I Watched The Strongest Man In The World (1975, Dir. by Vincent McEveety)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is back, again! He still hasn’t graduated from Medfield College and Medfield is still on the verge of going broke. Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn) discovers that the reason Medfield can never get out of the red is because the science class and students like Dexter are spending so much money on their experiments. The Dean fires the science professor and threatens to expel Dexter! But when Dexter’s latest experiment develops a type of milk that gives the drinker super strength, the Dean might have to change his mind.

A cereal company wants to buy the supermilk, which would get Medfield out of the hole. But a rival cereal company just wants to steal the formula for the milk so they hire disgraced businessman and gangster A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) to once again try to thwart the best laid plans of Medfield College. Meanwhile, Dexter competes in a contest to prove that the supermilk has truly made him into the strongest man in the world.

The plot of the last Dexter Riley movie somehow manages to be even dumber than the first two and it was high time for Dexter to graduate and get on with his life but The Strongest Man In The World did make me laugh a few times. Because this entry in the series involved super strength instead of invisibility or merging with a computer, it allowed for more physical comedy and it felt less dates than the other two movies. The action is pretty much nonstop, as Dexter gets into one scrape after another and the cast is likable even if they all were getting a little old to still be playing college students. Like the other Dexter Riley films, The Strongest Man In The World is too innocent and good-natured not to enjoy on some level.

I guess Dexter finally graduated after this movie. Both he and Kurt Russell went on to better things.

Life’s A Beach: Superdad (dir by Vincent McEveety)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1973’s Superdad, Disney takes on the generation gap.

Charlie McCready (Bob Crane) just can’t understand what’s going on with his daughter, Wendy (Kathleen Cody). She’s smart, pretty, and has the potential for a great future ahead of her but all she wants to do is hang out with her friends on the beach. Eccentric Stanley Schlimmer (Bruno Kirby) drives everyone around in a souped-ambulance. Ed Begley, Jr. (who plays a character who doesn’t even get a name) joins in whenever the group sings a folk song. Wendy’s boyfriend, Bart (young and likable Kurt Russell), is a surfer and water skier. Charlie is truly convinced that this extremely clean-cut group of teenagers is going to lead his daughter astray. In fact, Wendy wants to marry Bart! Charlie attempts to hang out with Wendy, Bart, and his friends on the beach and he can’t keep up. He can’t water ski, he can’t play football, he can’t play volleyball. All he can do is scream in this weird high-pitched voice. The entire time is Bart is extremely nice to him and doesn’t even make fun of him for not being able to hit a volleyball over a net. I mean, even I can do that! But because Charlie’s not dealing well with becoming middle-aged, he decides that Bart is a threat.

(I’m going to assume that Charlie also teams up with a creepy friend and starts filming himself having threesomes with groupies, though we don’t actually see that happen in the film. The subtext is there, though!)

Charlie decides that he has to get Wendy away from this group and the best way to do that would be to trick her into thinking she’s received a scholarship to …. Yes, this is just that stupid …. a scholarship to a prestigious university. While Bart and his healthy, non-smoking, non-drinking friends are all going to City College and living at home with their parents, Wendy will be miles away at a college where she can do anything that she wants. Charlie thinks this is a great plan. One gets the feeling that Charlie, for all of his overprotectiveness, hasn’t read a newspaper in 20 years. Seriously, has he not been keeping up with what was happening on most college campuses in the late 60s and early 70s?

The main problem with this film is that Charlie is an incredible jerk. It’s one thing to be overprotective. Fathers are supposed to be overprotective of their daughters. It’s one thing to worry about his daughter not having a good deal of ambition. I can even understand him getting annoyed with Stanley because Stanley is kind of annoying. (Watching this film, it’s hard to believe that Bruno Kirby was just one year away from playing the young Clemenza in The Godfather, Part II.) But seriously, Charlie is freaking out over his daughter dating KURT RUSSELL! In this film, Kurt Russell plays a character who is always polite, mild-mannered, sensible, and remarkably understanding of Charlie’s attempts to keep him from marrying Wendy. There is one scene where Bart gets upset and he barely even raises his voice. He’s incredibly likeable and, for all of this film’s flaws, it’s still easy to see why Kurt Russell became a star.

Of course, what really makes this film a cringe-fest is that it stars Bob Crane as a family man with a secretly manipulative side and, the whole time I was watching, I kept having flashbacks to Greg Kinnear in Auto-Focus. Wendy, to make her dad really angry, gets engaged to an actual hippie named Klutch (Joby Baker) and there’s a scene in which Klutch and Charlie get into a fight in Klutch’s artist studio. Every time Klutch swung anything near Charlie’s head, I definitely cringed a bit. Red paints get spilled everywhere, though luckily it ends up on Klutch and not Charlie. Still, watching the film, I couldn’t help but think that there are worse things that could happen to someone than having their daughter marry Kurt Russell.

I Watched Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972, Dir. by Robert Butler)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is back and just in time because Medfield College is on the verge of getting closed down again.

In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, buying a computer was supposed to be the solution to all of Medfield’s financial problems. I guess it didn’t work because Medfield is broke again and corrupt businessman A.J. Arnoe (Cesar Romero) is planning on canceling the school’s mortgage so that he can turn it into a casino.

There is some hope. Dexter has accidentally created an invisibility spray. Not only does it tun anything that it touches invisible but it also washes away with water so there’s no risk of disappearing forever. Dexter and his friend Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) know that they can win the science fair with their invention but the science fair doesn’t want to allow small schools like Medfield to compete unless they really have something big to offer. Dexter tells the Dean (Joe Flynn) that he has a sure winner but Dexter also refuses to reveal what it is because he doesn’t want word to leak before for the science fair. The Dean decides to raise the money to pay off the mortgage by becoming a golfer, as one does. Schulyer works as the Dean’s caddy while Dexter uses the invisibility spray to help the Dean cheat. That’s a good message for a young audience, Disney! But when Arno finds out about the spray, he wants to steal it so he can rob a bank.

This was even dumber than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but it was also hard to dislike it. The comedy was too gentle, Kurt Russell and the rest of the cast were too likable, and the special effects were too amusingly cheap in that retro Disney way for it to matter that the movie didn’t make any sense. When a bunch of college kids learn the secret of invisibility and use it to cheat at golf, you know you’re watching a Disney film.

I Watched The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969, Dir. by Robert Butler)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Medfield College has a problem. No one takes the college seriously. Maybe if the college could win the big college quiz show, people would finally stop laughing at Medfield but the students are not academically talented. Professor Quigley (William Schallert) thinks that the college needs to finally buy a new-fangled device called a computer. The Dean (Joe Flynn) says that there’s no way any college can afford something as expensive as that! Luckily, businessman and gangster A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) is willing to donate one of his computers. It takes several students to move the computer into the lab because the computer is huge.

Medfield finally has a computer but are the students smart enough to win that quiz show? Popular jock Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) happens to be in the lab during a freak thunderstorm. When both he and the computer get struck by lightning at the same time, it leads to Dexter becoming a human computer. He suddenly knows everything. He can speak any language and solve any equation. He can answer any question/ Whenever anyone shines a light into Dexter’s ear, they see circuit boards. No one really cares that none of this makes sense. Medfield is going to win that quiz show for sure! But first, Dexter is going to have to escape from Arno, who fears Dexter now knows all the details about his gambling ring.

Watching this Disney film was a real eye-opener for me. Computers are such a part of my everyday life that it was strange seeing a college making such a big deal about getting one. The computer that Medfield got looked more like the type of computer that NASA used to go to the moon than the ones that were in my high school computer lab. I was worried that no one seemed to care that Dexter had a circuit board in his head. Not even Dexter seemed to care. It was also funny to me that all he had to do was get struck by lightning while standing near a computer and suddenly, he knew how to speak every language and solve every problem. I use a computer everyday and I can still only speak English and Spanish. I feel like I’m getting cheated.

