Tag Archives: Reb Brown

Scenes That I Love: Reb Brown in Space Mutiny

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yell it loud …. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, REB BROWN!

Reb Brown, the star of some of the loudest movies ever made, is 76 years old today but I bet he could still beat the evil doers and encourage us all by shouting, “Go!  Go!  Go!”  A former college football player turned actor, Reb Brown holds the distinction of being one of the first actors to play Captain America and for also starring in classic films like Yor Hunter of the Future, Strike Commando and Strike Commando 2. Though he may not have ever become a household name, Reb Brown is a beloved figure amongst my circle of film-loving friends.

The scene below is from 1988’s Space Mutiny and it featured Reb doing what Red does best.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.13 “Isaac’s Teacher/Seal of Approval/The Curse of Dumbrowskis”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

Get ready for a very odd cruise!

Episode 4.13 “Isaac’s Teacher/Seal of Approval/The Curse of the Dumbrowskis”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on January 10th, 1981)

This is a weird episode.

Harriet (Florence Henderson) boards the ship with her husband, Harold Rogers (Jeffrey Tambor).  Now, the idea of Florence Henderson and Jeffrey Tambor as a married couple may sound strange but it’s even stranger when you actually see it.  Henderson and Tambor have absolutely zero chemistry together.  Tambor looks more like Henderson’s no-good stepson than her husband.

Harriet is convinced that she is destined to die at an early age so she continually pressures Harold to find a woman that he can marry after she’s gone.  In fact, Harriet thinks that maybe Harold could marry another passenger on the boat, Cindy (Christina Hart).  Harold is getting frustrated with the pressure that Harriet is putting on him to find a new lover.  Doc Bricker suggests that maybe Harold should make Harriet jealous by cheating on her with Cindy.  What?  I mean, I’m not surprised that Doc would make that suggestion but it is a bit odd that the show itself seems to think that this is a good idea.  Harold goes along with the idea because, even if Harriet doesn’t get jealous, he’ll still get to sleep with Cindy.  Wait.  What?

Harriet is okay with Harold cheating on her until Harold says that he wants to give her favorite necklace to Cindy.  Harriet realizes that she’s not okay with Harold giving her jewelry to his adulterous lover and she decides that she’ll no longer pressure Harold to find a new wife.  They leave the ship with their marriage stronger than ever.  Doc saves the day!

Meanwhile, Karen (Georgia Engel) boards the boat and immediately falls for Oscar Tilton (Donald O’Connor).  Now, as mismatched as Florence Henderson and Jeffrey Tambor are, they seem like soulmates compared to Georgia Engel and Donald O’Connor.  For one thing, O’Connor appears to be about 20 years older than Georgia Engel.  Secondly, Donald O’Connor’s ebullient style clashes wildly with Georgia Engel’s inability to speak above a whisper.

Oscar is an entertainer who is traveling with his seal, Shirley.  When Shirley sees that Oscar and Karen are falling in love, Shirley gets jealous and throws herself overboard.  She leaves behind her rubber ball, apparently as a way to taunt Oscar.  Oscar is depressed.  How can he do his act without Shirley?  Karen encourages him by telling him that he doesn’t need the seal to be entertaining.  Gopher even helps out by playing the horns that Shirley would have played had she not jumped into the ocean….

I am not making this up.

Anyway, good news all around.  Shirley survives jumping into the ocean and swims back to Oscar’s beach house.  Shirley shows up when the boat docks in Los Angeles.  Oscar tells Shirley that Karen is going to be a part of his life from now on.  Shirley claps her fins, indicating that she approves.

NO, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!

All I can say is thank goodness for Lillian Gish.  Gish plays Mrs. Williams, who boards the boat with her hulking nephew (Reb Brown).  Mrs. Williams is also Isaac’s former teacher.  Isaac is insecure about just being a bartender and pretends, with Gopher’s help, to be the ship’s first officer.  Captain Stubing is not amused.  Isaac tells Mrs. Williams the truth and Mrs. Williams replies that she is proud of Isaac, no matter what he does for a living.

Awwwwwwww!

This was a really simple story but it was sweet.  Lillian Gish’s natural class provided a balance to Jeffrey Tambor cheating on Florence Henderson and Donald O’Connor’s seal trying to scare off Georgia Engel.  And Ted Lange — seriously, episodes like this remind the viewer of how lucky The Love Boat was to have him.  Yes, everyone knows that pointing thing that he does.  But Lange also played Isaac as being a genuinely nice guy.  I don’t drink but if I did, I would want Isaac to be my bartender.

