TheFearmakers

In JUDGEMENT NIGHT, token black sheep of drinking buddies Jeremy Piven has provided a giant RV for buddies Emilio Estevez, his brother Stephen Dorff and Cuba Gooding Jr to hang out and drink in, while watching prime night boxing on the way to front seats for the actual match...

What's funny is that, while stuck on a very important freeway traffic jam, and with drinks in hand and a satellite TV, they could have simply cruised around and had a better time than at the place they never reach...

Taking a random off-ramp into an inner-city hybrid of then-modern gang movies or the post-apocalyptic Mad Max franchise, they wind up being stalked by a ferocious lot of killers, led by a constantly-lecturing Denis Leary, who had become famous spouting-off with chain-smoking diatribes on MTV...

He's not bad as the main bad guy, surrounded by equally vicious Irish hoods, but, realistically, being as white as most of his prey, he wouldn't quite hold up if, realistically, other more superior gangs happened encroach into territories where only passive homeless people exist, and there are no police anywhere... the hunting-ground locations in JUDGEMENT NIGHT are just too conveniently barren and lawless...

Meanwhile, the best character is sold as the biggest jerk in Piven's Ray, who... let's say he predictably exits the picture way too early... and should have been more an antagonist or less obnoxious or, better yet, less important early-on, because he simply outshines the other characters, with both acting and plot-importance...

Leaving Estevez with his usual half-baked intensity more befitting a decent straight-to-video than the capably thrilling odyssey intended... one that's become a cult movie since it never quite took off...

Understandably so, as this overlong NIGHT merely has moments of intensity while being otherwise bogged-down by an overlong sense of dread and doom, and not enough pockets of action-packed payoff.

Since EASY RIDER ignited movies by stoners for stoners, CISCO PIKE takes it a step further: while Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda safely sold cocaine in Mexico before riding off into America, CISCO has a different approach...

By having the title character... a musician fresh outta jail played by acting-newcomer Kris Kristofferson... blackmailed to sell pot by crooked cop Gene Hackman, the crime-thriller genre's mixed into an otherwise spontaneously free-form counter-culture expose...

But they don't do much with Hackman (not enough for his talents), who was right on the verge of playing an ambiguous antihero cop in THE FRENCH CONNECTION, making his extremely crooked detective extremely one-dimensional... so he could have been played by anyone...

Perhaps even Seymour Cassel, who was actually up for the lead role until, at the last minute, Kris filled in: which really works since he's not only a genuine musician/guitarist/singer, he's smooth and cool walking in and out of hippie hangouts, and, with an equally solid, no-nonsense manner, Kris could pull off both slow-burn and action, at any given moment...

His character being forced into selling bricks of weed gives the otherwise superfluous drug-dealing montages an underline purpose... and it's not exploiting drugs since a crooked cop's behind it...

But the way Bill Norton creatively directs within the groovy hot-spots, CISCO PIKE is a much sharper glimpse into the counter-culture scene than the attempted b-crime flick involving stoned musicians, like Harry Dean Stanton as Pike's heroin-addicted co-guitarist or hanging-out with authentic hippie chicks Joy Bang and Viva... while more recognizable actors like Roscoe Lee Brown, Severn Darden, William Traylor and Antonio Fargas feel like special guests on a TV-movie... at times, PIKE plays for both fringe and mainstream audiences...

Meanwhile, Cisco's genuinely faithful girlfriend is Karen Black, and, having practically stolen FIVE EASY PIECES from Jack Nicholson, she's mostly just around for Kristofferson to relate or not relate to at home...

Which hardly makes any difference since, no matter who else comes or goes, this particular ride (including Kristofferson's own songs filling the soundtrack) is almost entirely his own.

John Guillerman's TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE has a grainy aesthetic so that, unlike so many of producer Sy Weintraub's 1950''s/1960's Tarzan flicks, it seamlessly matches the inserted shots of wildlife stock footage...

From Gordon Scott's Tarzan nodding at crocodiles to pointing out a random predator/prey chase to beautiful (crash landed) pilot Sara Shane... then lecturing on how nature only kills for itself while humans kill for other reasons...

Like the antagonist gang... holed-up on a dingy riverboat after killing locals to acquire explosives to rob a diamond mine... led by LAWRENCE OF ARABIA actor Anthony Quale, who (we learn) had had a run-in with Tarzan years earlier... but his rifle-shooting sidekick/thug is of more importance, not only since Sean Connery would soon become James Bond, but because his character's the most energetic and deadly...

