Vanishing Point (1971)

          Although I’ve never really grooved to this particular counterculture artifact, as many friends who dig the same cinematic era have, all it takes to explain the appeal of Vanishing Point is to describe the close parallel between the film’s minimalistic storyline and prevailing early-’70s social concerns. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a drifter who makes his living delivering cars across long distances. After accepting a job to ferry a hot rod from Denver to San Francisco, Kowalski jacks himself up on speed and blasts down open highways with legions of cops in pursuit. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, blind radio DJ going by the handle “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little) narrates Kowalski’s journey for his listeners, framing the driver’s ride as a principled fight against the Establishment. The sympathetic reading of this material, of course, is that Kowalski just wants to be free, man, so when society tries to trap him with laws and rules and speed limits, he strikes a rebellious blow on behalf of rugged independence. And if you can’t anticipate how a story comprising these elements will end, then you haven’t seen too many counterculture flicks—as the song goes, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

          Viewed as historically relevant symbolism, Vanishing Point is interesting, because it presents a lone-wolf protagonist whose existence comprises nothing but early-’70s signifiers: He’s an alienated Vietnam vet, he self-medicates with illegal drugs, and he’s determined to force a confrontation with what he perceives to be the oppressive forces of law and order. Heavy shit, no question. It seems safe to say that writers Guillermo Cain, Barry Hall, and Malcolm Hart—as well as director Richard C. Sarafian—deliberately infused their story with of-the-moment dimensions.

          But very much like another existentialist road movie of the same vintage, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Vanishing Point plays an iffy game by using ciphers instead of fully realized characters. For instance, certain conventional narrative elements, such as backstory and well-articulated motivation, are largely absent from Vanishing Point. So, even though Vanishing Point provides ample fodder for post-movie interpretation games, the actual onscreen events are repetitive and superficial. It doesn’t help that Newman, who enjoyed a very brief run as a leading man in movies and television, is a bland persona. (Conversely, Little exudes casual-cool charisma and delivers his on-air monologues with smooth style.) It also says a lot that many Vanishing Point fans dig the movie because they’re entranced by the Dodge Challenger muscle car that Newman drives in the movie. After all, the Challenger has the film’s most fully rendered characterization—especially compared to the cringe-worthy portrayals of two gay hitchhikers whom the hero encounters.

Vanishing Point: FUNKY

Eat My Dust! (1976) & Grand Theft Auto (1977)

          Although these silly car-chase romps produced by Roger Corman should not be mistaken for quality cinema, they enjoy footnote status in movie history because they allowed Ron Howard to become a director. By the mid-’70s, Howard was a veteran TV star, having appeared in over 200 episodes of the ’60s favorite The Andy Griffith Show as a child actor, and having successfully transitioned to grown-up fame in Happy Days, which hit the airwaves in 1974. Additionally, he’d gotten a toehold in features, thanks to American Graffiti (1973). But what Howard really wanted to do, as the saying goes, is direct—so he agreed to star in Corman’s Eat My Dust! if the producer let Howard direct the follow-up. And though Grand Theft Auto is not a sequel (Howard plays different characters in each movie), both pictures traffic in vehicular mayhem.

          Eat My Dust! was written and directed by frequent Corman collaborator Charles Griffith, who always brought gonzo humor to his work. The picture stars Howard as small-town kid Hoover Nievold, the car-crazy son of a world-weary country sheriff (Warren J. Kemmerling). Hoover’s desperate to make time with a sexy blonde named Darlene (Christopher Norris), and she’s a speed freak infatuated with a racecar owned by Bubba Jones (Dave Madden). Hoover steals the car and takes Darlene for a joyride so he can get laid. That’s pretty much the entire story. Bystanders lose property as Hoover blasts through the countryside,  the sheriff makes chase, police cars crack up in spectacular ways, and Griffith throws a few weird sight gags into the mix, but nearly the only thing differentiating Eat My Dust! from other Corman car flicks is the lively bluegrass score by ace mandolin player David Grisman. Still, Howard is appealingly peppy, Kemmerling is entertainingly cranky, Norris is wholesomely pretty, and the movie is basically harmless.

