Film Review: Return To Campus (a.k.a. The World’s Greatest Kicker) (dir by Harold Cornsweet)

Posted on September 21, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This little film from 1975 is a weird one.

Return to Campus aired on TCM last night. I DVR’d it because, just judging from the title, I assumed that it was either going to be a raunchy comedy from Crown International Pictures or it was going to be some sort of ultra low-budget slasher that I could potentially review for October. Instead, it turned out to be an odd little vanity project about a 55 year-old college football player.

Hal Norman (played by an actor named Earl Keyes, who basically looked like an old school driving instructor) is a semi-retired aviation engineer who is obsessed with football. Back in 1939, he was a college football star but then World War II intervened and he ended up not only giving up his athletic career but dropping out of college as well. He’s gone on to make a good life for himself but he’s still haunted by questions of what could have been. Being at “odds and ends,” he decides to re-enroll at Ohio State. Not only will he be finishing up his senior year but he’s also determined to try out for the football team! Hal wants to kick field goals.

A 55 year-old kicking field goals!? Impossible, you say? Well, not if you’re willing to cheat. Apparently, Hal has invited some sort of spring that, when he puts it into his shoe, allows him to kick a field goal from 80 yards away. There’s four separate scenes in which Hal tells another character that there’s nothing in the rules books that says that he can’t use a special spring when he does his kicks. Since I don’t know much about football, I’ll take his word on that but still, it all seems a little bit unethical. I mean, think about it. You’ve got actual athletes out there, risking injury and depending on their own carefully developed natural talents. And then you’ve got some jackass having a midlife crisis overshadowing them because he’s found a loophole in the rules. (I kept waiting for someone to point out the obvious, which is that the only reason the rules don’t mention the spring is because no one but Hal knows that it exists.) It may not be illegal but it’s hard not to notice that Hal is very careful not to tell too many people about his magic spring.

(And really, it seems like if Hal was smart, he would patent his magic spring and make a fortune instead of using it to humiliate a bunch of college students.)

Anyway, the strange thing about Return to Campus is that very little actually happens in the movie. Hal goes back to college. Hal kicks a lot of field goals. Hal starts dating his English professor. Hal moves into the dorms and get a roommate named …. I kid you not …. Pighead. (Even the dean of students calls him “Pighead.”) You would think that, with a name like Pighead, he’d be some sort of wild party guy but instead, he’s just kind of dorky. Pighead’s girlfriend, Joyce, gets angry at Hal and tries to steal his magic kicking shoes. It leads to a extremely leisurely car chase, during which a pizza deliveryman nearly gets run over and loses all of his pizzas. “Mamma Mia!” he shouts. Everything plays out at a very leisurely pace. You never have any doubt about whether everything’s going to work out in the end because it’s just that type of movie.

Return to Campus was filmed in the 70s but there’s not a hint of drugs or campus dissension to be found in the film. Instead, it’s kind of like a kid’s film for old people. Most of the dialogue probably would have seemed old-fashioned in the 50s. For instance, when Hal is told that he has a meeting with a referee to discuss his kicking shoe, his girlfriend offers to go with him for support. Hal tells her no because this is a discussion meant for men. And his girlfriend — an English lit professor! — smiles and nods as if that’s the most sensible thing that she’s ever heard.

As I said, it’s a strange film and it was obviously very much an amateur production. In fact, it was so weird that I actually did some research after I watched the movie and I discovered that Harold Cornsweet (who wrote, directed, and produced the film) was an actor who appeared in a few small roles before returning to his hometown of Cleveland and making this film. He also actually was a kicker at Ohio State in 1939 so it seems probable that there’s a heavy element of wish-fulfillment in this film. In fact, that’s one reason why I can’t be too critical of Return to Campus. As inept as the film may be, it’s also an obvious labor of love. According to the information that I found online, Cornsweet died just two years after this film was released so it’s actually kind of sweet that he got to film a love letter to both his college and his sport before he went.

Return to Campus is incredibly inept and it possibly made me even less interested in football than I was before I watched it but I can’t help myself. I just have a soft spot for these amateur productions.

Lifetime Film Review: The Cheerleader Escort (dir by Alexandre Carriere)

Posted on September 21, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I swear, how did I ever make it through college?