Again, this episode was weird but at least it gave Lillian Gish and Ted Lange a chance to shine.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.9 “Hustle”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, Ponch gets bowling fever!

Episode 1.9 “Hustle”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on November 24th, 1977)

Life is a hustle when you work for the California Highway Patrol.

Ponch and Baker deal with a lot of things over the course of this episode.  While pursuing two motorcycle riders who are suspected of holding up a grocery store, Ponch gets a cigarette tossed on him by a passing motorist.  The suspects turn out to be two women who were just out for an afternoon ride.  They seem to be pretty amused by the whole thing, despite the fact that Baker roughly frisked them as soon as they pulled over.  Luckily, the sight of the hole that was left on Ponch’s uniform by the cigarette (and the boxers underneath) gives everyone an excuse to laugh.

This is not the best time for Ponch to have a wardrobe malfunction because he’s due in court.  Ponch gave a ticket to Sidney Engelhart (Marty Ingels) but Sidney claims that the only person who is guilty of reckless driving is Ponch.  Sidney tries to prove his point by basically stalking Ponch while he does his job.

While Ponch deals with his stalker, Baker pulls over a car being driven by veteran screen actor Broderick Crawford.  Ponch is totally excited to see Crawford but Baker is fairly nonchalant about the whole thing.  When his pen runs out of ink, Baker borrows Crawford’s gold fountain pen and then forgets to return it to the actor, which leads to Baker getting called out at the next morning briefing.

Meanwhile, there’s a huge car accident that leads to Ponch and Baker saving a mother and her baby from a live electrical wire.  Baker also pulls over a man driving a car that only has three wheels and, of course, there are the grocery store robbers to deal with.

And yet, for everything going on, Ponch’s main concern remains the department’s bowling tournament.  As has been a consistent theme so far during the first season of CHiPs, Ponch’s main concern continues to be doing things that don’t have much to do with his actual job.  Whereas Baker comes across as if nothing makes him happier than writing a speeding ticket, Ponch often seems to view policework as something to do until something better comes along.  On the one hand, this does not make Ponch a particularly effective cop.  We’re only 9 episodes into the series and I’ve lost count of the number of times that he’s had to go back to the trailer park to change his uniform.  On the other hand, it is probably a realistic portrayal of how most people view their jobs.  Ponch does enough to get by.

As for the episode itself, this was another “day-in-the-life” style episode.  So far, the first season of CHiPs has been dominated by rather loose plotting.  Ponch and Baker just ride and see what type of trouble they can find on the highways.  As for the bowling subplot, Baker turns out to be a surprisingly competent bowler and Ponch plots to win a lot of money from his fellow officers.  But then Baker sprains his bowling fingers and it looks like Ponch is once again out of a small fortune.  Poor Ponch, he is fortune’s fool!

(I actually have gone bowling a few times.  I’m not any good at it but I’ve been told that the important thing is to jump up and down regardless of what happens.)

This Hustle, I would give a solid B.  The scenery was nice.  There was an exciting motorcycle chase at the start of the show.  The episode was a pleasant-enough diversion, albeit not one that leaves a huge impression afterwards.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.6 “Baby Food”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, Ponch continues to screw up even the simplest of tasks!

Episode 1.6 “Baby Food”

(Dir by Paul Krasny, originally aired on October 27th, 1977)

This week’s episode of CHiPs is yet another story about how Frank “Ponch” Poncharello is terrible at his job.

While riding down the highway, Ponch and Baker find themselves stuck behind a truck that is transporting several boxes of baby food.  Suddenly, the truck’s backdoor slides open and the boxes start to fall onto the highway.  Baker is able to easily dodge the boxes, pull up to the side of the truck, and motion for the driver to pull over.  Ponch, on the other hand, is nearly killed because he comes close to hitting every box that falls out in front of him.  I mean, the boxes are not that big.  I’ve never even driven a motorcycle and I could probably do a better job of avoiding them than Ponch did.

Once the driver of the truck has stopped and the boxes are being reloaded, Ponch and Baker head on their way.  They are heading to headquarters, where they are supposed to be waiting for a call from the courthouse to let them know if they need to come down and testify in a case.  Still, Baker finds the time to pull over and ask two hippies if they need any help changing a flat tire on their school bus.  Baker is perfect and Ponch …. well, Ponch is not.

