Halloween (1978)

Little Michael Myers is sent away for murdering his big sister. After fifteen years of not communicating with staff, he escapes. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is convinced he is returning to his home town to continue his murder spree.

I’ve seen Halloween but never uncut, and likely never all the way through. Recorded off of IFC, I did have to contend with commercials, which sometimes seemed to come every five minutes, but at least it was unedited.

Pleasence is great as the obsessive Loomis, convinced of Myers’ malevolence despite any explanation. His body of work is quite impressive. High budget and low, genre and main stream, he did it all. Although she had done some TV work (including 23 episodes of Operation Petticoat), this was Jamie Lee Curtis’ first feature film. She was the only teenager of the group of high-schoolers.

Like Friday the 13th young people are picked off one at a time. But very much unlike it, Halloween is a slow burn. We learn what Michael is capable of through the Loomis character, and our imagination does the rest. We actually get to know Curtis' Laurie character and feel her peril. The danger is real and the kills have real weight.

Halloween is more than a good slasher. It's a good film. It defined a sub-genre and has been copied for decades. AMRU 4.

Death on the Nile (1978)

An odd collection of people embark on a luxury cruise down the Nile river. Most have an antagonistic connection to the lovely Linnet Ridgeway. I hope she enjoys the cruise.

This follow-up production to Murder on the Orient Express swaps in Peter Ustinov for Albert Finney for the role of Hercule Poirot. Finney found the makeup uncomfortable and the train too hot, so filming in Egypt was out of the question. Ustinov went on to play the role five more times, three being in TV movies.

Like Orient Express, and the Kenneth Branagh versions, we have a star studded cast. David Niven, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, and Olivia Hussey are traveler suspects. Mia Farrow was delightfully hysterical. Davis was quoted as saying "In the older days, they'd have built the Nile for you. Nowadays, films have become travelogues, and actors stuntmen." I can’t help but hear that in her voice.

The wife an I seem to watch a lot of crime mysteries, and recently been going through the Miss Marple’s from the 1980s, so this fit in nicely. It's interesting that Marple is turned into TV shows and Poirot into feature films. Mostly. I'll keep an eye out for the Margaret Rutherford films.

Death on the Nile is an excellent mystery with fantastic performances. It's a bit long but well worth the time. It deserves a rewatch. AMRU 4.

"What the hell is going on?
We're going through your private papers, sir, isn't that obvious?"

Corvette Summer (1978)

When a restored Corvette is stolen from a high school shop class, an obsessed twenty-something student (Mark Hamill) travels to Las Vegas to find it. Along the way he meets up with a hooker with a heart of gold (Annie Potts). Will love bloom?

Fresh off his success with Star Wars and with the Holiday Special on the horizon, Hamill wanted to do something different, and playing a 26 year old high school virgin apparently fit the bill. This was Potts’ first film role. Interestingly, both actors were injured in serious car accidents just prior to filming.

In addition to Luke Skywalker and Ghostbusters' Janine there are quite a few familiar faces. Dick Miller, who has appeared in just about everything, has a small role. Danny (Partridge) Bonaduce is one of Luke’s schoolmates, as is Wendie Jo Sperber. She was all over television and light comedies in the 80’s, most notably Bosom Buddies and Back to the Futures, one and three.

If not for the cast, Corvette Summer would have been long forgotten. It’s mostly about a broke teen in Las Vegas chasing a Corvette with no plan on what to do if he finds it. I watched it for Mark and Annie, others may want to skip. AMRU 2.5.

Piranha (1978)

While searching for missing hikers, an investigator and a grumpy alcoholic stumble upon a military research lab breeding hyper aggressive piranhas. Gosh, I hope they aren’t accidentally released to the river!

I listen to only one film-topic podcast: The Movies that Made Me, which I learned about from the YouTube channel Trailers from Hell. The mastermind behind both efforts is director Joe Dante. I’ve seen and liked a few of his films, so I wanted to click a few others off the list. Piranha was one.

I remember Piranha from my youth because I was a huge Jaws (1975) fan. I read the book before the movie was even announced and saw the film several times. I became low-grade obsessed with sharks and were it not for Star Wars (1977), I may have become an oceanographer. Anyhow, any successful subgenre spawns copycats. Even though I saw neither films, Tentacles (1977) and Piranha definitely got my attention.

Some interesting names appear here. Sci-Fi stalwart Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Keenan Wynn (Dr. Strangelove), Barbara Steele (Black Sunday), and Dick Miller (everything) specifically, some frequent collaborators with executive producer Roger Corman. Oh, yea, this is a Roger Corman film. Despite that, it isn’t too bad.