That’s a question that I often find myself wondering while watching a Lifetime movie. In the world of Lifetime, college is always prohibitively expensive and families — regardless of how big of a house in which they’re living — always struggle to pay their daughter’s tuition. It seems like, whenever it’s time to head off to college, there’s always either a divorce or a sudden bankruptcy or some other financial calamity designed to destroy idealistic hopes and dreams. Inevitably, the only way to pay for college is by descending into a sordid world of scandal, infidelity, and occasionally even murder.

That’s the situation in which Cassie Talbot (played by Alexandra Beaton) finds herself in The Cheerleader Escort. Cassie’s just started at a good college and her best friend is even her dorm roommate! Even better, she’s just made the school’s renowned cheerleader squad! It all sounds perfect but there’s a problem. Cassie has to figure out a way to pay for all of this. Her parents are divorced and, while her father originally promised to help pay for college, he has since disappeared. Her mother, Karen (Cynthia Preston), says that he might “be gambling again.” Well, he’s just gambled away Cassie’s future because, after Karen’s injured in an auto accident, there’s no way that Cassie’s going to be able to afford tuition!

Unless….

It turns out that there are wealthy men, most of whom are members of the college’s alumni association, who are more than willing to help the members of the cheerleading squad pay the bills. As long as the cheerleaders agree to “spend some time” with them, they’ll donate all sorts of money. In fact, that was one reason why Cassie was selected for the squad. It was felt that the alumni would react well to her innocent personality and indeed, they do. Soon, Cassie is spending all her time with the older and richer Terry Dunes (Damon Runyan). That doesn’t leave much time for going to her classes but who goes to college just to sit in a boring classroom?

Anyway, it seems like a good arrangement until another member of the squad, Gabby (Joelle Farrow), informs Cassie that she’s pregnant and that the father is another wealthy member of the alumni association. Gabby is super excited about having the baby. The baby’s father is a bit less happy about the prospect. In the real world, this would all probably lead to Dr. Phil doing a prime time special on “Sugar Daddy websites,” but this is a Lifetime movie so, of course, it all leads to murder and scandal.

And thank goodness for that! I mean, seriously, you’re not watching this film because you’re expecting to see a serious examination of why college is so damn expensive or why so many students are graduating with a mountain of debt. You’re watching this film for the drama and, on that front, The Cheerleader Escort delivers. In the grand tradition of previous Lifetime films like Confessions of Go Go Girl and Babysitter’s Black Book, The Cheerleader Escort delivers all of the sordid melodrama that you could hope for.

Really, we don’t ask for a lot when it comes to a movie like this: a little sex, a little melodrama, a nice house, and big drama. The Cheerleader Escort delivers all four.

Film Review: Replicas (dir by Jeffrey Nachmanoff)

Posted on September 20, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t even ask me to explain what’s going on in Replicas, a sci-fi film that was released way back in January to terrible reviews and non-existent box office.

Admittedly, this film has a plot and you can kind of follow it if you force yourself to. And really, it’s not that unusual of a plot. It’s another one of those things where a scientist is shocked to discover that his top secret research is actually being funded by the military and everyone in the audience is supposed to be like, “OH MY GOD! NO! NOT THE MILITARY!” As you can probably guess from the title, the film is also about clones. Have you ever noticed that bad sci-fi films always seem to involve cloning?

It’s not so much that the plot can’t be followed as that the film’s storyline just feels oddly underdeveloped. Watching Replicas, you get the feeling that the filmmakers got bored with the plot and just decided to go ahead and make the movie, without thinking everything through. As a result, the film touches on all of the ethical and philosophical issues that come along with cloning people but that’s all it does. Instead of actually exploring any of those issues or trying to come up with an original spin on the story, Replicas just mechanically moves from one scene to another.

