Road Dogs

 

This is my entry in the Hit the Road Blogathon, hosted by yours truly.

 

If you weren't alive in the 70's, you will never know just how big the CB craze and the love affair with the trucker was.  The trucker was a standard fixture in country music for years. But with the recording of C. W. McCall's #1 hit Convoy, a veritable fad craze hit the country. And Convoy was #1 not only on country charts, but it held the #1 spot on American Top 40 radio for one week. It stayed in the Top 40 for 13 weeks, which is pretty impressive since most of the top 40 at that time was dominated by easy listening and disco.

Convoy triggered a smattering of follow-up CB and trucker songs in it's immediate aftermath. But unless you listened to country radio most of them probably would have escaped your notice. The White Knight, a favorite of mine by a guy who billed himself as Cleddus Maggard, would probably be the only song that music fans of the 70's would recognize (that one hitting #19 on AT40).

But the CB craze went far beyond top ten radio. For those of you not alive during that time, virtually EVERYONE had a CB radio at the time. It was such a popular thing that, when my Boy Scout troop looked to raise some funds, we raffled off a CB as the top prize.  And the craze even included the movies. Between 1975, when McCall first came on with his monster hit, until about 1980, when the CB craze and America's love affair with the "rebel" trucker was dying out, there were no less than about a dozen trucker movies to hit the big screen.

Besides today's two features, among others, there was also the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, Breaker! Breaker!, a Chuck Norris film, White Line Fever, High-Ballin' and Trucker's Woman. 

The American love affair with the trucker didn't stop with just feature films. There was also trucker TV shows and movies. Some of you may remember Movin' On, a short-lived TV series featuring Claude Akins and Frank Converse or B.J. and the Bear, another show featuring Greg Evigan and his more intelligent partner, "Bear", a chimpanzee riding the asphalt highway. 

I have a confession. For a brief period while still in high school I had  a flirtation with wanting to be a truck driver when I grew up. That only lasted as long as my first attempt at driving a stick shift car, however. I found out pretty quick that I had no aptitude for using a clutch.  But, damn, wouldn't it have been cool living the life of a long haul transportation executive...  

 

 

 

Convoy (1978):

A little background: As noted above, the song Convoy  was the inspiration of Bill Fries, who performed the song under the moniker of "C. W. McCall, and his writing partner, Chip Davis (who later created Mannheim Steamroller, a band you may have heard of due to their frequency on radio during the Christmas season).  The character of "C. W. McCall" came from a series of TV commercials for a bread company called Old Home Bread. In these commercials C. W. would tool into a roadside diner and flirt with the waitress, all the while with Fries' vocals delivering a trucker inspired voice over. Watching these old commercials is pretty interesting if you were a fan of the song that Fries eventually recorded. The style is the same as the song.

 

 

First things first. The original song Convoy had no real plot. It's just about a bunch of truckers and the ones they add along the way who are on a cross country trip from L.A. to the Jersey shore, dodging the various police along the way.  That's it.  Not enough there for even an episode on a half-hour sitcom. So the writers had to come up with a plot to flesh out a full-length  movie. You decide whether they did a decent job of it. For reference, here is the original song:

 

This entry is going to throw a lot of CB slang at you, but don't worry. For the uninitiated, I'll translate as I go. 

Arizona, noon, on the seventh of June

When they highballed over the pass.

Bulldog Mack with a can on the back

And a Jaguar haulin' ass.  

He's ten on the floor, strokin' a bore

Seat cover's startin' to gain.

Now, beaver, you truckin' with the Rubber Duck

And I'm about to pull the plug on your drain. 

 First verse of the title song (movie version)

 

OK. Here's your first lesson in CB slang:

"Bulldog Mack with a can on the back- a Mack truck semi with a tank that is hauling a liquid  (probably gasoline, but it conceivably be milk or some other liquid)

"Seat cover"and "beaver"- a female driver  

To set the scene. Big rig independent trucker, "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson) is hauling his rig across the Arizona desert. And note, while all these characters have real names, most of the time they are addressed by their CB handles (nicknames), which is fitting. Rubber Duck is minding his own business when a seat cover (good looking girl) passes him in a Jaguar. This is Melissa (Ali MacGraw). 

 

Melissa messes with Rubber Duck, because after she passes him, she slows down. Eventually the two get into a road race, which just happens to bring them into contact with a smokey (police officer) who pulls Duck over.  But Duck manages to get out of a ticket after he tells the smokey that the girl in the Jag isn't wearing any panties. Note: The immediate scene after the cop leaves to chase down Melissa has Rubber Duck giving a "smokey report" (letting fellow truckers know of a cop in the area). He says it is on "I-4-Oh", which would be 1-40, but if that's I-40, even in 1978, it's pretty run down...

 

Just down the way Rubber Duck hooks up with "Spider Mike" (Franklin Ajaye) and an old buddy "Love Machine" (Burt Young).  Because Love Machine's current cargo is a Bulldog (Mack truck) full of hogs, Mike suggests that the change Love Machine's handle to Pig Pen. Of course he isn't enamored with it.. (would you be...?)

The three end up in a bear trap (radar speed trap), caught speeding by the unscrupulous county mountie (police), Sheriff Lyle (or "Dirty Lyle", as he will be referred to by the truckers). Lyle having no moral compass, nicks the three for $70 each to avoid jail time and impounding of their trucks, which needless to say is going into Lyle's own pocket. Grumbling, the three pay the fine and leave.

