Semiquincentennial Movie Project #19: Breaking Away

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #19: Indiana -

 

 

 

The state of Indiana was established on December 11, 1816. 

Details about Indiana:

State bird: cardinal

State flower: peony

State tree: tulip tree 

Additional historical trivia:

There is a good chance that the popcorn you are eating came from Indiana. Indiana (and Nebraska) are the producers of most of the world's popcorn supply.

Did you ever get a letter from Santa? It probably actually came from the post office in Santa Claus, IN...

Elvis Presley performed his last live concert in Indianapolis 3 months before his death.

October 6, 1866 was the date of the very first train robbery, in Indiana.

You older girls will remember Raggedy Ann. The doll was created by an Indiana woman. 

Speaking of females, Indiana is home of the first "women only" prison. 

The tiny school of Milan won the state basketball championship in 1954, and was the inspiration for the film Hoosiers.

Famous people born in Indiana: Orville Redenbacher (see the first trivia bit above), Jim Davis (creator of the Garfield comic strip), Michael Jackson (as well as the rest of the Jackson 5), Kurt Vonnegut, David Letterman, James Dean, Larry Bird, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and, believe it or not, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Sanders (who wasn't a real colonel in the Army, by the way..) 

 

Breaking Away (1979): 

Remember those heady days of the late 70's and early 80's? When life was idyllic because you didn't have to be worried about being drafted, and especially when, even if you did sign up for military service, you were assured of not having to serve in an unpopular war? When, after graduation from high school, the biggest decisions a boy would have to make was whether to go to college or join the work force? When Dennis Quaid was, arguably, one of the sexiest new actors on the screen (and I can say that, firmly entrenched in my own heterosexuality. A young Dennis Quaid was pretty hot at 25...) When a little low budget film like Breaking Away could surprise the critics and the public alike?

At a budget of only $2 million the film crept into being one of the top films of 1979. Roger Ebert, in his review, praised it, saying that "[i]n a summer of big-budget movies that are insults to the intelligence" here was a movie that was "a wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time. It is, in fact, a treasure..." (BTW, I looked up to see what "big budget movies" that Ebert might be referring to as "insults to the intelligence" and came away with these: He considered The Hurricane to be the worst movie of the year, this despite the fact that he stayed for the entire movie, but walked out on Caligula. He also did not like The Amityville Horror and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.)

Breaking Away, on the other hand, consistently cracks the top 20 sports movies of all time (a 2003 Sports Illustrated article ranked it # 8), and even gets fairly good rankings on movie lists that cover the entire gamut of movie genres. It's also # 8 on AFI's list of the "100 Most Inspiring Movies list.. With a cast of virtually unknowns (this was only the 7th movie for Jackie Earle Haley, the veteran of the main cast, the 5th movie for Quaid as well as the 5th for Dennis Christopher, and the first for Daniel Stern. To be the main focus of the cast with a bunch of "nobodies", the movie did fairly well, I would say.

The film was not without merits in more ways than one. It garnered five Academy Award nominations, and even managed to win one of them, Best Writing for Original Screenplay. It had the unfortunate situation of going head-to-head against the top movie of the year, Kramer vs. Kramer, and thus lost for Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Yates lost to Robert Benton) and Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Barrie lost to Meryl Streep). It also lost the Best Music award to All That Jazz (and deservedly so, in my opinion on that one).

Essentially it's a coming of age movie more than a sports movie. After all, even though the focus is on the sport of cycling, how many people would actually be interested enough to go see it just for the cycling? Certainly not if you wanted action. A football movie or a hockey movie or even a basketball movie would be much more likely to draw in the sports nut. On the other hand, a movie that centered on the conflict of teenagers trying to fit in to whatever society expected of them, while still retaining their exuberant youthful personality, is a much more likely draw.

The star of the movie is Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher), a kid who is absolutely enamored with the Italian bicycling team, and even by the Italian culture itself. To the annoyance of his father, he affects an Italian accent and cranks out Italian opera on his stereo. He has a big desire to compete against the Italians in a bicycle race, holding them in high regard as basically the "best of the best".

 

Along with high school buddies Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley), Dave spends most of his time discussing what the four are going to do now that they have graduated high school. It appears that the only real future they have is getting into the job market, since college is basically a pipe dream. The university students call them "cutters", a disparaging term for the townspeople, many of whom work in the local rock quarry. (Note: The actual term that the real university used was "stoners", but the production team opted to change it for the film, for obvious reasons...)

