Rollerball (1975) A Movie a Day Day 27

I have gone back and forth on this movie just about every time I saw it. The first time was in June 1975 with my friend Dan Hasegawa. I think we saw this without Art because he had just left for the Army. Either that, or Art was still trying to make time with Laura Charca and he did not have time for us. My guess is that if Jaws had not opened a few weeks later, this would have been the big picture of the summer and my favorite movie that year. As it was, I remembered it, but I did not have much loyalty too it. Second viewings reveal a lot of problems with the story and the film making. I still think it is a pretty good movie, but I look at it much more realistically now then I did then.

We saw it initially at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. The screen there was curved to accommodate films shot in cinerama, this one was not and it was simply blown up to fit the screen, which it did quite nicely. I don't remember noticing the importance of sound in a movie much before this. Maybe "The Exorcist" impressed me, but I don't think it was the stereo system that did it. This movie on the other hand, is much more impressive seen in a big theater with an immense sound system. At the dome, the opening segment with the Bach toccata was amazing. When the teams did their warm up laps on the Rollerball track, the rumble was impressive. Most of the hits, grunts and crowd noise was enhanced by simple volume. At the end the chant of Jon-na-thon, was almost hypnotic.

It's funny that sound is one of the big things I remember from the movie because it is also one of my biggest criticisms of the film. James Caan appears to have been directed to underplay every scene except the Rollerball matches. I suppose this is to show that he is not a crazed individualist out to take down the system, but just a guy who is really good at his job and doesn't understand why the corporation wants him to stand down. That is the essence of the conflict in the story, but Caan mumbles so much in the film, that it is hard to have a take on what his point of view is. His vocal delivery is low key and in many instances inaudible, and when you can hear him it sounds a little bit like the slow parts of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", where Kurt Cobain is inarticulate and gave Weird Al Yankovic an opportunity at an easy parody.

The look of the film is supposed to be futuristic, the key components of that are the Stadium itself and the architecture of the corporate world they live in. The plastic in the board rooms, and the odd shapes of buildings and hallways, are a quaint effort at a futuristic vision. The other thing that gives it away is the costuming. On the track, the players look like they could be competing in a real game set in the future. Off the track, they look like models from a Sears catalog in 1977. Leisure suits are not futuristic, they were fads. The corporate guys are still wearing suits so that part worked, but the non-executives look like they are dressed for a part in the chorus of a Cher concert. James Caan has the stupidest hat, it looks like a Spanish caballero hat with a ten inch brim. He tosses it into the crowd a couple of times, but every time he changes one of his leisure suits, there is another hat with material to match the suit. Having everything provided by your corporate masters does not guarantee good taste. The element that is accurate about the future is the video display. Big Screens for home viewing, with three alternate views on the top. You can't quite tell what the programs and pictures are recorded on, maybe small tapes, maybe disks but the effect is a lot more accurate than most of the other things in the movie.

The themes of the film are power and individualism. It is never quite clear why Johnathon is such a threat to the corporate order, but that ambiguity works toward making things a lot more ominous and believable. At one point, John Houseman's character explains how the corporations took over when the governments were all bankrupted. Maybe they were anticipating a world where the U.S. would triple it's debt in one year and spend itself twenty trillion dollars in the hole in a very short time. The vision of the corporations as evil overlords would be darker, if everyone on the movie wasn't so beautiful and happy. Hey, there is a side note that suggests that people in the future were medicating themselves into happiness. This looked like a pretty good criticism of the "if it feels good do it" attitude of the times, but I don't think that's what the filmmakers intended.

John Houseman made his last years very comfortable, by playing corporate types like this. In fact Smith Barney, an investment company that I don't even know still exists, built their image on his answer to the question how Smith-Barney customers get their wealth? "They earn it". Ralph Richardson appears in a scene that is basically unnecessary, just a little extra dig at the corporate future. He is as always, charming and there are two or three big laughs in this segment. An actor everyone will recognize but I will bet no one knows by name, plays the Coach-Executive in charge of the Houston team. This may be the biggest part he had in movies, but you will see him in two or three Superman films, at least three James Bond films, and even the first of the Christian Bale Batman movies. His name is Shane Rimmer, he is an American that ended up living in England, so all those movies produced at Sheppardton Studios that needed an actor with an American accent typically sought him out.

