"Lifeguard" 1976 A Movie a Day Day 19

For all my friends from Torrance, here's one for you. This movie was filmed at the beach in your hometown. Maybe you will recognize it or maybe even better, you will remember them doing the filming and have some comments to post about that. I looked all over the place for a trailer for the movie and could not find one. Even the DVD does not provide a trailer. Also, it appears that prior releases of the film on home video and television have left out the original songs that were written by Paul Williams for the movie. The above clip contains the most effective use of the song in the movie and it gives you a much better sense of what the tone of the film is then the poster which you will find below.

There is only one reason to see the movie, and that is Sam Elliot. Not that there isn't a pretty good slice of life story and that it is done poorly. Quite the opposite is true, but the selling point and the whole reason the movie matters is Sam Elliot as the star. This guy should have been the biggest movie star in the world. He is not necessarily a great actor but he has charisma to burn, and frankly is better looking than just about anybody you or I ever met. There is a line in the movie where his character is discussing with an old girlfriend, some options he has, and she reassures him by saying, "You could always get everyone to like you", truer words about a character were never spoken. He is not always admirable in the movie. He casts aside a sexy blond he has been sleeping with pretty casually, and he gets involved with a girl who is underage. Still, despite the fact he is a scoundrel, he is a likable one that we understand.
This is a low key movie. There are only a couple of memorable events that you hang a story on, most of it is character based and very quiet. Elliot's character Rick, is facing a fork in the road. How long can he go on doing a job like his, and feeling like life has not passed him by? There is a very good sequence set at his 15th High School Reunion, that gives us a chance to see how conflicted he is about being a lifeguard, when the rest of his classmates appear to be more accomplished. Of course if you watch the first fifteen minutes of the movie, you will understand his dilemma because his job is great. He gets to go to the beach everyday, watch gorgeous women in skimpy swimsuits, work on a fantastic tan, and then go home and have beautiful women throw themselves at him. Is he refusing to grow up or has he grown up and no one else recognizes it?

There was only one scene that seemed a little false to me. He goes home and has dinner with his parents. They seem to have a very good relationship and there is a lot of warmth. Over the course of the dinner, his brother's research and new job are mentioned and his dad suddenly jumps on him about his lifestyle. Based on what came earlier, it just seemed like a plot point, not something that grew out of the story or character. A similar shift in tone occurs when he goes to interview for a job selling Porsche s, only here the switch in attitude better fits the situation and the character.

The movie is only an hour and thirty seven minutes, but it is a leisurely trip. I can't imagine this movie being made today by a major studio. Even independent films are more focused on plot than a character study like this. From the poster you can tell the studio was selling this as a comedy, and there are a few funny lines (Watch Rick at the bar, talking to a blond receptionist who doesn't get any of his jokes), but if you go into this expecting a sex comedy, you will be disappointed. It is a drama about a man, faced with his own questions about his life. Maybe all of us can see ourselves in this situation, wondering what it all adds up to and hoping that we are going to be OK. I know when I see myself confronting those questions however, I'd feel a lot better if I looked like Sam Elliot.

The Mackintosh Man 1973 A Movie a Day Day 18

Well, I've been out of town a couple of days so I have fallen a little behind on the blog. Vegas is great for a couple of days and then it is time to get out and that's what we did. While I was there, I did do a little experiment related to this blog. The only copies of this movie I could find where old VHS tapes that were marked up substantially or were being auctioned, so I might not be able to get my hands on it. I checked i-tunes however, and it is available there for purchase or rent. Since I would not be able to transfer it to a DVD anyway, I decided I would rent it. This is the first time I've rented on i-tunes. I have some movies that I bought, but I was not familiar with how the whole process worked. You get access for a month but the minute you start watching your movie a clock starts running and your rental expires in 24 hours. I took this movie with me to Vegas, and I thought since it was on the i-pod that the 24hour limit might not matter. I was wrong on that count, the i-pod indicated a countdown had begun, there is even a little warning when you start so if you want to wait longer you can. So this is the first movie I have rented for the project, the first digital rental I have ever done, and the first movie for this project that I watched on a really small screen.

