscreen in a Hollywood movie, but Matheson’s exposed tush, seen at the 17:49 mark, definitely deserves honorable consideration.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Graham Baker

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Sci-Fi

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Foul Play (1978)

Posted on December 31, 2022 | 1 comment

foul

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Beware of the dwarf.

Gloria (Goldie Hawn) is a recent divorcee who takes a car trip along the San Francisco coast where she comes upon a stranded motorist (Bruce Solomon). Since she is looking to meet new people she decides to give him a ride. The man says his name is Scotty and that he’s looking to give up smoking and gives her his pack of cigarettes in an effort to stay away from them. Unbeknownst to Gloria the pack holds a microfilm that a secret organization is after. That evening the two meet-up at a theater to watch a movie, but Scotty, who has already been stabbed, dies while sitting in his seat. Gloria runs to notify the theater manager (Chuck McCann), but when they return the body is gone. Later that night Gloria gets attacked in her apartment by a man (Don Calfa) with a facial scare. She stabs him with her knitting needles and he falls over dead, at least she thinks so, before she herself passes-out. When the she comes to two policemen are in her place, but with no evidence of a body. One of the officers (Brian Dennehy) thinks she may be nutty, but the other one (Chevy Chase) finds her attractive and therefore makes an effort to research her story and while Gloria and he work together to investigate the case they begin a romantic relationship.

While Leonard Maltin, in his review, or whoever wrote if for him, describes this film as ‘Hitchcock plagiarism’ I found it similar to High Anxiety that came out a year before, and more of a homage. Many other films that try to replicate Hitch’s style usually fail because they go overboard with the theatrics, or too much parody, but this one has a nice balance that is both intriguing and funny.  Another great quality of the film is the way it lovingly photographs the city and landscape of Frisco Bay from its beautiful shore line, to row houses, to the scenic boat houses where the Chase character resides. It’s almost enough to compel one to move there if only a person who wasn’t super rich could afford to live there.

The supporting cast is delightful and everyone of them has some really laugh-out-loud moments. Dudley Moore is the best, in a part written specifically for Tim Conway who shockingly turned it down, as a sex starved bachelor who brings Gloria to his pad filled with blow-up sex dolls thinking the two will have sex only to learn that’s the last thing on her mind. Marilyn Sokol as Gloria’s fiercely feminist friend is quite amusing as is dwarf actor Billy Barty as a bible salesmen who Gloria mistakes as being the killer. Burgess Meredith, as Gloria’s kindly old landlord, doesn’t come-off as well and gets upstaged by his pet python. It also would’ve been good had his character brought-up his judo skills earlier in the story instead of having it introduced later on when they must confront the bad guys, which was just a little too convenient though the karate match that he has with Rachel Roberts is quite entertaining and something I wished had gone on longer.

I did though have some issues withe the two leads. Goldie is as enjoyable as ever, but her character makes what I felt were grossly misguided decisions. One is picking-up a stranded male stranger on an isolated road, which from a simple common sense perspective is a major no-no. She also later-on blithely walks into her apartment even after she becomes aware that the front door has been broken into. In another scene she’s given mace and a pair of brass knuckles from her friend Stella to use for protection and Gloria is able to escape from a locked room and knock-out the bad guy with the help of these items, but then she throws them away before running out, but any logical person would hold onto them in-case they were needed again.

Chase playing a police detective was something that I just couldn’t buy into. He initially comes-off, when Gloria first meets him at a party, as a lecherous lounge lizard looking to hit on hot babes and not serious about much else. He’s also seen as being highly klutzy, so having this clownish womanizer suddenly turn into a dedicated cop doesn’t jive and seemed more like two completely different people. Brian Dennehy gives a far more realistic portrayal of a policeman and is actually funnier in his exasperated responses to Gloria’s crazy story, so he should’ve been the sole investigator and Chase could’ve been this ordinary doofus that she meets and because he has the hots for her he agrees to ‘humor her’ and help her out on the case. The story and romance could’ve remained the same, but casting Chase as a regular Joe, which he’s far better playing at, would’ve made better sense.

The story does become strained at the end with a speeding car sequence that’s more nerve-wracking than fun, though the elderly Asian couple that can speak no English and sit in the back seat of the speeding limo are amusing. The whole reason behind the crime and attempted assassination of the Pope is hooky and it would’ve been better had no explanation been given at all than explaining it away the way they do. However, the climactic sequence done during a performance of ‘The Mikado’ at the San Francisco Opera House, is terrific and a nice finish to what is otherwise perfect escapism.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 14, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Colin Higgins

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD. Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy, Mystery, Romance

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Good Guys Wear Black (1978)

Posted on December 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

good

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: He’s marked for murder.