Keanu Reeves plays William Foster, a scientist who, along with his longtime friend and partner, Ed Whittle (Thomas Middleditch of Silicon Valley fame), has figured out a way to transfer a dead person’s mind into a robot’s body, hence bringing the person kind of back to life. A big evil corporation has set up a lab in Puerto Rico for Foster and Whittle to do their research. The problem is that every time that they put a dead soldier’s mind into an android body, the dead soldier gets pissed off and destroys the body. Evil Mr. Jones (John Ortiz) demands that they figure out a way to keep the dead soldier from getting mad. Somehow, it doesn’t occur to Foster or Whittle that Jones wants them to put the soldier’s mind in the android’s body so that the android can then be used as a weapon of war.

(Also, if you want to use androids as soldiers, why not just do some sort of remote control thing like they do with drones? Seriously, I don’t think Jones has thought his evil scheme through. The less complicated the better.)

Anyway, Foster and his wife, Mona (Alice Eve), and his three children decides to spend the weekend camping and things don’t go well. In fact, they go so badly that Foster ends up crashing the SUV and his entire family ends up dead. Not to worry though! Foster’s a scientist and he knows how to create clones. So, he’ll just clone his family. Of course, to do that, he’ll have to pretend that they’re all still alive and, because he only has room for three clones, he’ll have to pretend like his fourth child never existed.

Does Foster succeed? Well, the movie is called Replicas. What’s weird is that it’s obvious that Foster’s going to succeed but the movie still spends an entire hour with Foster and Whittle trying to figure out how to bring the clones to life. I understand the movie wanted to at least pretend like there was a chance that Foster might not be able to do it but, again, the movie is called Replicas.

Anyway, Foster does eventually resurrect his family but then he discovers that Jones is actually a bad guy and soon, Foster and the Replicas are fleeing for their lives. It really doesn’t add up too much because the film doesn’t bother to really explore any of the issues that it brings up. Potentially big moments — like Foster deleting his youngest daughter’s existence — happen but are never really explored. You keep waiting for some sort of twist — like the clones turning on their creator or Foster discovering that he’s a clone himself — and it never happens. Instead, the film turns into a rather standard if not very exciting sci-fi action film.

To give credit where credit is due, Keanu Reeves does appear to be taking the film seriously and he has a few scenes that suggest that the film would have been improved if it had played up the idea of Foster being a mad scientist. The rest of the cast seems to be either bored or miscast but Reeves does try to bring some heart to the film. Otherwise, Replicas is pretty forgettable.

LifetimeFilm Review: The Sweetheart (a.k.a. Dating A Sociopath) (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Is this Canadian film from 2018 called The Sweetheart or Dating a Sociopath?

It depends on where you first saw it.

When it was on Netflix, it was called The Sweetheart. However, when the film recently aired on Lifetime, the title had been changed to Dating A Sociopath. We all know how much Lifetime loves to change titles and, in this case, I think they made the right move. Dating A Sociopath just has a certain punch to it that The Sweetheart lacks. The Sweetheart makes it sound like this is a film about one of those old women who always has 60 year-old candy sitting in a glass jar. Whereas Dating A Sociopath tells you pretty much everything that you need to know about the film.

The sociopath of the title is Brian (John Cor), who is a personal trainer who apparently has a nice side gig going where he seduces wealthy women, spends all of their money, and murders them. John Cor does a pretty good job of playing Brian, turning up the charm even while he’s doing some of the worst things imaginable. As played by Cor, you can understand just how exactly Brian has managed to be such a successful con artist. There’s also a great scene in which a jewelry store employee attempts to blackmail Brian and Brian responds not with the expected violence but instead by precisely explaining everything that he will do to the employee if he doesn’t keep quiet. In this scene, Brian is both charismatic and dangerous and scary as Hell.

Brian’s latest target is Samantha (Jessalyn Gilsig), who is currently separated from her well-meaning but alcoholic husband. Samantha thinks that Brian is the best but her oldest daughter, Jane (Hannah Vandenbygaart), is immediately suspicious of him Of course, Jane has problems of her own to deal with. Thanks to her father’s lack of sobriety and basic driving skills, Jane has a broken leg and is forced to spend most of the movie hopping around on either crutches or using a cane. Making things even worse for Jane is the fact that Brian keeps messing with her medication, the better to keep Jane in constant pain and to also fool everyone into thinking that she’s become a pill-popping drug addict.

