The nice thing about Nice Dreams is that, if you can live with a little raunchiness, it's fun, and it's funnier than C&C's "Next Movie," their second movie after "Up in Smoke": the humor doesn't rely so completely on old jokes about the drug culture. Cheech and Chong are bawdy, they're unself-consciously irreverent, and if any idiocy can happen, it will happen to them. So naturally people enjoy watching them. [5 June 1981, p.17]

After getting off to a wretched start, the film settles down in mid-passage and grows unexpectedly appealing. Down the stretch it reverts to faltering form. The best policy might be to go about 30 minutes late and leave about 15 minutes early. [7 Aug 1981, p.C1]

The new film, a fitfully amusing and perfectly harmless spoof of the morbid and masochistic cliches that sustain the typical soap opera, represents a mellow, spruced-up turn toward the mainstream. [06 Jul 1981, p.C3]

An inconsistent but good-natured ramble, Bustin' Loose looks like a secure investment for Richard Pryor fans.

Directing from his own screenplay, Alan Alda displays an alarming aptitude for the comedy of manners at its most trifling and synthetic. [22 May 1981, p.F1]

The conventions that worked for High Noon break down in the high-tech atmosphere of Outland and the story seems trite and dinky. [23 May 1981, p.C6]

Sounds hard to mess up, but Death Hunt is so unconvincing that you never once stop asking yourself, "Why is this manhunt necessary?" [27 May 1981, p.B6]

Happy Birthday to Me is a cheesy tease from the outset. The opening sequence entraps the first victim, then allows her to escape, then entraps her again and allows her to escape again. By the time the filmmakers get around to making a murder scene stick, you're already fed up with their methodology and wondering why the movie wasn't called something like "The Coed With Nine Lives." [15 May 1981, p.F4]

The repeated fake-outs even lead one to entertain the fond delusion that The Burning might be absent-minded enough to diverge into harmless farce and end up as a rehash of "Meatballs." Regrettably, once Cropsy strikes again, he can't seem to stop, and the movie keeps him company by going methodically beserk. [28 May 1981, p.D11]

Miner doesn't linger over the multiple throat-slashings and skull-splittings. Comparatively speaking, he seems less bloodthirsty than the directors of Friday the 13th, The Exterminator or Mother's Day, to name only a few competitors of grosser gruesomeness. [13 May 1981, p.B6]

Harry Hamlin remains in a depressing, narcissistic low gear in King of the Mountain. Part of the problem is a blah role: Steve is not a protagonist of many words, or even many revealing looks. [06 May 1981, p.E7]

Priceless it ain't, but if the kids are determined to enjoy it, the brain damage should be minimal. [18 Apr 1981, p.D3]

Unfortunately, screenwriter David Shaber hasn't laid the sort of tracks that can support a clever or gripping vehicle. The rickety foundation might be finessed by swift, dynamic direction -- the sort of approach William Friedkin brought to The French Connection or Walter Hill to The Warriors, an urban thriller Shaber also helped fabricate -- but newcomer Bruce Malmuth isn't agile enough.

Despite its excesses, "The Howling" has some tricks and jokes worth howling about. The sexual undercurrents in the werewolf myth have been made playfully explicit, especially in the sultry, voluptuous form of Elisabeth Brooks, cast as a nympho werewolf named Marsha. When she ambushes a victim in the woods, they change forms in the course of coupling strategically obscured by a blazing campfire in the foreground -- a deliberate howl of a sex scene. [13 March 1981, p.C1]

It is a fine picture, sweet and pathetic, witty and tender. [17 Apr 1981, p.19]

It's the most exaggerated example yet of the abiding imbalance in modernist filmmaking, where an abundance of texture fails to conceal a minimum of substance, although it frequently makes the act of concealment pictorially exciting. [27 Mar 1981, p.C1]

Nicholson looks severly overmatched against Lange but the basic problem is that the filmmakers miss the mutuality of the obsession envisioned by Cain -- an attraction that enslaves Frank and Cora, inspiring murder and betrayal in the wake of adulterous passion. [20 March 1981, p.C1]

There's sure nothing purgative about the kind of anxiety the filmmakers are exploiting. If anything, it condemns them to strictly degenerate company. [24 Mar 1981, p.B8]

The intelligence and artistry with which Cutter's Way dresses up the top few cliches of the 1980s is amazing. This is a film with brittle dialogue, complicated acting and visual subtlety in the service of a trite and unworkable story. [20 Nov 1981, p.21]

The Funhouse begins with a lamely facetious reprise of the shower sequence from Psycho and slides steadily downhill there. [18 Mar 1981, p.B4]

Indeed, you come out of Back Roads feeling more familiar with the configuration of Sally Field's spinal column and chestbone than the character she's struggling to embody.