Like I said, I run hot and cold on this movie. There have been plenty of times that I thought it was a ponderous and pretentious movie that would benefit from being trimmed by half an hour. There are other times when I look at it and admire the 70's sensibility, that movies ought to be about something. Rollerball is supposed to be about the loss of individualism and the evil of corporate thinking. Or maybe it is about how the citizens will be satisfied with bread and circuses as in Roman times, entertained and distracted by a violent sport while the powers that be control their lives. But if you ask me what it's about I'll tell you it's about two hours.

Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday A Movie a Day Day 26

This is one of the films on my list that I never saw in a theater. I can't explain how that happened at all, this movie has Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed and Robert Culp as the stars. They are all actors I have enjoyed over the years. What it must have been like on the set with Marvin and Reed together. These two never found the bottom of a bottle. What is especially odd though is that Strother Martin is in it and he has a pretty good part. I must have been involved in something to miss an opportunity like this. You know what, this came out in the bicentennial year and my family was on the road for a month that summer. We went back to Battle Creek, driving across the country. I got to drive a lot because I had my license and my Dad needed to be spelled. I know we listened to Queen "A night at the Opera" and The Blue Oyster Cult on eight track most of the way. Dee and I had just gotten serious about seeing each other and before we left on the trip her mother had passed away and we took my Dad's new car up to the funeral in Bakersfield. It was also an election year and I watched both of the conventions while we were traveling. I remember the speech that President Ford gave and all the hoopla about Reagan maybe being on the ticket with him. We were also on our way to Atlantic City where the Ice Capades was getting their tour ready for the road. We had built several props for the show and Dad was going back as a technical adviser. Dorothy Hamill had just joined the show after her star turn at the winter Olympics and we got a chance to meet her. So, I guess I was a little distracted.

The movie is a comedy with several broad strokes that might be a problem these days. There is not only a white guy playing an Indian, but he is also an English actor to boot. Rape and the clap are the basis of several big punch lines in the movie, and women get popped in the face in a couple of scenes. It was not as crude at the time as it actually plays now. That is a little backwards I suppose, but the problem was not language or nudity or violence, but the way that some of those things were portrayed. If you did not know, "Cathouse Thursday" is the name of the lead female charater played by Kay Lenz, and she is basically trapped in what was euphemistically referred to as White Slavery. She gets the nickname when our drunken Indian (played by a drunken Englishman) steals her and several other girls, he is planning on using them like underwear with the day of the week on it. You can get a good sense of the humor from that set up.

For the first hour, the movie is all over the place. Things happen for no reason, people are connected without really understanding how and there just seems to be a lot of chasing slapstick. It feels like they are stretching to make incidents funny intead of letting them grow out of the characters or the plot. Once we get to the main confrontation between Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed and their former partner played by Robert Culp, things make a little more sense. The movie is set in a very interesting time and place, it is a western but one that takes place after the myths of the west are settling into place. The election of 1908 is in the background and there is a funny campaign song that gets sung by our heroes. They support Taft because they always voted Republican. When it turns out that their traitorous partner is using the Taft campaign as a way to connive his way into office and promote a big prize fight, they start seeing the advantages of William Jennings Bryan.

As I said before, there are a lot of slapstick chases and crude jokes about Indians and their ways. The movie has some charm but it feels like a mess. The clearest part of the story is in the last half hour, but I'm not sure you will sit still and wait for it. There are a number of very clever gags in the film. Strother gets a terrific introduction in a bar scene where he and Lee Marvin turn out to be flimflamming the locals using a rattlesnake. Later there is a bit with a jar full of hornets. Jay plays dirty old man for most of the middle part of the movie, but the characters all yo-yo between wanting revenge and wanting to do right by the girl they end up traveling with.

