Comic Contests

Bruce Dern smirks and slimes his way through the beauty pageant comedy Smile released back in 1975. As the ladies arrive in town for the judging, Dern, playing a local business man, revels in his role as organiser/judge and finds himself drawn to one of the pretty younglings, ignorant of the venom and heartbreak that’s happening backstage. Wonderfully acted and with a script that disguises it’s considerable with a light and breezy atmosphere. A brilliant yet neglected slice of seventies satire.

Butter doesn’t have the same bite as Smile but it’s a fairly reasonable swipe at another Amurican pageant tradition, butter carving. A  wholesome, vacuous couple dominate the local competition but when a little black girl and stripper enter the fray things get personal and new heights/lows are breached. Jennifer Garner takes the lead and is joined by Jackman and the gorgeous  Olivia Wilde but their efforts are mostly wasted on the thin script and a cheesey side story.

Sound Small Screenery

The Deadly Tower stars Kurt Russell as notorious sniper killer Charles Whitman in a taut dramatisation of his clock tower rampage. Made for American TV this modest little feature sticks, as far as I can discern, to the facts of the terrible tragedy and this spartan almost documentary approach actually adds to the tension and brutality as Whitman's careful preparation soon turns into callous mass murder. Whitman's robotic character and lack of dialogue isn't exactly a demanding role but Russell does a decent enough job, much like the rest of the cast and despite the bare bones production there's plenty of atmosphere with a leaden dread giving way to the manic randomness of the slaughter.

John Carpenter's TV movie effort Someone's Watching Me is a psychological thriller about a woman endlessly stalked by a stranger after moving into a new apartment. Carpenter skillfully, carefully builds the tension as the besieged Lauren Hutton's torment escalates and violence becomes inevitable. The script is a bit workmanlike and the plot a little hackneyed (only after being retread for the past 30 years or so but there's plenty to enjoy here with Hutton putting in an excellent effort while Carpenter works his particular nerve jangling magic to excellent effect.

Kings of Cult

Monte's classic automative fable, "Two Lane Blacktop.

Meyer's masterpiece of mammaries, Supervixens.

Noe's afterlife odyssey, Enter The Void

Crooked Country Trips

Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman chew lumps off each other in the sleazy 70's thriller Prime Cut. When Hackman's rural gangster refuses to pay his dues the Chicago mob send ice-cool Marvin down country to make things right. Both leads consummately trade variants of smiling menace but the wry scripting keeps things fresh and although it's pretty formulaic stuff it has a certain grubby period charm what with the lady auctions, human sausages and a Combine harvester chase scene. A solid, occasionally barmy, tale of sex trafficking and hubris that gets plenty of good stuff from Hackman and Marvin but is otherwise unremarkable.

There's far less charm in the greasy backwoods thriller Poor Pretty Eddie but it more than makes up for it by it's sheer derangement. A sultry Jazz singer gets stuck in hillbilly hell after her car breaks down and ends up in a motel run by a soused cabaret wash up and her two male companions, a giant idiot and a lusty Elvis impersonator. Unaccustomed to guests of colour her presence causes ructions and it's not long before she finds herself in serious danger after attracting the eye of the unstable young lothario, Eddie. The script is perfunctory and it looks terrible but it's quite loopy in a 70's shlock/exploitation sort of way and Shelly Winters as the mother hen provides good ham throughout. Low brow & raw, it's probably only going to appeal to trash cinema collectors.