 

The rivalry between the two factions becomes intense when some of the students from the university invade the boys' favorite swimming hole.

 

Mike in particular has some animosity for the university interlopers because, as a former football star in high school he resents the fact that some out-of-towners are garnering the accolades in the realm of football while he is only able to live on his past glories at school. 

 

Mike: "You know what really gets me though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinking town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hot shot kid - new star of the college team. Every year its gonna be a new one. And every year its never gonna be me. I'm just gonna be Mike. Twenty year old Mike. Thirty year old Mike. Old mean old man Mike. " 

Mike, Cyril and Moocher all have dreams, but dreams that are beyond what they think are realistically possible. Dave, on the other hand, is the essence of optimism. He knows, I mean really knows, that given the opportunity he could be a star cyclist. So when the Italian team comes to town for an exhibition race, he plans to be in the race to compete against his heroes. But his "heroes" turn out to be a bit less than altruistic. They use some very unorthodox tactics to get Dave to wreck his bike during the race.

 

This has the effect of making Dave apathetic about his dreams. Even though his friends want him to compete in the local race, mainly because if he wins it would take those uppity university students they hate down a peg or two, Dave is not very gung-ho about the idea. Inspiration comes from an unlikely source. Dave's father tells his son about how, as a younger man, and one of the quarry workers, he helped cut the stones that helped build the university, even though he never felt welcome on the campus.

 

Ultimately Dave and his friends join the race, with the team name being "Cutters" (thus snubbing their noses at the disparaging term the university students use against them). Dave is, of course, the driving force for the team, since none of his friends are as avid about his chosen interest in cycling. But the entry in the race requires that a team be comprised of four, not just one. The race is kind of like a relay. One biker rides until he feels a need to rest and another takes over. 

 

Dave, of course,  takes the lead, but ends up getting injured amd has to let his friends take over. But the lead he garnered dwindles as the friends are not nearly as adept at this cycling thing as Dave. As usual in these kinds of movies, the last laps of the race make it necessary that Dave takes back his position as the rider. And it's pretty much a foregone conclusion what is going to happen at the final lap, I think.

In the middle of all this action Dave starts a relationship with one of the university girls, Katherine (Robyn Douglass in her first movie role). But Dave gets off on the wrong foot by pretending to be a university student, and not just that, but also being an Italian. You know that's bound to come back at some point and smack him in the butt. 

 

Did you know that this movie inspired a very brief TV series? In 1980 ABC tried to introduce a series, also called Breaking Away, with Shaun Cassidy in the lead role as Dave. It only aired 7 episodes before it was cancelled, however. I don't have any idea how it would have panned out in the long run, but the initial show was in essence a prequel to the film. The events were supposedly occurring the year prior to the events in the film.

 

Not to dismiss Barbara Barrie's Academy Award nomination, I think the standout performance of the film is Paul Dooley as Dave's father. He is hilarious in all his scenes, but early on in the film is one that stands out. Dad follows Dave upstairs when he comes home and comes back downstairs with a shocked look on his face. And you just know what his line is going to be before he even days it:

 

"He's shaving... he's shaving his legs..."

 Breaking Away is a film that will stick with you for its inspirational message. If you watch enough of these kinds of movies the ending may be telegraphed before  the movie ever gets underway, but like several movies I have reviewed over the years, it has enough of it's own charm that the "I've seen this all before" aspect of it gets overwhelmed by the way the actors play out their parts. I highly recommend if you've never seen it to give it a go, and if you have seen it, give it another viewing,

That's it for this week. Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #2: The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

 Week #2: Pennsylvania :

 

 

The state of Pennsylvania was the second of the original colonies to be established as a state in the United States. It became a state on December 12, 1787.

Details about Pennsylvania:

State bird: Ruffled grouse

State flower: Mountain laurel

State tree: Hemlock

Additional state trivia:

The state has one of only two radio stations in the US who's call letters are the same as the city it is in: WARE. (The other is WACO, in Texas)

Possibly Pennsylvania's mos famous resident is Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who predicts the weather on Groundhog Day.

In 1943, when a lot of men went off to fight in WWII, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers played one season of football as one team; The Steagles.

State College High School has the distinction of being the first high school to have a driver's ed class.

