COLD TURKEY (1971)

A large cigarette company, looking for some positive publicity, offers 25 million (tax-free) dollars to any town that can have all of its citizens stop smoking for 30 days. The only town to get 100% of its citizens to agree to the challenge, thanks to local preacher Dick Van Dyke, is Eagle Rock, Iowa, population: 4,006.

After a slow start (it’s nearly halfway through the movie before the contest even begins!), things pick up when the nicotine withdraws kick in and everybody starts acting like The Purge is popping off. That short segment was actually funny, minus the dog kicking joke, but the rest of the movie is pure meh. Which probably explains why the movie was filmed in 1969 and not released until 1971.

As it is, COLD TURKEY is amusing enough to keep the viewer engaged, but just barely. A lot of the staying power for me was the impressive supporting cast. It was like a who's who of comedic actors from that era. Sadly though none of it was actually funny, but watching Jean Stapleton sneeze over and over did make me smirk at the absurdity of it.

Vintage fashions, promising story idea that goes nowhere, vintage cars, good acting, a few humorous moments, zero nudity, zero feminist punk bands, zero cheerleaders, illogical contest with nobody really policing the contestants, terrible song over the boring opening credits, depressing ending. Also, for some odd reason, the town square scenes made me daydream about the town square scenes in SILVER BULLET.

I feel like I should say more about the movie, but it was just kind of a nothing movie. Great idea, but poor execution. Somebody could easily make a superior remake. Hell, I think the dullness of it has carried over onto me. This is probably the lamest review I've written in years. If you're looking a good review check out AMERICAN ANTHEM. That was a Happyotter classic! I also like how my update was longer than the review itself. Hahaha. Fucking stupid.

One thing I did find interesting was the shot of Dick Van Dyke walking down the sidewalk when suddenly it cuts to slow-motion and a group of children go running by while wearing Dick Van Dyke masks. The whole thing reminded me of Chris Cunningham's masterpiece video for Aphex Twin's “Come to Daddy” made nearly 30 years later.

THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER (1979)

A bad guy steals an airliner by simply flying off in it. The owner hires two detectives, Tom Selleck and James Whitmore, Jr., (or “Whitemore” as that one newspaper clipping shown below says) to get it back. Boring stuff happens and our heroes come up with a plan to say they have a bogus blueprint for a “Chinese typewriter”. What the fuck? I watched the entire movie and I still don't understand the story.

The only reason this unsold pilot even has a minor footnote in movie history is it has a few connections to the 1980’s television program “Magnum, P.I.” As a fan of that show, I thought it’d be fun to check out THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER. Wrong. While I do understand my thinking from a few hours ago…the reality has been nothing but pain and boredom. I wish I knew karate so I could dropkick this smelly DVD into a tree shredder.

Lifeless acting, underdeveloped (and boring) characters, weak action scenes, unfunny humor (I’m talking Nikki Glaser-level antifunny), needlessly confusing story, bland camerawork, a newspaper featuring a reversed photograph from a scene that takes place later in the movie (what is this LADY TERMINATOR? Or the TV-edit of EARTHQUAKE?), slow pace, multiple annoying usages of the term “percentage play”, wasted scenery.

The few connections to Magnum are interesting (I guess), but not worth wasting the 77 minutes it takes to watch this turkey. The most unusual is a small cutscene of a beachside shower that was later used in a Season 1 episode of Magnum. That was just odd.