The poster tag line may have been too prophetic for this movie. I did not choose to leave them out on purpose, but the movie is pretty forgettable.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 A Movie A Day Day 25

In 1974, I was 16 and generally able to make a lot of choices for myself. My parents had enough problems with my older brother, that they chose not to bring the hammer down on me for much. In truth I was such a goody two shoes they didn't have much to worry about and they knew it. I was movie crazy and I would go whenever the chance afforded itself. This was one of those opportunities I took advantage of. I'm sure it pissed my Dad off because I went with his friend Rusty to the show for the day. Rusty is a guy I mentioned before. He was only a few years older than my brother, and he basically wanted to grow up and be a magician. Specifically, he thought my Dad was the best act he had seen and wanted to emulate him. I don't know how serious he was because I never saw him practice and the one show I ever saw him perform, he needed more practice. Rusty had the same bug I did, he loved going to the movies. He was in one of the craft unions in Hollywood, and worked on TV sets as a carpenter. This meant he had money and he could indulge his whims. While, I was one of those whims. He would call and ask if I wanted to see a show and off we went. Most of the time my Dad shrugged it off, but when we would disappear into the theater for the whole day, he would blow his stack when I got home. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was a movie I saw on one of those days. We may have gone to five films that day. I know we finished with a double feature that includes "Dogs" and "Cutthroats Nine", but we started the day at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd. with this Clint Eastwood action film.

At first it appears that Clint is a hunted preacher, lucky to escape a crazed killer, but of course it turns out more complicated than that. As I was watching this film today, I was surprised at how little of the first half I remembered. The opening was not in my head at all. I thought Clint picked up Jeff Bridges character as a hitchhiker, it is almost exactly the opposite. There are some bits of character development that I did not recall at all, and the whole interlude with the two girls (one of them Catherine Bach) was just a haze. It actually takes almost an hour to get to the main point of the plot. This is a heist film and Clint was part of a gang that committed a big robbery. They decide to repeat the crime because the money from the first heist disappeared. The tools that are used in the crime account for Clint's moniker in the film "The Thunderbolt". The planning of the heist and set up of events is actually done very effectively. You get enough detail to know what has to go right, but there are also a number of things that can go wrong.

Once again there are a whole stream of character actors in this movie that appear in other Eastwood films. Geoffrey Lewis of course, and he is a comic foil instead of just playing the heavy. Bill McKinney has a brief bit as a lunitic driver who gives the main characters a ride. Burton Gillian, a stunt guy that was in a lot of westerns (although none that I know of with Clint) has a small part as a coworker of Clints' at a welding job. He is probably best remembered as the nasty but stupid cowboy from Blazing Saddles, he was Slim Picken's number two. I also saw Gary Busey in this movie as a coworker with Jeff Bridges. If this was not his first movie, it was close to it. This movie was written and directed by Michael Cimino, who's next picture would win the Academy Award, "The Deer Hunter". The third picture he made brought an end to the success that he had had. "Heaven's Gate" ended up destroying not only his career but United Artists Studio. While he was making his four hour western, the studio honchos were very nervous about the time and money. Cimino reportedly used Clint as a tool in his persuasive bag of tricks. He would tell anyone who doubted his ability to shoot efficiently to check with Clint. I don't know if they ever did, but that cache does him no good nowadays.

The movie looks great, most of it was shot in Idaho and Montana. This may be why Cimino wanted to film there, (and get the studio to subsidize his ranch at the same time). There is a chase scene through the gorgeous Snake River Canyon. The two leads end up leaving on a ferry ride down the river which is a chance for them and us to marvel at the beautiful background. The small town feel of the locations is really accurate. The diner, the bar and the drive-in, all feel like real places that people in that part of the world would encounter. This is why location shooting is important, the back lot at Universal or Warner's can't do this as well.

Jeff Bridges is actually a co-star if not the star of the picture. He received an Academy Award nomination in the best supporting actor category. How they figure that is not clear, he has as many lines and scenes as Clint does, and his story arc is the central point of the movie. His character'"Lightfoot" has a great walk on introduction, coming out of a field in the middle of nowhere wearing leather pants. It is clear he is the rock star of the film. I thought that his character's resolution was unnecessary, but it probably accounted for 80% of the support he got for his nomination. This is a very smooth, good looking heist picture with some great characters. It has some nice twists and there is even a Paul William's song to go with it. It is a little strange that Clint keeps telling Bridges that he is about 10 years too late to be connecting with him. Clint, was an international sex symbol at this time and his virility was used to sell a lot of movies. I just find it funny that he was playing the old man card in 1974, thirty-five years before he decided he was too old to be playing romantic leads any more.

