I remember friends talking about Meatballs during the summer of 1979. The Ivan Reitman directed film was a big hit and it made a movie star of Bill Murray. It began playing at the Martin on July 13 and ran until August 2, 1979. I wanted to see it, but my parents wouldn't let me due to its National Lampoon connection. National Lampoon meant sex to them and that was something a 12 year old boy shouldn't be seeing. I saw the movie years later and discovered the humor was much milder than I had been led to believe. Sure, there is some sex comedy, but it's not gratuitous. The film is about relationships, friendship, and growth with a wistfulness underneath it all. It's a great one to watch once a year as summer begins.
It just doesn't matter
Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand are playing on the other screen in The Main Event. Barbra plays a businesswoman who ends up holding the contract on a washed up boxer. She tries to get him back into the ring so she can get some return on him and, of course, love blossoms. I saw this on HBO a year or so later and it was sort of entertaining. The title tune was a decent hit.
Finally, for the last movie playing in Murfreesboro on July 24, 1979 we journey to the rocking chair theatre Cinema_One to see Woody Allen's Manhattan. I didn't see this one in the theatre, but I did see it years later. I have the blu-ray even. And that's all for this week's film flashback.
We're off to Tuesday March 6, 1979 on this week's installment of Film Flashback. Winter was hopefully fading away in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with a high temperature of 58 on this day. There's five movies playing and Tuesday is bargain night at the Martin Twin and the Marbro Drive-In. The Cinema One bargain night was on Mondays. They've got a winner this week with the remake/sequel of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I remember trying to watch this on HBO a year or so later and I couldn't get into it. It moved too slow for my teenage brain. Years later I caught it late one night on WTBS which was perfection as you become a pod person if you fall asleep and I was sleepy, yet now became transfixed by the film. Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, and Jeff Goldblum are all excellent, but it was Leonard Nimoy's performance as a pop culture psychologist that stood out to me that night. It is a masterpiece in slowly creeping paranoia which then accelerates into a waking nightmare. Kevin McCarthy from the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers makes a cameo which makes this film a sequel as much as it is a remake. The shriek and point of Donald Sutherland has made it into the current world of memes.
The Martin Twin has the re-release of Saturday Night Fever except it has been cut to meet a PG rating this time. The producers hoped to entice all of the underage soundtrack purchasers to come see the film. I was just 11 years old when the R rated version was released in 1977, but lots of kids my age went to see it with a parent or guardian even then so I don't know how successful the re-release was in the long run. The movie was based on a fabricated story by Nik Cohn called "Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night" published in New York magazine in 1976. He had been assigned to write on current youth dance scene, but couldn't understand it so he based the story on a mod acquaintance.
The John Badham directed film made a profit on its first weekend and made a megastar out of John Travolta. Travolta even received an Academy Award Best Actor Nomination for his portrayal of Tony Manero. I didn't catch this at the theatre on either go around, but I caught it on its first network television run. It was an interesting slice of the big city life, but even as a teenager I found the characters to all be sort of aimless. I suppose that's what the movie is supposed to impart as its Tony's restlessness and drive to escape which moves the plot along. The soundtrack album was a monster smash and The Bee Gees became ubiquitous. It didn't matter if you weren't into disco as you couldn't avoid it. I enjoyed the falsetto sonic cotton candy at the time. Disco had dominated the charts since the movie's original release and would continue to during the spring of 1979, but the time's were changing.
Heaven Can Wait is the other offering at the Martin Twin. Warren Beatty stars and co-directs (with Buck Henry) this remake of a 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan and not a remake of 1943 film Heaven Can Wait. James Mason plays Mr. Jordan in this version. The plot is about a guy who gets taken to heaven before his time and gets sent back to Earth. This is one of those movies that I saw back then at the theatre by myself and I'm perplexed as to why I went. The comedy seems too classy for a 12 year old kid to want to go see. I guess the pro football angle was what interested me. I did enjoy it and have seen it a few times since.
Marbro Drive-In has a movie about a ski-masked maniac killing young ladies using the contents of his toolbox fittingly titled The Toolbox Murders, and another about a bloodsucking vampire brought to us by pop artist Andy Warhol fittingly titled Andy Warhol's Young Dracula aka Blood For Dracula.
It would have been a pretty gruesome night at the movies at the drive-in in 1979.
That's all for this week. Next week will bring a blaxploitation classic and a visit from my favorite Japanese monster. You bring the popcorn.