After their run in the three decide to stop off at a truck stop to get something to eat. And guess who just so happens to be at the same truck stop... Melissa, who has sold the Jag and some other personal items to get enough money to get where she is going, ultimately Emerald City (Dallas). So she ends up hooking up with Duck.  But Duck and the boys are not through in town yet.  Who else comes in but Dirty Lyle. And we get to see just how unscrupulous as well as vindictive or villain is.  He tries to arrest Spider Mike for vagrancy, since Mike has no money after paying off his forced bribe to Lyle earlier.

 

The boys and Lyle go at each other, as well as some other cops who show up on the scene and ultimately Duck decides that their best bet is to get across the state line in to New Mexico, where they figure they will be safe since Lyle has no jurisdiction. But like Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, Lyle isn't going to let anything like jurisdiction prevent him from settling scores.

New Mexico, on I-four-oh

Like a Texas lizard on glass.

One thousand pedals was mashin' the metal

Them bears was a walkin' the grass.

We trucked all day and we trucked all night

Big Benny was improvin' our style.

We could tell by the smell we was headin' for Hell

And the Devil was Dirty Lyle. 

Second verse of title song 

Along the way, Duck and his pals keep picking up more trucks some long haired friends of Jesus in a microbus. (Hey! Wait one damn minute... that microbus is supposed to be chartreuse... )  The rest of the truckers who join the convoy seem to be joining just because it's an act of rebellion. But somewhere along the way, someone gets the idea that it is a protest of what was then a 55 MPH speed limit, which many people, especially truckers, did not like. The governor sends a representative to try to interview Duck and the other members of the convoy.

 

Meanwhile, Lyle is still on a one-man objective to bring down the Duck, or even to the point of killing him. When Spider Mike breaks off from the convoy to get to his final objective, that of being with his wife who is about to give birth to their child, Mike is arrested and beat up by the local police.  It is Lyle's intention to use Mike as bait to get Duck to come and rescue him. Duck heads off by himself at first, but when he gets to the town he has several other truckers with him and they demolish the town in order to rescue Mike.

Now Lyle was a creep, he was tacky and cheap

But he had him a badge and a gun.

He hated the Duck and he hated his truck

And he loved to bust truckers for fun.

So he followed the line and he bided his time

As he watched for his time to strike.

Then he picked on a trucker, a wiry old sucker

Yeah, the trucker they called Spider Mike.

Third verse of the title song. 

After the rescue, Duck and several others decide to head south of the border to Mexico, and finally, we get that old Peckinpah touch, a scene of needless violence as Lyle and about a thousand national guard and army guys try to prevent him from crossing the bridge. 

But the great Rubber Duck sorta run out of luck

When he crossed that final bridge.

There's choppers and rigs full of guns and pigs

They's wall to wall on the ridge.

He showed no fear as he grabbed his gear

And he stuck it in granddaddy low.

Them guns went boom and his ass went zoom

And the Mack took a terminal blow.

Fourth verse of the song  

 

 

 

Well, all seems at a bad end, because it looks like the Duck is dead and Dirty Lyle wins the day. But you know that just can't be how the movie ends. I will say this, the final three minutes are satisfying.

This movie made a decent showing, despite the fact that it was mostly panned by the critics.  At a budget of $12 million, it eventually drew in $45 million in receipts. What happened to the movie is an interesting story in itself.  

Sam Peckinpah, director of such classics as The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and The Getaway was the director of the film, and some elements ca still be seen as classic Peckinpah. But the original running time was way too long for the brass at the front office.  The original running time was 220 minutes (compared the 120 minutes in the final cut. Because Peckinpah seemed to be dragging his heels on cutting it down he was fired and the studios brought in an editor who, according to Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons, :cut the life out of it". (I'd be interested in seeing a director's cut just to see what was culled from it.  This one is compact, but it is well put together, so I wonder what they left on the cutting room floor.) 

 

 

 

The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977): 

The scene opens with a poor old truck driver, Elegant John (Henry Fonda) stuck in a hospital (or maybe it's an old folks home), trying to figure out how to spring his beloved Eleanor, his truck, from the impound lot.  

It becomes revealed in the early part of the movie that John went into the hospital for a checkup.  But he is aging, 60 by his own admission, and he ends up having to stay in the hospital (and I still think it's an old folks home). His truck was repossessed by the finance company, so John basically has to steal the truck. A fellow hospital patient (inmate in the home) tells him if he steals the truck on a Friday night he may have a good three or four days before the authorities get wind of his theft.

 

 

In a roadside cafe, he has some words with a fellow trucker, Charlie (Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinatti TV fame), who tells John he won't get the load to drive because the truck is stolen, so apparently John hasn't quite gotten away with his subtle tactics.

 

John picks up a hitchhiker, Beebo (Robert Englund). Beebo is on his way to Florida, but since John is not going that far, Beebo may be out of luck. John carries a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which explains the name of the truck, and probably also indicates just how long John has been a truck driver.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere in Wyoming, a brothel being run by Miss Penelope (Eileen Brennan) and her crew of courtesans (which includes, among others, Susan Sarandon) is invaded by the authorities. They are given 48 hours to leave town. (Yeah, that's the same thing I thought...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the truck, John and Beebo are headed across Wyoming (surprise, surprise). Beebo, ever the picky freeloader, complains to John they are headed the wrong way if they are to get to Florida.  But we find out that John's goal is to find a load to haul, and has a line on one in Laramie. Only when he gets there, the boss tells him he can't let John have the job because his truck is reported stolen.