The Dogs of War can be recommended only as a desperate snack for rabid tastes.

Ralph Bakshi's half-baked epic American Pop exposes the banality of his pop mentality. The creator of "Lord of the Rings' and "Fritz the Cat" surpasses himself: American Pop is undeniably his sorriest spectacle yet. [6 March 1981, p.C11]

The movie's very smoothness may set viewers up for a letdown. It's a low-key exercise in genre suspense and romance that fails to generate a high level of excitement or deliver classic dynamic thrills. [06 Mar 1981, p.C1]

The shocks are strictly mechanical and redundant, the script uncomplicated by incidental humor or character byplay. It comes as no great surprise when the killer is revealed to a be a Halloween clone and then allowed to vanish, aggravating the pathetic resemblance. The reviewers who made a fuss over Halloween have a lot to answer for. [25 Feb 1981, p.B12]

At best, the filmmakers are guilty of wholesale confusion. For lamentable example, the plot degenerates into a hopeless tangle of loose threads and discarded hooks, beginning with the initial vicious teaser, which identifies Pam Grier as a drug-crazed prostitute who guns down a pair of unwary young patrolmen in their squad car. [7 Feb 1981, p.C1]

The new facetious depressant from Colin Higgins -- the screenwriter and now director who has parlayed "Harold and Maude," "The Silver Streak" and "Foul Play" into one of the more baffling winning streaks on record -- runs a merely weak comic premise into the ground with coarse, laborious execution. [19 Dec 1980, p.E1]

Producer Ray Stark, screenwriter Neil Simon and director Jay Sandrich obviously intended to whip up a frothy, madcap entertainment in the tradition of the screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s. Their failure to "make one like they used to" incurs a double liability: In addition to wasting resources and disappointing expectations, Seems Like Old Times -- now at area theaters -- appears to trifle with an older and better movie.

Such a half-baked, arbitrary update that the decrepit plot seems to arise from the misty region of a kind of Jewish Brigadoon in contemporary Manhattan, a Ghetto That Time Forgot. [20 Dec 1980, p.D3]

Inside Moves is sneaky-funny and sneaky-affecting. It's an artfully old-fashioned morale booster celebrating comeback kids: apparent losers, outcasts and hard-luck cases who manage to pull themselves together, buck the odds and reaffirm their pride, dignity and masculinity. [18 Dec 1980, p.C1]

The bitchery may be funny for its own sake, but it causes the film to lose touch with its real heroine and genre. Moreover, the Christie plot ends up so drastically foreshortened that you'd swear a reel must have been misplaced, although the sluggish direction of Guy Hamilton doesn't make one anxious to see it restored.

This sequel to his earlier hit, Every Which Way But Loose, delivers exactly what it promises, namely lots of fistfights, car chases, booze, broads and country music, plus a dollop of the old Eastwood bootstrap philosophy ("Handouts are what you get from the government. A hand-up is what you get from your friends"). As for the comedy, it starts out with Clyde the orangutan defecating in squad cars, and goes downhill from there. [19 Dec 1980, p.23]

Considering how firmly the image of Popeye is fixed in the minds of all spinach-bred Americans, it's daring of the film to open by showing the character in its familiar cartoon form. But Robin Williams so utterly captures the Popeye idea as to justify this, and Shelley Duvall is such a perfect Olive Oyl that it will always be difficult to imagine her impersonating a human being. [19 Dec 1980, p.20]

An inspired comedy title, Stir Crazy blends several inventive, high-spirited performing talents into a tangy, cheerful entertainment. [12 Dec 1980, p.E1]

As derivative interplanetary clunkers go, Flash Gordon is good for a few laughs -- some of them intentional. [05 Dec 1980, p.F1]

Possibly . . . no, probably . . . no, definitely . . . the worst rock film of all time. [24 Nov 1980, p.B11]

Martin Scorsese's obsession with a dubious mystique of masculinity turns Raging Bull into a ponderous work of metaphysical cinematic bull.

