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.

Grease 1978 A Movie A DayDay 23

Grease is the word!!! There is nothing to dislike about this movie as long as you know something about it going in. There are a lot more crude references than you will probably remember, but that simply illustrates how joyful and fun the movie actually is, it blots out some of the crassness. This was a movie that was done inexpensively but very well, they had minimum expectations for it. RSO, the record company that was expanding into the movie business, expected Sgt. Pepper to be their big film of the summer. When this movie was first filming, John Travolta was not a movie star, he was just a well know and popular TV personality. Then lightning struck, because six months before the movie opened, Travolta exploded onto the screen in Saturday Night Fever, and was nominated for an Academy Award. So when they looked at their movie then, things started looking a lot more promising. It was for years the most successful movie musical ever. Watching it again makes you understand all over again.

I must have seen this movie dozens of times. We watched it a lot when the girls were younger and everybody knows the songs. In a few weeks there is actually a revival release planned with karaoke lyrics added so the audience can sing along. I wonder how shocked people will be when they realize they rhyme the word "shit" with "tit" in the Greased Lightning number. There are also some vague reference to oral sex and erections, but again, no one really pays much attention. There is a pretty dark theme at one point about teen pregnancy, but it blows over quickly and all is well at Rydell High. It is a testament to the performers and the production that the audience feels cheerful during the movie and not offended. The movie is rated PG, but if your kids are the kind that want to know what everyone is talking about all of the time, you might want to wait until they are a little older to show it to them. Most kids just like the dancing and singing and except for the one number I mentioned above, it is all pretty tame.

Dolores and I were looking forward to the Sgt Pepper movie when this came out but we were still thrilled when we saw this. I know we went to the theater at least twice to see it. The first time was at the Vogue Theater in Hollywood and the second time was in the mall at Del Amo in Cerritos. We saw a lot of summer movies at that mall, it was not really a great theater but it was close to her house in Norwalk and there was a matinee price. This movie came out the same summer as Jaws 2 and we may have seen them in back to back weekends. The soundtrack was ubiquitous that summer, spawning two or three number one hits, (Including the Barry Gibb penned Title Track sung by Frankie Valli). Ultimately, I would say it was the summer film of that year that everything else was measured by.

Travolta and Olivia Newton John were a little old for the parts but not so much that it took you out of the movie, and they are both really attractive as personalities here. We love the West Wing and Amanda gets a kick out of seeing First Lady Abbey Bartlet as Rizzo the slutty Pink Lady at Rydell. The staging of the dance scenes is done really well at venues that initially do not scream "Musical Dance Number ". The boys versus the girls version of Summer Loving is done on the bleachers of a high school football field and on the outdoor lunch tables. These were not flashy or glossy set ups, and as a result you pay more attention to the characters and the dancing. If you do not see Grease in a wide-screen format, you will lose about 60% of the charm in this sequence. Late in the film there are two other scenes staged in non-theatrical venues that still work like gangbusters. Travola's lover's lament at the drive-in is cleverly shown in front of the Drive-in Movie screen showing the intermission countdown. He is back-lit by the light from the projector in some shots and it is a triumph of staging.(The complete intermission countdown crawl is embedded below). Finally, a cheap carnival setting is used for the climax of the film. It also works well, there is a lot of energy in the dancing and the music is infectious.

There was a period of time after this movie came out (1981-1988) that Travolta was scorned by a lot of people. I seem to remember Tom Hollihan referring to him as John Revolta. Of course he established a lot of cred and returned for a ten tear dominance at the box office after Pulp Fiction. He is still in high demand today and I'll bet a lot of the good will and positive feeling people have toward him are a relut of their fond memories of Danny Zucko in Grease.

The Rescuers 1977 A Movie A Day Day 22

Once upon a time, all my movie viewing at home was done on an amazing invention called a laserdisc player. These discs were 12" the same size as a vinyl LP. Many people these days imagine that this large and clunky process was problematic, but nothing could be further from the truth. Laserdiscs are elegant and the artwork for the packaging puts most DVDs to shame. The Laserdisc pioneered the notion of special editions, deleted material, feature archive, trailers and second audio soundtracks years before the smaller DVD came along. The movie I watched today is from my collection of over six hundred laserdiscs that I acquired between 1990 and 2008. I have transfered many to DVD, but this one I watched on my still functioning laser disc player.

The Rescuers was one of Disney's 1970s features that showed how the animation styles had grown tired and stilted. The drawings of contemporary cites, buses and buildings, look flat and uninteresting. The characters move well enough but with one or two exceptions, the degree of attention paid to the animated performance was not up to snuff. The songs are cute but not memorable in any way. I am not saying this movie was a failure, it just shows how the studio had reached the end of the line. There were two or three features that followed this one, before "The Little Mermaid" revitalized the feature animation business.

The script from the Rescuers may have followed the book closely, I don't know, but it does seem that we jump from one scene to another without much reason or rhythm. The plot is OK, but it is very dreary from the beginning, and is actually quite grim for most of the movie. In the sequel, there was another grim scenario but it was made much more appealing by spectacular vistas and flying sequences. Disney's latest traditionally drawn "Princess and the Frog" owes a lot in art design to the Rescuers. The two Alligator characters are templates for the gator in the recent film. The bayou setting has many of the same kinds of smokey images in both films. The southern accents in the Rescuers are much more comic in nature than accurate. It fed a stereotype of slow taking, lazy thinking southerners that I suspect people today would find offensive. Speaking of offensive, there is an element in the Rescuers that you would never see in a politically correct movie produced in the current environment. One of the minor characters makes his own alcohol and then consumes it to comic effect. Later in the movie another character is heroically revived by taking a big swig of this moonshine and everyone celebrates how it helps save the day. Can you imagine such a sequence from a kid's movie today? The studio would be pilloried by social and parents groups for selling the idea that alcohol has any redeeming features. If this movie were being rated today, instead of a G rating it would probably get a PG-13 for drug and alcohol use.