Even when surrounded by Spaghetti Western regular Al Mulock as a surly outlaw, and NIGHT OF THE DEMON British veteran-actor Niall MacGinnis as an offbeat former-Nazi... all more intriguing than any Tarzan-movie villains while their constant in-fighting's edgier than the eventual body-count showdowns with either the Lord of the Jungle or the jungle's lethal elements, from quicksand to a deadfall...

Meanwhile, Scilla Gabel, as the gang's vulnerable fatale, flirts with jokey-scoundrel Connery, is surreptitiously lusted upon by the creepy MacGinnis and vainly loves Quayle's determined and selfish, anything-goes leader in what's the best Tarzan picture since Johnny Weissmuller...

And yet, Gordon Scott is not only sharper, he's brooding, moody and vengeful: making this ADVENTURE play out like an edgy British/Italian crime-flick within the Tarzan/jungle template.

There's a scene in otherwise underrated b-movie director Fred F. Sear's 1950's science-fiction disaster flick THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED where lovely actress Kathryn Grant (who he had directed in the film noir biopic CELL 2455 DEATH ROW), soon to be known as Kathryn Crosby after marrying legendary WHITE CHRISTMAS crooner Bing Crosby, is beautifully pouting with her insanely-gorgeous full lips...

Actually, despite being surprisingly first-billed, that's pretty much every scene she's in in this early "we're to blame for the earth's inevitable demise" melodrama, with only a few exterior shots of archive footage and where most of the time's spent in a clean office or grungy tunnel while blandly-handsome scientist William Leslie's being constantly... pouted at by that gorgeous assistant who silently adores (and is burdened with the desire to connect with) him... only there got an entire WORLD to save and enough lectures to make EXPLODED more drowsy motion than the supposed action built into a misleading title that's (other than Kathryn) the best thing going.

Another 1980's sex-comedy combining various attempts at awkward teens trying to lose their virginity ala THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, but with THE GRADUATE (or more recently here, HOMEWORK) theme of a sexy older woman coaching a shy younger man, MY TUTOR has pretty much everything...

Particularly thanks to titular tutor Caren Kaye, actually not that much older than failing student/shy rich kid Matt Lattanzi, who, seeming as if Vincent Spano had missed a few acting lessons, is fitfully vulnerable...

Cutting back and forth to Matt and wacky buddy Crispin Glover (even wackier than usual) and cocky instigator Brandon Clark, involved in nighttime escapades that break from the budding mainline romance... yet the movie almost entirely belongs to Kaye, hotter than the younger ingenues remaining just beyond the grasp of her student...

And, overall, she balances enough well-acted drama (stuck in a bad relationship with a cheating yuppie while dodging advances of creepy rich dad Kevin McCarthy) for MY TUTOR to age surprisingly well: her sheer class and natural beauty raises the bar on the sex-comedy template.

Pretty decent documentary, but the whole smug attitude about the drugs and culture of the seventies is kind of boring after a while. The actors basically said they can't share what "really happened" but then they do share some things... Why even bring up that you can't talk about something and then half-talk it... There are still drugs on movie sets today, but it's just not as cool, I guess... Had this SNL/SCTV generation done less drugs, their reign would have lasted more than six or seven years...

Michael O'Keefe seems fun and loose, but for many years he hated everything about Caddyshack, and felt it ruined his entire career, a grouchy Buddhist actor but he's fun here, as is Cindy Morgan, and Hamilton Mitchell, who I have interviewed, RIP...

The one thing I disagree with is that Michael's central part stopped being central once the big four, Chevy, Bill, Rodney and Ted became the stars... No matter what, Danny Noonan is STILL the main character, and he has plenty of screen-time... It's HIS story from beginning to end...

Anyhow, these docs should either tell everything or just talk about filmmaking instead of letting us know we missed out on some big secret... it gets old.

Critics unfairly blasted THE TRANSFORMERS MOVIE as nothing but a prolonged toy commercial while it's really a collected hybrid of brisk, adult-oriented, ultra-violent Ralph Bakshi HEAVY METAL-inspired animation; stylized Japanese anime; 1970's expository-filled Marvel sci-fi comics; Roger Dean's proggy planets inhabited by those titular robots that turn into motor-vehicles and spaceships or are already (in the best scenes) metallic dinosaurs, piranha and sharks... while a planet-engulfing planet derived from George Lucas's STAR WARS weapon The Death Star and V'Ger from STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE is the truly formidable antagonist...

