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| Johnny Weismuller |
Rolling Thunder (MGM, 1977) Here's a 70's revenge flick that isn't hugely known, but has enough of a following that Quentin Tarantino named his video releasing company after it! After seeing it in the early 80's on VHS, I caught up with it again on my new old buddy MGM/HD. In 1973, two Vietnam veteran prisoners of war are finally released and shipped back to Texas. One of them is Major Charles Rane (William Devane - Poor White Trash), the older, married guy; the other is Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones - The Fugitive), the younger, twitchier one. They have been through hell for several years, and although mostly happy to be home, they definitely find the hoopla they face a bit overwhelming. Rane is so devastated by what he suffered he can't even stay in his own house, choosing instead a cot in a room in the garage. Johnny heads back to Fort Worth, and tries to readjust to his life at his parents' home. Rane's son has never met his father, and their initial introduction is uncomfortable. It also becomes quickly obvious that the dynamic in the house has changed - perhaps something to do with the deputy sheriff hanging around a lot "keeping an eye on things." Rane's time in the hands of the Viet Cong have left him shattered and unable to connect to his emotions, so he spends a lot of time sitting quietly. Not long after the major is feted by just about everybody in his small town, including the mayor - and Linda (Linda Haynes - Latitude Zero), the young woman who wore his POW bracelet the whole time he was a prisoner. She presents him with a gift from the town - a briefcase containing one silver dollar for every day he was held captive. (Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2200). Rane politely thanks everyone, makes a brief speech, then goes back to just sitting quietly.
Then Lopez, Automatic Slim, and the Texan come a'calling. These lowlifes want those silver dollars. The Major, however, is not cooperative, and when it is all over Major Rane has lost his family and, thanks to a novel use of a garbage disposal, his hand. Shortly after, outfitted with a new razor sharp hook, Rane goes and picks up Johnny, and together, they set out on the road to revenge city.
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| As if being held by the Viet Cong wasn't bad enough - Tommy Lee Jones has to come home to a family that includes Franklin from the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre! |
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| Casper Van Dien |
The Child (1977) This is an ultra low budget horror flick from distributor Box Office International, run by the amazing Harry Novak. Harry would scope out movies like this and put them on the drive in circuit throughout the 1960's and 1970's. In this rather odd little movie, pretty young Alicianne has been hired as a nanny for a girl named Rosalie. Little Rosalie lives way out in the boonies in an old house with her crabby old dad and much older brother. Alicianne finds Rosalie to be a strange little girl who spends a lot of time in the cemetery down the road. Don't feel too bad for Rosalie, though, because she does have some friends. Friends who hail from that very same cemetery. Soon, everyone who makes Rosalie mad starts to die horrible gory deaths. With no real explanation, it seems Rosalie has some kind of funky control over the dead, willing them to crawl out of their graves and attack those she feels are responsible for the death of her beloved mom, which is pretty much everybody, including the old neighbor lady, the gardener, her dad, her brother, and eventually even the new nanny.
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| It does say you're in danger too, my dear, right there... |
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| Denny Miller |
Bikini Med School/Bikini House Calls (Vista Street Entertainment, 1994) These two movies are completely interchangeable with each other and must have been shot back-to-back one afternoon. I've joked a lot about movies that "had no plot to get in the way of the story," which is a line I stole from Joe Bob Briggs. It's never been more true than it is about these two plotless wonders. Both films are structured exactly the same - each opens with a voiceover that informs us we are present at a medical school whose initials spell QUACS. (Har de har har). The viewer then quickly discovers the films are a static hodgepodge of scenes set at a frat party at the school. You get about thirty extras dancing badly to some earnest but cheesy pop rock music, girls dancing onstage in skimpy or no clothing, brief dialogue scenes between various couplings of six or so characters, and sex scenes in an upstairs bedroom that stick to the visual mantra "no erections, no ejections." This twaddle is intercut with 1940's stock footage of medical and research activity from public domain educational shorts.
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| If they can use stock footage, so can I. |
That is all I can stands; I can't stands no more. As I leave you, try to remember - there is a land, a land down under, where women glow and men plunder.