Pennsylvania is the only one of the original thirteen states that does not have a border with the Atlantic Ocean.

Bot the first US zoo and the first US public library were established in Philadelphia.

Famous people born in Pennsylvania: Jimmy Stewart, Will Smith, John Updike, Wilt Chamberlain, Joe Namath. John Heisman (whom is honored with he annual Heisman Trophy) and US President James Buchanan. 

 

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979):

It's fitting that the Pennsylvania entry in this project centers around basketball. The basketball movie and Pennsylvania almost go hand in hand. Just look at the list of basketball movies that centered in the state. Celtic Pride, That Championship Season, Full Court Miracle, The Mighty Macs. One of the films that sailed under the radar was a comedy about the fictional Pittsburgh Pythons, a team that apparently couldn't shoot it's way out of a match-up with a team of pre-schoolers.

Pittsburgh is a big sports town, of course. They are represented in the NFL by the Pittsburgh Steelers, in the MBA by the Pittsburgh Pirates and in the NHL by the Pittsburgh Penguins. It seems astounding, to me at any rate, that their is no professional NBA team in Pittsburgh. To be fair there have been a few attempts, but it seems that Pittsburgh is considered a small market city when it comes to basketball. Not to mention the huge competition with the perennial powerhouses in the NFL and the NHL. 

This movie features many basketball stars of the time (late '70's). In film roles playing members of the hapless Pythons were Julius "Dr. J." Erving, Meadowlark Lemon (of the Harlem Globetrotters fame) and Jerry Chambers, but also appearing as themselves on the various courts of the game were a plethora of basketball stars:  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (L.A. Lakers), Bob Lanier (Detroit Pistons), "Cornbread" Maxwell (Boston Celtics) and Kevin Porter (Detroit Pistons).

The Pittsburgh Pythons are the laughingstock of the NBA. Even the worst teams in the league at least garner some fans who brave the jeers of casual fans and band wagoners who only go to the games when the team is winning. The opening scene of the film shows a vast landscape of empty seats. Nobody, and I mean nobody seems to want to go to the games, and that includes a set of wheelchair bound geriatrics who seem to be serving some kind of punishment, because even they complain:  "I don't want to be here. I wanna go home!" 

 

The Pythons have a problem, not only with being able to perform well on the court, but also with being able to interact with each other off the court. One of them, Lucian Tucker (Jerry Chambers), even openly tries to express his disgust with the team on court, demanding that he be traded forthwith vocally, even while in the process avoiding performing his duties on court. And he doesn't get along with his teammates, especially Moses Guthrie (Julius "Dr. J." Erving), whom he basically calls out as a over paid hindrance.

 

The coach for the time, Jock Delaney (Flip Wilson) is more than a little miffed with his team. You get the idea that he would do anything, if he could just get these malcontents to pull together as a team, but he just doesn't have the General mentality to get things back on track.

The only one who seems to have any faith in the team is a young kid, the ball boy, Tyrone (James Bond III). He tries to give Guthrie some encouragement, saying that Guthrie is just in a slump and he knows that Guthrie can turn it around. Guthrie tells Tyrone that he is a Pisces and he just needs to check his horoscope, which starts the wheels turning in Tyrone's mind.

 

He thinks astrology is the key to turning the Pythons around. So he goes to a local astrologer, Mona Mondieu (Stockard Channing) to get her advice. He tries to convince her to be the team astrologer. In so doing, he tells that the team are ALL Pisces. Of course, they aren't really ALL Pisces... at least, not yet. But fate has thrown it's hand into the fire because most of the team just walks. This sets up a need to get a team together, but fast.

 

They hold open tryouts for any and all basketball star wannabes. Which gets, among others, a local D.J., Jackhammer Washington ( Jesse Lawrence Ferguson) and a local preacher, Reverend Grady Jackson (Meadowlark Lemon) to come to the open tryouts. But there is one stipulation... all of the potential players HAVE to be born under the zodiac sign of Pisces.

 

The owner of the Pythons is a scatterbrain rich guy, H. S. Tilson (Jonathan Winters) is all gung ho about the idea, but his older brother Harvey (also played by Winters) is convinced his little brother is a nitwit.