John T. Booker (Chuck Norris) was once the head of an elite CIA assassin group known as The Black Tigers. The group was sent into Vietnam on a mission to rescue American POW’s, but instead finds that they were set-up and marked for demise. Only Booker’s brave and cunning leadership allowed the group to survive. Five years later Booker now works as a UCLA professor where he lectures about the problems with the Vietnam War and how it should never have happened. During one of his classes he meets Margaret (Anne Archer) a beautiful, young reporter who works in Washington and relays to him some troubling information: his buddies that were a part of that unit are now being picked-off one-by-one and Booker is most likely the next target. He decides to team up with her to not only warn the remaining members, but also to weed-out the culprit, or secret organization, who are behind it.

This was Norris’ second starring feature with a story based off an outline written by one of his friends, but the biggest problem with it is that there isn’t enough action sequences and I was genuinely shocked. I’ve not seen too many of his movies, so I’m still new to the formula, but I was honestly expecting fights every 5-minutes. Instead it isn’t until an hour in before Chuck displays his karate expertise and even then it’s brief. This was apparently because he wanted to do it differently than with the Bruce Lee movies he had been in, in the early part of his career. He described those as being ‘all karate with a little story thrown-in’ and he wanted to do something that had a lot of story and only some karate scenes.

While this may sound good in theory the plot is weak and the budget sparse to the point that adding in a few more exciting sequences to make-up for the otherwise anemic production would’ve been a good idea. This really comes into play during the rescue mission where The Black Tigers are in Vietnam looking for the POW’s, but the lighting and camera work are so poor that you can barely see what’s going on. The film also cuts away, so we never see how Norris and his buddies manage to escape from their enemies and make it out. It just immediately jumps to them 5 years later working regular jobs and having moved-on from the traumatic experience, which makes the whole thing seem too rushed.

The story has a few logic loopholes as well. Namely the fact that these assassins seem intent to kill their targets in broad daylight with a lot of people around. Most professional killers can find more subtle ways to off their targets like through poisoning, which can work slowly and harder to trace back to the original source. Shooting someone in big crowds is just asking for trouble because it brings in many potential witnesses and no guarantee they’ll be able to get out of there in time before the authorities arrive. If they must do away with their target through shooting then at least have it done when the victim is alone and the fact that this supposedly slick organization thinks of doing it the other way makes both them and the movie seem pretty dumb.

While Norris’ fighting skills are excellent his acting is not and even he admitted that he felt like ‘hiding behind a chair’ while watching it every time his character came onscreen. His voice inflection is poor and he seems unable to convey any type of emotion. Pairing him with Archer helps as her performance anchors it. I thought too that James Franciscus was terrific as the villain as his dashing good looks effectively reflected a slimy politician willing to accept any underhanded agreement in order to close a deal, but he should’ve been in it more. I was disappointed though with Jim Backus’ appearance as he’s given a very nondescript part as a doorman at an upscale condo building. You’d think bringing in a well-known celebrity he’d have something amusing to say, or do, but it’s a bland bit that could’ve easily been done by a no-name actor. He probably needed the work so that’s why he accepted it, but the producers could’ve at least allowed him to ad-lib, in order to jazz the scene up a bit.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 23, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ted Post

Studio: American Cinema Releasing

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Pluto, Freevee, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Martial Arts, Political Thrillers

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The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Posted on December 27, 2022 | 1 comment

osterman1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: His friends are spies.

Based on the 1972 Robert Ludlum novel of the same name the story centers around John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) a controversial host of a TV show where government officials are interviewed and many times put on the spot by Tanner who harbors anti-establishment political leanings. Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) is the director of the CIA who along with fellow agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) have uncovered a Soviet spy network within the US known as Omega. The decision is made not to arrest the three members (Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon) that have been identified as the spies, but instead try to get one to turn on the others and thus expose the organizations without tipping-off the KGB that they were aware of it all along. Since Tanner went to college with the three men and plans to have a weekend get-together with them at his place he gets chosen by Fassett to carry-out the trap where he’ll try to get one of his friends during the two-day stay to turn on the others. Tanner initially resists, but eventually agrees and has his whole house rigged with secret cameras and microphones, so the CIA is fully aware of everything that goes on, but ultimately Tanner begins to suspect that things may not be as they seem.

