DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY

In the late 70's in the Will household, it's obvious to say there was no cable. Get your listings from the paper. A solid week's worth of scheduling on about 4 pages of a "PARADE"--sized publication insert.

So, it was easy for a little chap like myself to scan the black and white newsprint, hopefully to find out if "White Lightning", "Eat My Dust", "Vanishing Point", or my personal fave, "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" were going to be aired anytime that week.

It was more miss than hit, but one of the local Milwaukee or Chicago stations would pop one of them on more than once a year, giving me a decent reason to scan the publication.

I'm no gearhead now, not even close, but as a boy I loved the car-chase movie. The roar of the engine, the endless action shots of Burt Reynolds, Barry Newman, Ron Howard, or yes, Peter Fonda whipping the steering wheel around like Devo on Acid.

Who needs plotline. Fonda, playing Larry, and his partner rip off a grocery store, pick up an idiotic airhead, Mary, along the way, and run for it. Vic Morrow, some kind of helicopter pursuit expert, is put on the case, and the chase, one that may be the longest ever filmed, ensues.

Some banter, which makes Adam Roarke the only sympathetic one of the three running from the law, is juvenile and poorly executed. Although there is a nice moment where Roarke befriends Mary, played by 70's iconette Susan George, when Fonda's character lets his assholeishniss get way out of control and pushes her. As far as emotional content, that's about as far as this one goes.

I gotta say, I showed this movie to my son earlier this summer, and he disagrees with me on the ending. There's a TON of c.b. chatter in the second half of this flick, and a lot of it is dialogue between Morrow and Fonda in the final chase segment. Just when it looks like the rogues have it made, and Morrow appears to be backing off as evidence by Oscar-worthy repartee, Fonda's Charger crashes right into a train.

Credits roll.

Greatest. Ending. Ever.

GRIZZLY

It's no secret that this movie is a blatant rip off of the "Jaws" formula, so I'm gonna get the hows out of the way right off the bat.

Locale: State forest, being ravaged by unusually aggressive Grizzly bear, is on brink of being closed down for the busiest holiday time of the year. Needless to say, the Superintendent is not thrilled.

Hero: Park Ranger (Christopher George) sick of being muscled by the bureaucrats, bent on stopping the horrific bear killings.

Grizzled Naturalist: Although, unlike Hooper of "Jaws", being a rich kid with lots of high-tech toys, he's a freakin' weirdo who lays around in strange woodland disguises, trying to record info on the local wildlife.

Pilot with war stories: Andrew Prine plays a helicopter pilot who helps in the search for the bear, even spins a campfireside yarn about Vietnam bloodbaths, ala Robert Shaw's lengthy USS Indianapolis monologue in "Jaws".

And an exploding killer creature.

The whys. To make money. "Grizzly" was the highest grossing independent film of it's year, which I believe was 1976. A surprising amount of blood for a PG-rated movie makes the movie still maintain an occasional shock value, but the FX are terrible, and some of the acting is even worse.

Lots of nice scenery though. Gorgeous woodland locales. I stayed up late for this one many times. It's a true crap classic.

FOOD OF THE GODS

It's been a while, but my current foray into "Movies I Stayed Up Late For" is the 1976 drive-in late night TV staple, "The Food of the Gods".

It's an absolute Godawful piece of claptrap that did nothing upon it's cinematic release but induce projectile vomiting and groans of disdain. It starred former child-evangelist (you read that right) Marjoe Gortner. He was being ballyhooed in the early 70's as "the embodiment of cinematic masculinity" (!) but never amounted to much more than a B-movie semi-icon.

This cinematic achievement was a quaint little story about chemical corruption. It seems there's these jars labelled "FOTG" sitting on the shelves of some elderly farmer's barns. (elderly farmers barns in 70's movies, always seem to have great things hiding inside them) Some animals and insects start to eat some of the mystery juice that was accidentally spilled causing them to grow awful damn huge, develop nasty dispositions and wreak general havoc all over the rural area. (You know, eating people and stuff).

The movie was forgettable (and regrettable) beyond this great cliffhanger ending: The final shots show some of the dumped compound running off into a river. Through snappy editing, the river flows downstream (where else does a river flow, Rob?) and (gasp) some cows drink from the river. The next shots are composed in a dairy, then show a child (hold on to your butts!) drinking from a milk carton in her school lunch. Oh My God! Wait a tic, what's gonna happen? Is she gonna be an NBA player or what? Not to mention they forgot to take the scientific theory of dilution into consideration. How effective would the substance be when broken down into parts per million, and several miles of riverflow? Not well thought out, boys, but yet again, how well thought out was the concept of this movie?

Wait a minute, I'm the guy who stayed up late for it. Heh, I was a kid, right?......right?


ADDENDUM: In 1988, I remember breezing through the daily information colossus known to those "in the know" as THE WAUSAU DAILY HERALD, and seeing the cineplex (if it could be called that) down by the mall showing (probably on the screen downstairs that's no bigger than my living room TV where I saw "Good Morning, Vietnam" in it's 347th week of release) "Food of the Gods 2", a Canadian opus trying to cha-ching in on the 12 year old success of the original.

