Happy 74th Birthday, Kurt Russell! In GUNS OF DIABLO (1964), a young Kurt graces the screen with cinema icon Charles Bronson.


As a person who sees his love of movies through a lens of “Bronson connections,” I have a special fondness for Kurt Russell. In 1963 and 1964, Charles Bronson worked on a television series with Kurt Russell called THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS. The series itself is the story of twelve year old Jaimie McPheeters (Kurt Russell) who, along with his ne’er-do-well doctor dad (Dan O’Herlihy) and a ragtag group of pioneers, travel westward from Paducah, Kentucky to the California gold fields in 1849. Charles Bronson first appeared on episode 10 of the series, and would stay with the series until it ended after 26 episodes. Russell was the star, with Charles Bronson riding along in the important role of Linc Murdock, the guide who gets them through all sorts of dangerous situations. 1964’s GUNS OF DIABLO is an interesting concoction, using the final episode of the series, “The Day of Reckoning” and adding some new scenes shot specifically for a movie release.

GUNS OF DIABLO opens with Linc Murdock (Charles Bronson) leading the wagon train across a raging river. The group constructs a wooden barge, and most of the group makes it across safely. Unfortunately for one of the groups, a tree floating down the river smashes into the barge, causing it to sink along with the wagon and the man on top of it. Murdock jumps into the river and is able to save the man who unfortunately suffers a broken leg. Needing to rest for a few days, Murdock decides to go into the local town, Devil’s Gap, to get supplies. Jaimie (Kurt Russell), a boy with the wagon train, asks his dad if he can go with him. Dad says yes under one condition, Jaimie gets a real bath while he’s in town. So Linc and Jaimie head off together. When they get to town, Linc immediately goes to the saloon to get a beer, where he sees the beautiful Maria (Susan Oliver), a woman with whom he has a dangerous past. Via flashback, we learn the story of Linc and Maria falling in love while he was working as a hand on the Macklin ranch five years earlier. But it was a doomed love affair as Maria had been promised to the eldest son of the family, Rance Macklin (Jan Merlin). When Linc and Maria plan to elope and get married, Rance and his brothers get the drop on them. A big gunfight ensues, with Rance taking a shot in the arm, and Maria being shot in the crossfire. Believing her to be dead, Linc barely escapes with his own life.

Back in the present time we meet a Maria who is stuck in a loveless marriage to a one-armed Rance. Rance and his brothers have lost the ranch and are always trying to stay one step ahead of the law. That’s why Maria’s been reduced to working as a waitress at the saloon. She also believes that Linc ran out on her five years ago, so she’s mad at him. But soon those old feelings start stirring up deep within her when Linc talks sweet to her. When the duplicitous bartender Ives (John Fiedler) sees Linc go into Maria’s room, he sends word to Rance. Soon the Macklin Brothers are on their way back to town to settle their old score with Linc. What they didn’t count on was the 12 year old Jaimie McPheeters, with all of his youthful exuberance and ingenuity, being there to swing the odds in Linc’s favor! I made up that last line, but Jaimie does help Linc a couple of times. 

I mentioned earlier that GUNS OF DIABLO was assembled together using the final episode of THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS, along with some new footage added specifically for the movie. I’ve never seen the final episode of the series that this movie was based on, but I have seen some of the earlier episodes and I did notice one key difference. The TV series revolves mostly around the trials and tribulations of Jaimie and his dad, Dr. Sardis McPheeters. Dan O’Herlihy played Dr. McPheeters in the series, but actor Russ Conway plays him in this movie. He’s not a big part of the movie, just appearing at the beginning and the end, but it was odd seeing a different actor portraying Jaimie’s dad. It sure would be great if the series were to become more widely available at some point in time. I’d love to compare the TV version to this movie version.

