Sunday, April 9, 2023

FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974)

Making eye contact with a naked man in a bubble bath, touching random men as they urinate in a bowling alley restroom, playing grab ass with your buddy in a children’s playground. These are all fun weekend activities, but it’s also a small snippet of what police detectives James Caan and Alan Arkin are up to when they are assigned to protect a high-ranking criminal from unknown assassins. You’d think that squirreling the target away in a secluded location would be a wiser course of action, but no, these two psychopaths go on a no holds barred rampage all across San Francisco like they’re in the fucking Purge!

Cold-blooded murder, sexual assault, driving a car at high speed through a marching band in a parade, assaulting people left and right, driving their car into an occupied apartment, multiple counts of theft, dozens of vehicles damaged or destroyed, looking at pornographic magazines around children, firing guns in public, jumping a moving train with a car, assaulting a man in order to steal his motorcycle, having a car illegally towed, no seat belts ever, assaulting a drunk guy with a metal pipe, murdering a guy in a dentist office, randomly accusing your wife of cheating instead of simply having a conversation with her…I could brush all of this bad behavior aside in the name of (poorly written and dated) comedy, but the racial and gay slurs were just too goddamn much. Life is short, and I don’t have time to waste on that weak-minded bullshit.

Homophobic and racist behavior aside, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN isn’t funny, entertaining or worth watching. Yet somehow it ended up being one of the bigger box office hits of 1974, so what the fuck do I know. I’m glad I watched it, just for the learning experience, but I’ll never watch this stinker again. Skip it.

Friday, March 31, 2023

EARTHQUAKE (1974)

[Note: For this review I watched both the 122-minute Theatrical Cut and the 142-minute Television Cut. Screenshots are from both versions, but mostly the Theatrical Cut.]

At the California Seismological Institute, a lowly graduate assistant comes up with some computations showing that a major earthquake is going to hit Los Angeles...today. He tells his superiors, but they just won't listen. They just won’t listen! Oh god why? Why!? Oh, the humanity! Across town, construction engineer Charlton Heston is rumbling and grumbling about buildings not being built beyond the current codes. He’s also rumbling and grumbling on top a single mom while his old bag wife is at home faking suicide attempts and crying to her father…who’s also Charlton’s boss. Yikes. At the same time, there are multiple other pre-disaster stories going on, including Shaft riding a motorcycle; ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner as a peeping tom stalking a pre-Dallas Victoria Principal; two nerds in an airplane having a boring conversation; George Kennedy as a LAPD cop getting shitfaced in a bar while Walter Matthau mumbles nearby.

For a mid-1970's disaster flick, EARTHQUAKE is mildly entertaining. I enjoyed the buildup and seeing what was going on in everybody lives. I especially enjoyed seeing Los Angeles in 1974. The earthquake itself looked great, but for whatever reason, the post-earthquake scenes were mostly snoozers. They sound promising on paper (flooding due to a busted dam, psycho soldier gunning down innocent civilians, workers trying to escape a wrecked skyscraper, etc.), but none of them really clicked with me.

Solid acting by a strong cast, good pace that slows as the film moves along, disappointing ending, impressive stunts, truly impressive matte paintings and models, animated blood, tons of vintage cars and fashions, Heston topless, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hedge, an accidental motorcycle accident and a really weird set decoration where Victoria Principal has a photograph of her brother on her apartment wall…but the picture is a still from a previous scene in the movie! It brought to mind that brain-melting photograph in LADY TERMINATOR.

EARTHQUAKE is totally worth watching for vintage disaster movie fans, but others will probably find it dated and goofy.

Fun fact: you might be asking yourself how is the Theatrical Version 122 minutes and the TV Version 142 minutes long? Good question. EARTHQUAKE was originally released in the theaters in 1974 and then broadcast on NBC in 1976. They wanted to make it into a two-night “event”, but the film wasn’t long enough, so they added a few scenes that were previously deleted and then, in a truly bizarre turn of events, they filmed new scenes and added them into the movie to pad the runtime! Not only does this included new characters, but they even called back some of the original actors to film more scenes!

I’ve also read that in some television markets, the audio to the film was simulcast on a local radio station so you could really crank up the scenes of Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston fighting. And, I guess, the earthquake also.