And I have to say that, as someone who has broken her ankle on multiple occasions and who knows just how Hellish the healing process can be without painkillers, nothing made me dislike Brian more than those scenes where he would sneak into Jane’s room and switch out her medication while she was sleeping. I mean, if I didn’t already know it from the title, those scenes would be all the proof that I needed to know that Brian was a sociopath. At the same time, those scenes also firmly put me on Jane’s side. By the time Jane finally stood up for herself and started her own investigation into Brian’s past, I was ready to jump and cheer.

Dating A Sociopath is a pretty entertaining Lifetime film, even if it wasn’t originally made for Lifetime. John Cor and Hannah Vandenbygaart are both well-cast in the two most important roles and if nothing else, the film will encourage anyone to think twice before dating a sociopath. Even a charming one.

Cleaning Out the DVR #24: Crime Does Not Pay!

Posted on September 17, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

We’re way overdue for a Cleaning Out the DVR post – haven’t done one since back in April! – so let’s jump right in with 4 capsule reviews of 4 classic crime films:

SINNERS’ HOLIDAY (Warner Brothers 1930; D: John Adolfi) – Early talkie interesting as the screen debut of James Cagney , mixed up in “the booze racket”, who shoots bootlegger Warren Hymer, and who’s penny arcade owner maw Lucille LaVerne covers up by pinning the murder on daughter Evalyn Knapp’s ex-con boyfriend Grant Withers. Some pretty racy Pre-Code elements include Joan Blondell as Cagney’s “gutter floozie” main squeeze. Film’s 60 minute running time makes it speed by, aided by some fluid for the era camerawork. Fun Fact: Cagney and Blondell appeared in the original Broadway play “Penny Arcade”; when superstar entertainer Al Jolson bought the rights, he insisted Jimmy and Joan be cast in the film version, and…

View original post 549 more words

Lifetime Film Review: Undercover Cheerleader (dir by Danny J. Boyle)

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Autumn (Kayla Wallace) has just transferred to a new high school and she has a decision to make. At her old school, Autumn was the star of the dance team but it turns out that this new school doesn’t have a dance program. Instead, it appears that Autumn is going to have to settle for either becoming a cheerleader or working on the school paper.

It’s a difficult decision and it was one to which I could automatically relate. When I was in high school, I was constantly told that I should follow in my sister’s footsteps and try out for cheerleader. I was also told that, with my big vocabulary and love of gratuitous sarcasm, I would be a natural for the school paper. Myself, I didn’t want to be a cheerleader because I wanted to establish my own identity as opposed to just following in my sister’s footsteps. At the same time, I didn’t want to join the paper because, as much as I love to write, I hate being edited. I ultimately decided to do neither. However, Autumn apparently has a bit more initiative than I did at that age because she decides to do both!

That’s right. Autumn is going to try out for the squad and then she’s going to write anonymous articles about her experience for the newspaper! She’s going to be an …. UNDERCOVER CHEERLEADER!

Autumn makes the squad and, not surprisingly, she discovers that there’s a lot to write about. For instance, it turns out that that high school’s cheerleading coach is kind of a fascist who forces the cheerleaders to eat laxatives and who takes an immediate and irrational dislike to the only black girl on the squad. The coach is also obsessed with controlling every aspect of her cheerleaders’s lives and it’s obvious that she’s less concerned with their well-being than she is with winning another championship. She even forces one cheerleader to seriously injure herself for no apparent reason.

When Autumn’s first article comes out, the entire school is like, “Ewwwww! Laxatives!?” Everyone on the squad is trying to figure out who wrote the article. Why they didn’t automatically suspect Autumn, who they already know is friends with the paper’s editor, I’m not sure. While the article does get the coach in trouble, it also leads to a cheerleader power struggle and ultimately a murder. This is a Lifetime movie, after all.

A lot happens in Undercover Cheerleader. In fact, you could probably argue that too much happens in the movie. It takes forever to get to that murder, which is unusual for a Lifetime film. But no matter! Undercover Cheerleader is a well-acted film and one that even has a few unexpected moments of wit. Autumn is an interesting character because, even as she writing articles about how much it sucks to be a cheerleader, she’s also discovering that she likes the other members of the squad. Kayla Wallace does a great job of capturing Autumn’s conflicted emotions about her assignment and she’s well-matched by Maddie Phillips and Ryan Grantham, who play two cynical student journalists.