This was director Sam Peckinpah’s final film and 5 years after releasing his last one Convoy. He was already quite ill due to effects of substance abuse and had to take frequent naps during the shooting day, but still managed to get the movie released on-time and within budget. Many have felt this was one of his weaker efforts, but I came away enjoying it despite the fact that Peckinpah despised the story and the Ludlum novel of which it was based and only agreed to the it because he needed the work. What I liked best was his patented use of slow-motion photography. Here I felt it came into use in excellent ways especially during the car chase. Most chase sequences in movies can get confusing because it’s usually done at fast speeds making it hard to follow and many times done with jump cuts, but here because it gets slowed down it made it more dramatic particularly with the crashes.

Admittedly some of his other directorial touches were a bit odd. The opening sequence showing two naked people in bed together making love, which was shot on video tape and has a romantic music score, making it seem like a soft core porn flick and had many of members of the film’s test audience confused and even walking out in disgust. There is a surprising level of nudity, including seeing Cassie Yates topless, that I didn’t feel was necessary. There’s also touches of humor that I didn’t care for either. Apparently this was Peckinpah’s attempt to balance the violence, but it hurts the tension. The producers didn’t like the comical bits either and cut most of them out when Peckinpah got fired during post production, but a couple do remain, which are amusing, like when Hurt has to be pretend on-the-spot that he’s a television news reader giving an impromptu weather report, but still out-of-place for this type of story.

Many critics complained about the elaborate plot Roger Ebert stated in his review that it ‘made no sense’ and caused him to become ‘angry at it’ as a result. Vincent Canby of the New York Times described it as ‘incomprehensible’ and Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader labeled it ‘a mess’. I didn’t have such difficulty following it and although it’s a bit intricate it isn’t really all that confusing as long as you pay close attention and the twists that do occur I found enjoyable and many times was already predicting. My one complaint was be the way Tanner gets so easily persuaded that his friends, people he’s known for a long time and is very close to, are spies and he immediately turns against them. This is also a man that is supposedly ‘anti-government’, so you’d think he might like the fact that his friends are spies. A good way to have avoided this was having the character not hosting a liberal talk show, but instead a conservative one where Tanner would be a patriotic, pro-American type guy and thus making his acceptance of what the CIA agents tell him more plausible.

It’s interesting seeing Hauer, who usually plays villains, being a good guy, while Lancaster being a perennial protagonist, mixing it up here as a baddie. Both play against type well and the supporting cast has their share of moments too including Craig T. Nelson as a judo fighting expert and Hopper, who should win the award for best nervous expression. In all though it’s Helen Shaver that steals it as Hopper’s cocaine addicted wife. She’s not likable in any way and actually quite annoying, but she definitely stands-out with has a few choice moments.

Spoiler Alert!

I will admit that the ended, where Tanner tries to out the CIA director during an interview on his TV-show, doesn’t work and becomes one twist too many. Having Hauer simultaneously speak on-the-air in his studio and then show-up at the same time at Hurt’s hide-out didn’t seem realistic. Apparently this occurred because the show was taped early and only given the illusion that it was done live, but how they were able to pull all that off is a stretch and having his friend Nelson suddenly become a seasoned in-studio director when that wasn’t his job otherwise didn’t jive either. It’s not enough to ruin everything that came before it, which I overall enjoyed, but it’s still a lame ending either way.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 30, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Spy/Espionage

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Tomorrow (1972)

Posted on December 25, 2022 | 4 comments

 

tomorrow1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Aiding a pregnant woman.

Jackson Fentry (Robert Duvall) is a lonely farm-hand who has never married and lives in a tiny shack on the grounds of the farm that he’s been hired to maintain. One day he comes across a pregnant woman named Sarah Eubancks (Olga Bellin) near the property who’s been abandoned by both her husband and his family. He brings her back to his modest shed to warm her up and since she has nowhere to go he eventually agrees, with the help of a local midwife (Sudie Bond), to assist through the birth of her child. Sarah though dies soon after the baby is born, but not before Jackson agrees that he’ll raise the child. For several years Jackson is able to do just that until the brother’s of the boy’s father arrive and take the child away. Then many years later Jackson is called-in for jury duty on a trial that, known only to him, has a connection to the boy he lost contact with. 

There’s been many movies that have tried to recreate the rural 1800’s, but many for the sake of drama, or to make it more relatable to modern audiences, tend to cheat things. They may make it authentic in some areas, possibly even painstakingly so, but then compromise in others due to the entertainment factor. This though is one film that could genuinely be described as being about as minimalistic as any director could possibly make it. Filmed on a farm in rural Mississippi that was owned by the grandfather of Tammy Wynette the movie gives one an authentic taste of life back then with little to no music and no sense of any staging. The bare-bones shack that Jackson must reside in gives the viewer a stark sense of the grim, no frills existence that many dealt with back then. The slow pacing aptly reflects the slower ways of life and having the camera virtually trapped in the shed, or at most the nearby property, symbolized how people of that era had to learn to endure and expect little.