Originally set to conflict with the opening of Jaws 2, Universal filed a lawsuit against the production company, maybe because it was actually a better film. Steven Spielberg, however, liked Piranha calling it the best of the Jaws rip-offs, and convinced Universal to drop the suit. The $600k Piranha opened two months after the $20m Jaws 2 to better critical reviews.

Piranha is a pleasant distraction. Not a great film and, truth be told, a little confounding in some parts, but overall a well put together movie. It doesn’t try to be too much and it won’t stay with me very long. But it is a pretty good Jaws rip-off. AMRU 3.

Deathsport (1978)

Authorities from a city capture “guides” to compete in a thing called Deathsport because, but these guides have competing story elements like mutants, talk in cryptic circles, and boy does this movie stink.

I didn’t come into this film with any great expectation, but it was the follow-up to Death Race 2000 so I was hoping it was a little fun. David Carradine returns as our hero and had it not bombed, the trilogy would have rounded out with Deathworld. While it featured some gratuitous nudity, it was completely lacking in humor. There was an attempt to save this film with reshoots and clever editing, but it failed. What we have is an overly complex story that makes no sense and goes nowhere.

Let’s talk about Claudia Jennings. She was a Playboy playmate that went on to do a string of cheesecake films during the 1970’s. She did pretty well, I thought, considering her pedigree, but apparently she had to be removed from the set once because she was coked up and unruly. She would die in a car crash shortly after the film’s release. Drugs, it would seem, were not involved.

Filming a convincing fight scene is difficult. The audience needs to know who the combatants are and how the fight is going for them, all the while being compelling to watch. Jackie Chan was the master at blocking a fight. So many of these low budget films do it poorly and Deathsport is no exception. And sadly, there are a lot of fight scenes.

Deathsport is a movie that started filming with little more than a premise. They hired a straight from film school director who was promptly fired. This stands as his only directorial credit. Allan Arkush was brought in to fix it, but the soup was already spoiled. The viewer is never sure what is going on, what the character’s motivation is, and why they should care. It’s just a string of pointless and poorly shot action scenes, tedious motorcycle chases, and punctuated with terrible dialog. No humor, no point, and no fun. AMRU 2.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

Tomatoes, the garden variety kind, start killing people. Let me stop you right there. You’ve already thought about this film more than it deserves.

Super low budget film made by complete amateurs. Most principles involved have few other credits, and mostly ones that feature murderous produce. A popular cult film, I likely saw it in the 80’s but remembered little. I remembered giant tomatoes, dumb jokes, and bad acting. Well, maybe I did remember something. There really is little else here.

An early scene shows a helicopter crash that clearly was unintentional. Apparently, the loss of the rental cost about two thirds of the film’s entire budget. Good thing they got the shot. The actors improvised dialog while pulling the pilot to safety. Yikes!

In the subgenre of low budget dumb comedy, think what was the lowest budget and dumbest comedy you ever saw. Now know that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is it’s king. The jokes include a Japanese character (being clumsily dubbed ala Godzilla, of course) knocks a picture of the USS Arizona into an aquarium. Or a paratrooper who spends the entire movie running around in his jumpsuit with his chute out. Pop culture references standing in as jokes, and silliness for silliness’ sake. I mean, the main character is named Mason Dixon.

Based on a short film, I think the filmmakers were trying to channel the spirit of films like the much higher budgeted and professionally made Rocky Horror Picture Show. Here's an interesting fact: the terrible music in the film was performed by a teenaged Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam fame. That's all I got for trivia.

I found Attack of the Killer Tomatoes hard to watch. None of it was funny, clever, or particularly interesting. It tried hard to be ridiculous rather than coming by it honestly. No point of view, no commentary on current events, just mindless foolishness. That said, my son liked it. AMRU 2.

Animal House (1978)

We follow the shenanigans of a college fraternity through two freshmen pledges and two older students.

I watched Animal House (introducing it to a son) with no intention of writing it up. Didn’t seem to be in the wheelhouse of the blog. But it was released in 1978, I didn’t see it in theaters, so why the hell not.

The Mayor’s daughter was played by the totally not underage Sarah Holcomb. She also appeared in Caddyshack with a terrible Scottish accent, and two other forgettable films, then disappeared from Hollywood. I think of Amadeus when I see Tom Hulce, but he is arguably better known as Pinto. By the way, look up the IMDb trivia how he got that name.

