THE DEADLY TOWER (1975)

[Update 07/08/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Fresh off his touching portrayal of the Strongest Man in the World in THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD, Kurt Russell takes a dark turn in this made-for-television version of Charles Whitman's August 1, 1966 shooting rampage in Austin, Texas where he got his blast on and killed 16 people and wounded 32.

Kurt plays a satisfying Whitman, but as with a lot of these 70's TV movies THE DEADLY TOWER is very straightforward. Also, it's too tame for the subject matter. The film opens with Kurt reading a book about guns and looking very troubled. Afterwards, he kills his mother and his wife (both offscreen). Then it's on to the gun store and finally the tower where he quickly sets up shop and starts blasting. Eventually the cops make their way to the top and kill him. The End.

It was an entertaining watch, but I would never want to see it again. The main reason I rented it was to see Kurt Russell play a bad guy, but 95% of the time he never spoke or even showed any emotion. Skip it.

Fun Fact: I live in Austin and I have no fucking clue where this building is.

THE BIG BUS (1976)

THE BIG BUS fails to deliver the big laughs...you see how lame that joke was? Well, that's about the caliber of nearly every joke and sight gag in this movie. I don't want to be too rough and say the movie sucked, because it didn't.  It was just weak.

The premise is fine (a gigantic bus has all kinds of problems on it's maiden non-stop cross-country trip), but the jokes are nearly all misses: A guy in a bar fight breaks a paperboard milk carton in half and uses it as a weapon; there's an on-board bowling alley and when the bus goes too fast the bowling ball and the pins slide backwards down the lane; once the bus goes over 90mph, there's no more wind resistance (for whatever reason), so Ned Beatty yells "He's breaking wind at 90!"  Yeah, those are some real knee slappers right there.

Like I said, it's not a bad film and I'm sure the film's makers had their hearts in the right place, but unfortunately they only had about 5 minutes worth of funny jokes for a 88 minute movie. On the positive side: I always enjoy seeing Ruth Gordon.

I'm curious what happened to the bus after filming was over?