Film Flashback August 13, 1976

Today's film flashback actually does land on a Friday night this time even though this is coming out on a Thursday (confused...you bet). August 13, 1976 is the day and the almost hilarious Gus is one of the movies playing at the Martin Twin. Ed Asner plays the owner of a terrible football team the California Atoms. He brings over a soccer ball kicking mule named Gus strictly as a half-time attraction. When he shows he can kick footballs too, he's put on the team coached by Don Knotts. The team becomes a winner headed for the Super Bowl. Tim Conway and Tom Bosley play a couple of crooks hired to kidnap the mule. It's almost hilarious, but comes several yards short. I think I saw this one at the Martin Twin. I may have read the paperback of it and watched it later on cable television. Maybe I did all of that.

Ready Gus? Oich! 

The Gumball Rally is your other choice at the Martin Twin. It's a fictionalized version of the "Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Sea" races that had been written about in Car and Driver magazine. The very talented writer Brock Yates wrote about these races dubbed "Cannonball Run's" and Hollywood took notice. Before Yates couldn't finish his own screenplay before 2 movies came out in 1976 about the race. One was titled Cannonball! and the other one was The Gumball Rally. The official Yates written movie wouldn't appear until 1981. It was the Burt Reynolds hit The Cannonball Run. The movie is lots of fun with great cars and some good action sequences. A young Gary Busey appears, but the best part of the movie is Raul Julia as Franco who teaches us the first rule of Italian driving: you rip the rear view mirror off. Car and Driver magazine has since fallen into the hands of people who don't like fun or most likely lawsuits. Hard to blame them. It's much safer anyways to just watch this classic car movie which is better than the Burt Reynolds Cannonball films. The Gumball Rally would come back later in the year and play at the Cinema_One during Christmas week.

What's a-behind me is not important.

The Marbro has Killers 3 and Rape Squad. Rape Squad was the re-titled 1974 movie Act of Vengeance. A hockey mask wearing rapist is terrorizing women. One of the victims named Linda finds other women who suffered the same fate, so they form a vigilante gang to take this hockey wearing mask criminal out. It's your typical violent revenge film which was a staple of drive-ins. It's original title was to have been Rape Squad, but AIP decided having the word rape in the title wasn't a good thing so it became Act of Vengeance. The original name was brought back when the film flopped upon release. I wrote about Killers Three before so you can click on this if you want to learn more about that one plus see the trailer. 

Our last choice this week is the terrifying film The Omen. The plot is your by then standard women gives birth to a devil child trope with the kicker being this particular child named Damien is destined to grow up to become the anti-Christ. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick top the billing for this one which did win an Oscar for the "Best Music, Original Score" which was by Jerry Goldsmith. Horror movies definitely need good music. I didn't get to see this in the theatre since it was R rated, but I remember seeing the ads on television back then. I did see it when it came to broadcast television and it creeped me out. It still does. Director Richard Donner was really quite masterful in building up the suspense and fear. 

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