While those qualities hit-the-mark I felt that black-and-white photography detracted from it. By the 70’s most films were shot in color and only a few like The Last Picture Show, Young Frankenstein, and Eraserhead just to name some, were not, but this was more for mood, or style. Here though with everything already at an intentionally drab level the color could’ve at least brought out the beauty of the outdoor scenery of a southern winter and offered some brief striking visuals and a cinematic presence that was still needed, but missing and kind of hurts the movie. 

Surprisingly I had issues with the acting. One might say with Robert Duvall present that couldn’t be the case, but his overly affected accent, he got it from a man he met once in the foothills of the Ozarks, was from my perspective overdone and even borderline annoying. Bellin is alright though behind-the-scenes she created problems by refusing to take any advice from director Joseph Anthony. She had done mostly stage work up until then and was used to having leverage about how she approached her character once she was onstage and considered that once the camera was shooting meant the same thing. It was okay, like with a play production, for the director to give advice during rehearsals, but when the actual filming started she should have free rein over her craft and having Anthony repeatedly reshoot scenes, like in typical film production, or suggest she do things differently as the filming was going on, was all new to her and not to her liking, which caused numerous arguments not only with Anthony, but Duvall as well making them both later admit that they regretted casting her and she never performed in another movie again. Out of the entire cast it was Sudie Bond as the lady who helps with the birthing that I found to be the most memorable. 

While the story has many commendable moments it gets stretched pretty thin especially since it was based on a short story by William Faulkner and then adapted first as a play and then to the big screen by Horton Foote (the first of two collaborations that he did with Duvall with the second one being Tender Mercies 10 years later). Almost the entire third of the film gets spent on Jackson’s conversations with the woman while his relationship with the son takes-up less than 10 giving the pacing and flow a disjointed feel. It’s also a shame that, like with The Owl and the Pussycat, which came out 2 years earlier, the producers compromised on the elements of the original piece as in Faulkner’s story the pregnant woman was black, but here she gets changed to being Caucasian. Had the character remained black then what Jackson does for her would’ve been more profound as he would’ve been taking great personal risk in helping her in an era and region of the country where racism was high and by no longer being a colored woman it lessens the drama and is not as impactful as it could’ve been.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 19, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Joseph Anthony

Studio: Filmgroup Productions

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

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black & White, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with a rural setting

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Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter (1986)

Posted on December 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

vasectomy1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father considers male sterilization.

Gino (Paul Sorvino) is a proud Italian man who has fathered eight children, but now his wife Anna (Cassandra Edwards) doesn’t want anymore kids and pressures him to get a vasectomy. Gino fears the procedure, but eventually agrees only to have an angry confrontation with the doctor (William Marshall), which sends him running away from the operating room. Anna insists that he still must go through with it, or he won’t be allowed back into bed with her until he does. Meanwhile Gino must also worry about his greedy relatives, who’ve concocted an elaborate plan to steal money from the bank he works at and put it out of business.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie quite this bad. It’s not so much for any technical miscues. No shaky camera, boom mikes getting into the screen, atrocious lighting, schlocky sets, or bad acting. In fact all of those things are okay. What really reeks is the bland script that is poorly paced and not funny. The film starts out really slow and never gains traction. For a comedy there needs to be a lively plot and quick edits, but this thing dies out before it even has a chance to get started. 18-minutes in and I was still waiting for the first laugh and became genuinely confused whether this was meant to be a comedy at all. 

The main plotline is so weak that the inane crooked loan scheme is added jut to pad the runtime. The living situation of the family is rather unrealistic as well. Of course since it was the 80’s, the height of capitalism, the question of whether a family could actually afford 8 kids is never addressed, but most people, even those working at a bank, might find that situation financially challenging. The home looks too well maintained for having all those kids too who would most likely be running around and disorganizing everything. The mother is never shown having to deal with them either. In fact she comes-off as an affluent suburbanite who’s fully in-control of her life and able to out with her lady friends without the typical struggles of having to juggle her personal life with child rearing demands. All 8 kids end up being boys, but what are the odds of that? They’re also all around the same age like she popped them all out simultaneously and all of them get crammed into the same bedroom even though the house they resided in looked big enough that that shouldn’t have been necessary.

Paul Sorvino manages to be solid even though with his rotund belly he does look a bit pathetic during the scenes where he wears a baseball uniform. He does though sing the national anthem surprisingly well, apparently he sang opera to the crew between takes, and the segment where he goes in to the operation and babbles incessantly, is actually kind of amusing. I was not impressed though with Edwards as she looked too young to be his wife like she was still in her 20’s while he was already in his late 40’s. 