          As for the sequel, one must strain to find indications of Howard’s future directorial talent in Grand Theft Auto—the picture was made in the same quick-and-dirty fashion as Eat My Dust!—but great things often come from humble beginnings. Howard co-wrote Grand Theft Auto with his dad, character actor Rance Howard, and the sequel is more plot-driven but slightly less enjoyable than its predecessor, largely because it lacks the freewheeling abandon of Eat My Dust! In Grand Theft Auto, Howard plays Sam Freeman, a young California man of modest means who is eager to marry his wealthy sweetheart, Paula (Nancy Powers). Her folks object to the union, however, so Paula steals her parents’ Rolls-Royce, collects Sam, and makes for Vegas with authorities and her parents in hot pursuit. The story starts to mimic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) when word gets out that a reward has been placed on the kids’ safe return—random people join the chase and make the situation even more chaotic than before. Eventually, Paula and Sam become folk heroes by defying the oppressive dictates of the Establishment. (This is one of those pictures in which commentary from radio DJs is used to illustrate public sentiment, making Grand Theft Auto a watered-down version of the 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point.) Naturally, the movie concludes with an overwrought demolition derby. Alas, whereas Eat My Dust! has a certain crude charm from beginning to end, Grand Theft Auto runs out of gas well before it crosses the finish line.

Eat My Dust!: FUNKY

Grand Theft Auto: FUNKY

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)

          While not actually a good movie in terms of artistic achievement and/or narrative ambition, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is in some perverse ways the epitome of its genre. Throughout the ’70s, filmmakers made innumerable ennui-drenched flicks about young people hitting the road for crime sprees that represented a sort of anti-Establishment activism. In the best such pictures, the wandering youths articulated their angst so well that their actions felt meaningful; in the worst such pictures, the basic premise was simply an excuse for exploitative thrills. Since Dirty Mary Crazy Larry exists somewhere between these extremes, it’s emblematic of the whole early-’70s road-movie headspace. The picture also has just enough cleverness, reflected in flavorful dialogue and oblique camera angles, to validate the existence of genuine thematic material, even in the context of a trashy lovers-on-the-run picture.

          Peter Fonda stars as Larry, an iconoclastic driver pulling crimes to earn money for a new racecar. Riding shotgun during Larry’s adventure is Deke (Adam Roarke), an accomplice/mechanic. During the movie’s exciting opening sequence, Deke breaks into the home of a grocery-store manager (Roddy McDowall) and holds the man’s family hostage while Larry waltzes into the store to collect the contents of the store’s safe. Unfortunately, Larry’s most recent one-night stand, Mary (Susan George), tracks Larry down during his getaway—she steals his keys and threatens to tell the cops what he’s doing unless she lets him tag along. Thus, Deke, Larry, and Mary form an unlikely trio zooming across the Southwest with police in hot pursuit. Working from a novel by Richard Unekis, director John Hough and his assorted screenwriters do a fine job of balancing talky interludes with high-speed chase scenes, creating an ominous sense of inevitability about the drama’s impending resolution.

          Still, the characterizations are thin—although the crooks’ main pursuer, Sheriff Everett Franklin (Vic Morrow), is an enjoyably eccentric small-town lawman—and the performances are erratic. Roarke anchors the getaway scenes with a quiet intensity that complements Fonda’s enjoyably cavalier persona. Englishwoman George, however, is a screeching nuisance, presumably impeded by the task of mimicking redneck patois. She’s so annoying, in fact, that it’s easy to laugh when Fonda berates her with this bizarre ultimatum: “So help me, if you try another stunt like that, I’m gonna braid your tits!” Dirty Mary Crazy Larry zooms along as fast as the cars featured onscreen, delivering several nerve-jangling crash scenes and generally setting an interesting trap for the reckless protagonists. Yet the movie’s ending changes everything, and the finale is so quintessentially ’70s that it’s reason enough to check out this hard-charging romp.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: GROOVY

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

          Few movies are more beloved by fans of ennui-drenched ’70s New Hollywood cinema than Monte Hellman’s enigmatic drama Two-Lane Blacktop, which for years was almost impossible to see. Glimpsed only fleetingly in late-night broadcasts or repertory screenings, the movie built a reputation throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s as one of the lost masterpieces of its era. Now that the picture has been widely available for a decade, the shortcomings of Two-Lane Blacktop are as apparent as its virtues. Viewed through the lens of Me Decade angst, the tale of men drag-racing their way across the U.S. is a potent metaphor for the way some people felt adrift after breaking with traditional values—but taken merely at face value, the picture seems opaque and pretentious. Yet Two-Lane Blacktop somehow manages to justify both interpretations simultaneously. At its best, the movie says volumes about directionless lives, and at its worst, the movie itself is directionless.