This is a thriller from John Huston, that I'll bet most people have not seen, in fact there are probably a lot of you out there that have never even heard of it. I don't recall any reviews from the time the movie came out, and I don't know how successful it was. Most of us nowadays are used to seeing box office returns being reported on every Monday morning. Prior to E.T., most box office was only know widely in the film industry. Occasionally a movie like the Godfather, Goldfinger, Jaws or Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon, and then there would be press coverage. Clearly this movie does not fall into that category, so it's level of artistic and financial success are something you would have to dig up. Like a great many of the movies on this list, it is of it's time, and reflects the world of the 1970. Most of it is set in London, but there are sequences in Ireland and Malta as well. Because it deals with thieves, spies, and prison in a realistic way, there is not much of the glamor left over from the mod 60's here. In fact, there is a nice sense of the oppressiveness that wore out the English political scene in the 70's.

I could not remember but two things from this film before I re saw it; the prisoner's clothing for the high risk prisoners was distinguished by bright yellow graphic patterns and that the gun Paul Newman uses toward the end of the movie was an automatic that looked pretty distinct and weird to me. If you look at the trailer above, you will see how the gun is used to create a memorable graphic for the movie.



This is probably why I remembered the gun, because I remembered the poster. The plot of the movie is actually quite complicated, and that makes the tag line "whoever he is, he's not what you think" pretty accurate. In my head, this would sit on a shelf with another movie on my list, that I have not seen since it opened, "The Black Windmill" with Michael Caine. They are both blurry spy thrillers from the 70's that featured actors I would usually be willing to go see. The Mackintosh Man features a pairing of Paul Newman and James Mason nearly 10 years before their film "The Verdict". I haven't looked to see if they did any more films together, both were nominated for Academy Awards for the Verdict. This current movie was not an award type of film, but there was good suspense and some unique elements that are worth seeing it for. I want to make particular note of the music score by Maurice Jarre, it is elegant and haunting in a manner very similar to "The Third Man", a comparison that I'm sure was not accidental. Just a couple of years later, Jarre would score Huston's masterpiece, "The Man Who Would Be King".

Since this blog is not just about movie reviews, but also an attempt to help me avoid forgetting everything that makes me who I am (as well as letting my kids pass on stories when I am gone), I will mention one last thing about the movie going experience. I opened a closet with skeletons I did not know would be there when I mentioned that I saw this with a date, a girl I am not currently married to. This made my wife very irritable, I guess I was not supposed to exist as a romantic character in any context other then our own. I have thought of Robin, the ice-skater from Granada Hills maybe a half dozen times over the last 37 years, you would think I took her out last night from the stink eye Dolores gave me when I told her about this. My suggestion to everyone else, write a memoir for your kids, but don't let anyone see it until after you are dead, otherwise that point might come earlier than you expect.

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES - A Movie aDay Day 17

The Planet of the Apes Series is really an attempt to cash in on the success of the original movie, in the cheapest manner possible. The follow up movies are really done in a style that was more befitting television rather than film. In fact by 1975 I think, there was a television series based on the concept. It lasted only one season so it appeared that the story had run it's course, at least as far as the audience was concerned. This is not to say that the movies that came after were worthless, but they were unnecessary and sometimes kind of weird.

I actually saw this movie on a triple bill in 1973 I think. That was another one of the differences between movie going as a kid and the way we experience movies today. Since there were no video releases, studios could either sell their material to play on TV or they could find other ways to exploit them. Re-releases are most well know as the tool that Disney used to generate cash on a regular basis. Every seven years or so, they would take out one of their classic animation films, and play it in movie theaters. This was also done with the James Bond films. The first time I saw a Bond film was on a double bill and a second release (From Russia With Love and Thunderball). I had seen the original Planet of the Apes when it first came out, and I was it with my family. I saw the trailer for the movie at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena. I don't remember what it was playing with, and I don't recall where we went to see it, I do remember being blown away by the ending.

I am pretty sure that I did not see the second "Apes" film when it first came out, and I don't know how long it took to put all three together on one bill. Almost all movies in those days played as double features. Typically a new release was paired with a film that was a few months older. The addition of a third film was somewhat unique, and I know I went with a friend, because there was no way my family would have been able to sit through three movies. (I loved going into the theater in early afternoon and coming out in the dark, of course I am a bit of a freak like that). I do know that I saw the three films playing in Pasadena. I thought there was a big movie house on Colorado between the United Artists and the State, but it just might have been the UA that I went to.

"Escape" is a reversal of the original film. The humans are in charge and the Apes are out of place and can talk. This probably seemed like a clever twist on the original movie, and saved a lot on building new sets, since you could film around town and the setting was contemporary. You can add a lot of fish out of water sequences, and it sets up the rest of the series in a somewhat logical fashion. The opening revelation of the Apes returning to Earth in the 1970's is a good visual sequence set on a beach, but once we get past the opening, things progress much too quickly to be very believable. Sal Mineo, an actor with an Academy Award nomination from Rebel Without a Cause, plays Dr. Milo, the Ape visitor that is killed ten minutes into the movie. This was his last feature role, he was murdered in 1976. So his last movie role you don't even get to see his face. After the death of their colleague, the other two Apes end up in a series of comic scenes based on sexual stereotypes and the world at the time. It is hard to believe that the government would decide to put up these Ape visitors from the future at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, much less send them shopping and to cocktail parties, but that is what happens.

The villain of the movie is the science adviser to the President. In truth, he has a legitimate concern for future events. By the end of the movie however he has become so self righteous and single minded that he is pretty loathsome. I thought the President was well played by an actor I remember liking from a lot of things in the 60's and 70s, William Windom. He may have the best written part in the movie, he comes across as smart, conscientious and politically savvy. The President has not ordered the elimination of the Apes, but the advisory committee he appointed is largely responsible. The President actually is sympathetic to the apes situation, and even though they have no scenes together, conveys a general feeling of what the world opinion about this situation might really be. On the other hand, the committee is played for laughs at first and then they become the heavies that enable the science adviser to act.

Bradford Dillman plays the supportive veterinarian, who tries to assist our heroes through the political events and then their escape. This might be the only sympathetic role he ever played. In most of the movies and TV shows I saw him in, he was the heavy or the slimy political hack. Roddy McDowell reprises his role from the first film, and I believe is in all of the following movies as well. I'm not sure why he was replaced in the second movie, but the character was nearly invisible in that film so it did not matter. His soft voice and genteel manner is one of the selling points for making us sympathetic to the apes in the first place. The movie is not great but of the five films, it is in the middle both in production and quality of the story.

North Dallas Forty (1979) A Movie a Day Day 16

This was a movie I saw late in the summer of 1979. The subject is football but not so much the game as the business of the game. I'm not sure that I like it as well as I thought I did. Part of the reason is that the movie is sold as a comedy, and while there are several amusing bits, the majority of the film appears to be a criticism of the game. I'll add that it was not a very focused criticism.

Nick Nolte and Mac Davis are the hot shot stars of the Dallas football team. They drink , smoke pot, and generally carouse with the other players on the team. For some reason Nick Nolte's character thinks better of himself than this. He is supposed to be an outsider, because he does not toe the company line. It is not clear what the team wants from him that he sees as being untrue to himself. His closest friend on the team, the quarterback played by Mac Davis, pretty much does things the same way he does, and nobody seems to be upset about that. As far as you can see, Nolte's character follows the directions of the coach and performs on the field. This movie is apparently based on a book that was a loose expose of the Dallas Cowboy organization. If Mac Davis is supposed to be a stand in for Dandy Don Meredith, then Roger Staubach is not the man he claimed to be, or he ought to sue. The episode in the film that contains the biggest laughs, focuses on a story involving the religious married rookie quarterback,being involved in a disgusting sexual peccadillo. The tag line for the poster about waiting for the Weird stuff comes from this story.


The movie is two hours and it has 15 minutes, at best, worth of funny. What it does have going for it is a locker room view of the professional game. The supporting characters feel real, even the ones that engage in some outrageous stunts. The two offensive line men are slightly crazed and seem like exaggerations, but it never goes to the point of parody. On game day their ritual is one of the most real things in the movie. Another thing that is real, or at least feels real, is the way the players are manipulated by the coaches to get the most out of them. My guess is that this was true at the time the movie was being made.

Here is the problem with the movie in a contemporary context. The players today have much greater power, the league does not treat the injuries of star players or others lightly. The mechanical approach that the coach takes in the movie, is a big part of the game today, but instead of the game suffering for it, the quality of play has improved. Maybe the guys in the old days were tougher but they were not faster, or stronger or more professional than the NFL players of today. If Nolte's character took that damn cigarette out of his mouth occasionally, and took the workouts a bit more seriously, he would not need as many pills and shots as he takes in the movie. The character played by Bo Svenson is supposed to be hopped up on steroids, that would account for his rage and the sexual frustration he shows at the party. However, the word "steroid " is never used, and all he gets are B-12 shots. Maybe we are supposed to see thru this, but since every other argument against the game is spelled out in big letters to get the message across, it seems strange that they pull their punches here. This movie wants to have it both ways. It wants us to root for the team, see the player perform, and then afterward, we are supposed to dismiss all of this as something childish. The girlfriend that Nolte's character gets involved with is a good illustration of this. She is an outsider at the wild party, who holds the players in disdain (Justified in this scene but not others), she points out all the problems that her boyfriend has with his body, but appreciates the play he makes in the big game at the end. She is a plot device to allow Nolte to work off of and verbalize his criticism so we can hear it out loud.

There is a lot that is fine in this movie, the atmosphere of professional football in the 1970's is probably right on. The characters, when they are not advancing the point of view of the message, are real. G.D. Spradlin,a familiar character actor from the time (he should have played Darrel Gates in a movie about the LAPD) does a very good job as a coach that knows what it takes to win in the league, even if talent is only part of the game. The character Nolte plays, wants to be judged only on his talent, but the game is planning, adjustment, strategy, study, hard work. The coach conveys that he know talent, but what never seems to get into our protagonist's head is that there are other people that are part of the game too. I think my recently retired colleague Bob Phelan, would appreciate the coaches point of view. "Hey Nick, You're Not the Center of the Universe."

Futureworld 1976 A Movie a Day Day 15

Spoiler Warning!!! if you watch the Trailer Before the Movie, Some Secrets Are Revealed, the same goes for the poster image.


I got to this one a little late in the day. One of the reasons I picked it was I thought it would be relatively brief. It was just over two hours so my memory is clearly fuzzy on this one. This was an August 1976 release, so it is possible that I saw it with Dolores but that seems less likely than I saw it with someone else. It might even have been a movie I saw with my friend on the USC Debate team, Jon Cassanelli. We hung out a lot during this summer, getting ready for the next year of debate.I was at his house in North Hollywood a lot that summer. We sat at a partner desk and did research, typed briefs and tried to stay cool. The main reason I think he must have been the person I saw it with, was that it was the kind of film he would like. It is not very serious, had some fun lines and bits of business and I think we may have gone to a multiplex in the valley in search of better air conditioning.

This is a sequel to the more well known "Westworld". The rights must have belonged to someone not at MGM, because this is an American International film. They were famous for drive in exploitation and cheap European dubbed cinema. While this is clearly not a high budget production, they get a lot of bang for their buck. There is a clever sequence involving holographic chess, that is a year before the scene in Star Wars on the Millennium Falcon. The special effects are not amazing as they were in Star Wars but the concept is well executed and it fits with some of the other material in this section of the film pretty well. Most of their money probably went to Yul Bryner, to get him to come back and play the role of the iconic robot gunman from the original film. He is only in the movie for one five minute scene, and it is a dream sequence that has nothing to do with the story except it showcases the machine that the bad guys can use to get all of your personal information. There is probably a reason that the female character has a sex fantasy related to the gunslinger, but it is not really explained. Early in the movie a comic character, who disappears after the first half of the movie, talks about robot sex and even asks our heroine if she is going to try it. This may be the source of the dream, but it gets Yul Bryner in the movie and allows the filmmakers to use his image in the advertising.

If you watch the trailer or see the movie poster, you will know the secret plot of the movie much sooner than necessary. Amanda had not seen either and while we were watching, she was creeped out by a couple of the things that are going on and she was in suspense as the story unfolded. She did not know where things were headed and it kept her in the movie. Another thing that might have helped is that she has not seen all those other films from the 1970s where there is a conspiracy to do something terrible and political and the journalists are the Hero (Capricorn One, The Parallax View among others.) So this movie does march out a bunch of familiar tropes from that time period. After the stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s, everyone was a little paranoid and looking for trouble. I hope we have gotten over that, but I still see those 911 truthers selling books and see people posting on news sites about the space program that deny the moon landings. I guess paranoia isn't going to disappear, but it is less part of the popular culture than it once was.

There have been attempts over the years to re-make Westworld. In fact, I think there was a script and pre-production and casting but the green-light went red. Arnold was going to play the gunslinger, and that might have worked because although he does not look much like a cowboy, the robot part fits him well and he has no lines. Futureworld is not likely to get remade, although it is not a bad idea. It was not a big hit, it has largely been forgotten, and there are technical advances that would make it a very interesting movie. As I said earlier, they did get a lot out of what they spent. The film does not look cheap, but there are very limited effects. I did think that unlike the original Westworld, the things to do in the differnt parts of the Delos Park this time, seemed more intriguing.