While I’m not a violent person I would consider, if I ever met the director of this, Robert Burge, to punching him as I honestly felt like he maliciously stole 90-minutes of my life and I don’t understand what the purpose was for it. 33,000 scripts get submitted yearly, but only 1 percent of those ever gets sold or produced, so how the hell did this one sneak through? Even a crew member from the film stated in his IMDb review that he’d give this a negative rating if he could. Maybe the director was a guy that had enough funds he was able to produce it himself and therefore didn’t feel the need to answer to anybody. If that were the case then this would’ve been an instance where having never made a movie would be better than living with the embarrassment of your name being attached to this mess for all those unfortunate enough to see it.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: September 26, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Robert Burge

Studio: Vandom International Pictures

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

 

 

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

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Cohen & Tate (1988)

Posted on December 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

cohen

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Child witness gets kidnapped.

Travis (Harley Cross) is a 9-year-old who witnesses a mob hit and for his own protection both he and his parents (Cooper Huckabee, Suzanne Savoy) are put into a witness protection program where they are uprooted from the home they’d live-in and moved to an isolated place that has federal agents standing guard outside around-the-clock. One day the place gets invaded by Cohen (Roy Scheider) and Tate (Adam Baldwin), who are two hit men working for the mob. The mob wants to prevent Travis from testifying in court, so the two hit men kill the parents and the federal agents and then kidnap the boy and take him on a long road trip to Houston where the mob bosses can question him directly. Along the way Cohen and Tate bicker and make clear they do not like each other and Travis exploits this to get them to fight more and then uses it as a diversion to escape.

After writing the screenplays for The Hitcher and Near Dark Eric Red was finally given the green light to direct his own movie and tension-wise the film is compact, but visually it’s boring. The car ride taking place almost completely a night where we see nothing but the interior shots of an old, grimy car enveloped by pitch blackness is not interesting and having it instead take place in the daylight where the rugged, but scenic Texas landscape could’ve added ambiance would’ve worked better. The night setting also adds in a few logic loopholes like when the kid runs down the highway there’s tons of traffic, but why would there be so many vehicles in the dead of night and the middle-of-nowhere? Also, you’d think a least a few of those drivers who saw a kid running on the road might want to pull over and offer assistance, but none of them do.

The film’s only surprising element is seeing Roy Scheider play a bad guy, which he rarely ever did. The role was originally intended for Gene Hackman, who turned it down, and then offered to John Cassavetes, who also passed on it, which is ashame. Cassavetes, with his tall stature and hawk-like facial features would’ve been perfect. Scheider, for what it’s worth, is okay, but he looks frail especially when seated next to the much bigger and younger Baldwin making his character appear weak and vulnerable. The film wants to portray Scheider as being in-control, but that’s not really how it ever comes-off. 

The in-fighting between the hit men is a big problem as it telegraphs right away the eventual meltdown between the two and Bladwin’s character, as a young thug with a violent, quick triggered temper, is about as cliched as you can get. These guys don’t come-off as being very smart either making the film’s ironic theme at seeing this young kid outsmart them at every turn not that impressive since anyone with an IQ of 5 could’ve easily done the same thing. A well run criminal plan, or any plan for that matter, predicts unexpected possible problems upfront and has a Plan-B already in-place in-case they arise, but these guys seem like they never bothered to think through anything making their constantly perplexed expressions at every blunder that comes along unintentionally comical and more like they’re stooges instead of bad-ass killers.

The boy is another issue as he’s too savvy for his age. Most kids would be paralyzed with fear at being kidnapped by two thugs who’ve just killed his parents (it’s later learned that the father survived the attack, but upfront he didn’t know this). A normal kid would’ve sat in the back of the car crying and not known what to do, but this one acts super street smart and even talks back to the killers, which isn’t interesting or realistic. A better approach would’ve had him terrified and helpless at the beginning and then slowly becoming more emboldened as the story progressed. 

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is anti-climactic. A police helicopter spots the stolen vehicle that Scheider and the kid are in, so at the last second Scheider veers the car off the highway and drives it into the business district of Houston. However, there are no cars or people around even though it’s during the day. The police squad cars then quickly race in and surround them like they were waiting for him, but how would they have known he would end up in that area since he veered off the highway in an impulsive spur-of -the- moment way?

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 12, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Eric Red

Studio: Hemdale

Available: DVD-R (MGM Limited Edition Collection), Blu-ray

 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies that take place in Texas, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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