          The narrative is almost mythical in its simplicity. The Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) zoom a hopped-up ’55 Chevy across America, picking up cash here and there by challenging strangers to races. Meanwhile, a slightly older man, G.T.O. (Warren Oates), identified only by the make of his yellow muscle car, cruises the highways in tandem with the heroes, occasionally bonding with them and occasionally clashing. G.T.O. has an interesting habit of picking up hitchhikers and telling each new passenger a different lie about his background. The other major player is the Girl (Laurie Bird), a drifter who spends most of her time in the Chevy and makes a vague romantic connection with the Driver, though she also ends up in the G.T.O. from time to time. (In a film populated by underdeveloped characters, hers is the most anemically imagined.)

          All of the characters hint at goals they want to accomplish, but in reality they seem addicted to the freedom of the road, presumably as interested in running away from something as running toward something. Obviously, there’s a lot of thematic heft implied by this situation, and in one of the movie’s best lines, Oates articulates what’s stirring inside these rootless racers: “If I’m not grounded pretty soon,” he says, “I’m gonna go into orbit.” In another scene, Oates toasts Taylor by saying, “Here’s to your destruction.” Taylor’s reply: “Same to you.”

          Are these characters seeking oblivion or salvation? Director Hellman and the movie’s writers (Will Corry, Floyd Mutrux, and Rudy Wurlitzer) aren’t interested in answers. Instead, the filmmakers focus on the day-to-day reality of moving down the road from one hamburger stand to the next, stopping only for sleep or to fix a broken engine; the clear implication is that the road is life, and the characters represent all of us trying to find our way even though we don’t know where we’re supposed to go. Other movies made similar points with greater clarity and depth, but the symbolic nature of the characters in Two-Lane Blacktop still speaks to sympathetic viewers decades after the film’s original release. Part of the appeal is undoubtedly the presence of real-life rock musicians Taylor and Wilson, since this was the only time either gave a significant acting performance. Neither is particularly revelatory, but they’re both handsome and intense, representing a certain romantic ideal of with-it masculinity circa early-’70s America.

Two-Lane Blacktop: FUNKY

Mad Max (1979)

          Australian director George Miller announced himself to the international marketplace as a formidable storyteller with Mad Max, a violent story set in a bleak near future where brutal gangs clash with trigger-happy cops on the battlefields of open highways; Miller’s camera swirls and swoops around the action in a kinetic way, accentuating the excitement generated by the confrontations between leather-clad road warriors. Mad Max was also the first opportunity for many viewers to see the young Mel Gibson, who tapped into his well-documented reservoir of personal rage to play an already tough cop transformed into a grim avenger by unfortunate circumstance. Having said all that, is Mad Max a particularly good movie? Not really.

          The story is a tricked-up rehash of standard vigilante tropes, Straw Dogs with car fetishism thrown in for good measure. The narrative is also relentlessly histrionic, with every scene punctuated by capital letters in terms of blunt foreshadowing and heavy-handed visual metaphors. Yet even though there’s not a whit of subtlety to be found in these 88 minutes, the acting is generally quite strong. It’s interesting to watch Gibson’s first attempt at the man-on-the-edge routine he later perfected in countless Hollywood movies; leading lady Joanne Samuel is earthy and warm; and villain Hugh Keays-Byrne does an effective job of portraying a punk-rock version of your friendly neighborhood sadist (his one shaved eyebrow is a nice touch). So while the story is thoroughly clichéd and the violence is cartoonishly excessive (let’s run that guy over twice, because once is never enough), Mad Max seethes with the energy unique to ambitious young artists who are desperate to show off their skills.