Charles Bronson was not a big movie star when GUNS OF DIABLO was released, but he was a well respected character actor. He had already headlined his own TV series, MAN WITH A CAMERA (1958-1960), and he had prominent roles in the massive box office hits THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) and THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963). This movie heavily focuses on his character, and Jaimie McPheeters takes a back seat. Bronson, already 43 years old, was more than up to the challenge. He comes across as a decent, hardworking man, who’s capable of taking care of himself. In other words, he shows the strength and charisma that would make him the most popular actor in the world just a few years later. Susan Oliver is quite beautiful as Maria. Although primarily known as a blonde, blue eyed beauty, her hair is dark here. She’s so beautiful that I can understand why a man with such limited options would be willing to fight to the death for her. And what can you really say about Kurt Russell?! He’s such a good child actor. While Jaimie McPheeters may not be the focus of the movie, he’s still so good in the role, showing kindness, loyalty and bravery in equal measure. In a world where so many child actors can’t adjust to life as an adult, Russell has made it look easy for the last six decades. In my opinion, he’s one of the all time greats. 

Overall, GUNS OF DIABLO will never be confused with HIGH NOON (1952) or RIO BRAVO (1959), but for a movie assembled from a 60’s TV western and a few newly shot scenes, it’s actually quite enjoyable. And the storyline may not be the most original, but the time tested tale of true love and honor winning out over greed and evil will always make for compelling viewing. I got my first VHS of this film in the 80’s and I still own it to this day. I even watched it multiple times while I was writing up this review. As far as I’m concerned, GUNS OF DIABLO is well worth watching for fans of westerns or fans of the stars. 

Rather than sharing a trailer for the film I thought I’d share this heartwarming story of the time Kurt Russell bought Charles Bronson a birthday gift while they were working together on this series. It’s a classic. Enjoy, my friends!

Elvis (1979, directed by John Carpenter)


Elvis, not to be confused with the later film starring Austin Butler, is a historically-interesting film for a number of reasons.

Made for television, it was the first of many biopics to be made about the King of Rock and Roll.  Seeing as how it went into production just a year after Elvis’s death and that its script was vetted and approved by Priscilla Presley herself, it’s not surprising that Elvis doesn’t really delve into the darker aspects of his life.  Elvis shoots a television, gets frustrated with his bad movies, and wonders who he can trust but we don’t see him get fat nor do we see him popping pills.  The movie ends with Elvis making his comeback in 1969, allowing a happy ending for the title character.

The film was directed by John Carpenter.  It was his first film to be released after the monster success of Halloween, though Carpenter actually started work on Elvis before Halloween was released.  Though the film’s television origins means there aren’t many examples of Carpenter’s signature style in Elvis, Carpenter does a good job recreating Elvis’s performances and, most importantly, he comes up with a film that holds your interest for three hours.

Finally, the role of Elvis is played by Kurt Russell, who was at the time still struggling to prove himself as being something more than just a Disney star.  Russell, who made his film debut kicking Elvis in the shins, throws himself into playing the role and captures the look, the swagger, and the voice of Elvis without ever descending into caricature.  His singing voice is dubbed for the performances but Russell is still convincing as the King.  It takes skill to wear that white jumpsuit without looking like you’re wearing a bad Halloween costume.  While this film showed that Russell was capable of more than just Disney films, it even more importantly launched his friendship with John Carpenter.  Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble In Little China all began with Elvis.

The movie doesn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t already know about Elvis but its entertaining and it has a big, colorful cast that include Pat Hingle as Tom Parker, Shelley Winters as Elvis’s mother, and Bing Russell (Kurt’s father) as Elvis’s father.  Priscilla is played by the beautiful Season Hubley, who married Kurt Russell shortly after filming.  (They divorced in 1983.)  Joe Mantegna, Ed Begley Jr., Ellen Travolta, and Dennis Christopher all appear in small roles and do their part to bring Elvis’s world to life.  Elvis is a fitting tribute to the King of Rock and Roll, one that gave Elvis a happy ending and started a great collaboration between a director and his star.

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


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)


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)


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.

Film Review: Fools’ Parade (dir by Andrew V. McLaglen)


1971’s Fools’ Parade opens in 1935.