Eventually John and Beebo end up at the "now in the process of being evacuated" brothel, where it turns out that John knows Miss Penelope, and her girls.  Miss Penelope hooks up with John and Beebo to go to South Carolina (eventually). Since John's main driving goal is to make one last haul in his truck, it might be a while before he gets either of his passengers to their destinations.  Especially since now the police are on the lookout for John and his stolen truck.

But the advantage of having a rolling brothel is not lost on Penelope, or John, (or for that matter, the audience...) When you have such a viable source of bringing in money, little things like the need for gas for the truck or food to feed a dozen hungry souls on the road becomes a little insignificant.

 

The sad part of all this is that John really is sick, not just an escaped old folks home resident. (So much for my thoughts...) He apparently is getting a little worse for wear as time passes.  Making this goal of one last hurrah at driving his rig cross country more than just an idle dream of living the life he once knew one last time. (Side note: at the time of this movie Fonda really was suffering from complications of his age. You probably already know Fonda passed away just a few years later after having received an Oscar for On Golden Pond.)

 It isn't long before every cop in the south, north, east and west is on the lookout for the stolen truck and escaped prostitutes. (Wait a minute, you might be thinking... weren't those hookers just told to vacate town? Why are the police after them, too? Well, you know how Hollywood doesn't really care about coherency of plot if there's potential money in the offing...)

But John has the misfortune of getting snagged by a backwoods sheriff and his bogus stop light.  Sheriff Harley (Dub Taylor) knows exactly what he's got. Think of Harley as a low rent version of Ernest Borgnine's sheriff from the first feature in this blog. He arrests his victims with the sole purpose of turning them in just to get his picture in the paper. Of course, the girls have a different plan,,, and John and the ladies escape.

 

 

In a bar somewhere they see themselves on the news broadcast where the newscaster (Sander Vanocur, playing himself) gives the basic story so far to his television audience (and I guess the movie audience, too, in case they fell asleep...) He wishes on the behalf of the public a Good luck" to John in his goals. The first indication that the public might be on the side of the lawbreakers.. (seems like a pattern is developing...)

 Up until this point, that "great smokey roadblock" seems to be non existent (and there's only 20 minutes left in the film...) But never worry. We still get the roadblock. All 4 minutes of it. Along with some hangers on who seem to have joined this "convoy" just because there was nothing else to do at the time. And with only about four police cruisers, not so "great" a roadblock... 

 

I won't say this film ends on an entirely positive note. Sure, the crew gets to their goal before the credits roll. At least almost all of the crew.

Henry Fonda is pretty damn good in this movie, and Robert Englund proves he can do more than just haunt your nightmares with razor sharp fingernails. (Yes, that's Freddie Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise...) The film is billed as a comedy and there are indeed some comedic moments in the film, but the romantic relationship between John and Penelope will tear at your heart strings, too. Is this one a great movie? Not hardly. One review I read said the more appropriate title would be "The Great American Sex-Trafficking Trip". Personally, I think he or she is taking a way too modern PC attitude.

It's definitely not family friendly, although the endearing romantic relationship between Fonda and Brennan is pretty sweet. I wonder what Fonda thought of the final movie, however.  He had recently been relegated to just cameos and probably took on this role as a way to get back into the spotlight of his glory days as a headliner. You'll appreciate On Golden Pond even more as his final movie after seeing this one. So, no, it's not a great movie, but at least it wasn't his last hurrah after all. It's worth one watch, but I don't think I will seek it out again. 

One thing that cropped up in my research. The original title of this film was "The Last of the Cowboys" which makes better sense as a title, given that that titular "roadblock" only takes up 4 minutes of the running time. But, as Hollywood is often wont to do, they tried to cash in on the CB craze by changing the title, obviously to draw in the crowds who had seen Smokey and the Bandit. The unhinged demeanor that Burt Reynolds had in that movie is barely visible in Elegant John. Good thing, too, because who would have accepted an aging Henry Fonda as an all-out rebel? 

Well, folks, that sound you hear is not a big 18 ton big rig firing up. The old Plymouth just needs some new mufflers. Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

Super New Year

 

 

 

 

First off, I can't believe I never got around to Superman before now.  Going on 9 years, off and on, on this blog, and with some of the entries being memories of childhood, a mention of this movie would have seemed to fit.  

Early on in my childhood, movies were a rare treat. I don't really remember all of them.  Most likely I saw several Disney animated films as a child.  One of the podcasts I regularly listen to, All 80's Movies Podcast, has frequent guests on it's show.  One of the questions the  hosts ask  their guests is "What is the first movie you ever saw?"  For me, my earliest memory is Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but I can't really remember one damn thing about the movie except that it had Angela Lansbury in it.

Likewise, I went with my parents and sister to see Patton at the drive-in, and I can't remember diddly about the first experience.  But I do know that it caused my father to determine that we as kids would be allowed to see no movie rated higher than G.

I had to beg and plead for my sister and me to be allowed to go see Star Wars. I  am not sure if my arguments on the subject convinced him to relent or if he was influenced by some other people that it was not that bad.  I always say that his main objection to PG and higher was the presence of language, since, if it was violence he probably would have not even considered Patton in the first place.