 

But H. S. intends to follow through with this decidedly off kilter idea. Including the aforementioned Jackhammer and the Reverend, several other players are destined to try to make this idea work, including Setshot Bufford (Jack Kehoe), Driftwood Haney (Peter Isacksen), and Bullet Haines (Malek Abdul Mansour). Most of these guys wouldn't even get a second look by the scouts, but they have one advantage... they are all Pisces.

 

This astrological mumbo-jumbo must have something on the ball, because this group of malcontents go on a tear, moving from last place lunkheads to contenders.  They take on some power houses in the league and mop the floor with them. Of course, this being about a fictional team from Pittsburgh, the rest of the teams are only known by their cities: Boston, Detroit, New York, and of course Los Angeles. But if you are quick eyed (and are familiar with the players of the late 70's) you can't help not missing some big names.

The highlight of the movie has to be the end. The Pisces are playing a game 7 in the NBA finals against Los Angeles, whose team includes the big guy himself, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But a monkey wrench has been thrown into the mix as Harvey, owner H.S.'s unscrupulous brother, kidnaps Mona. In the end the Pisces end up having to rely on themselves, rather than their astrological mentor.  

 

With a budget of $4 million, the movie made a pretty decent profit, pulling in $8.3 million in ticket sales. It didn't get much fanfare from the critics. (It doesn't even have enough reviews to get a rating on the vaunted Tomato meter, although IMDb user ratings put it at just shy of 5 stars). Is this a great movie? My opinion is it's not entirely bad, although it seems quite predictable. Often during the film certain situations are telegraphed long in advance. For instance, you just had to KNOW that the combative Lucien Tucker, the one who kept demanding to be traded at the beginning of the film, would end up being on the team that the Pisces faced in the finals. Sure, that's a standard trope in sports movies, so it's not like you wouldn't have expected it in the first place.   

In the end, I really can't tell whether this movie is disparaging the idea of belief in astrology or if it is trying to advocate it's power. Just so you know, I don't really believe in all that mumbo-jumbo of the stars having some kind of pseudo magical influence on my life, But then again, I told a woman who did believe in all that hocus pocus stuff and, without having told her beforehand my birth date, she said "You must be a Sagittarius." I was born in early December, and that falls under the Sagittarius zodiac sign, so maybe there is something to this stuff after all...  (Naaaah!)  

That's it for this week.

Quiggy 

Sand and Stars

 

 

 

 

 

This is my entry in the John Saxon Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis

 

 

 

 

So who is John Saxon? Well, Saxon, whose real name was Carmine Orrico, was a guy who made a name for himself in the 70's and 80's as a go to guy for such low budget horror and martial arts films that were the bread and butter of the drive-in movie circuit.  You may not recognize the name, but it's a sure bet you would recognize the face, especially if you watched those kinds of movies.

During his heyday he was a presence in such films as  Enter the Dragon (notably Bruce lee's last completed film) in which he is among a group of competitors in a tournament on a remote island. and many Westerns and crime dramas in the 70's.  Although he never achieved a high profile starring role for the most part, he did get a lot of attention whenever he was on screen.  He managed to win a Golden Globes award as New Star of the Year, an award he shared with James Garner and Patrick Wayne (from 1954-1965 there were multiple winners of the award  each year).

Saxon had a career that spanned from 1954 to 2017 (a few years before his death), but he was most active in the 70's and 80's. He did get roles ointo even the 90's and 2000's.   I didn't know it at the time, but I recently re-watched Beverly Hills Cop III, and lo and behold, there was Saxon in yet another role, this time as one of the baddies.

Blood Beach (1979):

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... you can't get past the beach! 

You know, for years, I thought that was the tagline from this movie. It plays on the fears caused by the blockbuster Jaws from a few years previous.  However, it turns out that the tagline is slightly different.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ... you can't get to it!

Notice the difference?  I think my tag is better, but, we can't do anything about it now...

Anyway, as intimated in the tagline, this movie initially plays off the fears of beach fun that that blockbuster had on vacation traffic back in 1975.  Surely the makers of this movie did not envision having that kind of impact on vacationers.  (If they did, then I want some of what they were smoking in the boardroom...)

And while I'm admitting misconceptions, for years, before I ever got to actually see the movie, I had sworn that I heard that the creature at the end of the film turned out to be a giant ant lion.  Whether that was an actual ending of another film, I can't say, but as you will see if you make it to the end of this review, you will see that it was NOT necessarily a giant ant lion.