In the budding-hero lead, Judd Nelson turns in a kind of deliberately cornball 1950's throwback, befitting the equally cheesy wall-to-wall 1980's stadium-rock/arcade-jukebox soundtrack... while Orson Welles provided his last professional job, voicing that immense world-engulfing villain, splendidly named Unicron...

Unfortunately, a distracting metallic/robotic effect filtering throughout Welles's delivery leaves only sparsely sporadic reminders of his timing without fully embracing the legendary godlike voice...

Leonard Nimoy's more recognizable as Unicron's slave/thug: both desperately trying to destroy the good-guy autobots, brought to life by gruff veteran warrior Lionel Stander, comic-relief Eric Idle, a jazzy Scatman Crothers, in-house regular Peter Cullen (dramatically dying as Optimus Prime) and the always seriously-commanding Robert Stack...

The only real visual problem is the same reason football teams wear different uniforms... the first half, with every Transformer a brilliantly-bright color involved in furious non-stop battles, makes it difficult to tell who exactly's fighting who, where, or why... it's during the last half, when the combative strategies are replaced with locations befitting various alien-obstacles, that the plot-line becomes more loose and adventurous...

It actually takes several recommended viewings (maybe even using subtitles) to follow the fast-paced, quick-framed, vibrantly-colored 84-minute cult classic that, while sometimes action-exhausting, is one of the greatest animated movie experiences since every single frame tells its own epic story.

FIRST OFF, there should be two different IMDb pages for the original XFL by Vince McMahon, a desperate and insanely stupid ploy to mix his professional wrestling WWF with football, and the newer incarnation which was bought by The Rock, who, ironically, was the first human seen when the XFL premiered, since he was one of McMahon's employees...

So the original XFL was the real deal, with all the mistakes and goofiness that's since become legend, like having clips of the players "backstage" with cheerleaders... The problem with trying to get into the sex lives (or flirtatious lives) of the players and cheerleaders was, neither could act... It was awkward...

Jesse Ventura could possibly be the worst thing about the XFL... His barking color commentary and attempt to have a feud with beguiled New York coach Rusty Tilman was just plain stupid... I know liberals adore Jesse but he was doing this while being the supposed blue collar governor, and proves how lame he was/is... the same man who sued a widow TWICE... Dumb dumb...

There IS a guilty pleasure, however, in all the cheesy inserts... only the games are boring, lackluster... The real reason this failed is that you're watching professional football with players who were far from professional athletes, especially when turned into teams... The NFL has pro players playing pro ball... These were a collection of rejects and players not good enough... It was like watching a cop show with security guards as the main characters trying to be real cops...

Ventura and the commentators would mention how the players were struggling financially, and how they had to quit their low/rent jobs to play, which was supposed to hype the underdog level but really just made the players seem like what they were, unprofessional athletes who should be working at the post office instead of being watched by the audience, so most of the XFL was just plain boring...

Yes, many of the technical devices are used in the NFL today.. .and that's a shame because watching football now is like playing a video game... ironically the look of the XFL was based on the Madden video games... Only those you can at least turn off.

Since the entire first act of the film noir docudrama THE PHENIX CITY STORY consists of interviews with actual citizens recalling when one shabby downtown street of vice and gambling ruled the otherwise peaceful and rural titular Alabama town, when the second act rolls in, we get right down to downright dirty business...

With actors now, beginning with good girl Kathyrn Grant dealing the central casino's cards to losing-streak boyfriend Biff McGuire... at which point everything's literally on the table since the joint's not only wholly dishonest, but bare-knuckle dangerous...

Mainly despised by the weepy, melodramatic wife of returning young lawyer Richard Kiley, whose veteran lawyer father John McIntire... a kind of unnamed town mayor type... is sought after by the one intrepid group trying to take down the string of mob-run casinos...

At one point, one of these honest fellas is carrying a pistol, which ignites a lot of discussion, unusual in a crime-centered noir where gunfights would have already come and gone... but the violence finally occurs in a viciously-sneaky fashion, mostly by thug John Larch working for casino-owning Edward Andrews (backed by fatale Jean Carson)...

Strange since Andrews, herein a slow-burn/cold-blooded, formidable crime boss, usually overplays offbeat passive dolts while hero Richard Kiley's more apt as sinister villains...