So Star Wars is probably my earliest theater going experience i can really remember.  A year later, on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, I am not sure which, we were allowed to go see our second PG movie, Superman.

The producers promoted the film with a memorable tagline : "You'll believe a man can fly."  And, as I can recall, it was pretty impressive at the time.  Nowadays it looks pretty quaint, having been exposed to CGI and the like, but it still looks pretty decent. 

The first of the potential Superman franchise had it's eye on it's sequel already, so there were some setup scenes that included the introduction , early in the movie, of the villains that would serve as foils for the man in the blue suit in the sequel, Superman II.  The first film had some pretty good clout in the form of it's stars.  One particular note was the name Marlon Brando.  His name appears, along with Gene Hackman, before the title "Superman" appears on screen. Such was the clout of Brando, given that his screen presence only really occupies less than 10 minutes of the opening scene. 

In addition, Glenn Ford had an all too brief appearance as Clark's ("Kal-El") Earth father. Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill, who played the original Superman and Lois Lane in the first 1940's live-action version of the Superman saga made a brief cameo as the parents of a young Lois Lane on a train.  Among others who had cameo roles, if you are quick, you can see Larry Hagman, John Ratzenberger, and Rex Reed.

The casting for Superman was probably not quite as expansive as the casting of some other coveted roles, like, say, Scarlett O'Hara, but quite a few names were in the running.  For instance, the producers sought out James Caan, and imagine that for a minute.  Hard to think of the same guy who had recently played a very emotional and rough character like Sonny Corleone trying to pull off the shy and reserved Clark Kent...  I also read that Arnold Scwarzenegger tried for the role.  (At least HE wouldn't have needed any padding as Superman, but even Jimmy Olsen would not have been fooled by the Clark Kent disgiuse in that case...)  

From wikipedia I gleaned the information that a whole raft of other then big names were either courted or tried out for the role.  Among these were Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone and even Paul Newman.  The one that caught my eye, however, was Neil Diamond.  That would have been the biggest mistake of the movie had it gone that way.  Diamond is a great singer, but he couldn't act worth squat. His one starring role, in 1980's The Jazz Singer, proved that.

The cache of big names didn't stop there.  The script was written by Mario Puzo, the same guy who brought us The Godfather saga, after William Goldman turned down the offer.  Puzo was a great writer in his own right, but I would love to have seen what Goldman would have done with the story.  (Goldman is the man responsible for the scripts for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride as well as a host of other great dialogue driven films, so the dialogue would have popped for sure.  He won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for All the President's Men, which I've been meaning to track down a copy of to review,)

As well, instead of Richard Donner, look at the list of "who could have been"  in the director's chair: Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, George Lucas. And, if the producers had been a little more confident in him during pre-production, Steven Spielberg.  But by the time they got the ball rolling Spielberg was already involved in his next opus, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The movie had what was, at that time, the biggest budget, at in the neighborhood off $55 million. Fortunately for the financial backers it was a huge hit and made well over $300 million in it's first run, a good enough showing that all that pre-setup in the picture to point to the sequel wasn't wasted.  (Just as an endpoint, since I won't be reviewing it here, the early scenes involving Jor-el and the three rebels figures prominently in Superman II.) 

Superman: (1978)

On the planet Krypton, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) delivers a sum-up of his case against three renegades, General Zod (Terence Stamp) and his cohorts Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O'Halloran).  In the end the three are sentences to a life (actually "Forever") sentence in The Forbidden Zone (essentially a two-dimensional prism that floats endlessly through space.)

After the trial Jor-El pleads with the council to listen to his aguments once again that Krypton needs to be evacuated immediately because it is on it's last legs.  He is silenced and forced to eep it to himself, because none of the powers-that-be want to admit that there might be something to his predictions, (And isn't that the way with ALL politicians when world-changing scenarios come into the fore.)

Jor-El swears that neither he, nor his wife, will attempt to leave planet Krypton.  But he didn't say anything about his son, Kal-El.  Just before all hell breaks loose on the planet, he manages to send his son off in a space ship, destined for a remote planet called...Earth.

The ship takes a little while to make the trip, since Kal-El is a baby when it leaves Krypton, but by the time it arrives on Earth, the baby is about 3 years old. (Which makes one wonder what kind of technology Krypton had to keep him alive and well-fed all that time, since he obviously couldn't have operated any computer functions himself...)

When the ship crash lands on Earth, it is conveniently near an older couple, Jonathan and Martha Kent (Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter).  They adopt the kid as their own, using the ruse that the boy is an orphan from Martha's side of the family to hide his true origin.

Fast forward 15 years.  Young Clark (Jeff East) is struggling to be accepted in his coterie of friends because he is such a geek.  Of course, we all know that the "geek" is just a front, since Clark could handle the entire football squad single-handedly.  Clark has a tendency to show off, secretly using his superpowers, but since the kids don't know his secret, they just think of him as more of a "geek".

When Clark's adopted father dies, Clark discovers, hidden in the barn, a crystal from his space ship. He takes the crystal and treks north to the frozen tundra of the North Pole where he creates the Fortress of Solitude with it, and spends the next 12 years under the tutelage of his real father, via hologram.

