We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
1970s thrills and chills; some of it hosted by Joe Bob Briggs.
A FORCE OF ONE (1979)
A few years ago, I covered the fact that the 1985 Chuck Norris action movie Invasion U.S.A. fits right in with Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and First Blood when you’re looking to liven up your Christmas movie viewing sprees, as all of those action flicks are set during the holidays. But Invasion U.S.A. isn’t the only Chuck Norris Christmas action movie. If you have space in your marathon for another, you can turn to the 1979 film A Force of One, which was Norris’s third star vehicle following Breaker! Breaker! and Good Guys Wear Black.
Norris felt that his acting was ten times better in A Force of One than it was in Good Guys Wear Black, and it’s easy to understand why: instead of playing a CIA assassin turned political science professor, here he’s playing a character who’s closer to his true self. That character is karate instructor and martial arts competitor Matt Logan... but, of course, Matt gets mixed up in the sort of dangerous action Norris never had to deal with in his own life.
Directed by Paul Aaron from a script crafted by martial artist Pat E. Johnson and Shaft creator Ernest Tidyman (who said he only took the writing job so he could afford to buy his mom a new house), the film takes place in the fictional city of Santa Madre, California, which is facing a serious drug issue. When two police officers are beaten to death by a mysterious assailant while on duty, the force turns to Matt Logan so he can teach officers some karate moves they could use to defend themselves.
Matt gives instruction and tries to help the cops, particularly Officer Mandy Rust (Jennifer O’Neill), figure out who might have beaten their fellow officers to death – but the situation becomes really personal when his own adopted son is killed by the drug dealers. That’s when Matt really becomes determined to bring down this drug ring that operates out of sporting goods stores and involves a homicidal martial artist played by Bill “Superfoot” Wallace.
A Force of One has kind of a ‘70s TV movie vibe to it and there’s not as much action as a lot of viewers may be looking for, but it’s an entertaining watch that’s appropriate for December viewings because it takes place around the holidays, with Christmas trees and decorations on display. Plus, it has a solid supporting cast of character actors, featuring the likes of Clu Gulager, Charles Cyphers, G.W. Bailey, and Ron O’Neal.
THE GETAWAY (1972)
In 1958, Jim Thompson wrote a crime novel called The Getaway, in which nearly every character was complete trash, and those who weren’t didn’t fare very well. Reading the book was like trudging through slime with these awful people – so it’s a little surprising that Steve McQueen’s publicist David Foster saw promise in the idea of producing an adaptation as a McQueen vehicle. Thompson was the first screenwriter hired for the project, but he got fired after four months of work because McQueen didn’t like that he kept the book’s downer ending in place. So Hickey and Boggs writer Walter Hill was brought in to handle the adaptation – and Hill managed to take Thompson’s characters and make them palatable for movie-goers, cutting down the amount of scumbag actions and violent crimes committed by characters we should be rooting for in a movie.
Peter Bogdanovich was briefly attached to direct the movie and envisioned it being an Alfred Hitchcock-style thriller, but McQueen ended up firing him and replacing him with Sam Peckinpah, who shot the violent acts that are in the movie with style and intensity. Even with a different director at the helm, the Hitchcock influence Hill brought to the script made it to the screen, with some extended suspense sequences.
McQueen took on the role of Carter "Doc" McCoy, who’s serving a ten-year prison sentence in Texas and has just been denied parole after four years. Doc can’t stand staying behind bars any longer, so he asks his wife Carol (Ali MacGraw) to get in contact with parole board member / corrupt businessman Jack Beynon (Ben Johnson) to let him know he’s for sale. Beynon gets Doc released quickly after that – and in exchange for his freedom, Beynon wants him and Carol to pull off a bank heist. On this job, they’re made to work with Rudy Butler (Al Lettieri) and Frank Jackson (Bo Hopkins) – and Lettieri had a face that let you know as soon as you saw him that his character wasn’t to be trusted. Indeed, by the time the heist is over, Rudy has killed Frank. Knowing Rudy is going to turn on him, too, Doc guns the man down... not knowing that he’s wearing a bulletproof vest at the time.
After Carol kills Beynon, who also made her sleep with him in exchange for her husband’s freedom, the McCoys take the money and run... with Beynon associates and a vengeful Rudy on their trail. One of the most unsettling things about the movie is the fact that Rudy seeks medical help from veterinarian Harold Clinton (Jack Dodson), taking the man and his young wife Fran (Sally Struthers) hostage – and as soon as Fran seems to fall in love with this violent, unpleasant, gun-wielding man as soon as he busts into their lives, so she and Rudy start cucking Harold all over the Texas countryside.
All of the characters come together in the end, colliding for a gloriously shot gun battle in a hotel.
With a running time of 122 minutes, The Getaway might be slightly longer than necessary, with some of the quieter sequences going on a bit longer than they needed too... but even if it drags at times, it’s still intriguing every step of the way. And it’s also a movie that just feels cool throughout. Some of that is the way Hill wrote the story and characters, some of that is the way Peckinpah shot it, and some of that is just the vibe that McQueen naturally put out. MacGraw was married to Robert Evans, one of the most popular “cool cat” producers of the time, when she took this job because she didn’t want to get typecast after starring in Love Story, even though she was nervous about working with McQueen and Peckinpah due to their tough guy reputations. By the time filming was over, MacGraw’s marriage to Evans was over and she was on her way to becoming McQueen’s wife. (For a brief time.)
So if you want to watch a movie that’s fully imbued with early ‘70s tough guy cool, check out The Getaway.