The whole movie was absolutely ludicrous but I did enjoy watching this movie. It was too sweet, innocent, and good-natured not to enjoy. There was nothing realistic about the movie but it was nice to imagine a world where everyone gets along, the bad guys are all too buffoonish to really be dangerous, and a serious knock on the head leads to thing returning to normal instead of permanent brain damage. Kurt Russell was only 18 when he made The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but he could already carry a movie.

Horror on the Lens: Indestructible Man (dir by Jack Pollexfen)

Posted on October 13, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is the surprisingly brutal 1956 B-movie, Indestructible Man!

I reviewed this movie back in 2013. It was definitely made on a low-budget and it features one of the most sexist endings in cinematic history and yet it’s also occasionally effective. The film’s biggest strength is that the Indestructible Man is played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Though Chaney was clearly dealing with his personal demons at the time this film was made, his surly manner and ravaged face make him very effective in the role of Charles “Butcher” Benson.

Enjoy!

Shattered Politics #12: The Boss (dir by Byron Haskin)

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After you’ve watched The Phenix City Story, why not go over to Netflix and watch another obscure but hard-hitting B-movie, The Boss?

First released in 1956, The Boss came out a year after The Phenix City Story but they both serve as good companion pieces to each other. Whereas The Phenix City Story shows what it’s like to live in a city dominated by corruption and crime, The Boss shows how a city could get that way in the first place.

The Boss opens in 1919, in an unanmed midwestern city. (A title card informs us that the city is a “middle class city.”) World War I has ended and the returning soldiers are marching in a parade throughout the city. Leading the march is Capt. Matt Brady (John Payne), a humorless war hero. Marching behind him are a group of soldiers who all seem to hate his guts, even after Bob Herrick (William Bishop) attempts to defend him. It appears that Matt was a strict officer during the war and Bob was the only one of his men who didn’t hate him. Of course, a lot of that is because Bob was a childhood friend of Matt’s. They both grew up in the city together. To be exact, their home was in the third ward. As Bob explains, the Brady family rules the third ward.

Matt’s older brother, Tim (Roy Roberts), is the 3rd ward’s alderman. After the parade ends, Tim explains that he expects Matt to follow in the family business. However, Matt doesn’t want anything to do with politics. Instead, he just wants to marry Elsie (Doe Avedon) and live a normal life. In fact, Matt says, he’s got a date with Elsie that night.

However, before Matt can go on that date, he ends up getting attacked and beaten up by some of the soldiers from the parade. He’s late for his date and when Elsie refuses to forgive him, Matt ends up going out and getting drunk. After getting into a few more fights, he meets an insecure woman named Lorry (Gloria McGhee) and announces that they’re getting married whether she wants to or not.

The next morning, Matt wakes up to discover that he now has a wife, Elsie never wants to see him again, and that Tim has dropped dead of a heart attack. Bruised and hungover, Matt suddenly finds himself forced to take over the family business.

The film jumps forward a few years. Matt is now the most powerful man in the city. He decides who get elected to which office and, with the help of the Mafia, he’s made a lot of money for himself. Bob, meanwhile, has married Elsie and is now Matt’s attorney and unofficial second-in-command. Meanwhile, Lorry lives in a huge mansion that she never leaves.

It took me a while to get into The Boss. In fact, I nearly stopped watching after the first twenty minutes because it didn’t ever seem like there would be a moment when Matt would be anything other than surly, drunk, and bruised. But then, once Tim drops dead, the movie becomes a bit more interesting. If you remember John Payne for anything, it’s probably for being the nice but kind of boring lawyer from the original Miracle on 34th Street. So, it’s interesting to see him here, playing a crude and perpetually angry man who always seems to be on the verge of punching someone out. He gives a good performance and occasionally you even feel a little sorry for Matt. For everything he does wrong, he’s still essentially the same guy who wanted to marry a school teacher and live out in the suburbs.

