#46 The Island

“For 300 years they've avoided the garbage of civilization.”
This line makes an intro almost too easy.
Actually, this wasn't as bad as I expected. That doesn't mean it was good though.

From the trailer you see that this film is definitely an attempt to cash in on the success of Jaws. Not only is it based on a novel by the same author, Peter Benchley, but the tagline in the trailer is “Now, the most terrifying thing in the water is … The Island”.

Directed by Michael Ritchie, the film looked good and didn't feel nearly as fake as I expected it too.
I think what first seemed like rip-off shots in the film felt more like slight nods to Jaws in the end.
A caught Tuna/Marlin (the fishermen can't decide) with a large bite taken out of it.
An underwater scene of kicking legs.
And definitely lots of shots of open water, but those make sense due to the context of this film, with or without Jaws.

The movie opens with some action as the viewer learns that what will be coming from the water won't be any sort of animal, but instead vicious pirates, with an ax!
Then we get to meet the real characters of Blair Maynard (Michael Caine) and his son, Justin.
The story has a good set-up. Blair is a reporter who wants to investigate 3 years of missing boats in a certain area. His son gets dropped with him by his mother leaving for a vacation so Blair takes him with on the trip, although the two are not very close at all.

As all the missing boats have been, Blair and son are captured by the band of pirates. Blair shoots and kills one as he makes his way onto their boat. This leads to a trial for Blair and the pirates decide, rather than kill him, he must impregnate the wife of the man he killed. Okay, that's a new one. The son gets bainwashed to become an adopted son of the pirates and the movie continues in typical fashion of 'how will we get out of this alive'.

Action scenes of the pirates taking boats isn't terrible, with a rip-roaring score fitting old pirate movies. But, just when you start to get into the action they ruin it. For instance, a man on the ship attempting to fight off the pirates with nothing but his tight blue underwear and karate noises.

Where the movie really falls apart is the stilted dialogue and acting. Although Caine was nominated for a Worst Actor Razzie for this role, I can't blame him fully, I think he needed some help from the supporing chaacters, and NONE was given. One or two of the main pirates may have been decent if they had had any script to work with.

*If you plan to watch this movie and want to be surprised in any way skip down to the verdict.*

There is definitely something off about the son, I don't know if they re-recorded his lines, or overdubbed them with someone else, or if he's just an awful actor, but it is really off-putting anytime he talks. Although the true crippling part of this character is less the acting and more the writing. The son doesn't get along too well with his father, and when captured is brainwashed quite easily. Believable enough, I guess. But then the whole freaking outcome of the movie is that father and son are back together and safe, and it is all ridiculously unbelievable.

The entire movie leads up to (as if anyone is still interested in the story at this point) a final fight scene upon a coast guard boat. The pirates have just taken the ship from a much, much larger group of coast guard members. Then Blair sneaks onto the ship, after swimming from shore, finds an automatic mounted gun and just mows down the entire band of merry pirates except a few, including his son.
As I said before, Blair and son are safe and together and the viewer is left wondering what the hell just happened.

**The Verdict**
2 stars
I can't say I'm sorry I watched this movie. The cinematography looked good, and there were a number of worthwhile, if laughable scenes. However, I can't say I would recommend it to anyone, unless I know they like bad movies.

Awards:
Nominated for Razzie – Worst Actor Michael Caine
Disagree. Can't blame Caine for his supporting cast and a terrible script.

Nominated for Razzie – Worst Director Michael Ritchie
Strongly Disagree. I think Ritchie did everything he could for this. His biggest mistake was probably signing on to try and turn this script into a film in the first place.

Memorable moments and quotes:
Pirate lighting his head on fire before boarding the boat!
-Definitely unexpected

Brainwashing boy by keeping eys open with toothpicks.
-Gross. It obviously worked though.

Blair: “Its a drug called cocaine”
Pirate Woman: “What does it cure?”
Blair: “Insecurity”

Fisherman: “You don't send a proctologist to do a nose job.”

Box Office: Flop
Understandable! This had an estimated budget of 22 million and pulled in only 15.7 million.
Universal seems to have dumped a lot of money into making the next Jaws and failed miserably. Had they sold the movie on its own merits to the gore audience (this is pretty gory for its day) it may have faired better.