          After Mad Max made a splash, Warner Bros. hired Miller to shoot The Road Warrior (1981), a hybrid remake/sequel that features Gibson in a star-marking reprise of his Mad Max role. In addition to a bigger budget, The Road Warrior has more imagination and style than its predecessor, though it shares the same numbing sledgehammer approach. A third film in the series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, appeared in 1985, and a fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road, is reportedly in the works, albeit without Gibson in the lead role.

Mad Max: FUNKY

The Muppet Movie (1979)

          True story: When The Muppet Movie came out in 1979, I fell so completely in love with the film that I went to see it every day for a week. Admittedly, I was 10 and therefore just about the perfect age for the picture, but still, there’s a reason the first cinematic outing of Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and the rest of Jim Henson’s Muppets got under my skin. Sweet but tart enough to avoid being cloying, the story unfolds like a classic Hollywood fable in the Frank Capra tradition—at the beginning of the picture, Kermit is just another frog playing a banjo in a swamp until a vacationing talent agent (Dom DeLuise) informs Kermit he could entertain millions of people if he went to Tinseltown.

          And that, right there, is what kills me about The Muppet Movie: It’s a story about the one noble reason for making films, which is using the cinematic medium to enrich the lives of others. As someone who has spent his entire professional life involved with movies, I lose sight of that beautiful idea every day, and I would never pretend that all of my reasons for embracing a cinematic existence are admirable. Nonetheless, somewhere inside me is the 10-year-old kid who connected with Kermit’s dream, and we could all do worse than remembering who we wanted to be before life made us who we actually are, with all of our petty flaws.

          If all of this sounds awfully high-minded since the subject at hand is a family comedy starring a bunch of felt puppets, it’s useful to explain that the surfaces of The Muppet Movie delighted my younger self as much as the heart of the film touched me. Brightly colored, fast-moving, sly, and tuneful, The Muppet Movie is a musical comedy alternating between charming dramatic vignettes (oh, Miss Piggy, the obstacles you place in your own path), silly comedy sketches (Gonzo taking a ride on a handful of balloons), and toe-tapping songs written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher. (As if penning the gorgeous main theme “Rainbow Connection” wasn’t enough, the duo also contribute fun numbers like the jaunty road anthem “Movin’ Right Along” and the Electric Mayhem’s funky jam, “Can You Picture That?”)

          The story about Kermit slowly gathering a surrogate family during his trip to Hollywood is fun (why wouldn’t Fozzie Bear drive a Studebaker?), and the stop-and-start romance between Kermit and Miss Piggy offers an amusing satire of overwrought romantic melodrama. The bad-guy business with evil restauranter Doc Hopper (Charles During) is genius, because what better nemesis for Kermit than a fast-food titan who operates a chain selling frog’s legs? (During is wonderfully flamboyant, and Austin Pendleton is a hoot as his morally conflicted sidekick.) The movie regularly drifts into loopy territory, like the climax in which Keith Moon-inspired muppet Animal plays a bigger role than usual, and on top of everything, the movie is stuffed with amazing cameos by comedy stars and other celebrities. Of special note are Mel Brooks as a nutjob German scientist, Steve Martin as an obnoxious waiter (“Oh, may I?”), and Orson Welles as a Hollywood mogul.

          Decades after my weeklong immersion in The Muppet Movie, I still find it as clever, entertaining, and heartfelt as ever—if not more so, since the intervening years have revealed how rare it is to find a genuine celebration of decency anywhere in the cinema. I doubt I’ll ever tire of listening to Henson’s deeply felt statement.

The Muppet Movie: RIGHT ON

Heroes (1977)

          Sincere and well-intentioned but not particularly good, Heroes takes a seriocomic look at the traumas plaguing Vietnam-era combat vets trying to assimilate back into normal life. The picture is most noteworthy as a star vehicle for Henry Winkler, who was well into his phenomenally popular run as ’50s greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on the sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984). Leaving the leather jacket and pomade behind, Winkler plays a delusional vet named Jack Dunne, who flees a New York City mental hospital to pursue his bizarre dream of opening a worm farm with several combat buddies. He lands on a cross-country bus, seated next to conflicted city girl Carol Bell (Sally Field), who has also fled Manhattan; she’s ditching her impending nuptials for reasons that are never particularly clear. What ensues is an odd sort of romantic comedy, with these mismatched souls getting closer to each other as they experience colorful adventures.