With each viewing I pick up on small details that I either missed for forgot about. But that’s not the key to Animal House’s endurance. It’s the sheer creativeness and hilarity of the performances. This is John Belushi at his absolute best. This coming from a life-long Blues Brothers fan. His status as a non-principle character allowed him to channel his inner animal. Brilliant.

There are few great jokes in Animal House. It is mostly a series of great scenes stitched together. There is little story or character arc. Just craziness. The end result is a cultural touchstone for a generation. Everyone should watch it. Unless you are a terrible person, then you shouldn’t, and be sad. Karen Allen was hot. AMRU 4.5.

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Up In Smoke (1978)

Pedro (Cheech Marin) and Stoner Man (Tommy Chong) go on adventures trying to score some pot that culminates with them unknowingly driving a van made of weed from Tijuana to Los Angeles. Stoner antics ensue.

Cheech and Chong had been working together for ten years before somehow convincing a studio to let them make a film. Once finished, the studio had no idea how to market it, so the boys made comic strips and left them around making it feel like an underground film.

The Altmanesque direction style was no accident. Director Lou Adler was a fan of Robert Altman’s style and much of the dialog is ‘layered’ almost to the point of obfuscation. Lots of stars had small roles like Strother Martin, Edie Adams, Tom Skerritt, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them Ellen Barkin and Harry Dean Stanton. Stacy Keach played the comedically authoritarian narc.

The granddaddy of the Stoner Comedy genre, Up In Smoke can be amusing at times but sadly it does not hold up. The gags lack any real creativity and the layered dialog makes it hard to understand. I was a fan of their comedy albums back in the day so I was happy to watch, but it doesn’t earn anything past AMRU 2.5. They boys made seven films together in as many years and IMDb and Metacritic both agree, this was the best of them.

The Cheap Detective (1978)

Private dick Lou Peckinpaugh (Peter Falk) is suspected of his partner’s murder, and people stream in trying to find lost treasure, then his old flame returns with her husband looking to escape the Nazis, and … well, following the plot isn’t really the point.

This Maltese Falcon/Casablanca mashup and parody is something of a sequel in spirit of Murder by Death (1976), with the same writer, director, producer, and several actors. It showed up on a basic cable movie channel and my mom recorded it.

This film works on three levels: nostalgic references to the two source movies, seeing the parade of celebrity cameos, and watching the characters behave foolishly. While the cameos and references were amusing (and extensive), the comedy fell somewhat flat. Frequently they were obvious, unfunny, or downright dumb. And that presents a problem because there is no coherent story to tie the humor to. The jokes had to stand on their own, and for the most part, they didn’t.

Highlights were Madeline Kahn as the Mary Astor character and hottie Ann-Margret as, well, I don't know who. Odd to see the unappealing Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched or Kai Winn, depending on your predilection) in the Ingrid Bergman role. I found that downright distasteful. I am glad I watched it, as I’m a huge fan of Murder by Death, but it should have been funnier. Time for me to rewatch Murder by Death. AMRU 3.

“I'm using rented bullets for my gun. We all got problems.”

Grease (1978)

Bad boy Danny has a summer fling with good girl Sandy, but things get awkward when she shows up at his high school for the senior year.

Many years ago I saw Grease in the theater (do the math) and while this wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse, I really enjoyed it. Recently at my son's Middle School talent show, the choir did a medley of Grease songs (the six boys were all lip syncing). I got a hankerin' to see the old flick, so a few days later I tied my three boys to chairs and had their eyes forced open ala Clockwork Orange, and cranked up the old Netflix. One of them liked it. Kinda.

A few observations. Vince Fontaine's hands were all over Marty Maraschino, not that I blame him much. She played Elaine on Soap. Nice to see old friend Joan Blondell in a small roll. Jeff Conaway was supposed to sing Greased Lightening, but Travolta pulled rank. At least he got to marry Olivia's big sister. For a little while.

Elvis, who was offered the part of the guardian angel, was referenced in Rizzo's Sandra D song. The original stage play referenced Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause) but because he was murdered in 1976 they changed the line to reference Presley. The day the scene was filmed, Elvis died. And so it goes.

My boys had the same reaction to the big reveal as I did some 37 years earlier. We liked the before Sandy. The message seems because Danny couldn't NOT be a douchebag, she had to transform into a skank. That's quite depressing if you think about it.

There is no getting around it. Grease is a goofy-ass film. But the music is catchy, the performances spot on, and the choreography excellent. Despite any knocks I can give it, it's guaranteed to please. Well, one out of three boys, anyhow. AMRU 4.

"Peachy keen, jellybean."