At headquarters, Ponch hits on the dispatchers, commandeers a meeting room so he can watch his favorite soap opera, and is basically so obnoxious that Getraer kicks both Ponch and Baker out.  After taking some time to rescue a man and his dog from a car that’s caught on fire, Ponch and Baker head over to the trailer park that Ponch calls home.  Ponch wants to change his uniform (which got covered in soot as a result of the fire) and Baker wants to see Ponch’s beautiful new neighbor.  Despite being under orders to remain easily contactable, Ponch accidentally knocks his phone off the hook.

That’s not good because Gatraer actually needs to talk to Ponch.  It turns out that the baby food that fell off the truck is infected with botulism and two of the boxes are missing!  Gatraer has to leave his office and ride his bike all the way to Ponch’s trailer park to let Ponch — who is now wearing a “Keep on Trucking” t-shirt — know about the contaminated baby food.  Gatraer asks Ponch and Baker if they saw anyone scavenging at the scene.  It takes Baker a while to remember the school bus but at least he did remember!  Ponch apparently only has a five-minute attention span.

The hippies are eventually tracked down and their baby is rushed to the hospital, where he recovers.  While Gatraer congratulates Ponch and Baker on finding the contaminated food, he does tell them that they need to stop getting personal calls at the office.  It turns out that Melinda, the trailer park girl that Ponch likes, has been calling HQ and asking to speak to Baker.  Obviously, Melinda knows who has career potential and who is one mistake away from getting evicted from his mobile home.

This episode was enjoyable because it’s always fun to watch people get mad at Ponch.  Larry Wilcox reveals some unexpected comedic abilities in this episode.  (Just look at his face when he realizes Ponch is using a conference room to watch his favorite soap opera.)  I also liked how clean and friendly the trailer park was.  CHiPs originally aired quite a bit before my time but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the show led to be people moving to California.  I mean, even the trailer parks are nice to look at!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.2 “Undertow”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, Ponch takes a deep breath and he gets real high.

Episode 1.2 “Undertow”

(Dir by Christian I. Nyby II, originally aired on September 22nd, 1977)

On tonight’s episode of CHiPs, a true crisis breaks out.

The California Highway Patrol’s basketball team loses a game!

Now, they would have won the game if Ponch had been playing.  I’m only two episodes into this series and it’s already pretty obvious that there’s apparently nothing that Ponch can’t do.  However, while at the scene of an accident on the highway, Ponch stood right in front of a leaky cannister of nitrous oxide!  He ended up getting so high that he started seeing double, dancing in the halls of the station, and basically just acting like a total jackass.  Of course, he smiled the whole time.  Baker was less amused.

Because of his temporary high, Ponch was sent home and ordered to stay in bed for a day.  He missed the game and the CHiPs lost to some other off-duty branch of California law enforcement.  Fortunately, Sgt. Getraer is able to set up a rematch and, with Ponch now able to play, the CHiPs win by two points!  And, of course, the winning shot is taken by Ponch because there’s nothing that Ponch can’t do.  This episode ends with a series of freeze frames of Ponch winning the game and proving that California has the best highway patrol in the country.

Of course, the basketball game is only the B-plot of this episode of CHiPs.  The main storyline deals with fake tow truck driver (Angelo de Meo) who is listening to the police radio for calls from women who have broken down on the highway.  The driver goes to wherever the women are calling from but, instead of towing their car, he instead steals their money!  The first time that Ponch and Baker chase him, the crooked tow truck driver gets away.  The second time, they catch him.  Of course, both of the chases lead to multi-car wrecks on the highway.  This episode features the first instance of a car flipping over in slow motion on this show.  Apparently, that would go on to become a CHiPs trademark.

Of course, there are other little things that Ponch and Baker have to deal with.  They pull over a drunk driver (Jim Backus) and Ponch, who is high from the nitrous oxide, struggles to give him a sobriety test.  They also pull over an old surfer (Paul Brinegar), who has a talking myna bird in his truck.  The bird was cute.  These scenes did not add up too much but I imagine they were included to drive home the idea that Ponch and Baker are professionals, even if they do spend a lot of time talking about basketball.