Three men are released from the West Virginia state penitentiary and given a train ticket out of town by the prison captain, Council (George Kennedy).  The men are a bank robber named Lee Cottrill (Strother Martin), a young man named Johnny Jesus (a young Kurt Russell), and a courtly older man named Mattie Appleyard (James Stewart).  Despite his polite tone of voice and his folksy manner, Appleyard is actually the most notorious of the three men being released.  Convicted of murdering two men, Appleyard has spent the past 40 years in prison.  Both Appleyard and Cottrill are looking to go straight.  Every day of his sentence, Appleyard worked and earned money.  Along with a glass eye, Appleyard leaves prison with a check for $25,000 dollars.  Appleyard plans to cash the money at the bank and then open a store with Cottrill.

Unfortunately, Appleyard has been released at the height of the Great Depression.  The streets are full men desperately looking for work.  People will do anything to feed their families or to make a little extra money.  Salesman Roy K. Sizemore (William Window) transports guns and dynamite.  Willis Hubbard (Robert Donner) works as a conductor on the train.  Aging prostitute Cleo (Ann Baxter) offers to sell the virginity of her adopted daughter, Chanty (Katherine Cannon).  Junior Killfong (Morgan Paull) sings on the radio and occasionally takes on deadlier work with his friend, Steve Mystic (Mike Kellin).  As for Captain Council, he’s decided that he’s going to make his money by ambushing the train carrying the three men that he has just released from prison.  After killing the men, Council will cash Appleyard’s check himself.

Of course, it doesn’t quite work out as simply as Council was hoping.  Willis Hubbard has a crisis of conscience and lets Appleyard, Cottrill, and Johnny know what Council is planning.  The three men narrowly make their escape but Council frames Appleyard for a murder that he didn’t commit.  Now wanted once again, the three men must not only get the money but also clear their names.  It won’t be easy because, as Hubbard explains, they may be free from the penitentiary but now, they’re trapped in “the prison of 1935.”

Fools’ Parade really took me by surprise.  I watched it because it featured two of my favorite actors, James Stewart and Kurt Russell.  And both Stewart and Russell give very good performances in the film.  Stewart was always at his best when he got a chance to hint at the melancholy behind his folksiness and the young Kurt Russell plays Johnny with a sincerity that makes you automatically root for him.  For that matter, the normally sinister Strother Martin is very likable as Lee Cottrill, a bank robber who is still struggling with the idea of going straight.  But, beyond the actors, Fools’ Parade is a genuinely sad portrait of desperate people trying to survive.  At one point, Sizemore and Cottrill watch as their train passes a camp of people who have been displaced by the Great Depression and it’s even implied that the villainous Council has some regret over what he’s become.  (There’s a small but poignant scene in which Council and Cleo acknowledge the passage of time and, for a minute, the viewer realizes these two people were, at one time, maybe as idealistic and optimistic as Johnny.)  It’s a well-acted film, one in which moments of humor are mixed with moments of true sadness.  I may have picked the film for Jimmy and Kurt but, in the end, the film’s story and performances drew me in.  The 63 year-old Stewart proved that he could still give a memorable performance and the 20 year-old Kurt Russell proved that he was a future star in the making.  If you haven’t seen it, this is definitely a film to check out.

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


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.

Shattered Politics: The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (dir by Michael O’Herlihy)


First released in 1968, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band is an old school Disney family film that almost feels like a rather mean-spirited parody of an old school Disney family film.  The songs are forgettable, the film has a cheap made-for-TV look to it, and the whole thing feels a bit too manufactured to  produce any sort of genuine emotion.

That said, it’s memorable for two reasons.  First off, it may be the only film ever made that centers on the presidential election of 1888.  In the Dakota territories, the citizens wait to see whether or not Democrat Grover Cleveland will be reelected or whether he’ll be defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison.  Those who support the Dakotas joining the Union as one state hope to see Cleveland returned to the White House.  Those who favor the creation of a North and South Dakota hope that Benjamin Harrison will win the election, allowing for four new Republican senators to be sent to Washington.