Rollercoaster - 1977 A Movie A Day Day 24

Here is a movie that had one thing going for it in the theaters that could apparently not be reproduced for home viewing, Sensurround! This was a sound system that used an ultra low frequency bass set of speakers to actually vibrate the theater during key scenes in the film. Imagine going beyond 3-D, or Smell-o-rama, this is almost certainly part of the concept that was being parodied in the film Kentucky Fried Movie, our first Movie-A-Day. Sensurround was actually created for the movie "Earthquake" a few years earlier. The process was only used in three theatrical films, Earthquake,Midway and Rollercoaster. This movie was it's final bow. The process did receive a technical Academy Award, but I guess competing sound systems ultimately made the process less economically viable. I actually saw the three films made with Sensurround in theaters. I thought it only made sense in Earthquake.

Other than the special effect, this was a very typical Universal release in the summer of 1977. I am not exactly sure what it was about Universal Films in those days, but they often looked like they were lit for television rather than the movies. The film stock seems a little flat. The colors are fine but there is no richness or texture to the images. I was always able to pick these movies out because of this look. Also, there was a very stock set of players in the movie. They were all pros but they seemed to be thrown in as background in studio's movies, much like a set that you would see repeatedly used. Harry Guardino, Richard Widmark, William Prince were in dozens of Universal movies and played similar parts in other studio efforts as well. Before "On Golden Pond" Henry Fonda spent the last fifteen years of his career, popping up in bit parts on Universal titles. This allowed them to bill a movie star, but one that was not the lead, that they did not have to pay much and was usually in the film for only a couple of scenes.

Rollercoaster is an attempt to combine a suspense thriller with a disaster picture. The opening actually works pretty well up until the actual catastrophe. The effect of the first disaster is created on stage with live action, life sized dolls, and some speed-ed up film sequences. They are satisfactory, but they look really creaky by comparison to things that were being done a couple of years later. Star Wars actually uses some similar techniques but worked so much better. The work was professional but it looked better suited to a less expensive TV production. Before the coaster accident, there is a long suspense segment with the villain eying his target, getting into place, victims and near victims changing places. The climax is a letdown. After that it becomes a fairly standard cat and mouse game between the cops and George Segal's safety inspector on one side, and a very clever criminal on the other.

The use of Magic Mountain for the final confrontation works well, the park had not been overexposed at that point, the Revolution Roller Coaster is very photogenic, and there is some good background imagery. The roller coaster sequences are shot very effectively, the nighttime accident at the beginning does not afford the same visual impact as the wide screen day lit ride at the end. They probably copied the idea from "This is Cinerama" but it looks exciting from your seat even if you are not in a car on the coaster tracks.

There are a few interesting casting points in the background that I had forgotten about. Charlie Tuna, who is a well know DJ from the 70s up through today, has a part playing himself at the opening of the Revolution. Gary Franklin, was a radio reporter who played a radio reporter. If you don't remember, a couple of years after this came out, he was the movie critic on L.A. CBS affiliate, where he quickly became widely know for his One to Ten point scale. When he move to KABC Tv a few years after that, he had a ten year run as one of the most powerful film critics in the country. Siskel and Ebert eventually became the gold standard, but Franklin was always distinctive and very opinionated. Helen Hunt has a part as Segal's daughter, in a red herring appearance at the park during the climax. I think I also spotted Craig Wasson and Steve Guttenberg in the cast.

The band Sparks, appears in a concert sequence during the Magic Mountain scenes. I did not remember they were in this at all, and it is sort of funny because in 1983, Dolores and I along with Kathy and Art, went to a special event night at Magic Mountain, and Sparks was the featured act. I actually saw the movie at the Garfield Theater, down on the corner of Garfield and Valley. The speaker set up took out a large number of seats, but that was a huge movie house that probably seated 600 to 800 people. Quite a change from the elegant but small (200 seats) theaters of today. It's is an old fashioned movie, that felt old fashioned when I saw it in 1977.