Blythe Danner is the female lead and she looks very much like her daughter, Gweneth Paltrow in a couple of scenes. Her big dream sequence is sexy without having much sex in it, and she carries off the showdown she has at the end pretty well. Peter Fonda is OK, but fairly standard issue. After the clunky opening set up of the mystery, he settles in nicely. There are not a lot of movies that end with a middle finger being slung at the antagonists, but along with Easy Rider, Peter Fonda is in two of them. Arthur Hill, who seemed like he lived at my house in the 1970s because he was on so many TV programs and movies, plays a pretty familiar genial on the surface but not very trustworthy otherwise character. Hal Holbrook could easily have replaced him and I would not notice. They must have auditioned for the same roles all the time in the 70s. Also in the film is Stuart Margolin, a TV actor that showed up in movies pretty regularly. If you ever watched the Rockford Files, he played Angel, Rockford's weaselly friend. He is also well cast for his part.

This is another one of those high concept science fiction movies from the 1970s, that existed before the term high concept was widely used a few years later. It is not as great as Soylent Green or Capricorn One, but it will entertain you for a couple of hours and that's what Westworld and Futureworld are all about (just remember that the people you watch this with are not sex robots waiting to entertain you after the feature).

Rocky II 1979 A Movie a Day Day 14

This time I want to start with a story about the movie going experience instead of the movie itself. This is one of the few things in my life that I am ashamed of, rather than just embarrassed. I went to see this movie twice on opening day. The first time was with Dan and Art, and we went in the afternoon and had a great time. Here is the part I don't like to admit, we then picked up Dolores and Kathy, and took them out for the evening, and we did not tell them we had already seen the movie. I'm not sure why we did this, except that we suspected they would not be interested in going if we had already gone, and we wanted to experience their reaction to the movie. It was a lousy thing to do, to keep this from them. On the way out of the movie, one of us finally announced that we had gone that afternoon, and all hell broke loose. It was some kind of violation that in retrospect seems obvious, but at the time probably appeared to be inoffensive. I'm not sure if Kathy ever recovered from this, and we had weird episodes at the movies with her on many subsequent occasions.

I know I apologized to Dee, and I have never done anything like this since. I have done plenty of other stupid things related to movie going, including seeing a movie or two that she wanted to go to without her. That was usually a result of my not realizing her goal in the situation, it has never been a deliberate deception. By the way, Dolores, once again I am sorry.

Now to the movie itself. I have read other comments suggesting that the Rocky sequels are all unnecessary. I would have been perfectly fine if they had not happened because I agree, there was nothing to fix in the original. The first Rocky is perfection. It was the little movie that could and did win us over. There were no big stars or expectations, just the strength of the story and the passion of the writer/creator of the character. Over the years, Stallone probably got a bad rap for many of the choices he made. Some of the acting roles he took just did not work, and some of the films he directed, although successful, were not very good. That having been said, Rocky 2 represents the qualities of the underdog he was and it is true to the character he created. After the success of the original Rocky, Stallone made a couple of duds and it looked like his career might flame out. He had enough cache left however to leverage himself the directors role on this movie as well as star and writer.I think he acquitted himself very well.

My memory of the original LA Times review was that they thought it did not seem true to his character, some of the things he does in the movie. I think that is exactly the point. Rocky needs to figure out who he is. That he created a name for himself in the first fight with Apollo Creed, doesn't mean he knows how to handle his life and new notoriety. In a contemporary version of this story there would have to be a couple of violent confrontations and cruel teasing to get him back in the ring. There is a bit of psychological manipulation, but most of the motivation to fight comes from the fact that this is how he finally defined himself. He does not get back into the ring with Creed because he has been called chicken, but because he defined himself as a man by being a fighter and taking care of Adrian. When he no longer fights, he has a hard time doing the one other thing that defined him.

The movie starts off by repeating the last few minutes of the previous film. There is a lot of positive emotion in that, and it is dangerous, because you remind the audience of their high expectations. The final outcome however is earned because what goes on during the middle part of the film is a reminder of why we loved these characters in the first place. It is manipulative, but guess what, that is what a good director does. He finds the right buttons to push so that you will care about the story and be satisfied that you took the trip. There is not a betrayal of the first film by the second. It is a different story,with a different outcome but with the same honest circumstance we began with in the first movie. The biggest theft of a movies well earned love with characters, came in the opening of Alien 3. That movie flushed the preceding movie down the toilet and said,"let's start it over by kicking the audience in the teeth." Rocky 2 doesn't make that mistake. Of course it can't live up to the first time, that movie came out of nowhere. Just as a second kiss or date is an extension of the relationship you started, it will not have the same electricity. Does that render it worthless? I'll tell you what, I've kissed my wife a thousand times since the first electric touch of our lips. It has not always been the same, but they are all worth something and they don't make the first time meaningless. The slogan in the trailer captures the true nature of the movie; "His whole life was a million to one shot" (the original tagline for Rocky), "Now he shows he's one in a million." It fits but yet it is different. Just like the movie itself.