This episode was actually kind of fun.  Erik Estrada is not a particularly subtle actor to begin with and this episode actually gives him an excuse to overact even more than usual.  As much fun as it is to watch Estrada bounce off the walls, it’s even more interesting to glance over at Larry Wilcox and see just how much he appears to resent having to work with someone who always has to be the center of every scene.  Neither Wilcox nor Baker seem particularly unhappy about Ponch being sidelined for a good deal of the episode.  Just as in the pilot, the chase scenes were genuinely well-filmed and it was impossible not to enjoy the shots of the motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic.

Next week, Ponch will probably save someone’s life while Baker seethes in the background.  We’ll see!

The TSL Grindhouse: Robowar (dir by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After some men go missing in the jungles of an isolated island, a group of mercenaries is assigned to search the jungle, battle the guerillas who control the island, and rescue the missing.  Accompanying the mercenaries is a shifty CIA agent who seems to know more than he’s letting on.  What the mercenaries soon discover is that the guerillas aren’t the only threat that they have to worry about.  There’s a shadowy figure stalking them.  Equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry and encased in impenetrable armor, this figure is following them like some sort of preda–

Wait.  Does this sound familiar?

The 1988 film, Robowar, is an unapologetic rip-off of the Predator.  Directed by Bruno Mattei and written by Troll 2 director Claudio Fragasso (who also plays this film’s version of the Predator), Robowar is such a rip-off of the Predator that it even ends with an end credits sequence in which we see clips of each actor stalking through the jungle.  Reb Brown plays Murphy Black, the head of the mercenaries, and he spends a lot of his time shrilly shouting at them to “Move!  Move!  Move!”  Catherine Hickland plays the head of a local orphanage.  She introduces herself as “Virginia” and is called “Virginia” throughout the film but the end credits insist that her character was actually named “Virgin.”  The other mercenaries are played by a combination of American and Italian stuntmen and some of them vaguely resemble their better-known counterparts from Predator.  Max Laurel, who plays the group’s fearless tracker, looks like he could have been distantly related to Sonny Landham.  Massimo Vanni and Romano Puppo play two mercenaries who have a relationship that’s similar to the friendship between Jesse Ventura and Bill Duke.  Of course, in anyone really makes an impression, it’s Mel Davidson as the group’s government handler and who spends the whole movie smiling while delivering lines about how the entire group is doomed, himself included.  It’s such an odd performance that it becomes rather fascinating.

What type of film is Robowar?  It hits all of the same plot points as Predator but it does it with a much lower budget.  Indeed, the film’s opening sequence appears to be made up of footage lifted from Mattei’s earlier film, Strike Commando.  Whenever we see the action through the killer robot’s eyes, Mattei gives the action an extreme orange tint that makes it impossible to actually tell what’s going on.  Reb Brown spends a lot of time yelling but the same thing could be said for the entire cast.  This is one of those films where no one fires a machine gun without screaming while doing so.  And yet, because it’s a Mattei film, it’s always watchable.  Bruno Mattei (who born 92 years ago today in Rome) may have specialized in ripping-off other, most successful films but he was so shameless and unapologetic about it that it’s impossible to judge him too harshly.  As always, Mattei keeps the action moving quickly and doesn’t worry to much about things like continuity.  Mattei’s films were rarely good but they were almost always fun when taken on their own silly terms.

At times, Robowar almost feels like a parody of an American action film, with Fragasso’s script featuring dialogue that is so extremely aggressive and testosterone-fueled that even Shane Black probably would have told him to tone it down a notch.  Much as with Troll 2, the film provides an interesting view into how Fragasso imagined Americans to be.  Early on, we are informed that the mercenary group is known as BAM, which stands for “Big Ass Motherfuckers.”  Later, one of the members of BAM insults two others by saying, “I bet they have the AIDS.”  It’s as if someone programmed a computer to write an action movie and, as such, Robowar might turn out to be a surprisingly prophetic film.

Despite featuring a few Americans in the cast, Robowar was not available in the U.S. until it was released on Blu-ray by Severin Films in 2019.  Though Bruno Mattei passed away in 2007, his work continues to be discovered by new audiences.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Space Mutiny (dir by David Winters)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Arggggh!”