Wait a minute, the first did nothing. This makes no sense. How did the theatre manager get horranged into carrying this stupid movie anyway? Did the distributor offer him a "Food of the Gods 2" hat? These filmmakers tried to pull of the cinematic equivalent of a sequel to oh, say, "Swept Away", Madonna's movie a few years back that made something like 65000 clams in it's opening weekend despite the star's marquee name. Go figure. I should fund and release a sequel to "Satan's Cheerleaders". It would be as intelligent.

SILENT RAGE (1982)

Mad Scientists. Mad Slashers. Kung Fu fury. Chubby Comic Relief.

"Silent Rage" has it all. It also boasts all 4 of what I feel are the 4 integral ingredients of a great "B" movie.

1."What the Hell?" dialogue: "Look at that cell structure!!!"
2.Martial Arts mayhem: Chuck Norris takes apart a bar full of bikers and the antagonist at the end of the film with his high kicking antics.
3. Hey, It's that guy!!!!: Steven Keats, Stephen Furst (Flounder from "Animal House"), and Ron Silver (!), who sadly recently passed away, to boot.
4.Overacting alert!!! Steven Keats in his mad scientist rage of cellular and biological superiority spews venomous f-bombs at former Oscar winner Ron Silver (in an early role for him)

Ron Silver's patient is on the edge and medicated at the beginning of this classic.
His landlady's noisy children drive him over the edge and he murders two people with an axe before Mr. Norris and Silver show up. After much violent struggling and a temporary handcuffing with a brief police car incarceration, our soon to be slasher, John Kirby, is gunned down.

Shortly thereafter in a texas hospital, biological scientist Keats, for reasons unknown to the audience, works as a surgeon with psychiatrist Silver. They try unsuccessfully to save the life of Kirby, played well nearly worldessly by Brian Libby. Keats then tries to play God by injecting an experimental chemical into Kirby, who is an excellent choice for such a thing by the way, (to the film's credit, Silver's character DOES make that point), turning him into an indestructable version of the psycho he already was.

The rest of the film is a generic slasher movie, although skillfully executed to some degree with the use of some tension, and an eerie synthesizer created soundtrack. The odd addition of Norris as the hero (this was post indy-"A Force of One", "Octagon" Norris, but pre-Cannon--"Missing in Action" Norris.) is weird and Furst as Norris' silly sidekick doesn't really work for the most part. Chuck doesn't act here as much as "exist" while the pros around him Silver, Keats, Furst and Toni Kalem, as his love interest, do the heavy lifting if you can call it that. Give them credit they do well with what material they have.

"Silent Rage" obviously is a mess, but an entertaining one with a decent genre climax. Norris was obviously an excellent cinema martial artist, and it shows here.

But overall, it is what it is (I hate that phrase). A good "B" grade horror/sci-fi/karate move.

WHITE LIGHTNING

Bogan County, Arkansas is a terrible place. It's hot, it's sticky, and it's run by a murderous sherriff. The locals spend a lot of time transporting illegal alcohol, or as they put it, "runnin' licka". So much of this lawless liquor manufacture and transport takes place apparently, that Bobby "Gator" McCluskey has made himself an arrangement with the feds. A deal to get out of prison a year early to avenge the murder of his baby brother Donny at the hands of the affore-mentioned crooked sherriff, JC Connors.

Can I get an amen?

This movie represents a high water mark in the career of Burt Reynolds, who plays the lead, Gator, with verve. "White Lightning" is just after "Deliverance" and right before "The Longest Yard", and well before "Smokey & the Bandit" and the derail that followed shortly after. In Burt's canon, his career at this point was artistically at least, at it's absolute peak, in my opionion. Reynolds is subtle here, pefectly selling his grief over the loss of his brother, but growing a dull cold behind his eyes when it comes to dealing with the sherriff. He is surprisingly effective in just using facial expressions in this film. For example, in the nice moment when shortly after his prison release, he gradually unwinds as he discards his tie and suitcoat while simultaneously pressing ever so much harder on the accelerator of his hyper-tuned 1971 Ford Ltd. You can see the stress lift as the pedal goes down. There are other points in the movie as solid as that have you wondering at times, What's Gator thinking?

Director Joseph Sargent keeps things brisk, yet tense, with the help of a solid score by Charles Bernstein. The soundtrack veers between schticky banjo jams augmented with jew's harp during the extended car chase scenes, to a downright diabolical sounding blues slide guitar in the movie's heavier moments. As a kid, I would play these tunes in my head while recreating the car chases using matchbox cars. Ah, the whimsy of childhood. All kidding aside, the score is great, pulling off being jolly and at the right moments, damned ominous.