The next thing you know, Clark is a fully grown man and has gone to Metroplolis where he has a job as a reporter, and meets three of the main characters he will interact with the rest of he film: Perry White (Jackie Cooper), his boss; Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure), the paper's star photographer; and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) one of the star reporters.  (One thing, played for laughs in some scenes is Lois asking someone how to spell some word.  It's funny, but it made me wonder how she got a job as a reporter when she lacked the wherewithal of vocabulary... or at least a good dictionary...)

Superman reveals his presence very early when Lois, who is on a helicopter to go meet the President of the United states gets into a bind and nearly crashes.  Subsequently he foils a robbery, snares a guy trying to get to the top of the building without using the building's elevator, and rescues a cat in a tree.

Everyone wants to know about this mysterious hero, and Superman eventually agrees to an interview with none other than Lois.  Making Superman and Lois seemingly bosom friends (at the very least...)

Meanwhile, deep under the subway in his secret lair, mastermind criminal Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is making plans for his domination of the real estate market by planning to hijack two nuclear warheads and use them to destroy most of southern California nd make all the desert land he bought up prime coastal property.  In this endeavor he is helped by his dimwit flunky, Otis (Ned Beatty) and his woman, Miss Tessmacher (Valerie Perrine).  (With stalwart help like this, who needs enemies...?)

Eventually things come to a head when Luthor entices Superman to his lair.  But Luthor is not an idiot.  He didn't entice Superman without a backup.  He has a piece of Kryptonite, a remnant of Superman's home world on hand, which will render Superman useless when he comes in contact with it.

With Superman out of the way, and the warheads on their  destination, things seem bleak.  But when Miss Tessmacher finds out that Luthor has sent one of the warheads to Hackensack, NJ(?), she rescues Superman, on the promise that he will stop the warhead going to NJ first, because that's where her mother lives.

(OK. Interjection here.  Superman is "faster than a speeding bullet". So why is he taking such a long time to overtake the first warhead?  We need that to happen so that the next part will happen, but it just doesn't compute...)

Superman does stop the first warhead, but the second one does it's damage by causing the San Andreas Fault to malfunction and start causing serious damage.  But Superman is able to keep the entire coast from disappearing into the Pacific Ocean.  Unfortunately, one of the losses in the event is the life of Lois.  Which doesn't really set well with Superman...

One of his father's admonitions during his training was that it was "forbidden for him to interfere with human history".  But Superman refuses to let that stop him.  He roars into space and using his super speed manages to reverse the turning of the Earth to go back before Lois died. (And thus, even though he took his own precious time chasing down the first warhead, he finds the wherewithal to fly faster than that to reverse time.. go figure.)

All's well that ends well, at any rate.  Lois is still alive and Luthor and Otis end up in prison.

 This movie is still pretty good even now, 47 years later, although at times, as I said before, it comes off a little dated by it's special effects.  But I can't fault it for that, after all, it was the best that Hollywood and the science of filming had to offer at the time,

Well, folks, time to fly off to the home front.  Drive safely.

Quiggy

KISS in the Dark

 

"Check it out, man. The question you gotta ask yourself is how badly do you wanna see the greatest f*****g rock and roll show on the f*****g Earth, right? We're talking about Gene and Paul live, dog! I'm talking about the most voluptuous women hanging out in the audience. I'm talking big breasteses, and tight vesteses, my friend! You're talking people passing around joints in the audience. You're talking about f*****g Detroit Rock City, brother.  "  -Detroit Rock City

 

 When I was growing up there were plenty of rockers in my school.  Although I was raised on country music and grew up listening to Willie and Waylon and the boys, I was aware of the existence of both pop and rock music.  I admit that early on I had some apprehension for some of the more hard core stuff.  You have to remember I was raised in an evangelical church which preached that most of the music of the world was the spawn of the Devil.

One of my earliest recollections of experiencing rock music was hanging out with some seniors when I was a freshman.  The guy whose car we were in had a collection of sme serious hard core tapes of bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Kiss.  Much to my surprise I wasn't possessed by the Devil after hearing this stuff.  And I realized that the style and tempo of the music was to my liking.  I never became a serious headbanger like you see in some films and music videos, but I could rock out with the best of them.

As far as Kiss was concerned, I learned that glam rock was just another variation of the same type of music that some others used.  The members just used makeup as a gimmick.  It is a false rumor that the letters of KISS stand for "Knights In Satan's Service".  The name was actually just a response to a statement made by one of the band members.  Peter Criss commented that he had been in a band called "Lips" so Paul Stanley suggested they call their band "Kiss".  (BTW the band had formerly been known as "Wicked Lester" before Criss joined the band)

 

For a brief period, the band abandoned the makeup gimmick and just produced albums without makeup.  But their prominent years involved the personas they created   They played under their real (or in some cases, assumed) names of Paul Stanley (born Stanley Eisen), Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz), Ace Frehley (born Paul Frehley) and Peter Criss (Peter Criscuola).  But they also had names for their personas in makeup (Stanley: "Starchild", Simmons: "The Demon", Frehley: "The Spaceman" and Criss: "Catman")

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park: (1978)

By 1978, Kiss had such a following that they were even granted their own TV movie special.  Airing just before Halloween in 1978 (fitting, dontcha think?) the movie was panned by critics and fans alike.  The band famously forbid anyone in their crew to even mention the movie in their presence.  And, in retrospect, it is pretty ridiculous.  The producers seemed to not know what they had.  The Kiss characters come off looking like cheap knockoffs of the3 worst comic book superheroes, and the acting is substandard even with Anthony Zerbe, who probably should have known better.