Confederate veteran Renssaeler “Grandpa” Brown (Walter Brennan) supports the Democrats and he’s got his family singing songs to promote the cause of Grover Cleveland.  Grandpa’s son, Calvin (Buddy Ebsen), is a Republican who still has no problem performing at the Democratic Convention because he, much like his children, is a born performer.  His oldest son, Sidney (Kurt Russell, who was 16 at the time of filming), is not old enough to vote but I imagine he’d probably vote for the Republican ticket because he’s Kurt Russell and it’s hard to imagine Kurt voting for a Democrat.  The other children want to keep both Grandpa and their father happy.  Meanwhile, daughter Alice (Lesley Ann Warren) has fallen in love with newspaper editor, Joe Carder (a very bland John Davidson).  Joe’s a Republican and supports Benjamin Harrison.  Grandpa’s not happy but really Grandpa should just mind his own darn business.  At least, that’s my take on it.  (Also, I gave up cursing for Lent.)

On the one hand, the Bowman sisters are pretty evenly split politically, with two voting for the Democrats and the other two tending to vote Republican so I could definitely relate to the idea of a family that didn’t always agree on politics  At the same time, this film’s premise means that there are a lot of songs about Benjamin and Grover Cleveland in this film and they’re about as memorable and exciting as you would expect a bunch of songs about two of America’s forgotten presidents to be.  If you learn anything about the election of 1888 from this film, you’ll learn that Cleveland’s full name was Stephen Grover Cleveland.  You might also note that, for all the talk about how the country have never been as divided as it is today, people were saying the exact same thing in 1888.

The other thing that makes this otherwise forgettable film stand-out is that it features the film debut of Goldie Hawn, who appears as a Republican dancer in the film’s climax.  This was not only Hawn’s debut but it was also the first film that she made with Kurt Russell.  That said, don’t panic.  Hawn was 22 to Kurt’s 16 when she made this film but the two of them didn’t become a couple until they met again in 1983, while filming Swing Shift.  I read an interview with Kurt where, when asked whether he noticed Goldie Hawn in her film debut, he said that he did but he didn’t even think of talking to her because, “I didn’t even have a car.”

Fortunately, everything worked out in the end.  Benjamin Harrison vanquished Grover Cleveland (though Grover returned in 1892, becoming the first of two president to serve non-consecutive terms) and, after their second film together, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are together to this day.

 

 

Scenes That I Love: Kurt Russell In Used Cars


Used Cars (1980, directed by Robert Zemeckis)

Today is not only St. Patrick’s Day!  It’s also Kurt Russell’s birthday!

Today’s scene that I love comes from one of my favorite Kurt Russell movies, the wonderful 1980 comedy, Used Cars!  In this scene, Kurt’s ambitious used car salesman promotes his senate candidacy and gets some important advice from his mentor (Jack Warden).  This scene features both Russell and Warden at their considerable best.  Needless to say, if you haven’t watched this film, you need to!

(Watch it with Fargo and have yourself a car salesman double feature!)

 

#MondayMuggers present THE MEAN SEASON (1985) starring birthday boy, Kurt Russell!


Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday March 17th, we celebrate Kurt Russell’s 74th birthday by watching THE MEAN SEASON (1985) co-starring Mariel Hemingway, Richard Jordan, Richard Masur, Richard Bradford, Joe Pantoliano, and Andy Garcia. 

Kurt Russell plays Malcolm Anderson, a reporter for a Miami newspaper. He’s had enough of reporting the local murders, so he promises his school teacher girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway) that they’ll move away soon. Before Malcolm can hand in his notice, the murderer (Richard Jordan) from his latest article phones him. The murderer tells Malcolm that he’s going to kill again. The phone calls and murders continue, and soon Malcolm finds that he’s not just reporting the story, he is the story.

We thought it would be fun to join The Shattered Lens and make Kurt Russell our centerpiece for the day. There’s absolutely nothing more enjoyable to me than watching movies with friends. And If you enjoy Russell, Miami, and serial killer thrillers, you should like this one. So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch THE MEAN SEASON! It’s on Amazon Prime.

The trailer for the THE MEAN SEASON is included below: