It was a Tuesday in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on January 31, 1978. It got up to 31 degrees that day. You could stay in and watch Happy Days or you could go out and see the Fonz on the big screen. Except he's not the Fonz in Heroes. He's Vietnam War vet Jack Dunne suffering from post traumatic stress disorder who busts out of the mental hospital with a dream of starting a worm farm. Then he meets Carol Bell on a bus. Sally Field plays a woman about to be married having second thoughts. Harrison Ford is in it too. I believe I did talk my mother into letting me see this one alone at the Martin Twin while she went shopping since it had Henry Winkler in it. The Fonz was the absolute apex of pop culture television alpha males back then. Heroes ran often on HBO in 1979 and I definitely saw it several times on television. I wanted to like it, but it's just not that good a movie. Comedy and drama is hard to mix.
My mother went with me to see Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot. It's terrible, but it's about Bigfoot so all is forgiven. I was Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster crazed in the 70's as most little boys were. There were sightings of Bigfoot and lake monsters all over the place. This movie was in its 3rd big week at a time when movies didn't usually stick around that long since there were only 5 screens in all of Rutherford County. The outdoor footage is pretty well done, but there's no real story there. The whole movie is on YouTube.
Smokey and the Bandit was back on the big screen again in Murfreesboro playing at Cinema One. If not for Star Wars, the Burt Reynolds smash would have been the biggest movie of 1977. I had seen it way back in July of '77 at the Martin Twin with my cousins who were visiting from Memphis and Mississippi. I loved it then and I still love it today. I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie more than any other. Sally Field plays another would be bride running off from her wedding in this case. Jackie Gleason shines as Buford T. Justice of Portague County which is not a real county in Texas. Jerry Reed's music and acting chops enliven the proceedings too. The boys over at Redneck Matinee have a podcast dedicated to this classic trucker movie. The movie belongs to the Bandit though. Burt Reynolds's good ol' boy charm is perfected here. It's not his best movie, but it is essential viewing for its CB radio chatter and vision of the new South which was on the rise in the Seventies. I recommend you skip the sequels.
The Marbro Drive-In has a couple of movies on their last night. Rod Steiger plays Benito Mussolini in The Last 4 Days which is about Mussolini's failed attempt to escape the Italian partisans. It is paired with Girls In Trouble which is somehow billed as a comedy about ladies various attempts at having abortions. I think I would have to skip that night at the Marbro. There's an Italian language trailer for The Last 4 Days and Rod Steiger is intense as El Duce. I couldn't find one for Girls In Trouble. As Siskel and Ebert liked to say. The balcony is closed. Another Film Flashback will be posted next Friday at 6AM barring some major catastrophe.
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