 

The script sounds like it was written by amateurs.   The comments from some of the members of the band are instructive.  Gene Simmons has said that it is "a classic movie... classic if you're on drugs."  I compare it to the "Star Wars Holiday Special" (which coincidentally aired just a few weeks later in 1978...), just another desperate 70's attempt to cater to the whims of the teenage viewing audience who weren't watching much TV in the first place.

None of the members of Kiss can act worth a damn (at this point, although Gene Simmons has proven himself capable in a few later endeavors.)  BTW, is it just me or does Ace Frehley sound like Curly from the Three Stooges?

So what's the plot?  (Plot?  Are you serious?)  Anthony Zerbe plays Abner Devereaux, a genius who has devised much of the animatronic attractions for a theme park.  But because the bottom line is getting the theme park to make money and much of the funds are being drawn on by Devereaux to finance his increasingly expensive new ideas, he is given the ax by the management, in particular the head of operations, Calvin Richards (Carmine Caridi).

 

Of course, Devereaux is put into the mold as a mad scientist whose goal is to make them all pay for his troubles.  The thing is, Devereaux has the ability to turn actual humans into robots.  As well as create his own robots.  And he plans to use them all for his nefarious purposes.

 

Devereaux's big complaint is the scheduled performance of the band Kiss as a major attraction to opening day.  Devereaux doesn't like rock and roll.  (I bet he is still miffed that classical music has gone out of style.)  So he plans, among other things, to create robotic versions of Kiss, kidnap the real band, and substitute the robots for them.  With the robots thus in place, he will proceed to have them trash the park and incite a riot, thus shutting down the park.

 

The superhero aspect comes into play when it is revealed that each of the members of the band have their super powers given to them by a set of ancient talismans.  When Devereaux has one of his human/robot henchmen steal the talismans from their dressing room, he is able to neutralize them and kidnap them.

 

Of course, good will always in out in the end in these kinds of movies.  The trouble is getting to that end.  Trust me when I say, if you're not laughing at the ineptness of the plot, you are probably wondering how this thing ever escaped from the drawing room in the first place.  

 

 

 

 

Detroit Rock City: (1999)

 

The time is 1978.  Four would be rock and rollers who have formed their own Kiss tribute band (called "Mystery") anxiously are awaiting the upcoming concert of Kiss coming to their home stadium.  They have tickets on hand.  Unfortunately, the tickets are in the possession of Jam (Sam Huntington), whose mother (Lin Shaye) is a religious zealot who subscribes to the belief that rock and roll in general is evil and that Kiss in particular is the spawn of Satan.

She finds the tickets that Jam has stashed and proceeds to burn them in front of him, to the horror of his band mates/friends; Hawk (Edward Furlong), Lex (Giuseppe Andrews) and Trip (James DeBello).  With their hopes dashed the boys are devastated.  That is until a local radio show has a call-in contest with four tickets in the offing as the prize.  Trip is the lucky guy who calls in and wins the tickets.

 

The four set out to travel to the concert.  In the course of the trip they have a confrontation with a group of disco fans and prove that no disco malcontents are a match for a group of hardcore rockers.  Which ends up with one of the girls accompanying them on their trip and one of the funniest scenes in the process>

"Don't pick her up!  It's a teenage girl walking along the side of a highway!  I mean, they make scary movies that start out like that!"

"Yeah, but they make porno movies that start out like that, too!"

Upon arriving in the city, the boys find out that ditzy Trip forgot to stay on the phone long enough to give his personal information to the DJ at the radio station and the tickets were given to the next caller.  Stuck in the city without their precious tickets each boy goes his own way to find a way to scavenge tickets for the precious concert.

The various ways in which each of these guys tries to get tickets is a treat in itself.  I won't give away all of them, but at least one of them will have to shed his inhibitions to get the money the needs to buy tickets from a scalper (see the quote at the beginning of this blog piece.)

The fly in the ointment is that Jam's mom is in town too, as part of a group of religious witch hunters to protest the evil presence of Satan's musicians.  And of course, you just KNOW that Jam and his mom are going to cross paths at some point.

The band members only appear at the end at the concert, so we aren't subjected to an attempt to make restitution for the 1978 debacle of a TV movie.  And this flick is by far better acted by its cast.

Well folks, time to take that ride home.  Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

Living the Fat, Drunk and Stupid Life

I didn't pledge a fraternity in my college days.  I wasn't the type.  Most college fraternities came off as elitist snobs (much like the Omegas in this movie, although I wasn't influenced by it.  I didn't see Animal House until I was well into my 20's.)

But if there had been a fraternity, like the Deltas,  for outcasts like myself, I definitely would have petitioned them to accept me (although, truth be told, I may have been considered too much of an outcast even for the Deltas...)

When John Landis and company were casting around for locations for this film, most universities took one look at the script and tossed them out on their ears.   The only reason that the University of Oregon in Eugene actually agreed to allow the filming was due to the university president, William Boyd, having seen the critical acclaim that The Graduate received after UC-Berkley had rejected the filming on its campus only to see USC get the location shooting and the subsequent benefits from it.