          One of these exploits is a long visit with Jack’s Army pal Ken Boyd (Harrison Ford), a simple-minded Midwesterner with a self-destructive streak; he spends his time entering (and losing) stock-car races when he’s not getting hammered and shooting off his M16 in the fields of his family farm. Jack and Carol also run afoul of an ornery bus driver (Val Avery) and the slimy denizens of a redneck bar. Excepting the visit with Ken, the movie’s episodes feel contrived and random, a problem exacerbated by screenwriter James Carabatsos’ vague characterizations and, especially, by the casting of Field and Winkler. Carabatsos can’t figure out how to balance between the film’s comedic and dramatic elements, so the movie’s tonal shifts induce audience whiplash.

          As for Field and Winkler, they’re so inherently likeable that it’s hard to buy them as edgy characters, and the script constantly undercuts their work by going for cutesy jokes at the expense of emotional reality. Nonetheless, Heroes isn’t bad so much as sloppy. Many stretches of the film are charming, and Field and Winkler conjure flashes of sweet intimacy whenever the storytelling calms down enough to let them do serious work. It’s also interesting to see Ford playing a character role instead of a lead, since Heroes was made before his ascension to superstardom in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). He clearly relishes the hard work of inhabiting a troubled individual, and he has many strong moments.

Heroes: FUNKY

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976)

Fleeting glimpses of a popular starlet in the altogether are the only quasi-redeeming values of Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, a lovers-on-the-run picture so unremarkable that calling it pedestrian would disparage the myriad lovers-on-the-run pictures that are uninspired but at least tolerable. Directed by hack extraordinaire Mark L. Lester, who never let the quest for quality impede his brisk shooting schedules, the picture concerns a young drive-in waitress with dreams of becoming a country singer. For no discernible reason, Bobbie Jo abruptly quits her job and runs off with a customer who imagines himself a modern-day outlaw in the Billy the Kid mode (because, apparently, Bobbie Jo figures a crime spree will land her on the Opry stage). Playing the outlaw of the title is the charmless Marjoe Gortner, a minor ’70s figure who appeared in a series of awful movies before eventually drifting out of public view; nothing he does here defines his absence from the screen as a cinematic tragedy. With such a major vacuum at the center of the film and with Lester’s filmmaking characteristically shoddy, all eyes fall on the film’s leading lady, Lynda Carter. As always, the actress best known as TV’s Wonder Woman is an amiable presence, and as always, she’s an absolute knockout. So if ogling Carter for 88 minutes sounds like fun, dive in, and you’ll be rewarded with a few brisk peeks at her celebrated torso. If you actually want an interesting movie to accompany your eye candy, then, sadly, you’re out of luck. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw: SQUARE

Moving Violation (1976)

           The ’70s were filled with interchangeable action pictures about young rebels zooming across the countryside in hot cars while redneck cops chase after them, and only a few examples of the genre really stick in the memory—for instance, Vanishing Point (1971) is full of turbo-charged counterculture metaphors, and Grand Theft Auto (1977) is notable as Ron Howard’s directorial debut. Yet Moving Violation is probably as good an example of the genre as any other movie, simply because it lacks any distinguishing characteristics whatsoever: It is, quite literally, generic. Kay Lenz and Stephen McHattie costar as standard-issue mixed-up kids who fall into an adventure when they witness a corrupt sheriff committing a murder and then flee, so most of the picture comprises scenes of the duo driving fast while the sheriff and his cronies try to kill them. This results in lots of slo-mo crashes through things like haystacks and outhouses. Between chases, the kids stop to hang out with incidental characters and to have sex.

          Lenz, an interesting actor prone to delivering uninteresting performances when given substandard material, is sexy but lifeless, while McHattie unsuccessfully attempts a James Dean-type performance with all sorts of mumbling and sulking, coming across like a slovenly kid who wandered in front of the camera. Not coincidentally, McHattie played Dean in a TV movie around the time he made Moving Violation, so apparently he decided to get two movies out of the same performance. Because the leads are so drab, the movie is inert until old pro Eddie Albert shows up as the wiseass lawyer the kids hire to help unravel their situation; Albert’s charm and timing are easily the best things in the movie.