Alligator, the most amusing variation yet on the Jaws formula, finds plenty of room for incidental humor and romantic byplay while sustaining a breezy suspense plot. [20 May 1981, p.B1]

The most perfunctory and least imaginative of the recent cycle of horror melodramas, Motel Hell may be credited with a fleeting wry touch, but it wears out its welcome by running a minimum of ghoulish stunts into the ground. [25 Oct 1980, p.F4]

To present a simple progression from crime to trial to death, when a moral dilemma was promised, is a dramatic crime. [01 May 1981, p.19]

Fade to Black washes out by relying too heavily on assocations from older films. The excerpts from old movies are far more vivid and evocative than the host attraction. [12 Nov 1980, p.B7]

Private Benjamin seems coarse, sluggish and interminable as a comedy scenario.

A powerful period setting might have taken up the slack, but Lynch doesn't impose the past as vividly as the theme demands. Nor does he place us in a position to appreciate Merrick's fears and longings as if they were our own. [17 Oct 1980, p.C1]

If Kagemusha falls short dramatically, and many admirers may not share that impression, the sag occurs at an awesome level of filmmaking prowess. Ironically, this tale of a shadow warrior is diminished only by the length and intensity of the artistic shadow thrown by Kurosawa in his prime. [21 Nov 1980, p.F1]

Oh, God! Book II revives that excruciating game of false piety in which Hollywood humorists grovel for brownie points in eternity by presuming to be God's chummiest press agents. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

The rapport that ought to evolve between Gloria and her juvenile charge never quite makes it from the filmmaker's imagination onto the screen. [10 Oct 1980, p.E7]

At its best, My Bodyguard recalls the freshness and authenticity of Breaking Away -- and for a while seems that it is going to be even better. That impression proves premature. After building up to a stirring, climactic turning point, Alan Ormsby's original screenplay falters in the stretch. [15 Aug 1980, p.C1]

Given the source material, the film is as good as respectful adaptation could make it: a high-class soap opera, compulsively watchable despite a quality of insight eventually exposed as trite and dubious in the extreme. [26 Sep 1980, p.F1]

Making a scintillating feature directing debut at the age of 30, Mastroianni reveals a special knack for juxtaposing funny and frightening stimuli, recalling De Plama and Steven Spielberg at their most provocatively amusing.

Smokey and the Bandit II -- is a premeditated embarrassment. It seems to prove that entertainers who discover a successful formula may not have the foggiest notion of how to protect, duplicate and sustain it.

Clearly, The Octagon is no real threat to War and Peace or even Beau Geste, but it will appeal to those who are still in mourning for Bruce Lee, who like carefully choreographed fight scenes and who enjoy standing in front of a mirror looking at their muscles. [25 Aug 1980, p.B1]

Xanadu cannot possibly be described as a good movie, but it can be recommended to those who can tolerate large amounts of intravenous marzipan. The music is highly enjoyable -- though perhaps more so once one gets the record album home and isn't bothered with the story -- and the film so unerringly airy that it has a beneficent, tranquilizing, bemusing effect.

The Final Countdown emerges from a round trip through this time-bending exercise flattened into a two-dimensional letdown. [01 Aug 1980, p.C7]

Even this garbage-can world deserves a better grade of junk. [7 Aug 1980, p.B4]

Shabbily photographed and raggedly assembled. Caddyshack is hanging evidence that Ramis wasn't prepared for the assignment or clever enough to fake it...Ramis proves unable to sustain a single frayed thread of plot continuity, and none of the prominent cast members -- Chevy Chase, Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight -- enjoys opportunities decisive enough or direction competent enough to generate a little comic momentum and help prevent the gratuitous material from falling in a stinky, dismembered heap.

Dressed to Kill is a witty blend of suspense and humor, a skillful manipulation of basic nightmare ingredients that leaves one limp, amused and always impressed. It's an achievement particularly noteworthy in contrast to the Grade-Z "horror" movies that have been cluttering up the screens lately. [25 July 1980, p.17]

Though 45 minutes longer than the original release, still feels thinner, less complex, more mythic and far less compelling.

Against all odds and prejudices, Cheech and Chong seem to get better and better. Their new film is a vulgar, zany kick. Cheech and Chong's Next Movie decisively confirms the flair for movie comedy that the pair demonstrated so disarmingly in "Up in Smoke." Objectionable as their raunchy sense of humor and simple-minded, potheaded characters may be from a socially responsible standpoint, Cheech and Chong transcend the objections. [19 July 1980, p.B1]

Friday the Thirteenth meets Saturday Night Fever. Good and promising actors -- people who deserve a better film the next time -- are too numerous to name. [16 Aug 1980, p.D2]

Used Cars, a mean, spirited farce about cutthroat rivalry between ruthless used-car salesmen somewhere in the Southwest, recalls the worst tendencies of "Ace in the Hole" crossed with the worst tendencies of "One, Two, Three." It's assiduously nasty and hard-driving too, a double-duty excess. Director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis has undeniable energy and flair, but it's being misspent on pretexts and situations that seem inexcusably gratuitous and snide.