Of course, I’m a history nerd so my favorite scenes in The Boss were the ones that dealt with real moments from history, like the scene where Matt panics when he hears about the 1929 Stock Market crash. Even better, though, is a brief sequence that takes place at a political convention. Though no names are uttered and the party is never specifically identified, it’s obvious that Matt is meant to be at the 1932 Democratic Convention and the candidate that is asking for Matt’s support is obviously meant to Franklin Roosevelt. When Roosevelt is nominated without Matt’s support, Matt can only bitterly observe that he wishes he was from Chicago because then he could own a President.

Would a movie made today have the guts to say such a thing about FDR? I doubt it.

The Boss is currently available on Netflix. If you’re into politics and history (and maybe even political history), be sure to watch it before it goes away.

It Came From The Public Domain: Indestructible Man (dir by Jack Pollexfen)

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS BELOW)

First released in 1956, Indestructible Man is a low-budget B-movie that, as a result of being in the public domain, has been released on DVD by several different companies and seems to be included in just about every other compilation box set released by the folks at Mill Creek. Perhaps because it stars Lon Chaney, Jr., it also seems to turn up on TCM fairly regularly. That’s how I first saw it.

Whenever anyone mentions the film Indestructible Man to me, I always think about … well, actually no one ever mentions Indestructible Man to me. But if they did, I would probably always remember one scene in particular. It comes towards the end of the film. Detective Dick Chasen (Max Showalter) has managed to solve the mystery of the Indestructible Man. He celebrates by going out with his new girlfriend, a burlesque dancer played by Marian Carr. Sitting there in the car, illuminated by the romantic glow of the moon, Detective Chasen informs her that he’s gotten her fired from her job because she’s going to be way too busy being his wife to have a career. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t say no!” his girlfriend responds.

Don’t believe me? Watch for yourself. From Indestructible Man, here’s one of the most sexist scenes in film history…

Up until that ending, Indestructible Man tells the story of Charles “Butcher” Benson (Lon Chaney, Jr). As you might guess from his nickname, Butcher isn’t a nice guy. In fact, he’s a career criminal who is sitting on death row in California. He’s been double-crossed by his criminal partners (who include both a lawyer and a guy named Squeamy, so you know they’re bad) and, from his prison cell, he swears that he will have his revenge.

And then he’s promptly executed.

However, his body is donated to science. Scientist Robert Shaye is investigating whether or not massive electrical shock can be utilized to cure cancer. When he and his assistant (Joe Flynn) shock the Butcher’s corpse, the Butcher comes back to life and starts to wander around the laboratory. Shaye attempts to give him a shot but the hypodermic needle snaps when pressed against the Butcher’s skin. The Butcher proceeds to strangle both the scientist and his assistant…

What’s going on? Well, fortunately, this film is narrated by Detective Dick Chasen (and yes, that is the character’s name and that’s all I’m going to say about it). Dick Chasen explains to us that 1) the electrical shock fried Butcher’s vocal chords and rendered him mute and that 2) the shock caused Butcher’s cells to multiply at such a rate that he is now …. INDESTRUCTIBLE!

Anyway, Butcher proceeds to spend the rest of the movie tracking down and murdering his former criminal associates. Even before you reach the most sexist ending in the history of American cinema, it’s all rather silly. It’s also rather slow. The film lasts 70 minutes and I would say that 20 of those minutes consist of pure padding.

However, as often happened with B-movies, the low budget occasionally works to the film’s advantage. The flat black-and-white and the stark sets may have been an unintentional consequence of economic reality but, at the same time, they give the film a much needed edge.

Much as the low budget accidentally worked to the film’s advantage, so to did the personal demons of Lon Chaney, Jr. contribute to making him into a surprisingly effective and disturbingly believable killer. Though he’s best remembered for playing the handsome and soulful Larry Talbot in the original Wolf Man, by the time Lon Chaney, Jr. made Indestructible Man, years of drinking, smoking, and self-destructive behavior had caught up with the former matinée idol. Chaney’s ravaged face, marked by deep lines and sporting a permanently grim expression, makes him perfect for this role. The highest praise that I can pay to Chaney’s performance is that you look at him and you truly believe that his character would be nicknamed Butcher.

As I stated at the start of this review, Indestructible Man is in the public domain and it’s fairly easy to track down. For that matter, you can always watch it below.