          Bearing all the penny-pinching hallmarks of product generated on the Roger Corman assembly line, Moving Violation is hampered by disjointed editing, so scenes don’t really start or end—they just blend together without any sense of the passage of time. The movie also bops chaotically from bleak scenes of youthful desperation to yee-haw road action accompanied by banjo music, so by the time the flick segues from its dark climax to the zippy Phil Everly-sung end-credits song “Detroit Man,” Moving Violation has committed nearly every movie violation imaginable.

Moving Violation: LAME

Deadhead Miles (1971)

More a series of vignettes than a story, the first original feature written by enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick follows an eccentric crook named Cooper as he drives a stolen big rig across the heartland, with a sardonic hitchhiker his sole companion during several peculiar misadventures. Alan Arkin, indulging his most flamboyant impulses, plays Cooper, while gangly Jeffersons costar Paul Benedict plays the hitchhiker, so the picture is infused with strange behavior, even by the permissive standards of ’70s cinema. Malick’s dialogue is equally bizarre. Consider this exchange between Cooper, popping Benzedrine to stay awake, and the hitchhiker. Cooper: “Sometimes I sit back, roll down the windows, and let Benny do the driving.” Hitchhiker: “Don’t they affect your brain?” Cooper: “I wish they would.” None of the individual episodes is especially memorable, except perhaps the random bit of Cooper trying to make time with a redneck woman until he realizes she’s chained to the furnace of her dilapidated shack, but the dialogue is flavorful throughout. “I got a good look at that feller—I see him again, I’m gonna stick ’im in the head with a fork.” Or, “I listen to the radio, and that’s how I learn about current events, most of which aren’t in the almanac.” Cooper is an inept sort of maniac, sparking loopy conversations with strangers and committing petty larceny everywhere he goes, but never accomplishing much of anything. The hitchhiker is a willing accomplice during most of the aimless journey, even though he never really gets the hang of tossing soda bottles at street signs the truck passes; Cooper’s a stone-cold pro at that. Interesting people float through the movie (watch for Charles Durning, Hector Elizondo, Loretta Swit, and cameo players Ida Lupino and George Raft), and director Vernon Zimmerman is an interesting Hollywood footnote because he made the amiable cult flick Fade to Black (1980). But the strongest appeal of this cheerfully pointless movie—which has never been released theatrically or on video—is spending 90 minutes inside a funhouse-mirror world of Malick’s creation.

Deadhead Miles: FUNKY

Slither (1973)

So offbeat that I’m surprised Wes Anderson hasn’t bought the remake rights, this amiable comedy stars James Caan as an ex-con (ex-caan?) who inadvertently gathers a surrogate family of weirdos as he pursues a fortune in stolen loot. The eccentricity is front and center right from the first scene, in which Dick (Caan) visits his crooked pal Harry (Richard B. Schull) in a ratty old country house. As they chat, gunsels close in from all directions and riddle Harry with bullets, so a dying Harry secrets Dick into an underground bomb shelter and blows up the house, obliterating the gunsels in the process. Dick exits the rubble, dusts himself off, and shuffles away to his next adventure. He soon crosses paths with ditzy drifter Kittty (Sally Kellerman), who has a nasty habit of holding up roadside establishments at gunpoint. And eventually Dick partners with low-rent bandleader Barry (Peter Boyle), who claims to know the location of the stashed cash. So once the movie’s up to speed, Dick, Harry, and Kitty are roaming through trailer parks and other kitschy locations in Harry’s Winnebago, while mysterious villains in color-coordinated vans chase after them. It’s all very zippy and absurd, sort of like a novelistic character study with a crime element thrown in to keep things moving. Caan seems unsure how to play his character, but Boyle and Kellerman go full-out in every scene; Boyle’s a smooth-talking loser eager to latch onto something big, and Kellerman’s a motor-mouthed space case eager to latch onto anything. The imaginative screenplay by first-timer W.D. Richter (of Buckaroo Banzai fame) eventually runs out of gas, but it travels to quite a few interesting places before that happens, wringing affectionate chuckles from the spectacle of hapless characters trapped in pathetic situations; a playful scene set during a trailer-park bingo game is a standout in terms of sheer eccentric fun. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Slither: FUNKY