If you’re a fan of Lifetime films, you should enjoy Undercover Cheerleader.

Drive-In Saturday Night #5: MALIBU BEACH (Crown-International 1978) & VAN NUYS BOULEVARD (Crown-International 1979)

Posted on September 14, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

The kids are back in school, the days are getting shorter, and the nights are getting cooler. Yes, my friends, summer’s almost over, but before it ends, let’s take one more trip to the drive-in and enjoy a pair of Crown-International Exploitation classics. Crown was responsible for a slew of “teen sex” drive-in flicks in the 70’s and early 80’s. You know the type: the “teens” are all over 21, and the “sex” consists mainly of topless babes and some heavy necking!

Our first feature, 1978’s MALIBU BEACH, is the quintessential Crown-International “teen sex” romp. School’s out, and all the hardbodied California kids head to said beach for some frolicking in the sand and surf. Pretty Dina gets a summer job as a lifeguard, and meets handsome football hunk Bobby. A leather jacket wearing musclehead named Dugan tries to get between them, but we all know he’s got no shot!…

View original post 681 more words

Hellhound On My Trail: Walter Hill’s CROSSROADS (Columbia 1986)

Posted on September 10, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

‘Well the blues had a baby/and they named it rock and roll” –

Muddy Waters

Hi, my name’s Gary, and I’m a bluesoholic! Whether it’s Deep South Delta or Electric Chicago, distilled in Great Britain or Sunny California, the blues has always been the foundation upon which rock’n’roll was built. Yet there aren’t a lot of films out there depicting this totally original American art form. One I viewed recently was 1986’s CROSSROADS, directed by another American original whose work I enjoy, Walter Hill.

Hill was responsible for cult classics filled with violence and laced with humor, like HARD TIMES (with Charles Bronson as a 1930’s bare knuckles brawler), the highly stylized THE WARRIORS , the gritty Western THE LONG RIDERS, and SOUTHERN COMFORT (a kind of MOST DANGEROUS GAME On The Bayou). He scored box office gold with the 1982 action-comedy 48 HRS, making a movie star out of…

View original post 466 more words

Lifetime Film Review: My Evil Stepdad (dir by Stacia Crawford)

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

AGCK!

As you can tell from looking at the picture above, the stepdad in My Evil Stepdad is even more evil and pervy and shady than the usual Lifetime evil stepdad. Lifetime, of course, has a long and proud tradition of airing films about dangerous stepparents. They all usually seem to follow the same basic plot. A widow (and it’s almost always a widow as opposed to someone who has just gone through a divorce) meets a seemingly charming man who quickly marries her. Her daughter is suspicious of her new stepfather. Around the halfway mark, the stepfather commits a murder, just in case we were still entertaining any doubts about whether or not he’s a really bad guy. Eventually, the daughter does a Google search and discovers that her new stepfather has either changed his name or is lying about some other important detail from his past. Eventually, the stepfather is either killed or taken off to prison, the widow realizes that there’s nothing wrong with being single, and the daughter is proven correct. The most important thing, of course, is that everything returns to normal at the end of the film.

In My Evil Stepdad, the widow is Tracy (played by Jennifer Lafluer). Tracy has still not fully gotten over the death of her husband and, while she’s open to dating again, she has a strong aversion to Tinder and almost anything else that came into existence after 2011. Her daughter is Ashley (Addy Stafford), who has inherited her father’s love of photography and who is looking forward to attending college in the fall. And then, finally, the evil stepdad of the title is Jared (Chris Johnson), who seems to be nice and trustworthy and whose claim that he’s started a wind chime business is kind of charming as long as you don’t think about it too much.

When Jared comes across an online dating profile that Ashley set up for Tracy, he quickly manages to make his way into Tracy’s life. Of course, he gets a little bit of help from Ashley who, unfortunately, doesn’t realize that he’s totally evil until after he’s already married Tracy. It’s after the wedding that Jared starts to push Ashley out of her mother’s life. Not only does he pressure her to take out a student loan to help pay for college but he also takes over her photography studio, changing the locks and turning it into his mancave. Even worse, he tells Ashley that if she needs any money, she’ll have to ask him for it. He even says that he will be her “sugar daddy.” Like seriously, ewwww!