The movie featured a cast of unknowns. John Belushi was the most recognizable face, as the rest of the potential Saturday Night Live alumni opted to not join the cast.  Imagine an Animal House movie, if you will, with Dan Ackroyd as "D-Day", Chevy Chase as "Otter" and Bill Murray as "Boon".  Donald Sutherland was later added because the brass were afraid of a movie that only had one familiar face and that one of a relatively popular, but still somewhat obscure late night TV show.

Animal House is an institution in itself.  I don't think they actually coined the "toga party", but they sure as hell started a trend for them.  Not sure about the food fights, but I bet there were a few of them.

If Animal House isn't required viewing for potential college-going high school seniors, it should be.  If only to show how "not to succeed in college".  Or maybe to give them inspiration for getting through it without going crazy.

Animal House (1978):

Larry Kroger (Tom Hulce) and Kent Dorfman (Stephen Furst) are two college roommates whose big ambition is to pledge a fraternity.  There hopes are pretty much dashed when the elitist Omega fraternity rejects them.  ("a wimp and a blimp")

Larry and Kent

Kent convinces Larry that they should try to pledge the Delta fraternity because, after all, Kent's brother was a member of the Deltas so, he thinks, they HAVE to accept him because he is a "legacy".  Larry has some reservations because the deltas are renowned as the "worst" fraternity on campus.

Which they are, and deserve to be.  One look at the house and the ragtag bunch of malcontents in the house would prove it.  The big man on the campus (in more ways than one) is "Bluto" (John Belushi).  Add to that a wild and crazy guy who is not afraid to ride a motorcycle in the house, "D-Day" (Bruce McGill), two roommates who are only in college for the girls, "Boon" (Peter Reigert) and "Otter" (Tim Matheson), and a barely sentient guy only known as "Stork" (Doug Kenney).  Robert Hoover (James Widdoes), the president of the fraternity is the only one who could be said to have both oars in the water.

D-Day, Otter, Boon, Bluto and Hoover

Meanwhile, in the university dean's office, Dean Wormer (John Vernon) and the leader of the Omegas, Greg Marmalard (James Daughton) conspire to get the Deltas kicked off campus, by putting them on "double secret probation".

Dean Wormer and Marmalard

Wormer encourages Marmalard to use his wiles and his sadistic sidekick Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf) to spy on the Deltas and use whatever means necessary to achieve this goal.

Neidermeyer

Not knowing of their impending doom, the Deltas continue on their wild and wicked ways, including having a toga party, complete with kegs of beer (in violation of university rules about that kind of behavior).  They also go on a road trip where they hook up with some girls from the nearby all-girls university.  When the midterms come out, and all of the Deltas are failing, Dean Wormer threatens to kick them out and to notify the draft board of their eligibility for the draft (and thus potential fodder for the Vietnam War).

But the Deltas are not ones to take this lying down.  When Hoover comments that it's over, Bluto leads the charge;

Bluto: "What? 'Over"?  Did you say 'over'?  Nothing is over until we decide it is!  Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  Hell, no!"

Otter: "Germans?"

Boon: "Forget it, he's rolling."

Bluto:  "And it ain't over now!  'Cause when the goin' gets tough....  The tough get goin'!  Who's with me?  Let's go!"

And after running out on his own Bluto comes back to continue rallying the troops;

Bluto:  "What the f*** happened to the Deltas I used to know?  Where's the spirit?  Where's the guts?  This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst.  'Oooh, we're afraid to go with you, Bluto.  We might get in trouble'.  Well, just kiss my ass from now on.  Not me.  I'm not gonna take this.  Wormer, he's a dead man.  Marmalard, dead.  Neidermeyer...."

Boon:  "Dead.  Bluto's right.  Psychotic, but right."

And thus, the Deltas plan a really "stupid and futile gesture" to exact revenge on the university.

Oh and you haven't even seen the best part yet.  They plan to make a mockery of the homecoming parade.  And what a mockery it is.

This is a movie I still get a kick out of, even some 35 years after my college days ended.  If you've ever wanted to see some nemesis in your life get their comeuppance (without actually wanting them dead in the real sense of the word, this movie is one you absolutely HAVE to watch at least once in your life.

Time to take that ride home.  The old Plymouth could stand a few accoutrements like the Deltas deck out their car, but I don't really want to cause havoc these days.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Angels in Transit

This is my entry in the "They Remade What?!" Blogathon hosted by Phyllis Loves Classic Movies.

Remakes don't usually compare too favorably with the originaal in the cinema world.  In fact, just the term "remake" can usually inspire a kind of "Oh God! You can't be serious!" kind of response in the average aficionado of cinema.  Especially if said aficionado is enamored of the original.  Just ask any fan of Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho what they think Gus van Sant's so called "homage" to the classic and you are probably in for a rant of unprecedented proportions.

On rare occasions the remake does turn out to be acceptable even to fans of the original.  On even rarer occasions, the remake turns out to be astoundingly better.  I'm thinking in particular of the 1941 John Huston/Humphrey Bogart version of the classic Dashiell Hammett novel The Maltese Falcon.  The Maltese Falcon was so much better than the 1931 version or the remake from 1936, Satan Met a Lady, that it is now considered the definitive version of the book.

In 1941, a play called Heaven Can Wait garnered the attention of Hollywood.  The play was so good that, instead of actually being produced on Broadway, it went directly to the studio.  Re-titled Here Comes Mr. Jordan, the film was so good, it gained the attention of the Academy, where it was nominated for 7 awards, of which it won two.  It suffered from being pitted against How Green was My Valley.