Overall:
If you have an obsession with bad movies or pirates hunt this film down. Otherwise, feel free to pretend it was never even made, that's what the people responsible seem to be doing. (Not out on DVD)

#47 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Re-release

Not an alien movie.
I really went in to this movie expecting it to be some sci-fi film about aliens.
Not even close. It's the story of a man, and a woman, who are driven to figure out what a recurring image in their head means while trying to grasp the reality of an alien presence. It's a character piece that still looks and sounds amazing almost 20 years later.
This is a film I had wanted to see but probably kept putting it off since there were three version and I never knew where to begin, unsure if I would want to watch every version. I'm glad I just jumped right in and finally watched this, but would choose the original now that I know I will watch all 3 versions.
The look of the film, the music and the great acting of everyone, especially Richard Dreyfuss, really made this a film you want to see projected on a giant screen. It sucks you right into the world and you really don't want to leave.

The Verdict:
5 stars
Although some parts were a little slow I found this film amazing. I will definitely have to check out the other 2 releases of this to see the differences.

Awards:
While this re-release didn't win any awards, the original release won Oscars for Best Cinematography and Sound Effects editing in 1978 and was nominated for 7 more.

Memorable moments and quotes:
Jillian ( about the police looking into her son's disappearance) “They asked me if I had seen any strangers in the neighborhood”. Laughs.

Roy: “I guarantee this whole thing is a put-on.” Then puts on gas mask anyway.

“Einstein was probably one of them”

Box Office:
Well, it came brought in 15.6 million as a re-release so my guess is they were ecstatic. I mean how much could the re-editing have cost?

Overall:
See this movie! Stands the test of time. May have to find this on blu-ray for my collection.

Bonus - Squeeze Play

B-B-B-B movie!
Boobs, Butts, Baseball and Beer.
It was raunchy, but I wouldn't call it a sexploitation film.
Made by Lloyd Kaufman during Troma's Pre-Toxic Avenger days. The story focuses on a group of men who'd rather play softball than be with their women. Of course once the game is over the adrenaline seems to turn them into incredibly horny monsters who like to grope anything they see. This leads the women to organize their own softball team to take them on.
Between this there's some good "couple" development. One falling apart and one just beginning. There's more than just the TnA to keep the viewer watching.
On such a small budget the filming looked almost good and most of the characters were pretty well played. Of course it was pretty similar characters as most Troma films, Guys who are jerks, women who are sexy, and kids who are brats.

The Verdict:
2.5 stars (out of 5)
Sexist? Sure, but at least it tells you it's sexist and the girls stand up for themselves, where most movies just show that the women like being poked and prodded.
All-in-all, this was a pretty enjoyable movie. Had some good laughs, and I actually cared about some of the characters and storyline.
I'm kind of a sucker for these late-night style comedies. As a young man just discovering the opposite sex, I would regularly try and stay up late to sneak in a few movies on USA's Up All Night. Although these were heavily edited they were great for a young man heading into puberty, and I found they were about more than just the girls, they were also about very low-brow humor. So I guess you could say I grew up on the stuff. And I still find it funny! So maybe I'm a little biased, but it was a fun movie.

Awards:
Not really the type of movie to receive or be nominated for any major awards.

Memorable moments and quotes:
"Just think about all the kids and silverware we'll have when we're married."

The wet T-shirt contest.
This was memorable to me, because as I look back it sticks out that this scene lasted a REALLY long time. Obviously Kaufman wanted to show as much T in this scene as possible, but when you watch it he keeps enough going on during the contest to make it all flow. And that is really surprising for a movie like this.

The softball announcer.
This guy added a lot of humor to the movie.

Box Office:
Ha. My guess is pretty limited to drive-in theaters in the day.
But with the obviously low budget, it probably made enough.

Overall:
If you like Raunchy sports comedies you could do a lot worse I'm sure.
I would probably never seek this out again, but if it was on TV sometime, I'd watch it.

1980 #49 - Prom Night

WHY?
Why was this film ever released?
The setup for the movie is pretty good. A bunch of kids tease a girl and she falls out a window to her death. Then 6 years later someone starts to kill off the kids on their prom night.
Unfortunately what happens during the film throws it all out the window.
The biggest problem from the beginning is trying to figure out who the characters are. Jamie Lee Curtis looks like someone's mother. Then we find out she's a teenager, but dating who we thought was her son. Then we learn who we thought was her son in the first scene is her brother, and she's dating someone else who looks way too similar to her brother. It's all very confusing for about 15 minutes or so.
Landing Curtis for this role was probably great for the production studio as I'm sure it drew people to the theater. Unfortunately it also ruined the film. She is far too prominent in the movie playing a character that should really have hardly anything to do with the story. The rest of the characters who are important hardly see any screen time before being killed off.
It's also way too easy to figure out who the killer is. Which leads to even less suspense as the film draws to its *groan* climax. But I don't want too give anything away in case someone actually wants to watch this.
The look of the film was even worse than the way the story played out. Half of the time you can't see what's going on because it's shot in the dark with a glaring light everytime there's a reflective surface.

