NIGHT SCHOOL (1981)

Women attending (or working near) Wendell College in Boston have been turning up with their heads chopped off.  The cops get involved and a young detective is determined to solve the case.  And since he only has like four suspects I'm pretty sure he can figure it out.  A small smattering of blood, zero gore, lightweight nudity, medium pace, soft focus that gives everything a weird fuzzy look, 80's fashions, Boston locations, okay acting, zero scares.

Worth checking out for slasher completists, but it's more of a police murder-mystery than a slasher film. Still kinda interesting in a laid back, made-for-TV looking kind of way...even though it wasn't made for TV.  From what I can tell, NIGHT SCHOOL actually had a short theatrical run back in 1981.

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?

EASY LIVING (1937)

[Update 03/08/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

A wealthy New York City banker becomes enraged when he finds out that his wife spend $58,000 on a fur coat without telling him. He throws the jacket off the roof of their high rise. Down, down, down it goes until it lands on Jean Arthur's head and smashes the feather on her hat. She confronts the banker and he apologizes.  He tells her she can have the coat and then he innocently takes her to a hat store to get her a new hat. Naturally, when people see them together they suspect that she's his mistress and that's when the story goes crazy! Mass confusion, mistaken identities, dogs jumping all over the joint, people falling down in a giant bathtub, a piggy bank getting murdered, phone cords tangled up, a riot scene in an Automat that had me laughing so hard I had to rewatch it three times, a police chase and much more.

If you're not opposed to older movies and you like comedies then you should check this one out. I really enjoyed it.