— Dave Ryder (Reb Brown) in Space Mutinty (1988)

Space Mutiny, a sci-fi epic from 1988, is full of dialogue about all sorts of political and philosophical concerns but none of it is quite as memorable as the quote above.  Dave Ryder says, “Argggggh!” a lot over the course of Space Mutiny.  He’s the newly appointed head of security for the Southern Sun, a gigantic spaceship that has spent the last 260 years traveling from Earth to a new planet.  Being head of security is important because there are some people on the Southern Sun who are plotting a mutiny.  Dave Ryder decides that the most effective way to battle the mutineers is to yell loudly and frequetly.  “ARGGGGGH!’ Ryder yells whenever he’s being shot at.  “ARGGGGGGGH!” he screams when he finds himself on a very slow and gradual collision course with the head of the mutineers.

When Dave isn’t saying stuff like, “Argggggh!,” he’s saying stuff like, “Go!  Go!  Go!”  When the bad guys open fire on him and his men, it’s time for them to “Go!  Go!  Go!”  When the mutineers are being chased, Dave is quick to tell everyone to “Go!  Go!  Go!”  He’s like the physical fitness trainer from Hell.  He never actually yells “Feel the burn!” but you can be damn well sure that he’s thinking it.  In fact, there’s a point in the movie where “Feel the burn!” actually would have been a good line.  Dave and his girlfriend, Lea (Cissie Cameron), set a mutineer on fire.  It’s actually a bit of a sadistic scene and it doesn’t come across as being the big hero moment that it’s obviously meant to be.  But, then again, Dave isn’t yelling because he’s a nice guy.  He’s yelling because he’s played by Reb Brown.  Reb Brown yelled all the way through Strike Force Commando.  Why wouldn’t he do the same for Space Mutiny?

Of course, Dave isn’t the only person barking out orders on the Southern Sun.  Cameron Mitchell plays the ship’s captain, a wise old man who looks like Santa Claus.  John Phillip Law is Kalgon, the main mutineer.  He laughs a lot.  Cissie Cameron is the captain’s daughter.  She falls for Ryder, despite the fact that she appears to be old enough to be Ryder’s mother.  (In real life, Reb Brown and Cissie Cameron are married and Cissie is only a few years older than Reb.  In Space Mutiny, she’s stuck with an unflattering hair style and is made up to look like an aging cheerleading coach.)  There’s also a woman who works on the ship’s bridge.  She’s killed in one scene, just to mysteriously turn up alive in the scene that follows.  In space, no one can hear the script supervisor.  Finally, there’s a group of alien witches who board the ship and spend the entire movie dancing in front of a ball of electricity.  Since they don’t actually interact with any of the main characters, it’s obvious that they were added to pad out the film’s running time.

One of the more interesting things about Space Mutnity is that Kalgon actually has a point.  It does seem kind of stupid to spend several hundred years traveling to just one planet when there’s other planets nearby that the ship could just as easily reach.  Indeed, the mission of the Southern Sun never makes that much sense and the Captain seems to be delusional in his insistence that it does.  The Captain’s unending faith and his long-flowing beard makes him come across like a minor biblical prophet, the type who always had to ask a major prophet to interpret his visions for hm.  The Captain does not come across like someone who really knows what he’s doing.  I don’t care how much Ryder screams, Kalgon had a point!

Today, Space Mutiny is best known for being featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and for later being taken apart by the Rifftrax crew.  Space Mutiny, though, is such an extremely silly movie that you really don’t even need any professionals to help you snark your way through it.  The film offers up such a treasure trove of material then even the most humorless among your friends will be a comedic genius by the time it ends.  It’s a fun movie, made even more so by the fact that the filmmakers apparently meant for the film to be taken seriously.  There’s a lot of talk about important issues like freedom, duty, and faith.  In the end, what you’ll remember is the screaming.

Horror on TV: Kolchak: The Night Stalker 1.19 “The Youth Killer” (dir by Don McDougall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight on Kolchak….

There’s a new dating service in Chicago!  It’s only for the hot, single, and young!  So, why are some of the members turning up dead and suddenly old?  Could it be that the owner of the dating service has a less-than-ethical way of remaining young!?

Carl Kolchak is going to find out!

This episode aired on March 14th, 1975.  It’s not one of the better episodes but, as always, Darren McGavin is a lot of fun in the role of Kolchak.

Enjoy!