The movie opens with Harry (David Huffman) going off to his job as a harbor patrol man.  He apparently swims out to his job. On the beach he greets a woman, Ruth, who is doing her daily walk on the beach with her dog.  While Harry is out swimming he hears the screams of the woman, whom we see pulled down into the sand and disappear.

 

What happened to her?  No one seems to know, since it seems no one saw her disappear.  At least no one who is coming forward.  We do see a woman watching the scene from an abandoned building, but she is not making herself known.

The LA Police are dubious.about her disappearance.  The two detective partners who discuss the disappearance with Harry (played by the Young brothers, Otis and Burt... OK they aren't really brothers, but isn't it interesting that they are both named Young?)

 

 

There former girlfriend of Harry, Catherine (Marianne Hill) shows up, because, coincidentally, she was also the daughter of Ruth, and has shown up to find out what happened to her mother.

 

 

 

The incident with Ruth is investigated, but no one is sure how a woman can just suddenly disappear from a deserted beach.  One of the better parts of the film, at least for me,  is when Burt Young is on the screen.  Sure, he is playing a character that is typical for him, a crass, brash and not too bright bruiser type.  But Burt always did brighten up movies I saw him in.  

The next "victim" of of our mysterious enemy is the pet dog of the woman killed earlier.  The dog is looking for his missing mistress and ends up losing it's head over the loss.  Literally.

Cut to the crowded beach.  The next potential victim is a girl who is with friends being covered in sand.  She starts screaming that something is biting her legs. She is pulled from the sand, her loegs covered in blood (but still intact).  (And depending on which cut of the movie you see, there is a brief (very brief) glimpse of whatever is doing this.

Finally, our star makes his appearance.  Saxon, who is the chief of police, Captain Pearson, is talking with the assembly of police discussing the incidents, the missing woman, the dog and the girl who was "slumming; I presume" from Beverly Hills. And he wants answers.  (Well, who doesn't, John?  Who doesn't?) He's got everybody from the mayor to the daughter to the parents of the girl to the ASPCA (who want to know what the police are doing to investigate a blatant act of cruelty to animals because of the dog victim.  (Yes, there are some attempts of comedy in this film...  poor attempts, but attempts, nonetheless.)

Several more people are attacked by this sand creature including a would be sex offender who, without being too graphic, won't be doing any sexual offenses in the future.  Viewing the scene Capt Pearson says the tag line "just when you thought it was safe..."  (The writers don't miss a chance with this one...)

As with that other classic beach monster film, no one seems to have any idea that if there is something dangerous around, maybe a good idea would be to avoid the dangerous area.  So we are going to see a couple more victims being swallowed up by the beach.  (And for a movie called :"Blood Beach" there is surprisingly little "blood"in these attacks.  The ones that are swallowed whole apparently have no blood in them.)

Interestingly enough, we do get some very brief looks at this creature as it shows it consuming the victims below the surface.  It's looking almost like some kind of slug. But the real thing is, when the authorities finally discover it's lair and set up video cameras, that it looks more like some kind of Venus flytrap. 

 

 Captain Pearson has the lair rigged up with explosives designed to blow the thing to smithereens.  But as a doctor intimates, there are some things that exist in the world that are capable of regeneration and wonders what might become of each smithereens if they do blow the thing to Kingdom come.

 OK, so if you are operating on all cylinders, you can see how the final scene rolls out.  

Is this movie any good?  Well, I can give you the best thing I can, which is tell you how one of my review books puts it.  It's a "silly little shocker that can best be described as "sucky"." Which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the way the creatures sucks it's victims into the beach, but is not a bad description of the film.  If you want to save time, just think of it as Baywatch with less bikinis and more blood.  Or at least more disappearing bodies...

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980):

This film, made on the cheap by the famous low budget mogul Roger Corman has a cache of stars and future stars to boost it into the stratosphere.  Besides our current subject, Saxon, the film also has Richard Thomas (yes, John-Boy Walton is in this...).  It also features George Peppard (Col. Hannibal Smith from The A-Team, and the titular detective Banacek... or for those of you into that kind of movie, Paul from Breakfast at Tiffany's).  Additionally you've got Robert Vaughn (Napoleon Solo from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others...), Jeff Corey ( a face you would recognize, even if the name is not familiar), Sybil Danning (one of the big names in the babes with guns and/or swords genre of film) and Marta Kristen (Judy Robinson from the TV series Lost in Space). And Julia Duffy (Newhart) makes her big screen debut. It also has music composed by James Horner (whose resume included, among others, the films Titanic and Field of Dreams).. And James (Jim) Cameron was involved in the art direction and visual effects. And the script was written by another giant in the industry, John Sayles (who directed several high profile films, including my favorite sports movie, Eight Men Out).

The film has been described as Star Wars meets Seven Samurai, At the start, Sador (John Saxon) of the Malmori has come to the planet Akir. (A name that is homage to Akira Kurosawa, director of Seven Samurai, among other great Japanese samurai flicks). He informs the people of Akir that he intends to subjugate them in a short time. 

 

 

Zed (Jeff Corey) tells the people they must learn to fight, a thing that has not been a part of Akir society for many years.  What must happen is they must gather some mercenaries to help them, and thus we have Shad (Richard Thomas), the only one who apparently can fly their lone star ship to head out to recruit these mercenaries.

 

 

But first he needs the help of old Zed's former ally, Dr. Hephaestus (Sam Jaffe).  He goes to the spaceport home of the doc, but the Doc is just a shadow of his former self, in more ways than one.  He insists that Akir is doomed, with or without help, and wants Shad to stay on the spaceport and, with his daughter, Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel), repopulate the spaceport. (All it has are androids...)  But Shad is insistent on saving Akir, and with Nanelia's help, escapes.

 

 

The next goal is to round up the mercenaries.  Fortunately for Shad, one is just around the corner.  Cowboy (George Peppard) could be a big help, that is if Shad can exercise a little bravado and kill a few people who are trying to kill Cowboy themselves... 

 

When he has finished, Shad tries to convince Cowboy to join the team.  But before he does, we get to see why Sador is such a badass.  He has a "stellar converter". Think Death Star, but on a smaller budget.  Essentially, instead of blowing up planets, Sador can eliminate his enemies by turning their planets into suns.

 Meanwhile, Nanelia is rescued (captured?) by another race, a mercenary creature who goes by the name of Cayman. (And Cayman looks a lot like a couple of other creatures from movies I've seen, like the alien in Enemy Mine). Cayman rescued her, but intends to sell her to another party.  That is until he finds out that Nanelia is seeking mercenaries to fight Sador. It seems Cayman and Sador are NOT bosom buddies... 

 

And Shad runs into the Nestor who want in on the action. (BTW, I wonder if this is where Star Trek got the idea for the Borg.  The Nestor are sentient beings who share one consciousness... "What one sees, all see, what one knows, all know...) They are not looking for gain in the matter, they just want to join in the quest, however.

 

And then Shad meets up with Gelt (Robert Vaughn) the sole remaining mercenary of his own world.  And Gelt is reminiscent of the character that Vaughn played in The Magnificent Seven, Lee, a guy who doesn't care what he has to do, just as long as he gets paid to do it.

 

The final piece of the puzzle is St. Exmin of the Valkiri (Sybil Danning).  Shad is not entirely gung-ho about her joining the party however, since he ship is small and it doesn't look much like a fighting machine.  (Of course, if he could see her, he might make an exception...)  But she is nothing if not determined and somehow ends up on the fighting team anyway.

 

Which leads up to the final battle.  As any good Star Wars knockoff, there are some decent space battles, but since, as I said before, this has some elements of Seven Samurai (or The Magnificent Seven, for you neophytes), there is also a battle on Akir's surface. And that's where Cowboy's help comes in handy, since his trade of choice is hand weapons, so he has taught the Akir how to handle themselves in hand-to-hand combat.

Ultimately, a few brave souls have to die.  And most of them die spectacularly.  (That $2 million budget wasn't all wasted on actor talent...).  This isn't Star Wars, of course, it's just Star Wars Lite.  But damn, it is a great movie in it's own right.  If you have an hour and a half to kill, I recommend it.

Well, folks, that wraps up this trip.  The old Plymouth may not make it to Akir, but it's good enough to get home (as long as I don't run into Saxon on the way...)  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

Disney in Space (and Cyberspace)

 

 

 

 

 

This is my entry in the 100 Years of Disney blogathon hosted by Silver Screnes.

 

Like just about every kid (or every American kid, at least), I grew up in an age where my first experiences with movies was Disney movies.  Movies like Bedknobs and Broomsticks for live action films, and 101 Dalmatians for cartoons were the bread and butter of my movie going experiences. I still recall seeing both of those in the theater (101 Dalmatians must have been a re-release, however since it's original premiere predates my being old enough to experience it).

For years, that was all I was allowed to go see.  There is a story somewhere else on this blog that my parents took my sister and me to see Patton and my father took such an offense to the foul language in it that he refused to allow us to go to anything rated above G afterwards, which pretty much eliminated anything BUT Disney movies. It took a huge amount of pleading to get my father to let my sister and I go see Star Wars. But we did get to that.

So I got to see a LOT of Disney movies, but by the time I was 15 I started to rebel against the strictures of limitations. It took another 10 years or so before I would even consider those cheesy happy-go-lucky movies.  But beginning in the late 70's Disney started  delving into more adult focused themes.  Not sure if The Black Hole was the first, but it was pretty close.

I was still at that age where I didn't have the autonomy to choose my own path when The Black Hole came out (it was rated PG, so it was still off limits by my father's standards, despite it being a Disney movie), but by the time Disney released Tron I had the power to choose my own entertainment.  It was years before I finally got to see The Black Hole, but Tron was one of the first in my new independent life. Nowadays Disney is not just limited to cartoons and animal movies, because some of its subsidiaries are releasing some various adult movies. (Witness what you can see under the Touchstone umbrella...)

 

 

 

 Tron: (1982): 

Tron was state-of-the-art back in 1982.  Although the movie still holds up well these days, 40 years down the road the graphics come off as a little dated,  But one of the memories I have is playing the Tron video game at the arcade.  

 

 

 

The movie (and video game) featured some astounding special effects, such as the lightcycle.  Those of you who are younger probably don't even know what an arcade is. These were prevalent across the United States and elsewhere until the rise of really good home entertainment systems.  You used to have to go to a central location where you invested quarters (sometimes, at least in my case, 10s of dollars in quarters) to play stand-up consoles featuring games like Pac-Man (which I KNOW you've heard of) and other games.  The malls (another dying place from those days) always had one place like that.  In my case it was called The Gold Mine.

The movie itself involved a man named Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a former employee of a computer company called ENCOM. 

 

 

 Flynn spends his days running a video game arcade and in his spare time trying to hack into the ENCOM computer system to find information that will help him prove that the head of ENCOM, Dillinger (David Warner) stole his ideas for several video games and used them to maneuver himself to the top of ENCOM's ladder.

 

As such, when Dillinger shuts down high-level access to the mainframe computer, Flynn's friends still working at ENCOM, Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora (Cindy Morgan) go to Flynn to warn him that Dillinger is on to him.  And so is the Master Control Program in the computer system.

The real villain in the piece is the Master Control Program (hereafter called MCP).  The MCP started out as just a glorified chess program, but somehow has been able to garner more and more power until it is essentially able to manipulate the system (and his subordinate, Dillinger, in the process).

When Flynn tries to access the information that proves that Dillinger is guilty the MCP uses some technology developed by Lora and her partner, Dumont (Barnard Hughes) to digitize Flynn and convert him to a computer program in the system. (Yeah, OK, there is a tremendous amount of suspension of disbelief required for this film).

Inside the system, Sark (who is Dillinger's representative in the computer world) is commanded by the MCP to put Flynn in the games.  The games are a way of destroying computer programs who refuse to renounce their belief in the Users. Side note: there is an underlying religious theme here.  Consider the Users to be representatives of the gods, or God, if you will. What the MCP, who represents the Devil, is trying to do is to get the computer world society to renounce their belief in the gods (God).  Any who do not are sentenced to play in the games. And defeat in the games results in de-resolution. Elimination from existence, in other words.

 

 

 

In the computer world Flynn teams up with Tron, a computer program written by Alan in order to defeat the MCP and free the world from it's influence.  Every character in the real world has it's representative as a computer program in the computer world, so we even get Lora and Dumont in the system.

One of the distracting parts of this film is the occasionally blooper that was left in (probably because the budget wouldn't allow re-shoots). That is when the occasional character refers to the MCP as the "MPC" And I consider it a blooper because on other occasions the same character calls it the MCP correctly, so it's not like it's a character mistake.

