And! Boy Howdy!’s Movie Pits Of 1978

And! Boy Howdy!’s Movie Pits Of 1978

by

Edouard Dauphin

Picking the worst films of 1978 is like picking your least favorite Brothers Gibb songs. It’s easy to start but where do you draw the line?

Ten is where. Georgia The Borgia has already picked her ten best, so now Edouard Le Retard, gets to root around in the slime.

This has been such a rotten year for movies that even the most masochistic critics have refused to attend certain screenings. Your “Drive-In Saturday ” reporter has been warned away from dozens of awful films. As a result, they can’t qualify for the ten worst list.

For example, I didn’t get to sample such treasures as The Wiz, Foul Play, King Of The Gypsies, Oliver’s Story, Midnight Express, Lord Of The Rings, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Also Grease and Moment By Moment. (Any year you can miss two John Revolta movies can’t be all bad.)

Anyway, here goes nothing (literally). They’re in no particular order since they all stank about equally.

BLOODBROTHERS:: I managed to sit through this picture without ever knowing what it was about or why it was made. Paul Sorvino, Tony LoBianco and Richard Gere are hardhat construction workers. They hate work (too boring), drink to excess (their only redeeming quality) and periodically beat up all the women in their family. Throw in some obscure references to the Mafia, a kid brother who needs a life-saving operation (I’d have gladly let the brat die), and lots of pasta and you’ve got this flick—two hours of screaming Italians.

MAGIC:: Another baffling film. The tired old story of the dummy that takes over from the ventriloquist. Anthony Hopkins plays the ventriloquist and looks to be semi-comatose.

Ann -Margret proves once again that as a serious actress, she is not a force to be reckoned with. And Burgess Meredith as a show biz agent does a Jewish accent that will have you crying “Oy veh!” The picture is billed as a suspense thriller—its secret is that nothing happens. If that’s your idea of suspense, go see “Magic.” I say, bring back Mortimer Sneird.

HEAVEN CAN WAIT:: Sure, it’s cute and there are even a few good laughs, but this is easily the most overpraised film of 1978. Warren Beatty is an L. A. Rams quarterback who dies before his time due to a heavenly error, then returns in the body of another man. A one joke film that runs out of gas after an hour. From then on, it’s like watching the second half of a N.Y. Giants football game. Now if only the Giants offensive line would all die before their time and never return .. .

FIST:: What’s a ten worst list without a Sly Stallone picture? This contorted attempt to trace the history of the teamster union finds Sly in the Jimmy Hoffa role. He ages less than gracefully over several decades, finally emerging in the late 1950’s as a puffy Danny Thomas lookalike. Proof positive that “Rocky” was a fluke and Stallone will soon be hosting Celebrity Bowling.

THE BIG SLEEP:: Director Michael Winner had the bright idea of moving Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe character to England. It doesn’t work. Robert Mitchum phones in his performance. Jimmy Stewart, complete with liver spots, is an absolute embarrassment. And Sarah Miles demonstrates she’s getting a little long in the tooth to be playing the sexy temptress. Candy Clark takes off all her clothes repeatedly amid cries from the audience of “Put Them On. ” The plot is as confusing as the Bogart original, but this time you don’t care.

SUPERMAN:: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a turkey! Yeah, some of the special effects are fine and Brando gives the opening a little class, but where in hell did they ever spend that $48 million? Not on the star-studded cast, most of whom could have qualified as day players. I blinked and literally missed Terence Stamp’s performance. Certainly not on the sets, which look tackier than the CREEM editorial offices. And not on the ending, where Superman restores California after it has been ripped apart along the San Andreas Fault (I was rooting against him on this one). Maybe the producers embezzled the money.

A WEDDING:: Take a motley assortment of people and bring ’em together for a ritual that is distinctly American. The formula worked for Robert Altman in Nashville, but fails him here. Lillian Gish, as the matriarch of a ridiculous Midwest family, has the good sense to die in the first reel, but Carol Burnett, Mia Farrow, Geraldine Chaplin, Howard Duff and others are forced to mug, spout nonsensical dialogue and act zany for another 90 minutes. Mostly, they just act embarrassed, except for DesiArnaz, Jr. as the groom. PoorDesi. His agent must have told him he was in a “Significant” movie. Bring back Fred & Ethel Mertz!

AN UNMARRIED WOMAN:: Still another women’s movie made by a man. In this case, Paul Mazursky, who has given us nothing but sentimental slop for ten years. Jill Clayburgh is abandoned by her husband and has to cope with the horror of living in a luxurious Manhattan apartment on an apparently limitless budget, with a new lover in the person of Alan Bates. A living hell, right? Soppy and earnest all the way, with about as much depth as a copy of Ne w York Magazine, which it distinctly resembles.

COMES A HORSEMAN:: For a while, I wasn’t sure this was a lousy movie, because I couldn’t see the actors. The interior scenes are so poorly lit it’s a wonder the actors didn’t fall over one another. But even the outdoor daytime scenes are dark—no small achievement in this era of technical proficiency . The director manages to make Jane Fonda look plain, coaxes the usual lackadaisical performance from James Caan and permits Jason Robards to shamelessly overact. Word of mouth killed this movie fast—and rightly so.

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY:: “Soul Train” goes to the movies. Supposedly a typical night at an L. A. disco, which explains why I avoid L. A. and discos like the plague. Donna Summer and The Commodores perform, if you can call it that. Several dozen one-dimensional characters create multiple subplots which lead nowhere. There are lots of flashing lights, I saw this film on a British Airways flight to London and asked to be let off in the Atlantic.

There you have them—the ten lowest of the low. But stick around—1979 may be even worse!