The Verdict:
1 star (out of 5)
I really can not think of any redeeming qualities to this movie, except I had some fun watching it.Of course that was more due to the alcohol and company, then it was the movie.

Awards:
Nominated for Genie – Best Achievement in Film Editing / Brian Ravok
Disagree. I don't know much about film editing. But what I do know is that the editing of most horror films are used create suspense. There was no suspense created with this film whatsoever. And none of it even looked decent, so I'm not sure why this was nominated.

Nominated for Genie – Best Performance by a Foreign Actress / Jamie Lee Curtis
Disagree. Jamie Lee acted and looked like a mother figure to all the other characters that were her supposedly her own age. I'm sure this is partially the fault of casting, but still, there is no reason for this performance to be nominated for anything.

Memorable moments and quotes:
Wendy: “It's not who you go with, honey, it's who takes you home.”
Classic, and classy, too.

Alex: “You're my sister. I'll leer”
You know, they really didn't play out the incest angle that this brought up.

Disco scene
This was ridiculous, not only because I hate disco, but the scene added absolutely nothing to the film. Plus, Curtis dances like a robot.

Crowning of King and Queen:
This was hilarious. I can't say why, if you haven't seen it, but I hope it was meant to look as funny as it did.

Box Office:
Success?
From what I can find this film cost under 2 million to make and grossed almost 15 million at the box office. I'm sure this was a success for the studio. I can see why people wanted to see this. Horror films were really starting to take off around this time and current Scream Queen Curtis was probably a big draw. Too bad the movie couldn't deliver anything worth watching again.

Overall:
Stay away from this movie unless it's halloween and you want to watch hilariously bad scary(without the scares) movies.
One note of interest is the acting of Leslie Nielsen. It's not that great, but it is odd to see him act seriously.

1980 #50 - The Nude Bomb

GENIOUS!
Is a word I'd use to describe the original Get Smart! TV show. Unfortunately, The Nude Bomb doesn't even come close.

I won't be too worried about giving away any spoilers in this post because, well, I don't think there's enough of a plot here to give away.
The story follows Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) as he tries to stop KAOS from bombing the world with bombs that will make everyone nude. And that's about it.

The film starts out with some decent puns and one-liners, but soon falls into a cheesy action comedy. Don Adams is great, even with sub-par writing. He seemlessly picks up the role from ten years ago, and nothing ever seems forced from him. His comedic timing is perfect, like most of his work.

The rest of the cast was okay, but you definitely miss having Barbara Feldman as Agent 99. They bring in a few girls to replace her part for the movie but the main character is 22. I'm not sure who's daughter Andrea Howard is, but she should not have been given this role. She simply can not act. While the film was filled with a number of small smiles and maybe even a chucke, the only time I laughed out loud was seeing Howard's attempt to act surprised by the revealing of the bad guy. I think I may have to find a clip of that somewhere to post.

My hope to revisit the original TV show with this movie could not be satiated. The biggest fault, besides falling flat n the laughs, seemed to be a lack of new gadgets. The show always did a great job of coming up with worthless gadgets, and this movie seemed to recycle a few and come up with nothing original.


The Verdict:
2 stars (out of 5)
Don Adams saved this film from being completely worthless, but just barely.

Awards:
Nominated for Razzie – Worst Movie
Agree. This is definitely on my short list for worst movie of the year. I hope the year gets better.

Memorable moments and quotes:
Talking about the desk-car
Caruthers: “Be sure to change drawers every 6,000 miles.”
Max: “Mine or the desk's.”
Caruthers: “Depends on who's chasing you.”

Norman Saint Sauvage: “Your bogus ingenousness is straining my equanimity.”
Max: “Could you put that another way?”
Norman Saint Sauvage: “You're Pissing Me Off!”

The clone fight scene.
This scene was pretty well done. Max and Sauvage keep multiplying as they go through an instant clone machine until the entire room is filled with pairs of them fighting each other. It was pretty funny when a child came through as one of Max's clones, too, and he had to send him back in.

Box Office:
Flop
I am guessing this was a flop. I couldn't find the budget, but my guess is it was higher than the 14.6 million it brought in. I can see why this flopped. Probably grabbed people trying to relive the television show, like myself. But my guess is bad reviews killed most of the momentum for it.

Overall:
Unless you feel the need to see everything Don Adams has ever done, leave this one alone. It may also be worth a watch if you come across it late one night after heavy drinking. Alcohol would have made this much funnier I'm sure.