Anyway, the movie virtually steals many things from Star Wars. I won't go into detail of these, but if you watch you will catch them. The major one is when Sark's ship overtakes the smaller ship being piloted by Flynn and Tron and Lora.  It looks so much like the opening of Star Wars it's unavoidable.

Ultimately Tron and Flynn end up in a battle with the Emperor (I mean the MCP) and get to free the computer world from its influence.

The plot still holds up, as I said before, but the graphics seem dated.  If you can get over that, you will enjoy the story at any rate.

The Black Hole (1979):

 The movie begins with a spaceship already investigating the black hole (why waste time with a prologue of how we got to this point, when you can do it with dialogue between characters?  Kudos, Disney).

Anyway, the ship, the Palomino, which is commanded by Capt. Holland (Robert Forster), has discovered a ship that appears to be unaffected by the black hole. (It should be being drawn into the immense gravitational forces of the hole, yet is in a stationary form.)

 

 

 

A side note to explain exactly what a black hole is:  It is a region of space that is the product of a collapsed star that creates a hole in space and draws all objects in it's vicinity into it because of the immense gravity it generates.  In theory it can draw entire solar systems into it.  What is on the other side of the black hole can only be conjectured since nothing apparently can withstand it's force.  Therefore, the black hole of the film SHOULD draw the spaceship into its vortex. (yet it does not.).

The crew decide to take their own ship closer to investigate.  It turns out that the ship stationary near the black hole is the Cygnus I, a ship that had been sent out 20 years earlier.  The ship was supposedly recalled but never returned.  There is a connection between the crew of the Palomino and Cygnus.  It seems that one of the crew members, Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), is the daughter of a member of the crew that manned the Cygnus.

When the crew gets closer, some of their ship is damaged by the force of the black hole and they land on the Cygnus.  It seems the Cygnus is able to generate some null gravity force field which is how it is able to stay stationary despite the gravity pull of the hole.

On board, the crew encounter what appears to be the sole survivor of the crew of the Cygnus, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell). Along with a crew of robots that he created to help him man the ship. He informs them that Kate's father stayed behind with him, but has since died.  The rest of the crew were sent home and Reinhardt expresses surprise that the crew never made it back home.

 

 

 

Reinhardt agrees to help the crew get their ship repaired and get them back on their way home, but intimates there is no way he is going back with them.  What is goal for staying is a mystery.  But while the crew gathers up the tolls and supplies several of them go off to investigate on their own.  Capt. Holland, ostensibly heading back to the ship to initiate the procedures, departs the shuttle and finds, among other things, uniforms and personal effects of the supposedly departed Cygnus crew. Another crew member, Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) also secretly goes off on his own.  Booth sees one of the robots limping which arouses his suspicions.

Meanwhile in another part of the ship, the Palomino's resident robot. Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowell) meets B.O.B. (voiced by Slim Pickens), an early prototype of his own model who reveals interesting information as to what EXACTLY happened with the crew of the Cygnus. (And no, they didn't disappear trying to return to Earth...)

Dr, Reinhardt, as the mad genius of the piece, has a notion to try to find out what is on the other side of the black hole.  As Dr. McCrae suggests, "he walking a tightrope between genius and insanity".  Or to put it more bluntly as Booth says "I think the guy is nuts."  The only person who thinks that Reinhardt is playing with a full bag of marbles, it appears, is Dr. Durant (Anthony Perkins).

But Vincent and Kate share a connection via ESP (don't even ask what I think of that...).  Vincent shares with Kate that the Capt should return to the Palomino, where Vicent relates what he learned from B.O.B.  The crew did indeed not get away from the Cygnus.  There was a revolt over control of the ship and the crew members who didn't die were turned into, you guessed it, Reinhardt's robots.

At this point the final reel comes up and I don't want to give the final away, but it is Disney so you have to have a pretty good idea how it will all turn out.  Fortunately for me and some other people, it doesn't involve a cocker spaniel/schnauzer mutt showing up to save the day.  (That would have been ridiculous, of course, but prior to 1979, entirely something I might have expected.)

I whole heartedly recommend both of these movies to anyone out there whose intersts segue into the science-fiction realm.  There are some points that are unbelievable (like ESP) but the primitive graphics and special effects hold up rather well, even is this day of CGI.

Well, that brings us to the time to warp home. (I converted the Plymouth to hyperdrive...) Drive safely folks.

Quiggy