David Janessen is Captain Pete Douglas . . . and his life is in a talespin: his wife is in the hospital for a life-saving operation and he can’t get out of flight duty . . . and he ends up piloting an airline through a storm. Complicating matters is Marjoe Gortner (Star Crash), in his full-crazed mode that we love (aka, The Survivalist), as a prisoner-transfer who escapes his shackles and skyjacks the plane.
Yeah, if this sounds a lot like Charlton Heston’s Skyjacked (1972; reviewed this week) with its tale of a crazed Vietnam vet with a bomb hijacking a Boeing, then it probably is. Yeah, this is purely unabashed in its Airport series airline disaster rip-offery. But you know what? With this project’s director and the cast he brings to the table, this is a lot of fun. And since we’re mentioning Charlton Heston and his disaster movieness within the context of a David Janessen movie: they both starred in the “Dirty Harry”-inspired football disaster movie, Two-Minute Warning (1976).
Director Robert Butler’s career as a writer, director, and executive creative consultant in TV drama and movies is extensive. His 100-plus credits that began in the early ’60s culminated with Hogan’s Heroes, The Fugitive, and Batman; his moves into theatrical work gave us Kurt Russell in Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive. He began his TV Movie career with the admittedly odd (for television, that is) Death Takes a Holiday (1971), a fantasy-romance where death visits earth and falls in love with Yvette Mimieux; he also gave us Gene Roddenberry’s post-Star Trek effort Strange New World. Do we want to mention the summer camper rip-off with the Cheap Trick theme song, Up the Creek (1980)? Oops, we just did.
And look at the rest of that cast! No need to even mention their movies, for you know ’em well: Don Meredith, Christopher George’s wife Linda Day George, Ray Milland, Hari Rhodes, and Broderick Crawford . . . just wow, it’s all the actors we know and love ’round ‘ere and have written about many, many times in our reviews.
If you don’t get your pilot greenlit the first time — I’m looking at you, The World of Darkness— try again with another take at sports writer Paul Taylor (Granville Van Dusen), who died for 2 minutes and 37 seconds, which gives him the power to hear the voices of ghosts.
This has brought him to New England, where a golem has been attacking people. A golem of all things!
JoBeth Williams is somehow in this, but try as they may, CBS could not get anyone to want this to be a full-time series. If they had, it would have aired on Friday or Saturday and died a quick death. Such was the way of pre-The X-Files series. I can name so many — The Man From Atlantis, Misfits of Science, Automan, Manimal, The Powers of Matthew Star, The Phoenix, Battlestar Galactica, Galactica ’80, The Highwayman, Gemini Man and many, many more. I watched them all and would bemoan the fact that they never could last.
This was created and written by Art Wallace, who developed Dark Shadows with Dan Curtis. He also wrote the TV movie She Waits and episodes of the Planet of the Apes series that were made into the European films Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes and Back to the Planet of the Apes.It was directed by Noel Black, who made Pretty Poison and Private School, yet mostly directed television programs.
Speaking of TV Guide, Barnard Hughes — grandpa from The Lost Boys — is in this!
This is another fact-based TV drama about an aircrash, this one concerning the January 1982 disaster of Air Florida Flight 90 from Washingon D.C. to Fort Lauderdale. The Boeing 737-222 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., resulting in 78 fatalities.
Courtesy of moviemem.com
Jeannetta Arnette (yep, of The Redeemer), Barry Corbin (WarGames), Stephen Macht (most recently of the USA Network’s Suits, but since this is B&S About Movies, we’ll mention Nightwing, Galaxina, The Monster Squad), Dinah Manoff (Grease and Child’s Play; the daughter of Lee Grant of Airport ’77), Richard Masur (the sled dog guy in John Carpenter’s The Thing), and Donnelly Rhodes (of the SyFy Channel’s Battlestar Galactica reboot and The Neptune Factor). The rest of the familiar TV actors and film-character actor cast includes Ken Olin, Jane Kaczmarek, Chad Low, Kate Vernon, K Callan, and Kathleen Wilhoite (the sassy waitress Carrie Ann from Road House). Donnelly Rhodes and Dinah Manoff also appeared together in the TV-sitcom Soap.
Director Robert Michael Lewis gave us the successful TV Movie one-two punch of The Astronaut (1972; produced by Herve Bennett of Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232; reviewed this week), and Pray for the Wildcats (1974); at that point, Lewis continued almost exclusively in the TV Movie realms, venturing into the theatrical world only once: with one of Sam’s favorite films S*H*E: Security Hazards Expert. Screenwriter John McGreevy 120-plus resume also started in ’50s TV series, but he also gave us the Fast and Furious precursor, drive-in classic, Hot Rod Girl. By the late ’60s he worked on TV’s Family Affair and Mayberry R.F.D. Among his 30-plus TV movie credits, he gave us one of the best juvenile delinquent TV drama of the ’70s, The Death of Richie (1977).
Needless to say, with the team of Lewis and McGreevy — and regardless of the up-against-it TV budget — this is a well-research docudrama that sticks to the facts and doesn’t go off into composite characters or “fact-based” situations. True, because of the budget, you may see a few “flaws” in the realism of the crash scene, but with this familiar pro-cast selling the material, it’s easily forgiven.
You can watch this movie on You Tube HERE and HERE.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Well, the VCR and the accompanying VHS tape was still hanging on and not all movies were yet released to DVD. There was no Amazon Prime or Netflix. No streaming and the onslaught of 80-minute direct-to-DVD movies were not yet the norm. Cable Superstations like USA and TNT were not yet in the TV Movie business, but the TV movie death knell was ringing in the “Big Three” networks’ village square: “Reality TV” was on the horizon.
Courtesy of VPRO Cinema Netherlands— watch the trailer.
It’s hard to believe a U.S TV movie — known it in initial broadcast as A Thousand Heroes — would star Charlton Heston (who’s been in the cockpit before with Airport 1975 and Skyjacked) and James Coburn. However, while this aired as a TV movie in the states — and as most, if not all U.S. TV Movies did — it was broadcast overseas with the Crash Landing alternate title, which also carried over into its home video store shelf life (it also ran on HBO throughout the ’90s).
Instead of a big studio, like Paramount or Universal (see The Crash of Flight 401 and The Ghost of Flight 401), Bob Banner Associates — known for CBS-TV’s long-running The Carol Burnett Show and the daytime Dinah Shore talk show, along with the talent showprecursor Star Search (1983 to 2004) and the premiere disco show Solid Gold (1980 to 1988) — bankrolled this Harve Bennett production for broadcast on ABC-TV. Now, if that pairing of Harve Bennett and ABC seems familiar, that’s because the network broadcast Bennett’s TV Movie-to-series adventures of a junkman’s moon rocket, Salvage I. Bennett also provided the network with the sci-fi TV movie classic (before there was a Capricorn One), The Astronaut (1972). But his greatest success with ABC-TV was The Six Million Dollar Man, which aired as a 1973 TV movie, then as a 1973 to 1978 series on ABC — then yes, with episodes packaged into overseas theatricals.
As with Crash of Flight 401, broadcast on ABC-TV in 1978, this Lamont Johnson-directed (1970’s The McKenzie Break, 1972’s The Groundstar Conspiracy, 1983’s Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone) is a fact-based drama regarding the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in July 1989. The fifth deadliest crash involving a DC-10, of the 296 passengers and crew, 112 died and 184 survived. Despite the mass causalities, the accident and rescue continues to serve as a text book example in crew resource management and emergency response.
The support cast on this — as with all TV movies up until the mid-90s — is expertly cast with Carmen Argenziano (Jacob Carter on Stargate SG-1, but since this is B&S About Movies: we’ll mention Sharks’ Treasure, Graduation Day, and Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact), Bruce McGill (yep, D-Day from Animal House and Timecop), character actor Tom Everett (Air Force One and too many TV series to mention, and Richard Thomas (The Waltons and Battle Beyond the Stars). Needless to say, with Herve Bennett in the producer’s chair and this cast, this film is a well-done, gripping action flick about the human fight-or-flight response.
The events from the Sioux City crash also served in the plotting of the fictitious, Jeff Bridges-starring Fearless. You can steam the film on You Tube.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
We’re reviewing both of these TV movies side-by-side as result of their basis in the December 1972 crash in the Florida Everglades near the Miami International Airport of Eastern Flight 401 scheduled from New York JFK to Miami. The flight ended with 101 fatalities: the pilots and flight engineer, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers; 75 passengers and crew survived. The crash was documented in the national best-selling paperback Crash (1977) by Rob and Sarah Elder. The supernatural aftermath of the crash was documented in the equally popular The Ghost of Flight 401 (1976) by John G. Fuller.
Paramount and Universal Studios quickly adapted the properties into TV movies: Paramount Television produced Crash (1978), aka The Crash of Flight 401 in its video shelf life, for ABC-TV. Universal Studios optioned the supernatural tales and retained Fuller’s book title for their NBC-TV movie.
Barry Shear (Madam Sin) directs The Crash of Flight 401 with William Shatner starring as National Transportation Safety Board Investigator Carl Tobias (purely narrative; not a factual character), under pressure to exonerate Lockheed, the manufacturer of the wide-body L-1011. Eddie Albert (TV’s Green Acres, the POTUS in Dreamscape) and Lane Smith (District Attorney Jim Trotter in My Cousin Vinnie) star as the surviving Eastern Airlines’ captain and flight engineer under investigation for causing the crash. The passengers and FAA personnel read as a who’s who of ’70s television: Adrienne Barbeau (who returned to the passenger cabin in the 2020 horror-parody Exorcism at 60,000 Feet), Lorraine Gary (Jaws), Christopher Connelly (Raiders of Atlantis), Ron Glass (TV’s Barney Miller), Ed Nelson (Roger Corman’s Rock All Night and Night of the Blood Beast), and Joe Silver (Rabid).
The late Steven Hilliard Stern (This Park is Mine) directs The Ghost of Flight 401, a tale concerned with the ethereal sightings of pilots Robert Loft and Don Repo on other planes that had salvage parts from the wreckage. Ernest Borgnine stars as flight engineer Dom Cimoli alongside Russell Johnson (TV’s Gilligan’s Island) as Captain Loft; Gary Lockwood (of the TV Movie Earth II) is the FAA investigator on the case. The rest of the cast features a young Kim Basinger with a when-you-see-’em-you-know-’em TV and feature-film character actor feast of Robert F. Lyons, Allan Miller, Alan Oppehheimer (a quickly gone-and-replaced Six Million Dollar Man TV movie cast member), Eugene Roche, and Hal Holbrook’s then wife, Carol Eve Rosen.
As is the case with all TV movies of the ’70s, while they’re up against the budget, the production values are high and — according to the comments of IMBb users involved in and experienced both incidents as airline industry workers — are technically accurate. The acting, of course, is excellent across all quarters.
Barry Shears’s 80-plus credits, which began in the early ’50s, were mostly in episodic TV, Tarzan and Police Woman in particular. His dozen-plus TV Movies include Power (1980; Joe Don Baker as Jimmy Hoffa), Undercover with the KKK (1979; a true story about an FBI infiltrator), and Strike Force (1975; with an early Richard Gere in a cop vs. drug dealer drama).
Other works in Stern’s superior TV movie oeuvre (on U.S. TV and cable; in Canada, they ran as theatrical features) are the James Brolin-starring The Ambush Murders (1982), the pre-stardom Tom Hanks-starring Mazes and Monsters (1982), and the Ned Beatty-starring (Ed and His Dead Mother) Hostage Flight (1982).
You can watch The Crash of Flight 401 and The Ghost of Flight 401 courtesy of You Tube. In addition to ABC and NBC airing both of these fact-based airline movies, ABC also broadcast the adventure-drama SST Death Flight, while NBC took the subject matter into a sci-fi turn with The Disappearance of Flight 412; CBS-TV broadcast the horror-fantasy The Horror at 37.000 Feet, which also starred William Shatner. We’ve also reviewed all of the theatrical forefathers that inspired the “Big Three” TV Networks’ airline telefilms with our “Airport: Watch the Series” featurette.
We reviewed a gaggle of airline disaster TV movies this week, so be sure to check out our “Airline Disasters TV Movie Round Up” feature with links to all of the reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Before there was The Asylum Studios. Before there were mockbusters. Before there were an endless stream of direct-to-DVD and direct-to-streaming variants of popular movies, there were the “Big Three” networks’ (ABC, CBS, and NBC) endless stream of TV movies that knocked-off popular theatrical films. In the case of this Jud Taylor-directed (TV’s Star Trek and Man from U.N.C.L.E.) airline thriller, it was made by NBC in the midst of the Airport disaster flick series of films made between 1970 and 1979 (read out “Airport: Watch the Series” featurette), which also included ABC’s SST Death Flight and CBS’s The Horror at 37.000 Feet. While ABC’s offering was an adventure-drama and CBS’s a horror-fantasy, NBC’s offering took a sci-fi turn.
Ugh. Cheap-jack DVD cover available at your local retail “impluse buy” end caps and electronic retail dust-bin barrels.
Glenn Ford (Jonathan Kent in Superman ’78, but since this is B&S About Movies, we remember him best for The Visitor and Happy Birthday to Me) is an Air Force Colonel in investigating an Air Force base’s rash of electrical disturbances aboard its aircraft. To pinpoint the in-flight problem, he dispatches the four-man crew of Flight 412 piloted by Captain Bishop (David Soul of Salem’s Lot). Shortly into the flight, the flight makes radar contact with three unidentified craft and reports them as U.F.Os; two fighter jets are dispatched and force Flight 412 to land at a remote, abandoned military airfield in the American Southwest desert. Sequestered in a barracks and their craft hidden away in a dilapidated hangar, government officials begin to interrogate and convince the crew they did not see flying saucers. Meanwhile, Ford’s Colonel — and Bradford Dillman — refuse to accept Flight 412 simply vanished — and that it has anything to do with alien contact.
At the time of this NBC-TV production, Peter Hyams had not yet scripted the conspiracy-similar Capricorn One; he came up with the idea back in 1969 while working on the Apollo broadcasts for CBS-TV. Completing the script in 1972, no production company wanted to make it; that is until ITC Entertainment (Space: 1999, Saturn 3) put Capricorn One into pre-production in late 1975 and commenced filming in late 1976. In a coincidence: Capricorn One was — based on its casting of the then popular James Brolin and O.J Simpson — pre-sold to NBC to secure its TV rights, which assisted in augmenting the production’s budget.
While a ratings success during its initial October 1974 broadcast on NBC, contemporary critics decry Flight 412 for its overuse of stock footage (which leads to the boondoggling jets switching from U.S. Marine McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom II fighters to Grumman F9F Panthers; the latter didn’t fly in the ’70s as they were retired after the ’50s, this according to aeronautical critics), recycling newsreels of individuals speaking of their “close encounters,” and voice-over narration to advance the plot. But those critics seem to miss the point: that the “plot” was based on “fact” and made to resemble a documentary about a “real event” involving a military U.F.O encounter. Flight 412 became a frequently-ran film on NBC’s late night programming blocks and UHF-TV syndication until the mid-’80s, at which time it was given a VHS release.
Courtesy of its casting of Glenn Ford, David Soul, and Bradford Dillman, the film is easily available as a still-in-print DVD and streams on Amazon Prime. But we found You Tube freebies HERE and HERE and on Daily Motion. You can also enjoy it as part of Mill Creek’s Nightmare Worlds 50-film pack, which afford us to do another take on this film.
Image courtesy of JohnGrit/Unisquare.
Other network TV movies parked at the Hollywood hangers are Paramount Studios-ABC’s The Crash of Flight 401 and Universal Studios-NBC’s The Ghost of Flight 401; both are concerned with a real-life, 1972 Eastern Airlines crash and its supernatural aftermath. Don’t forget that we wrapped up our week of airline flicks with our “Airline Disasters Round Up” feature.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Image courtesy of photographer Allen J. Schaben for a May 2020 Los Angeles Times article by Randall Roberts/font overlay by PicFont.
It was long overdue. Everyone reviews the music career of the man born as John Nommensen Duchac in 1953, but few, if any, have examined his acting career. So B&S About Movies took up the challenge because, well, we love John’s acting gigs as much as his music.
That’s right, we love ya’, John! May you have many more films and albums to add to your career. And when you finish your starring role in your currently-in-production 82nd project, D.O.A. – The Movie, B&S About Movies will be the first to review it.
Flicks we wanted to review, but were unable to locate VOD/PPV screeners or DVDs:
Under the Gun (2002) Red Zone (2003) Hated (2012)
The rest we didn’t get to as result of time and/or lack of VOD/PPV screeners:
Scorpion Spring (1995) — trailer The Price of Kissing (1997) Drowning on Dry Land (1999) MTV’s Wuthering Heights (2003) The Sandpiper (2007) Absent Father (2008) All Creatures Here Below (2018) — trailer
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of rock ‘n’ roll, be sure to check out our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” tribute round ups from July 2020, September 2020, and September 2021 featuring over 100-plus film reviews. And John’s A Matter of Degrees was also part of our week-long review of radio station flicks, which you can catch up on with our “Exploring: Radio Stations on Film” featurette. Same goes for John’s The Red Right Hand, which was part this year’s October “Slasher Month” of reviews.
There’s further reading on John’s career with Tim Stegall’s recent, two-part interview at Alternative Press published in October 2021. John also speaks with Daniel Kohn at Spin in April 2020 regarding the release of Alphabetland, the recent album by X.
You can enjoy John in 1991 promoting his solo album and a 1983 national TV appearance with X, both on NBC-TV’s The David Letterman Show.
There’s faux rock stars . . . and there’s Teddy Connor of Wotan.
Courtesy of Gregory Hill Design/NBC-TV/Law & Order.
If you’re an avid B&S About Movies reader, then you know Roger Corman ain’t one to pass up a hot film genre without creating a knockoff. And the paranormal was a hot property in 1999 courtesy of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense and David Koepp’s Stir of Echoes.
And Corman, at the very least, owned a solid to Craig Nevius — the guy he contracted to script the abortive tax dodge-copyright retainer that was 1994’s The Fantastic Four. So, yeah, the least Rog could do was greenlight another Nevius script. And remember, way back in the day, when Patrick Dempsey and Helen Slater were “things” that made you go the theater (ugh, chicks and movie date nights)? Well, Craig’s introduction to Hollywood was the 1989 Brat Pack-inspired Happy Together starring the duo.
So, that’s that backstory.
But why Rog didn’t slap an Amityville* prefix on this to sell as a bogus sequel is anyone’s guess. I mean, come on, Rog. Amityville: The Vacancy. Bam! Sequel city. How could you not see it, Rog?
However . . . we’re not reviewing this because of Corman or Nevius. Or that it was a missed Amityville “sequel” opportunity. Or the fact that David Carradine (Night Rhythms) is creeping up the joint. We’re here because John Doe of X is in the support cast as Professor Paul Ballard.
Yes. John Doe. As a University Professor. Yeah, you’re damn right I am watching this one — its Corman ripoffness be damned to the pits of hell.
So, Brad and Danielle (Brian Bloom and Kimberly Row) are two newlywed paranormal psychologists who enjoy their erotic kinks (hey, it’s a Corman ghost romp, after all). And Brad carries Danni over the threshold of the Sunset House, an infamously documented New England residence (actually filmed in Ireland), with the goal of recording the spirits-in-residence. And they discover the ghost of the autistic Samuel, a murdered little boy who likes to play “London Bridge Is Falling Down” on the piano and enjoys scrawling cryptic chalk warnings on the basement floors. And that Samuel sees the memory of his mommy in Danielle. Oh, and Danni’s pregnant and Sammy wants that fetus to keep his spirit warm. And that Sammy isn’t all too fond of sex, so Brad and Danielle “stir the spirits” with frequency. Oh, and Danielle used to get her freak on with her and Brad’s boss, Professor Ballard (you go, Mr. Doe). And the ‘ol town doctor, played by Carradine, only has kinky eyes for her. And so does the local cemetery’s creepy gravedigger. And with that, the ghostly grandfather clocks, red hot fireplace pokers, and axes are tossed around in quick succession.
Uh-oh! Caveat emptor ye David Carrdine fans: this is another marquee-on-the-box cameo boondoggle of the Eric Roberts variety, as ol’ Dave is on board for less than 10 minutes, and John Doe — who I personally came for — isn’t around for much longer. But if you’re into guys with haunting blue eyes of the Meg Foster variety (who doubled as a young “Burt Reynolds” in a gaggle of syndicated, late ’90s Smokey and the Bandit** TV movies) or actresses that look a little bit like Charlize Theron (and appeared in a bunch of soft core flicks prefixed with the words “Justine” and “Emmanuelle” and suffixed with numerals) frolicking inside a Corman house of horrors, then there’s something here for you to stream on a Friday Night.
But truth be told: Nevius’s script, in conjunction with its direction by Mitch Marcus (who also knocked out the 1999 Corman rip The Haunting of Hell House starring Michael York), actually has some nice, creepy n’ chilling visuals in spite of its low-budget effects, and genuine thrilling moments.
And you can watch it courtesy of a free-with-ads-stream on Tubi TV.
* We love our Amityville flicks around here, so much so we cataloged them all with our “Exploring: Amityville” featurette.
** We love our Smokey and the Bandit knockoffs and hicksploitation movin’ piktures ’round ‘ere, Cletus. So check out our “The Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List” featurette, a collection of down-home films produced from 1972 to 1986.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publish music reviews and short stories on Medium.
John, my friend . . . you own me a brew at the “Double Douche” . . . for I just endured a “chick flick” — for you. A chick flick with Sandra Bullock, no less. And Ben Affleck. And I just went from the rim of the bowl, and into the swirl of the bowl . . . storms and hurricane analogies of the heart be damned.
Just the way he’s leaning back, like a limp-ass noodle, is pissing me off.I can’t even make it through the trailer.
If all feels a little sitcomy, that’s because you’ll notice the name of Marc Lawrence on the marquee, who broke into the industry as a staff writer and supervising producer on NBC-TV’s Family Ties. He then went on to become Sandra Bullock’s go-to writer, also penning her films Miss Congeniality (2002), Miss Congeniality 2 (2002), and Two Weeks Notice (2002).
Amazingly, and only in Hollywood-penned careers, Ben Holmes, our romantic lead (Ben Affleck), is able to make a living — and live in Manhattan, the most expensive section of real estate in the U.S. — by writing “blurbs” on the sleeves of hardcover books. Meanwhile, Sam and I kill ourselves writing movie reviews for, get this, the glory — and the occasional free screener links. And the privilege to live in a week-to-week existence in Allegheny County where the Spaghetti-O’s flow like a fine wine.
Yep, as usual: in less than five minutes, Ben Affleck has managed to pissed me off with the desire to give him, as Sam would say, “a Chris Kattan punch in the nutsack” for making a movie.
Anyway, the “force of nature” comes in the form of a self-professed, free-spirited drifter named Sarah (Sandra Bullock) who ends up next to Ben on his flight from New York City to Savannah, Georgia. Oh, and Ben is on his way to marry Bridget who, of course, he discovers he doesn’t love, thanks to wild n’ crazy Sarah.
And how is it, a free-spirit without the income of our successful blurb writer, can afford to sit next to Ben on a plane? Eh, plot piffle. Lets cue the birds — the fowl that flies into the engines and grounds the plane. So Sarah convinces Ben to rent-ride share to Savannah. But why not hop another flight? Well, Ben hated flying in the first place — and now that friggin’ bird in the engine has him completely freaked out. Hey, he’s a book blurb writer and has everything to live for: for he, like the annoyances on NBC-TV’s Friends, has a job with an income level that in no way can afford him to live next to Joey Tribbiani and Chandler Bing who, based on economics, shouldn’t be able to live in Manhattan, either. (And how in the hell did Rachel Green — a homeless and unemployed runaway bride, without a degree in the field and no experience, and who couldn’t even cut it as a coffee house waitress — climb the ladder of Ralph Lauren’s fashion empire, then be courted by Gucci? Only in the sitcom-verse where you get amazing jobs with no training and apartments beyond your meager means, and there’s never a shortage of attractive women for annoying, bald Woody Allen knockoffs like George Costanza.)
Anyway . . . back to “The Force,” as the usual car rentals, train snafus, crowded buses, love on Tilt-a-Whirls, and thunderstorms — and the eventual hurricane — ensues. But why didn’t they call this Planes, Trains, and Automobiles? Well, that title was already taken by a Steve Martin and John Candy movie, remember? And naming a film after transportational devices isn’t as romantic as giving a movie a title that implies kismet.
Hey, what about John Doe?
Well, he’s married to Sandra and she dumps him for Ben. Dumping a hungry wolf for a douchy wash cloth? Welcome to the sitcom-verse. But in Sandra’s defense: John’s a scumbag that’s cheating her out of her family home and never lets her live down life’s mistakes. In John’s defense: he slugs ‘ol Benny-boy right in the kisser. Nice. But it took an hour and a half to get to John’s scene, so that punch to Ben’s face isn’t enough to save this rom-doggle — even if it’s John Doe throwing the punch. Maybe if John also socked Ben’s whiny-nasally co-star, Steve Zahn?
Hah. Too little, too late. Time for Pat McGurn to tap us a cold one, you know, at the place where, when Ben Affleck confronts me for this review . . . they’ll be sweepin’ my eyeballs off the floor.
Yeah, I’m going to need a TBS replay of John Doe in Road House to flush this celluloid infamy from my eyes. Yeah, John. I know you were in The Good Girl (2002) with Jennifer Aniston. But sorry, my friend. No can do. I already did the Affleck flick for you, and now you’re on shaky ground with Jen. Even Sam, the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer and Mix Master of Movie Themed Drinks, scoffed at my challenge to review it. Not even a threat from your Uncle Brad will make us. Sorry, John. But we’re just not that desperate for entertainment in Allegheny County. But feel free to write the tune “R.D Hit and Run Ben,” with no publishing rights on my end required.
But Sam — being the uber Rowdy Herrington* fan that he is — is reviewing Road House for ya! (*So much so, he conducted a four-part interview with the director.)
From the Useless Movie Trivia to Amaze Your Friends at PartiesDepartment: This is the second John Doe review this week — the other is Man Maid (2008) — that features actor Steve Hytner and John Doe in the same movie — although they’re not in any scenes together, here. They’re also in the unreleased Mila Kunis flick Tom Cool (2009). And sci-fi fans may recall Hynter and Doe in the cast of “Into the Woods” from the first season of FOX-TV’s Roswell. So, there you go. Reviewing this movie wasn’t a total waste, for you’ve been movie trivia blessed.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
New Queer Cinema (see Gregg Araki and his “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy”) director, writer, and producer Todd Stephens used his youth-raised years in Sandusky, Ohio (yep, the same town in Chris Farley’s Tommy Boy from 1995), to his advantage: most of his auto-to-semi-autobiographical films are set in that Buckeye State enclave.
While he turned the directorial reigns over to David Moreton (currently in production with his fourth film, Big America), Stephens made his screenwriting debut with the alternative, coming of age rom-com Edge of Seventeen, which was concerned with a Eurythmics-obsessed teenager coming to terms with his sexuality. And as with Stevie Nicks inspiring the title of his debut film, the “Welsh Witch” influence returned for Stephens’s second writing effort, which also served as his directorial debut. While mainstream critics applauded the film — and it found acceptance on the art house circuit (I made the drive to see it) — the film only managed to score award nods and wins in the LGBT film festival community.
To propel this coming-of-age road trip filled with the usual eclectic characters (a sexually-confused Amish teen runaway; Karen Black as a washed-up retired singer), Stephens used the then de rigueur Stevie Nicks Festivals where fans celebrated her music. Gypsy Vale (Sara Rue of CBS-TV Rules of Engagement and The Big Band Theory) and Clive Webb (Kett Turton; Vampire Steve on CW’s iZombie) are early-twentysomething goths who travel to the 1983 Stevie Nicks Festival, aka Night of a Thousand Stevies, in New York for Gypsy to realize her dream to become a famous singer, like her idol, Stevie Nicks. Fueling and supporting her musical dreams is her ex-musician father, Ray (John Doe of X; Border Radio), who deals with the loss of Gypsy’s mom and his musician-wife, Velvet.
Gypsy 83 served as one the earliest art house entries from Palisades Pictures. The studio would come to acquire the catalog of the shuttered, UK-based Tartan Films, which distributed East Asian films under the Tartan Asia Extreme imprint between 1992 to 2003 (Battle Royale, A Tale of Two Sisters, Oldboy). Comic book aficionados with take notice of Andersen Gabrych in the cast (also of Stephens’s Edge of Seventeen and Another Gay Movie) as a writer for several issues of Batman, Batgirl, and Detective Comics.
There’s no free-with-ads or VOD streams in the online marketplace, but we found a You Tube rip for you to enjoy.
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