A Movie A Day #196: Mercenary Fighters (1988, directed by Riki Shelach Nissimoff)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Everyone’s favorite hippie action hero, Peter Fonda, plays Virelli, a long-haired Vietnam vet turned mercenary who is hired by a corrupt African general (Robert Doqui) to protect the construction of a dam that will result in the flooding of a native village.  Got all that?  Though Fonda is top-billed, he is not the star of the film.  The star is Reb Brown, who plays T.J. Christian.  T.J. starts out as a member of Fonda’s team but then he falls in love with a nurse (Joanna Weinberg) and he switches sides.  The villagers need someone to lead their revolution and all it takes is hearing Reb Brown do one of his trademarks power yells to know that he’s the man for the job.  Reb Brown was famous for yelling whenever he did anything and he yells a lot in Mercenary Fighters, even more than he yelled in Space Mutiny.

Mercenary Fighters is a typical Cannon film from the late 80s.  Like many of Cannon’s mercenary movies, it was covertly filmed in South Africa, at a time when apartheid was still being enforced and Nelson Mandela was still sitting in a prison cell.  (Cannon was not the only film company to secretly make movies in South Africa during the Apartheid Era.  They were just the most blatant about it.)  Richard Kiel apparently turned down Peter Fonda’s role.  It’s hard to imagine Kiel in the role but perhaps that’s because Virelli is a quintessential Peter Fonda-in-the-80s role.   Fonda glides through the film, delivering his lines like a California surfer who just smoked the kine bud.  The presence of Ron “Superfly” O’Neal and James “son of Robert” Mitchum serves to elevate the film’s cool factor while Robert Doqui brings some “I’ve worked with both Robert Altman and Paul Verhoeven” credibility to his one-note role.  Mercenary Fighters is good for anyone who is into either mindless Cannon action movies or Reb Brown yelling while shit blows up behind him.

A Movie A Day #165: Big Wednesday (1978, directed by John Milius)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If there is a male bonding hall of fame, Big Wednesday has to be front and center.

This episodic movie follows three legendary surfers over twelve years of change and turmoil.  Jack Barlowe (William Katt) is the straight arrow who keeps the peace.  Leroy “The Masochist” Smith (Gary Busey) is the wild man.  Matt Johnson (Jan-Michael Vincent) is the best surfer of them all but he resents both his fame and the expectation that he should be some sort of role model for the younger kids on the beach.  From 1962 until 1974, the three of them learn about love and responsibility while dealing with cultural turmoil (including, of course, the Vietnam War) and waiting for that one legendary wave.

After writing the screenplays for Dirty Harry and Apocalypse Now and directing The Wind and The Lion and Dillinger, John Milius finally got to make his dream project.  Big Wednesday was based on Milius’s own youth as a California surfer and he has said that all three of the main characters were based on different aspects of his own personality.  Expectations for Big Wednesday were so high that Milius’s friends, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, exchanged percentages points for Star Wars and Close Encounters of  The Third Kind for a point of Big Wednesday.  The deal turned out to be worth millions to Milius but nothing to Lucas and Spielberg because Big Wednesday was a notorious box office flop.  Warner Bros. sold the film as a raunchy comedy, leaving audiences surprised to discover that Big Wednesday was actually, in Milius’s words, a “coming-of-age story with Arthurian overtones.”

I can understand why Big Wednesday may not be for everyone but it is one of my favorite movies.  It is one of the ultimate guy films.  Some of the dialogue and the narration may be overwrought but so are most guys, especially when they’re the same age as the surfers in Big Wednesday.  We all like to imagine that we are heroes in some sort of epic adventure.  The surfing footage is amazing but it is not necessary to be a surfer to relate to the film’s coming-of-age story or its celebration of the enduring bonds of friendship.  Katt, Vincent, and Busey all give great performances.  Considering their later careers, it is good that Big Wednesday is around to remind us of what Gary Busey and Jan-Michael Vincent were capable of at their best, before their promising careers were derailed by drugs and mental illness.  Be sure to also keep an eye out for infamous 70s character actor Joe Spinell as an army psychiatrist, a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund, playing a fellow surfer and providing the film’s narration, and Barbara Hale, playing the patient mother of her real-life son, William Katt.

One final note: At a time when the shameful stereotype of the psycho Vietnam vet was becoming popular and unfairly tarnishing the reputation of real-life vets, Big Wednesday was unique for featuring a character who not only joins the Army but who appears to return as a better person as a result.