Herein he's the true main character trying to get his stubborn yet beloved father to join a cause that will eventually kill him... dad, that is... after what's basically a courtroom-drama sequence in-between murders: including local James Edwards's young black daughter...

Meanwhile Kathryn Grant, mostly known as Kathryn Crosby, married to Bing Crosby and who later appeared in classics ranging from ANATOMY OF A MURDER to THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, remains the semi-undercover, idealistic card dealer as the 11th hour tension relies more on her character hopefully surviving than what's predictable from those opening (annoyingly overlong) townspeople interviews: discussing how things have changed for the better...

But PHENIX has enough raw savagery to where what's deliberately obvious is never entirely predictable since 99 RIVER STREET director Phil Karlsen makes this 1950's jazz-soaked expose feel more like an edgy 1930's gangster flick throwback: where any god-awful thing can happen, at any given time.

Too mainstream for drive-in/exploitation and too risque for younger audiences seeking more Mark Hamill after the previous years' blockbuster STAR WARS, Matthew Robbins' CORVETTE SUMMER is a lot of movies rolled into one extremely entertaining time-filler...

Beginning with Hamill as lonely high-school student Kenny Dantley, who... on an auto shop junkyard field-trip (with teacher Eugene Roche) not long before graduation... initially discovers one piece of a corvette: and eventually builds the titular dream-car from scratch in a nifty montage revealing the most important aspect of his entire life...

After which there's only one quick cruising scene, rolling down a headlight-drenched boulevard, ironically liken to George Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI until the inevitable journey once the car's stolen... becoming a road movie but with a destination... from Southern California to Las Vegas... where this CORVETTE spends most of the SUMMER...

Annie Potts, a hybrid of quirky love-interest and offbeat sidekick, is what brings the watered-down risque-exploitation aspect as a wannabe hooker in a van, who Hamill's initially burdened with until the virgin-breaking moment that occurs around the time he's gaining on his prized-possession...

Where the same years' LASERBLAST protagonist Kim Milford (who had blown up a STAR WARS sign with the weapon) runs a gritty chop-shop, making for a terrific heavy... looking every bit the laidback west-coast surfer type like Hamill but with an experienced edge (in real life he gained some mileage as Jeff Beck's lead singer)...

The anticipated car chase finale takes place on the road leading back to Los Angeles, an action-packed reverse of Hamill's desert-scorching hitchhiking journey on the way to Sin City that, for a change, exists mostly in daylight and where the second-act search is the most involving...

Landing desperate gas station and car wash gigs to find the hod-rod... called The Hot One on posters... SUMMER shares elements of investigatory location-hopping gumshoe flicks: before he eventually finds the car, only to quickly sell-out for big money and idyllic romance (except that his perfect girl shares those rudimentary ideals)...

As this CORVETTE makes for an extremely busy, sometimes convoluted 2-hour cult classic... yet with a following of mostly car instead of b-movie buffs since the vehicle means everything... despite only flanking the beginning and end of what's ultimately more character than vehicle driven.

There are two things that connect the romantic-comedy STARTING OVER with Burt Reynolds' career breakthrough DELIVERANCE: he doesn't have the defining mustache, and it's not a "Burt Reynolds Movie" but a movie he co-stars in with other people...

Budding TV-writer and future mogul James L. Brooks's STARTING OVER story is directed by Alan J. Pakula, more prone to political thrillers... and he's about as comfortable here directing as Burt is being basically stuck in a vehicle that would have far better suited an Alan Alda, Henry Winkler or Charles Grodin type...

As least a genuine comedic actor would have attempted adding spark to this newly-divorced man, thrust back onto the big city dating scene of endearingly neurotic women... and while it's good Burt was able to NOT portray another cocky playboy, and actually function as a humble human being, he's simply too good-looking to be an average face-in-the-crowd junior-college instructor who, like in SEMI-TOUGH, winds up instantly smitten with Jill Clayburgh, who seems more like his progressive librarian aunt, modelling an offbeat personality based from Diane Keaton in ANNIE HALL...

Meanwhile Candice Bergen as Burt's songwriting ex-wife is even worse at comedy than drama... Never a good actress to begin with yet always extremely beautiful, we don't know enough about how their marriage was during the good times for their breakup and predictable reconciliation to matter...

Brooks would end-up writing/adapting AND directing much better cinematic soaps with BROADCAST NEWS, AS GOOD AS IT GETS after beginning with the game-changing TERMS OF ENDEARMENT... which was supposed to have Burt play the womanizing astronaut that gave Jack Nicholson his second Oscar...

But what Brooks saw in Reynolds based on this performance is as enigmatic as whatever Reynolds saw in a script that doesn't even allow him to return to his genuine acting-for-the-sake-of-acting roots... or to stretch himself in what's an intentionally grounded romantic-comedy where he basically sleepwalks for two extremely long hours.

There's a TARZAN curse when you look into the actors: Johnny Weismuller was golfing in Cuba during the Castro takeover, and decades later ended up doing his Tarzan call throughout the lonely corridors of an old folk's home; Lex Barker died middle-aged before marrying a younger woman; Mike Henry was bitten by a chimp and suffered from monkey fever; and far worst of all, Ron Ely hosted Name That Tune with Kathie Lee Gifford...

At least Gordon Scott turned out okay, but his replacement in actor/stuntman Jock Mahoney... after getting through TARZAN GOES TO INDIA without trouble... dared to swim across a giant, extremely polluted Thailand river and caught amoebic dysentery, never gaining back complete strength for future stunt or acting roles...

Which supposedly explains why he looks so frail here... but even in INDIA he was the skinniest Tarzan ever, appearing more like an in-shape long-distance-runner than the kind of bodybuilder type the part's known, and, given the character's legendary strength, most often calls for...

But he makes a decent vine-swinger... and his initial CHALLENGES happen in the course of eight-minutes, leaving the rest of the picture for villain Woody Strode, evil uncle of a child about to rule over the Asian country, trying to get his own young son to replace him...

Taking place within the vibrant yet antique oriental cities and monasteries, providing terrific visuals between random jungle romps, Tarzan could have used more action and less of the baby elephant...

But he does finally have an effective sidekick that's not some vulnerable kid or a goofy adult forcing comic relief... but a swift and agile local (Jimmy Jamal) who unfortunately dies too soon...

Which is normal since anything with enough potential peters out quickly enough to where the audience forgets the villain's motivation, or Tarzan's motivation in stopping him: a shame being Jock's last romp while Woody Strode (though his voice was dubbed) definitely looks the part of a worthwhile adversary...

But most of the time they seem in two different movies... until squaring-off in an adjoined-competition/challenge that takes far too long to happen, and ultimately aren't very... challenging... except for the incredible final sword-fight over a roped-covered flame-pit that (with the casting of Strode) could even put SPARTACUS to shame.

Do NOT like the new opening, showing scenes from the upcoming episode, that's what you're supposed to do at the end of the previous episode, which for this one, would be the end of the 7th season, and now going into 8 they were desperate for changes, having something they didn't have before, tons of competition besides the fact some of it had gone away, like Bonanza being a... Bonanza in the ratings...

It's better that they started out seeing the crime for ten minutes in the opening because you invest in the criminals... Showing what they wind up doing doesn't work...

I think they wanted to get to THE FBI guys quicker... Then again, this episode remains the same as before, showing the bad guys more than the good, making THE FBI a kind of criminal anthology that happens to have the same cast as FBI members...

Good cast, as in, two young men who would play villains in the best Dirty Harry (which was promoted in an episode featuring Mark Hamill last season)... David Soul and Robert Urich, from Magnum Force and of course, Starksy and Hutch and SWAT/VEGAS...

Also Jim Davis and Belinda Montgomery, who have guested on here before.

After actor/stuntman Jock Mahoney played the villain to Gordon Scott's Tarzan in TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, he was chosen to portray the swinging ape-man himself, a bit older, more sinewy than muscular and facially resembling former Tarzan (who Scott replaced) Lex Barker...

Here against several villains, beginning with formidable Leo Gordon as a foreman on a vast desert construction site (foreshadowing Tanis from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK)... An infamous elephant hunter, he threatens to kill any wildlife that could hinder the work -- unless Tarzan and his boy sidekick... with a trained pet elephant... saves the day...

The plot, also involving middleman local Feroz Khan and lovely princess Simi Garewal, gets a bit weary, and, halfway through Leo Gordon is surprisingly killed... and HOT CARS villain Mark Dana, an always effective square-jawed/deep-voiced heavy, steps up: and he's even more of a formidable corporate-menace...

Once we trudge past overlong scenes with Tarzan, the boy and the elephant bonding in the jungle, there's a final-act involving Mark Dana with explosives vs Tarzan riding on and charging with a herd of Elephants: all filmed in action-packed-widescreen glory by British filmmaker John Guillerman, who also directed Gordon Scott and Jock Mahoney's previous MAGNIFICENT and would one day take the primal reigns for the 1970's KING KONG remake.

By 1968, when the third and final Mike Henry TARZAN movie hit theaters, the television series starring Ron Ely and Mike's former sidekick Manual Padilla Jr had already almost run its course, because TARZAN AND THE JUNGLE BOY was made in 1965 and shelved for three years...

Beginning like Edgar Rice Burroughs' original story since the titular JUNGLE BOY was abandoned and raised there, so Tarzan can surely relate... only it's the villain's brother, literally played by returning actor Rafer Johnson's lookalike sibling Edward Johnson, who searches for and eventually rescues the kid...

The bamboo bridges built upon a craggy mountain of endless waterfalls is reused from TARZAN AND THE GREAT RIVER, where Rafer had played another antagonist but from a different region... there the Amazon, here back in Africa... yet both filmed in South America, where the locations are effective except for intrusively-grainy archive footage of genuine wildlife...

And as the kid (Steve Bond) becomes a wishbone for the Johnson brothers, Mike Henry sort of comes and goes, almost like he's watching another movie while basically ghost-starring in what's supposedly his very own TARZAN swansong: hardly even able to swing with gorgeous ingenue Aliza Gur, by far his hottest Jane-surrogate yet.

The previous years' TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD had the jungle-traipsing hero in a suit with a handgun, competing with the James Bond franchise and, in TARZAN AND THE GREAT RIVER, supposedly taking place in the Amazon instead of Africa, they're back to the jungle: although there is one rudimentary scene with Mike Henry's muscular yet monotone Tarzan wearing civilian clothes...

Mostly though, the story's centered so much on a maverick boat captain... played by game-show-host Jan Murray with child-actor Manuel Padilla Jr his first-mate sidekick... that GREAT RIVER is more like an attempt to spinoff another franchise from Tarzan... who mostly stands around giving both the captain and kid advice on growing up...

Meanwhile the token ingenue's pretty blonde Diana Millay as a doctor whose syringe scares the natives even more than the villain, played by black British actor Rafer Johnson, who supposedly cursed them to sickness...

So it's all down to one finale fight against Tarzan in a terrific looking exterior location of bamboo bridges built along a mountainside: which should have happened a lot sooner, and for much longer.

In Burt Reynolds' first starring role, OPERATION CIA, he ran and leapt throughout Saigon, Vietnam and a few years later, in another low budget exploitation flick only in the Philippines, he does pretty much the same thing... at least the best parts providing tons of action including his own stunts...

That's after a rather clunky yet still somewhat intriguingly offbeat set-up of Burt gathering a band of renegade army veteran misfits of all races and ages: from old tough white guy Lyle Bettger to equally tough old Indian Rodolfo Acosta to Burt's former OPERATION co-star Vic Diaz... and of course a pretty ingenue's always needed...

So Anne Francis is introduced as the daughter of one of Burt's connections... she's a tennis pro with a bizarre groupie in hippie girl Joanne Hahn, and yet, during the third-act cavernous treasure heist, there aren't any dames at all...

Except for Burt's real life Asian girlfriend Miko Mayama, with a few quick scenes up front and at the end... who's rugged and pretty enough so Francis wouldn't have been needed other than name recognition in a heist-import that works a lot better in the planning stages...

Which includes running down local weasel Jeff Corey, whose henchman in stuntman Eddie Nicart gives Burt's scoundrel-scavenger more dire urgency than his eclectic ensemble, that never really connects as a whole...

And although sometimes too strange for an action flick and too violent for mainstream, IMPASSE provided Reynolds a more clearly defined pulpy adventure than Sam Fuller's SHARK since there's a genuine beginning, middle and end here as Burt, with his clean-shaven Brando-looks and plenty of gusto, needed to have a lot more fun in the middle.

Since Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch couldn't stand each other on the set of 100 RIFLES, when they wound up in FUZZ... a funky-scored blaxploitation-style wannabe but for mostly white cops... she demanded they share no screen-time together, which almost comes true...

In one scene inside the usual dingy precinct, a woman tells Welch's newbie detective character about an attack... cutting to Burt and affable sidekick Jack Weston eavesdropping... then when Welch is shown again you can hear an early version of Burt's signature chortle... after which, they're in the same frame: twice, quickly...

Pretty much summing up FUZZ since none of the detectives have much to do with each other, supposedly a comedy but only because these crime-fighters... being so riddled with workday trauma... laugh off serious things: which also happens in severe police-crime dramas...

Except one dire sequence where Burt's character (and the real Burt) is set on fire... then while recovering, he talks to his deaf wife while melodramatic music plays in the background: after all, this is from Ed McBain's 87th PRECINCT books and TV-series, where one of the cops has a deaf wife... only here it's awkward and unnecessary...

Meanwhile all the characters appear inside and outside, in random arguments or stakeout vignettes (like Burt and Jack dressed as nuns), ultimately connected by one grand extortion scheme...

That's when anticipated antagonist Yul Brynner appears... yet he really adds nothing short of a menacing scowl as his overall plan's both simplistic and complicated...

With lady's-man cop Tom Skerritt almost romancing Rachel Welch on one side, and James McEachin dealing with two obnoxious precinct painters on another, FUZZ... an attempt to combine the offbeat ensemble of MASH with the edginess of THE FRENCH CONNECTION... is a jigsaw puzzle without enough pieces to present a clear image.... seeming more a scatterbrained television pilot than coherent big-screen feature...

But it's the poster that explains everything: Burt Reynolds' iconic almost-nude Cosmopolitan layout; Rachel Welch in a bikini; Brynner's mellow moll Tamara Dobson in vibrant CLEOPATRA JONES garb... none of these elements presented in the movie, promoting only the actors and, even on their own, Burt and Raquel have hardly enough input here for FUZZ to be a genuine vehicle for either.

You can tell that TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD is imitating/emulating the popular mid-1960's James Bond franchise by the opening credits alone, with a vibrant, jazzy score and psychedelic colors tracing what winds up the opening scene's empty bullfight arena, with Mike Henry's usually scantily-clad hero actually dressed-up in a dapper business suit for a duck-and-cover shootout...

Winding up in another (filmed entirely in) Mexico location full of gorgeous pyramids where David Opatoshu as Vinero attempts taking over, more like a Bond villain than Tarzan's a spy, eventually trading his civilian clothes for the signature loin-cloth framing a ripped/muscular build, the usual Tarzan template from Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker to Jock Mahoney leading to the USC Trojan football star's acting breakthrough...

His first mission's to find young Manuel Padilla Jr. (who would soon co-star with TARZAN Ron Ely on TV), right after he's kidnapped by the villains who initially invaded the jungle (awkwardly blended with grainy stock-nature-footage): including who'll become Tarzan's final-fight rival, obvious by the sheer size of Don Megowan's tall and muscular Mr. Train, who winds up at the titular valley with his boss commanding army tanks to force gold from the peaceful natives...

At this point feeling like a Spaghetti Western, and making David Opatoshu a fitfully despicable villain who deserves his eventual demise, thanks to Tarzan's last minute reliable resilience (with the help of villain's-secretary-turned-helpful-ingenue Nancy Kovack and a few resourceful animals) in a low-budget yet slick-looking, thoroughly-entertaining American International production: a double-whammy time-machine not only into the peak of the spy-genre, but when Tarzan movies were adventurous pulp-sourced programmers before becoming idealistic melodramas.

In his string of romantic comedy films, and even his car chase flicks, Burt Reynolds is never alone. There's always an eclectic cast of characters supporting him along the process...

But here's a movie where Burt, playing extremely subtle as a single successful guy who yearns to have a baby, seems completely isolated, at first, and not only because he wants the child born through a surrogate mother...

Other than Paul Dooley as his work buddy and Norman Fell as a shrink, there aren't too many outlets for the usual ensemble humor -- not the kind that would result in the signature blooper reel during the end credits...

Some of the best moments have Burt interviewing women for the job -- mostly ones he's dated in the past. And one particular insult battle with ornery Carol Locatell is a hilarious standout while on the classy side, Lauren Hutton turns in a cameo as perhaps the perfect candidate... leading to a chase through Manhattan, the buildings and skyline captured as if a character in itself...

Yet what brings real light to this unique lightweight comedy is Beverly D'Angelo as a waitress/music teacher needing money to study abroad...

She takes the gig and sleeps with Burt after a contrived yet still romantic date and, once impregnated, she lives at his bachelor condominium...

Of course they hang out enough for both to fall in love (D'Angelo's restroom conversation with Burt's lover Elizabeth Ashley is a standout): but it takes long enough to not be another New York City romantic-comedy. And while the ending is visible for miles, D'Angelo plays her part with enough vulnerable charm to make the turnout a happy instead of corny one. You'll be glad things worked out, if only for her sake.

When this aired, or when the reruns aired, before the internet, who would think that you could watch the episode, then go on a computer and type on one of the actor's pages that you're watching him being chased by thugs and knocked out by a motorcycle...

Just did that to Jesse Vint, and he wrote back, while his later scene in a hospital bed answering questions from the FBI leads, "I remember that!"

Such crazy times of a show when times were simpler, as in, less complicated: and a complicated life is the theme here...

A tall young man wants to help his dying mother so he winds up being thrown into college basketball gambling, run by villain's villain Peter Mark Richman (who I once interviewed online)...

Jesse's character had gotten injured for arguing with Richman, and the main protagonist, with the vulnerable name of "Billy," has a gorgeous girlfriend in Susan O'Connell, brown hair, blue eyes, gorgeous...

She's usually a very meek ingenue but here she's planting the seeds for her husband to cheat in this episode that starts slowly but builds, slowly, but still builds nicely in what's so far the best season, six.

Raymond St. Jacques is a great actor and an episode of DAN AUGUST, starring Burt Reynolds before he made the game-changing turn into big budget and highly successful movies, where Raymond plays a social activist could have been good but...

Well the social aspects are okay because back at this time there was a lot going on, but what's extremely and ridiculously dated is the dialog centered on what's happening to the black group... they speak in the same kind of jive cliches but in a serious tone beyond what would be considered racist in blaxploitation films...

Also the mystery aspect is highly predictable. The white racist are guilty. Of course they are. Having them be racist is a give-away.

Most of these kind of normal people turning to crime and getting over their head is intentionally modeled after the greatest binge series of all time, Breaking Bad, and this episode begins where the pilot left off with a guy who... well...

If you are Breaking Bad you remember Crazy, the guy they had locked up, well, the exact same thing happens here... as in, him being locked up and them having to decide what to do... which is NOT a spoiler since the episode begins with that aspect...

Good show though, fun characters, and I'm usually very fickle about these kind of shows, like Ozark, which I thought had a laundering money concept that was too rushed, Breaking Bateman I call it... I have to say, I like this show so far more than I did with that one at this point, where I think I stopped watching.

Some have compared this to Thelma and Louise, but the plot of the robbery of a place that had way too much money and for a reason that puts the otherwise small-time, unexperienced robbers in jeopardy is straight from the Donald Siegel movie Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau, and that influenced movies like Jackie Brown, and how this show...

It's not bad, and as a fan of binge series it held my interest faster than some others I either had to kind of muddle through or that I just couldn't get past the first few episodes...

The show is also very much like Breaking Bad, which was inspired by Quentin Tarantino how it begins from the middle then starts from the beginning and jumps around out of sequence... also the thing that happens to the obnoxious store manager: his name could be Crazy 8 1/2...

Also speaking of break binge shows, the queen of one of the best, Christina Hendricks from Mad Men, looks fantastic... great to see her again...

It just seems like another muse, Ozark, in that, unlike Breaking Bad, the plot is rushed, happens way too soon, tries too hard... it knows it's the kind of series that needs to pull you in...

But, again, the girls are likable, offbeat, and it's a nice time-filler.

David Ackroyd tells Dennis Weaver the same thing that John Kapoles would say to James Woods in THE BOOST... that they need a boost... which means cocaine... and while both that movie and this TV-movie (that came out before) both got bad reviews, they're both, well... very addictive pieces of entertainment...

Watching a hippie get high is like watching a fish swim... but seeing an otherwise conservative Willy "Death of a Salesman" Loman type blasting coke up his nose is always fun to watch, and of course quite rare, and Dennis Weaver, known for playing either tough or frantic roles, kind of balances both here...

His good wife's Karen Grassle, his good son's James Spader, his semi-wild buddy's Jeffrey Tambor and the truly wild office flirt, who introduced him to the dealer to gave him a boost, is Pamela Bellwood, so the cast is sublime...

But what makes this work is the realistic arc into his addiction and how the drug is treated here: first helping his fledgling sales (the best part) until the monkey starts showing, aka, he becomes a scene...

The more Dennis does coke the more he strays from McCloud and morphs into the zany motel worker in Touch of Evil, and overall, whether soberly depressed or high as a kite or crashing like one, does a fantastic job, not overacting like he could have... meaning, he really seems high on coke, not some old actor putting us on.