The voice actors were especially well cast and that makes up for some of the un-inventive animation. Bob Newhart is perfectly cast as the timid voiced but brave hearted Bernard. Eva Gabor is exotic and winsome as Bianca. They reprised their characters in the sequel as well. I was frustrated while watching the movie, trying to place the voice actor who played Mr. Snoops. I recognized the voice from the past but I could not quite put my finger on it. I finally cheated and looked on IMDB and it turned out to be Joe Flynn. He played the fussy and officious Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy. He did a dozen other Disney movies I'm sure. He died just a few days after finishing the voice work on this movie, which did not come out until three years after his death.

There is a lot to recommend in the movie, but it has very little life and older kids are likely to get bored because there is really not action or comedy for a long stretch at the beginning of the movie. Dolores was working at Disneyland the summer this movie came out, we did not get any discount but I remember merchandise and displays in the Main Street shops that featured the film. If you had a pleasant memory of the movie and want to share it with your child, it would be alright. Just don't expect the awe that comes with later Disney efforts or the classics from before Walt's death.

Sssssss (1973) A Movie a Day Day 21

As many of you are aware, Strother Martin was my mother's cousin. He lived with her family for a period of time when he was going to college and they were pretty close. When I was growing up in the 1960's I remember going to his home with Helen out in Agoura Hills for dinner on several occasions. One time when we were out there we visited a Animal Rescue Ranch, it might be the one Tippi Hedren ran but I'm not sure. I do know that as a kid I didn't like the baked beans Helen served one night and she told me to skip the next dinner. I was embarrassed because I was rude to my Mom's family. Helen seemed to forgive me though because later on as an adult, I was always greeted warmly when she came to my parent's place for dinner after Strother (Jay to all of us) had passed away. I know the date of his death because it was the night before my wedding. My Mom did not tell us, and I was so busy that I did not even realize they had not made it down for the service. I found out reading the paper a couple of days into our honeymoon and immediately called home. Mom said she did not want it to overshadow the day so she had just kept quiet. I was to discover over the years that she was pretty good at that kind of thing.

Sssssss, is one of the few starring roles Jay had in the movies. It was a B-type picture, but I am happy to point out that the producers were Zanuck/Brown, who two years later would create the greatest adventure/action picture of all time, (If you don't know,I'm not going to tell you). A couple of years before, he also starred in a low budget horror film called the Brotherhood of Satan. Brotherhood was not a summer release so it will not make this blog, but I am proud to stand up for Sssssss, as a good example of a 1970's style horror film. There are limited special effects, some good make-up, a creepy concept and some fine performers. Those things can go a long way in entertaining people. Cynical modern audiences might scoff at some of the visual concepts or plot points, a remake of this movie would feature CGI to a ridiculous degree. That is when the idea and the actors would become less important to telling a story.

Jay plays Dr. Stoner, an expert on snake venom and snakes. He is involved in some secretive research. The opening of the film, is a very creepy scene that features two good actors and a sound effect on the audio track that will give you nightmares, and you will see nothing. The story then sets up a couple of revenge plot elements and lays the foundation for some slow building ickyness. If snakes creep you out, this would make a good double feature with "Snakes on a Plane". You will see how effects and concept don't always make a movie better, sometime it is just different. Anyway, Dr. Stoner and his daughter run a research lab, and they do a venom milking show as a way to raise money. The new lab assistant from the University is given injections to help protect him from snake bite, or so he thinks.

The actors are all competent. Dirk Bendict plays the new assistant. He has some whiny moments because of the thing that happens to him, but he also gets to chase the girl in the lake naked. This was a sexy scene that is cleverly covered up by key placement of tree branches and leaves in the foreground. I don't remember that from when the film played in theaters, and I can' imagine any reason why it would be added later, except for TV showings. I was fifteen when the movie came out, so I probably imagined a lot more than was actually there. I remember thinking that the girl played by Heather Menzies was very attractive. She comes across very nerd like in the movie, so she may not have hit the spot for everyone, but she was my cup of tea at the time. I may be biased, but I thought Strother was great. He plays the role with the right amount of sympathy, sadness and crazy as a loon goofiness. There is a nice scene where he is reading Walt Whitman to a snake, and he is slightly drunk. It comes off as a little weird but also kind of sweet. The snake is his closest friend, and when bad things happen, he plays out the part like a geek based Charles Bronson. Richard Shull, another well known character actor, plays Dr. Stoner's nemesis, and he is pretty good at being pompous. The comeuppance he gets is disturbing with just one or two camera shots. This would be an unnecessary CGI shot today, good for shock value and laughs but not adding to the horror. This movie played on a double bill with "The Boy who Cried Werewolf", a movie I remember not at all. This was one of the final examples of a studio booking two films together. Double features continued for another 15 years, but the movies were put together by the theater management rather than the distributor.

The resolution of the movie is a little abrupt, but it coveys a strong horror response in one of our lead characters. It is definitely a 70's style shot and cut, designed to leave the audience aghast. The movie is not a world beater, but it has enough creeps and a fine performance from the star to justify seeing it. Jay was a nice man and an excellent actor. He died too young and he would have been great in some 80's movies also. He worked with Paul Newman a half dozen times, and John Wayne about the same. Most people will remember him from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he utters the famous line"What we've got here is a failure to communicate". His costars in this movie are not as famous, but one of them is a King. (Cobra that is.)

[This Poster is on my wall right now]