Originally from a small town in Iowa, Frank Macklin (Robert Hays) is a hotshot young executive with The Ellison Group. When Frank is assigned to manage and revitalize a failing brewery in his hometown, it is a chance for Frank to rediscover his roots. His childhood friends (played by actors like David Keith, Tim Thomerson, and Art Carney) may no longer trust him now that Frank wears a tie but it only takes a few monster truck rallies and a football game in a bar for Frank to show that he is still one of them. However, Frank discovers that the only reason that he was sent to make the brewery profitable was so that his bosses could sell it to a buffoonish millionaire who doesn’t know the first thing about how to run a business. Will Frank stand by while his bosses screw over the hardworking men and women of the heartland? Or will he say, “You can take this job and shove it?”
Named after a country music song and taking place almost entirely in places stocked with beer, Take This Job And Shove It is a celebration of all things redneck. This movie is so redneck in nature that a major subplot involves monster trucks. Bigfoot, one of the first monster trucks, gets plenty of screen time and, in some advertisements, was given higher billing than Art Carney.
A mix of low comedy and sentimental drama, Take This Job And Shove It is better than it sounds. In some ways, it is a prescient movie: the working class frustrations and the anger at being forgotten in a “booming economy” is the same anger that, 35 years later, would be on display during the election of 2016. Take This Job And Shove It also has an interesting and talented cast, most of whom rise above the thinly written dialogue. Along with Hays, Keith, Thomerson, Bigfoot, and Carney, keep an eye out for: Eddie Albert, Royal Dano, James Karen, Penelope Milford, Virgil Frye, George “Goober” Lindsey, and Barbara Hershey (who, as usual, is a hundred times better than the material she has to work with).
One final note: Martin Mull plays Hays’s corporate rival. His character is named Dick Ebersol. Was that meant to be an inside joke at the expense of the real Dick Ebersol, who has the executive producer of Saturday Night Live when Take This Job and Shove It was filmed and who later became the president of NBC Sports?
Old west outlaw Frank Calder (Oliver Reed) wants to learn how to read so he and his gang ride into the nearby town and kidnap Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen). Because he saw her reading to a group of children, Calder assumed that Melissa was a school teacher. Instead, Melissa is the wife of a brutal cattle baron and hunter named Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman). Even after Calder learns the truth about Melissa’s identity, he keeps it a secret from his gang because he knows that they would kill her and then kill him as punishment for kidnapping the wife of a man as powerful as Brandt. Stockholm Syndrome kicks in and Melissa starts to fall in love with Calder. Meanwhile, Brandt learns that his wife has been kidnapped and, with a group of equally brutal friends, he sets out to get her back. In Brandt’s opinion, Calder has stolen his personal property. Using a powerful and newly designed rifle, Brandt kills Calder’s men one-by-one until there is a final, bloody confrontation in the desert.
Brian Kelly (Christian Slater) is a California skater with a rebellious attitude and an adopted Vietnamese brother named Vinh (Art Chudabala). When the movie starts, all Brian cares about is not selling out and finding empty pools to skate. He even hires an airplane to fly him and his friends over Orange County so they can get a bird’s-eye view of the layout. Vinh is more worried about his job with the Vietnamese Anti-Community Relief Fund. The fund has been set up to send medical supplies to Vietnam but, when Vinh comes across a discrepancy in the shipping records, he realizes that something else is going on. When Vinh turns up dead in a hotel room, everyone else may believe that it is suicide but Brian knows that his brother was murdered. With the help of his fellow skaters and a sympathetic cop (Steven Bauer), Brian sets out to bring his brother’s killers to justice.
Cory Webster (a young Josh Brolin, who looks identical to older Josh Brolin) is an amateur skateboarder from the Valley who hopes to win a downhill competition and score some sweet corporate sponsorship. Chrissy (Pamela Gidley) is an innocent blonde from Indiana who is staying with her brother in Venice Beach. Cory and Chrissy are in love but there is only one problem. Chrissy’s brother is Tommy Hook (Robert Rusler), leader of The Daggers, a punk skateboard gang. There’s no way Hook is going to let his sister go out with someone from the Valley.
Tom Selleck is Phil Blackwood, a best-selling mystery author who is suffering from writer’s block. Paulina Porizkova in Nina, a beautiful Romanian who has been accused of murder. When Phil sees Nina being arraigned in court, it is love at first sight. He provides her with a false alibi and invites her to stay with him while he writes a book based on her case. At first, Phil thinks that she is innocent but he soon has his doubts, especially after Nina shows off her skills as a knife thrower.
When did your life first start to go downhill?
In 1987, two weeks into the season, the National Football League Player’s Association went on strike. In the past, player strikes had led to cancelled games and shortened seasons. But in 1987, the owners fought back. Instead of cancelling games, they brought in replacements. Some of the replacements were former college players. Some were players that were recruited from the Canadian leagues or
Jerry Bolanti (Joe Cortese) is a cocky loud-mouth who has just returned to New Jersey after serving a prison sentence. Jerry needs a work so a mid-level gangster named Tony (Lou Criscuolo) hires Jerry as a debt collector. The problem is that Jerry is just not very good at his job. His attempt to collect money from Bernie Feldshuh (Frank Vincent) leads to Bernie hiring a legendary hitman (Keith Davis) to kill Jerry. Despite working with two experienced enforcers, Joe (Joe Pesci) and Serge (Bobby Alto), Jerry’s next job is just as unsuccessful and leads to even more unnecessary deaths. Tony starts to wonder if maybe he made a mistake giving a job to Jerry and, unfortunately, no one simply gets fired from the Mafia.
Yesterday, the great character actor Harry Dean Stanton passed away at the age of 91. Cisco Pike is not one of Stanton’s best films but it is a film that highlight why Stanton was such a compelling actor and why his unique presence will be missed.
Jimmy Dworski (Jim Belushi) is a convicted car thief who only has a few days left in his criminal sentence but still decides to break out of prison so he can go see the Cubs play in the World Series. Spencer Barnes (Charles Grodin) is an uptight ad executive who needs to learn how to relax and have a good time. When Spencer loses his organizer, Jimmy finds it. Before you can say “The prince and the pauper,” Jimmy has access to all of Spencer’s money and the mansion that Spencer is supposed to be staying at over the weekend. While Spencer tries to survive on the streets and track down his organizer, Jimmy is living it up, spending money, impressing a Japanese businessman (Mako), romancing the boss’s daughter, and taking care of business.
Through the Shattered Lens 