In 1978, the film was remade, using it's original title of Heaven Can Wait.  This movie, too was so good, it also gained the Academy's attention.  It was nominated for 9 Academy Awards.  Unfortunately the competition included The Deer Hunter and Midnight Express, both of which deserved every award they won.

For your enjoyment I include here all the awards for which both movies vied for awards.  You make the call on whether the Academy was right:

1941 Academy Awards:

Best Picture: Here Comes Mr. Jordan lost to How Green Was My Valley
Best Director: Alexander Hall lost to John Ford (How Green Was My Valley) 
Best Actor: Robert Montgomery lost to Gary Cooper (Sergeant York)
Best Supporting Actor: James Gleason lost to Donald Crisp (How Green Was My Valley)
Best Screenplay: Won
Best Original Story: Won
Best Cinematography (Black and White): Joseph Walker lost to Arthur Miller (How Green Was My Valley)

1978 Academy Awards:

Best Picture: Heaven Can Wait lost to The Deer Hunter
Best Director: Warren Beatty and Buck Henry lost to Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter)
Best Actor: Warren Beatty lost to Jon Voight (Coming Home)
Best Supporting Actor: Jack Warden lost to Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter)
Best Supporting Actress: Dyan Cannon lost to Maggie Smith (California Suite)
Best Screenplay: Elaine May and Warren Beatty lost to Oliver Stone (Midnight Express)
Best Original Score: Dave Grusin lost to Giorgio Moroder  (Midnight Express)
Best Cinematography: William A. Fraker lost to Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and
Heaven Can Wait (1978):

(Note: The two movies are so similar that I chose to combine the two into one overall review)

Joe Pendleton (1941: Robert Montgomery; 1978: Warren Beatty) is an athlete who is up-and-coming for stardom.  (In the 1941 version Joe was a boxer.  In the 1978 version, after a deal to try to get Muhammad Ali to star fell through, Joe became a football quarterback).

Joe's trainer and best friend Max Corkle (1941: James Gleason; 1978: Jack Warden) tries desperately to keep his star in top shape.

Joe runs into some bad luck and ends up dying (1941: in a plane wreck; 1978: in a bicycle vs. truck accident) and is taken to Heaven by his escort (1941: Edward Everett Horton; 1978: Buck Henry).  Joe, however, refuses to accept that he is dead.  He argues his case with the head bigwig at the transport station, Mr. Jordan (1941: Claude Rains; 1978: James Mason).

 It is discovered that Joe was NOT scheduled to die until 50 years hence.  The escort made a mistake and pulled his soul a moment or two too early.  But getting Joe back to his original body proves to be problematic.  Max had Joe's body cremated.  The solution that Mr. Jordan comes up with is to have Joe transferred to another body, one that is scheduled to die forthwith.  But Joe is adamant that the body he gets be in primo physical condition because he intends to fulfill what he considers to be his destiny (1941: be the boxing champ; 1978: play on the LA Rams team in the Super Bowl).  He rejects several options in due course because they don't fit his ideal standards.

Finally, Mr. Jordan introduces Joe to Leo Farnsworth, a millionaire.  Leo's wife, Julia  (1941:Rita Johnson; 1978: Dyan Cannon) and his personal secretary, Tony Abbott (1941:  John Emory; 1978: Charles Grodin) are secret lovers and have been plotting Leo's murder.

Joe initially rejects this option, too, until he sees Betty Logan (1941: Evelyn Keyes; 1978: Julie Christie).  Betty is on a mission to get Leo to change his mind about a rather illicit business affair.  Joe decides to be Leo, just long enough to help Betty get her problem resolved.

Of course, Julia and Tony are devastated that their first attempt at murder has not succeeded, but they refuse to give up.  Joe, as Leo, causes consternation not only with them, but also with his business associates.  Seems that Leo had a history of stepping on other people to get to the top.  And his new attitude is at odds with that.

In the meantime, Joe hires Max to help him personally train Leo's body to try to achieve his ultimate sports goal.   To do that, he somehow first has to convince Max that Leo is really he, Joe, in another body, making Max complicit in the affair that only Joe and the escort and Mr. Jordan know.

Joe eventually wangles the cards in his favor with his new body, but the dream is not exactly as he plans.  The rest of the movie I'm leaving as a surprise.  If you only decide to watch one of these, I recommend it be Here Comes Mr. Jordan, simply because I think Evelyn Keyes is one of the hottest women from the classic film era.  Both are well worth the view, though.  The remake has the advantage of getting to see Warren Beatty get his ass creamed by real football players cameoing as the real Los Angeles Rams.  (A story goes that a couple of the real players plotted to give Beatty a real taste of being sacked in one of the scenes.)


Above all, avoid at all costs the Chris Rock remake Down to Earth, which follows basically the same plot, but is absolutely horrendous. (if the fact that it stars Chris Rock didn't already give that away...)  But if you are of a more salacious bent, the theme was revisited in a pornographic film Debbie Does Dallas...Again.  But I can't comment on it, since I have never seen it.  Honest!




Well, folks, it's time to fire up the old Plymouth.  And, just in case, if some new blogger comes along and tries to convince you he is me, it just MAY be true.... Drive safely.

Quiggy