While all of this is going on, Tracy continues to defend Jared even as everyone else in her life tells her that he’s kind of a jerk. Of course, every since the wedding, Tracy has been feeling ill. Hmmmm …. could Jared possible have something to do with that?

In many ways, My Evil Stepdad is a standard evil stepparent film but it manages to go through all of the expected paces with a certain panache. Director Stacia Crawford keeps the action moving at a nice pace and Abby Stafford and Jennifer Lafluer are believable as daughter-and-mother. Chris Johnson is wonderfully sleazy in the role of Jared and the film also features a good comedic turn from Belmont Cameli in the role of Ashley’s best friend. If you like Lifetime films, you’ll enjoy My Evil Stepdad.

Lifetime Film Review: The Wrong Cheerleader (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“You messed with the wrong cheerleader!” Vivica A. Fox announced towards the end of Lifetime’s The Wrong Cheerleader.

“Hell yeah, he did!” I shouted back at the television.

Now, one reason why I yelled that response is because Vivica A. Fox is a totally badass. She has appeared in almost every installment of Lifetime’s “Wrong” franchise and she always plays a no-nonsense authority figure that no one in their right mind would want to mess with. When Vivica A. Fox gives you advice, you better listen. And when she gets mad at you, you better run because she does not mess around!

The other reason I cheered was because she was telling off one of the most unsympathetic and evil abusers to ever appear in a Lifetime film. After spending two hours watching this guy gaslight and threaten his girlfriend, I was ready for Vivica to show up and verbally kick his ass and she did not disappoint.

Fox plays Coach Flynn in The Wrong Cheerleader. She’s the cheerleading coach at the local high school and it’s a job that she takes very seriously. As she explains to a new recruit, being a part of the squad means that you’re a part of a family. When a prospective cheerleader says that she understands what Flynn means, the Coach tells her that she won’t be capable of understanding until she actually experiences it for herself. And I’m just going to say that I probably would have been scared to death of Coach Flynn in high school because she would have taken one look at me and probably told me to drop the attitude, stop showing so much skin, and behave like a responsible young lady. And I probably would have done it too because, seriously, you don’t want Coach Flynn mad at you.

Coach Flynn is concerned about her newest cheerleader, Becky (Cristine Prosperi). Becky is dating Rob (David Meza) and, from the minute he first shows up at school, it’ obvious that Rob has issues. Along with having a violent temper, Rob is a relentless manipulator, the type of guy who tells Becky that everything he does wrong is because of how much he loves her. When he gets into a fight, he tells Becky that it was because he was defending her and that it’s actually her fault because she was wearing her cheerleading uniform. If Becky so much as looks in the direction of another guy, Rob loses his temper. Rob, of course, has a hundred excuses for his behavior, most of them having to do with his dysfunctional family life. Everyone can see through Rob. Everyone, it seems, but Becky.

If you’re looking for an expose into the sordid world of high school cheerleading, you’ll probably be disappointed with The Wrong Cheerleader. To be honest, Coach Flynn could have been a soccer coach and Becky a goalie without changing the film’s plot. (Though “You messed with the wrong goalie!,” doesn’t have as much of a ring to it as “You messed with the wrong cheerleader!”) But no matter. The film does a pretty good job of revealing the techniques that an abuser will use to maintain control over the woman that he’s abusing. Anyone who has ever been in a toxic relationship will recognize exactly what Rob is doing. The film also makes the very important point that if you do witness abuse, you need to say something. Just shrugging away the problem or hoping that things will somehow get better is not a solution.

For those of us who remember her as the always quirky Imogen on Degrassi, it’s interesting to see Cristine Prosperi playing a far more conventional character in this film but she does a good job in the role and she still looks young enough to pass for a high school student. (The same could not be said of some of her classmates.) David Meza does a good job playing up his character’s manipulative nature and, of course, Vivica A. Fox is a total badass as Coach Flynn.

The Wrong Cheerleader isn’t quite as over-the-top as most Lifetime cheerleading films but it has a good and heartfelt message and that’s definitely worth something.