SOYLENT GREEN (1973) – hosted on by Joe Bob Briggs on MonsterVision
On August 30, 1996, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs showed the dystopian sci-fi thriller Soylent Green on his TNT series MonsterVision. Joe Bob says critics hated the movie and the public loved it when it was released in 1973 – and clearly the public won out on this one, because Soylent Green has endured over the decades as one of the most popular dystopian sci-fi thrillers ever made. It also happens to be one of the most widely spoiled movies ever made. Even people who have never seen the movie are probably aware of its twist, because the four words spoken about that twist in the film are quoted all the time, all over the place.
Before he can get to the movie, Joe Bob does a comedic rant about one of his ex-wives, who was so terrible that he calls her “the anti-wife.” This woman haunts his nightmares and not only would she not let him keep any of his stuff in the house, she also underwent a transformation during their relationship, going from being attractive in 1984 to being a bug-eyed lizard lady in 1988. Joe Bob has some pictures in hand to prove this transformation, but he doesn’t actually show them to the camera.
Then it’s movie time. Directed by Richard Fleischer from a screenplay by Stanley R. Greenberg that was based on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, Soylent Green is set in a world that’s crumbling due to overpopulation. In 2022, the population of New York City has ballooned to 40 million, and most of the people have to live on the streets. Of course, the rich still have it pretty nice. They live in spacious apartments and gated communities, drinking authentic booze, eating real meat while everyone else lives on high energy vegetable concentrate (“tasteless, odorless crud”) – including the titular concentrate, said to be made of plankton. The rich also treat women like furniture. Concubines like the character Shirl, played by Leigh Taylor-Young, come with the homes when they’re purchased.
Charlton Heston stars as Detective Robert Thorn, who is called in to investigate when a rich man named William R. Simonson, a member of the Soylent Corporation’s board, is murdered in his home. There’s something suspicious going on in the Simonson residence: the alarm system was out of order, the guard was out for the night, and nothing was stolen, and yet Simonson was home to be murdered with a meat hook. Thorn’s investigation not only leads him to having interactions with Shirl, but also unearths some earth-shattering revelations.
Soylent Green is an interesting glimpse into a terrible world where most of the world has nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Where corpses are simply carted off to waste disposal plants, and police break up riots with garbage trucks called scoops, scooping up loads of people and dumping them into the waste collection body. Thorn is a fun character to follow through this world, as he takes every opportunity to steal as much as he can from every rich home he strolls through. The movie tells an interesting, troubling story – but its 97 minutes also move by at a slow pace, which may not go over well with some modern viewers.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob acknowledges that this is a slow-developing movie (“They were slower in 1973”), but encourages viewers to let it simmer a bit because once it gets going, it’s great. Even then, he’ll brush off a section of the movie with the description, “blah blah blah exposition exposition exposition plot plot plot plot plot.” He calls this “a guys movie” due to cast members like Charlton Heston, Chuck Connors, and Edward G. Robinson. He feels that this is one of Heston’s best roles because he’s so nasty and such a thief, and he enjoys it more than the average sci-fi movie because there’s none of the usual cutesy sci-fi bullstuff. It’s slow, but chilling, and he wraps up by saying that people should watch this movie every year.
THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972) – hosted on by Joe Bob Briggs on MonsterVision
Soylent Green was shown in a double feature with The Legend of Boggy Creek – and this one had to be a special request from Joe Bob himself, because it’s difficult to imagine TNT would think this down-home Bigfoot docudrama was something their average late-night viewer would want to sit through. Joe Bob absolutely loves this movie, though. As I’ve said before (when discussing the fact that he showed it on his dusk-to-dawn-to-dusk Shudder marathon), he is probably one of the only people in the world who can get giddy talking about this thing. His childhood was spent not too far away from the Arkansas locations shown in The Legend of Boggy Creek, which probably has a lot to do with his appreciation for the film. He also worked at a newspaper that reported on Bigfoot sightings in the Boggy Creek setting of Fouke, Arkansas. Another connection: MonsterVision director Tom Moore had a working relationship with Charles B. Pierce, who made his feature directorial debut with The Legend of Boggy Creek after securing the budget from a businessman and rebuilding an old camera himself. Moore was an associate producer on Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown and produced and directed the sequel Return to Boggy Creek – but Joe Bob doesn’t let the fact that his director made Return to Boggy Creek hold him back from saying the sequel isn’t nearly as good as its predecessor.
The Legend of Boggy Creek claims to be an entirely true story, with accounts of Bigfoot sightings dramatized sometimes with the actual Bigfoot sighters playing themselves. During his hosting segments, Joe Bob hypes up this “exploitation documentary” and reveals that he has been to Fouke, Arkansas. He found the place scary even without having a Bigfoot sighting... although, he did see a waitress there who might be confused for Bigfoot in the wrong lighting. He says the movie has moments that will make you go “I can’t believe I’m watching this,” and that you can tell the director really believes the story being told. He compliments the people who played themselves in the movie, celebrates the musical interlude, confessions that he loves everything about the movie, and says it makes you want to go to Fouke and meet the people who appear in it. And maybe go monster hunting. He finds the movie to be very believable and funny in a true-to-life way and has fun with the dialogue, which is the sort of stuff that no one would ever write. That’s how you know it’s a true story.
Joe Bob says that is not only the best movie in the history of Texarkana, but also a classic of American cinema, and we’ll never have another like it. That last part is certainly true. Others have tried making Boggy Creek follow-ups, but you can’t replicate what The Legend of Boggy Creek brought to the screen.
This one doesn’t have much in the way of the thrills, except for a pretty fun sequence toward the end, and makes for a better viewing experience if you just tune in to watch a documentary about some people in the backwoods of Arkansas (with an occasional appearance by Bigfoot). Joe Bob has a lot more fun watching it than I do.
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