Rebel opens the same way as First Blood, with Sylvester Stallone hitchhiking on a country road. Other than that, the two films have nothing in common. For one thing, in Rebel, Sly is wearing a big floppy hat and stops to feed some horses with a big, goofy grin on his face. He also doesn’t get hassled by the man. Instead, he gets picked up by a bunch of hippies in VW microbus.
Stallone is playing Jerry Savage, an anti-war activist, former college student, and probably one of the hippies that spit on John Rambo when he returned from Nam. Disillusioned by protest marches that don’t seem to accomplish anything, Jerry is going to New York City so he can hook up with the Weather Underground. He and his friends are planning to blow up a kitchen goods company that has accepted a contract to build bamboo cages for the government. What Jerry doesn’t know is that the FBI is onto his scheme. Nothing works out but the movie is mostly about Jerry sitting around and talking to people about how messed up the world is. It all ends, as all low-budget movies from the 1960s must, with Jerry running through a green field.
This was Stallone’s second film, after A Party At Kitty and Stud’s. He was twenty-four years old. The film was originally released under the title No Place To Hide and it vanished until Rocky made Stallone an unlikely star. It was re-released in 1980, now called Rebel and re-edited to remove almost every scene not involving Jerry, making it even more of a Stallone vehicle. This is the version that is currently available on YouTube. In 1983, new scenes were shot and this film was released once again, this time as a comedy called A Man Called … Rainbo.
(Rambo. Rainbo. Get it?)
Regardless of which version you find, there’s no reason to watch Rebel beyond the strangeness of seeing Sylvester Stallone play a hippie revolutionary but, especially if you’re a fan of Sly’s 80s law-and-order phase, that’s reason enough. Even before he was best known as Rocky, Rambo, and Cobra, Sly seems miscast as a peace-loving radical. He delivers his lines softly, trying to hide his trademark New York accent. Stallone is the best actor in the movie but, if you saw this movie in 1970, you would never expect its lead to one day be one of the biggest stars in the world.
The international version was called The Terrorists.
In rural Colorado, the three wives and all the children of Orville Beecham (Charlie Dierkop) have been murdered. Veteran journalist Garret Smith (Charles Bronson) discovers that Orville is the son of an excommunicated Mormon fundamentalist named Willis Beecham (Jeff Corey). Willis, who lives on a heavily armed compound, practices polygamy and wants nothing to do with the outside world. However, Willis’s brother, Zenas (John Ireland), long ago split with Willis and set up a compound of his own. At first, Garret suspects that Orville’s family was killed by Zenas. As Zenas and Willis go to war, Garret discovers that there’s actually a bigger conspiracy at work, one dealing with corporate greed and water rights. (Forget it, Bronson, it’s Chinatown.)
In the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, no one is more feared than Boyd Bendix (Daniel J. Travanti), an acerbic, right-wing gossip columnist. Anyone who crosses Bendix the wrong way runs the risk of being accused of everything from sexual deviancy to communism. Bendix’s latest victim is prominent journalist named Dennis Corcoran (Gordon Pinset). Unlike everyone else who has been bullied by Bendix, Corcoran refuses to quietly submit. Working with a gruff but brilliant attorney, Robert Sloane (Ed Asner), Corcoran takes Bendix to court.
Like any newly inaugurated President, Manfred Link (Bob Newhart) faces many new challenges. The biggest challenge, though, is keeping control of his family and his White House staff. His wife (Madeline Kahn) is an alcoholic. His 28 year-old daughter (Gilda Radner) is so desperate to finally lose her virginity that she is constantly trying to sneak out of the White House. General Dumpson (Rip Torn) wants to start a war. Press Secretary Bunthorne (Richard Benjamin), Ambassador Spender (Harvey Korman), and Presidential Assistant Feebleman (Fred Willard) struggle and often fail to convince everyone that all is well.
Fay Forrest (Joanne Whalley) and her boyfriend, Vince Miller (Michael Madsen), make their living stealing from the mob. After their latest job results in the death of a made man, Fay decides that she needs to escape from the abusive Vince. She runs away to Las Vegas, where she looks up a small-time, financially strapped P.I., Jack Andrews (Val Kilmer). She hires Jack to help her fake her death, offering to pay him $5,000 upfront and $5,000 after she’s dead. Jack is reluctant to get involved but he also has a loan shark threatening to break every bone in his body. Jack helps Fay fake her death but then Fay leaves town without paying him the second $5,000. Even worse, both Vince and the mob quickly figure out that Fay is not actually dead and join Jack in trying to track her down.
Through the Shattered Lens