High Plains Drifter 1973 A Movie a Day Day13

We just got back from the Yenny's where we had a great visit with our friends and a wonderful meal. Rick and Mary were on their way to Ontario to pick up Jimmy, so they stopped and had dinner with us as well. I reminded them about this blog and if they don't bother to bookmark it and read it on a regular basis, the next entries will be less friendly. All of this fits in with the theme of today's movie "High Plains Drifter". A vengeful spirit finds cruel ways to extract justice from a town that ignored the desperate pleas of their last lawman. Ok, I'm not a Marshall and no one is whipping me to death, but I am flogging this blog so give it some attention or I will haunt you.

Clint Eastwood is the star of at least a half dozen films on my summer blog list, this is the first one that he is featured in that I got to. I was a little annoyed to hear that Sam and Nate had not seen "Dirty Harry", and Ellie came in after the Rollino's left and did not even know what "Dirty Harry" was. Now let's get this straight, Clint Eastwood has been a movie star for twice as long as any of these kids have been alive, and It is just Un-American not to have seen Clint in his most iconic role. However, since it was not available at Blockbuster at a price the young Yenny boys could afford, I will give them some credit if they see this movie this summer. Other than Harry Callahan, Clint is best known for his westerns. "High Plains Drifter" was Clint's third directorial effort and it is a western that is substantially different from the Italian films he made in the 1960s. Although it might at first appear that the character of a nameless gunfighter is not too far from the Sergio Leone epics, the truth is this movie is a lot more twisted and the protagonist, a lot less sympathetic or heroic. In fact, this is actually a ghost story masquerading as a western. As the movie goes on, it gets creepier and crueler, and most of us would hope not to have a vengeful wraith like this after us.

A town is deeply afraid of three violent criminals that are set to be freed from the penitentiary. Their hired gunslingers are killed and they turn to the man responsible for leaving them in this situation. It turn out that this is not a remake of High Noon, with Clint in the Gary Cooper role. Instead, this movie is more like "The Haunting", where the innocent are few and the guilty are punished. The town of course has a secret, and none of the townsfolk are blameless in the back-story. Clint's character gets away with mentally torturing the towns people, stealing from them in the most obnoxious ways, and even getting away with rape. Still as the history of the story is told you don't take much pity on the residents of Lago. When the town gets relabeled "HELL", it is literally true. I may have already given away more of the story than I should, but you oldtimers who have seen it won't care and if any one has yet to see it, there are still a lot of key things I have left out. The trailer at the top of the page is actually pretty effective at setting up the movie and not giving anything away. The supernatural twist is left out entirely, but I think you will enjoy the movie more if you are spooked a little from the beginning.

There are a bunch of familiar faces in the cast. Anthony James appears as one of the merciless outlaws, his is a face you will recognize from a dozen places. He usually plays a sniveling heavy,he has a gaunt, greasy look that filled that bill in most of his movies. Early in his career, he played the killer in "In the Heat of the Night", and his last movie before retiring from acting was "Unforgiven" where he played "Skinny" the owner of the billiards parlor that makes the mistake of decorating his saloon with the body of Clint's friend. Not a bad pair of films to bookend your career. Geoffrey Lewis plays another of the killers, and he must have been in every movie Clint made in the 1970s. His daughter is the actress Juliette Lewis. There are several other faces that will pop up in Clint films over the next twenty years. Everyone one in the movie is just fine, and the whole town plays chicken quite convincingly. The only brave souls are the little person that becomes sheriff/mayor of the town and the current sheriff.They might be considered brave because they parade around a target for the rest of the town's men to practice shooting at, and none of these guys could hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun. The two sheriffs could have been drilled during target practice.

For at least a year, Dan Hasegawa, Art Franz and I would accuse anyone who couldn't hear us of having "pigshit" in their ears because of a line in this movie. When you are fifteen, saying "pigshit" seemed cool. Clearly it was not and that might explain why none of us had a date to take to the prom in high school. Well, live and learn.