Sargent also surrounds Reynolds with a fine supporting cast of character actors such as Matt Clark, Bo Hopkins, and the legendary RG Armstrong. Burt is reunited with his "Deliverance" co-star Ned Beatty as the crooked sherriff, JC Connors. (In one scene, Gator references "Deliverance". When he's asked by a young woman what happened to him to cause the bandages covering half of his face, he replies "I was hurt trying to save two of my buddies from being knocked up by a homosexual." He is of course lampooning that obviously nightmarish sequence from John Boorman's classic thriller.)
Beatty manages to pull off the difficult combination of sinister, intelligent, and good ol boy sarcastic all at once. The heated tension in the scenes involving both Beatty and Reynolds is palpable. So palpable, you'd almost believe there was a personal grievance between the two in real life.

The only true weakness to me is Jennifer Billingsley in the female lead role, as she's not a particularly strong actress here, and comes off as more annoying and painfully dumb than anything else.

"White Lightning" has a definite southern feel, as it was shot on location in Arkansas. It comes across like a piece of rebel Americana as everybody appears to be coated in a layer of perspiration and living in a haze of humidity. It looks every bit like the deep south it was shot in.

This is little more than a cult film now, (one of Quentin Tarantino's faves, he even lifted one of Gators lines, "I'm only afraid of two things: women and the police", to which he gave no credit, in an interview with Jay Leno) but it was cause for celebration on those late 70's summer nightson TV 18 WVTV in Milwaukee, or WFLD 32 out of Chicago. My Dad would pop a quarter ton of popcorn, bust the Sparco soda bottles out and it was "White Lightning" time.

BILLY JACK (1971)

This one is a pure classic in almost every sense of the "MISULF" word. In the later 70's and early 80's this one was constantly being aired on UHF, VHF, monthly pay, and some sporadic signals being picked up from other solar systems. I saw it many times, one because I was so heavily exposed to it, between repeat broadcasts, and two because my siblings dug it so much.

But why did I love it so much in my pre-adolescent mind? It wasn't the political messaging, which was hamfisted, because I wasn't ready for that yet. It wasn't the special effects, because there were none. It wasn't completely the martial arts scenes, though that helped.

It was the bullying.

As a kid I attended several elementary schools, one parochial, and it seemed like someone was always geared up to knock me off whatever good mood I may have been fortunate enough to wake up with that day. It got to the point of ridiculousness, and made me not want to go to school some days. Now I know being bullied is nothing new to many, but maybe that's why "Billy Jack" was so big with a lot of folks, not just the political views subscribed to by "dirty hippies" that were so much of the film's focus.

Billy Jack was the voice of pent up outrage at those who feel they are in control, and have to force that fact down the throats of everybody else. Tom Laughlin played Billy as a half-breed green beret Vietnam vet who wanders his Arizona locales becoming one with various natures, and protected the put-upon refugees from everyday life that comprise the student body of the "Freedom School", which is operated by Billy's friend, Jean. A local land baron, Posner, rapes the natural resources of the countryside for profit, while his spoiled rich son rapes, or tries to rape, the women of "Freedom School". It's a recipe for disaster.

It's Billy as vigilante that was the selling point for me. For a character that has the ultimate goal of peace for all mankind however, he does spend more than enough time whipping ass. As a bullied kid, that appealed to me. I was sold the moment Billy lands that vicious reverse crescent kick (terminology gleaned myself from two years of Tae Kwon Do study) to the smirking jowl of Mr. Posner, and leaves him laying in the grass of the town square, an embarassed and beaten soul.


The film however lingers far too much on the school and it's inhabitants, and those sequences can seem to drag on forever. It doesn't help the story. "Billy Jack" himself as a character wasn't what it could have been, either. I'm not saying Laughlin had to engage in a kung fu battle every 8 minutes, but the run time overall could have been trimmed to streamline the film into a more flowing narrative, giving it a brisker pace. The characterizations are there, but it seems like experimentation at times.

Nevertheless, a legend was born with the unexpected box office success and public endearment for the character, and there is a heavy nostalgia factor in it for me, as it is a leader in the MISULF (Movies I Stayed Up Late For) lexicon. It makes the MISULF Hall of fame. It's many flaws aside, I still have warm feelings for "Billy Jack".

ZORRO (1974) One Don Diego, minus the Banderas, please

"Zorro" was a 1974 multi-country production starring Alain Delon, who made his biggest American splash as a pilot in the cumbersome "Concorde:Airport 79". My put-upon sister took me to see "Zorro" theatrically during a late 70's rerelease. I remember some serious swashbuckling, fantastic stunt work involving equine action, a lot of Alain Delon smooching, and the song "Zorro's Back", which was used to great effect a couple years back in the Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson collaboration, "Bottle Rocket".

This enjoyed some great late night runs on our pre-cable television sets back in the day, and I'm hoping to track it back down on DVD sometime in the near future. It would be nice if it would not fall into that category of movies & shows from back then that either I enjoyed or frightened me, which turn out to be not so great upon later-life viewings. This is an every growing phenomenon that I call BTARS.

It's an affliction that you lapse into when you collect the popcorn, soda, and snacks and pop in a days-long-gone-by movie that you're geeked up about seeing again only to realize BOY THAT ACTUALLY REALLY SUCKED. BTARS. There is no cure.