A scruffy but appealing light entertainment, the movie owes its unexpected charm to the fact that comedian and dog seem to complement and humanize each other. [09 Sep 1980, p.C3]

The movie isn't skillful enough to back up its satiric presumptions. Though it obviously aims to be sassy and uninhibited, Airplane! never approaches the comic heights achieved unwittingly by "Airport '75" and the peerless "Concorde -- Airport 1979." [3 July 1980, p.C11]

The Blue Lagoon is a plump sitting duck, waiting to be roasted by sarcastic spectators. But director Randal Kleiser and his associates may enjoy the last laugh at the box office if this oblivious romantic idyll connects with susceptibilities as naive and dumb-founding as their own.

Flawed and uneven, but vigorous and imaginative, The Stunt Man is a brash, whirlwind action comedy about the paranoid uncertainties of a fugitive who takes refuge with a movie company on location. [24 Oct 1980, p.B1]

In one scene -- a costume ball on his ship -- Korman wears an archaic naval uniform and explains that is is an exact copy of "the uniform worn by Lord Nelson when he defeated the Spanish Armada." That's very funny, but one wonders whether anyone who understands why it is funny could enjoy the rest of the picture. [11 Aug 1980, P.B3]

Ironically, the stars didn't get it together either. The Blues Brothers offers the melancholy spectacle of them sinking deeper and deeper into a comic grave.

Filmmakers ought to be granted time off for good intentions. Then, perhaps, those responsible for the prison film Brubaker could have gotten their do-good impulses under reasonable control, and used them to make a good picture, instead of a goody-goody one.

Rough Cut isn't the finest vintage of its light, dry style, but it is easy to take and when it ends you may be sorry there isn't more. [20 June 1980, p.17]

The movie is so shabbily written (by Dennis Hackin) and unevenly directed (by Eastwood himself) that the traditional obstacles to romantic comedy consummation are overwhelmed by superfluous complications and imprecise calculations.

Downey's direction is so flat that about 20 rock songs have been inserted to cover the dithering continuity with a semblance of rhythm. Like the flatulent and shattering noises, the score functions a distracting sound effect, camouflaging tattered swatches of "comedy." [10 June 1980, p.B2]

An absurdly upbeat romantic vehicle for John Travolta. The film-makers appear to believe that the moviegoing public craves a reassuring love story, at any cost. This film ends up as s counterfeit endorsement of the so-called simpler so-called values.

In spite of cliches as thick as stars in the sky, the price of admission to "The Mountain Men" may be worth almost as much as one 1830 beaver pelt.

With The Hollywood Knights, Floyd Mutrux, the director of "American Hot Wax," seems determined to wear out the welcome of a once-amusing nostalgic device once and for all.

Stanley Kubrick's production of The Shining, a ponderous, lackluster distillation of Stephen King's best-selling novel, looms as the Big Letdown of the new film season. I can't recall a more elaborately ineffective scare movie. You might say that The Shining, opening today at area theaters, has no peers: Few directors achieve the treacherous luxury of spending five years (and $12 million-$15 million) on such a peerlessly wrongheaded finished product.

The total effect is fast and attractive and occasionally amusing. Like a good hot dog, that's something of an achievement in a field where unpalatable junk is the rule.

Like Parker's earlier features, Fame is a stylistic self-advertisement. The locale has shifted, but one recognizes the identical false urgency and coy tumult. Parker seems destined to spend his career whipping up ephemeral picturesque frenzies. [20 June 1980, p.C2]

Humanoids is a clever combination of Jaws and Alien. [09 Jun 1980, p.B1]

When the names of the players flash on the screen in Friday the 13th, it is not so much a list of the cast as a body count. Practically everyone who spends more than five minutes on camera dies horribly -- in close-up. Considering the quality of the acting, most of them deserve no better. [13 May 1980, p.B3]

An admirably crisp, incisive counter-terrorist thriller, the most proficient and entertaining movie of its kind since Richard Lester's Juggernaut.

The Tin Drum is likely to be remembered as another conspicuous example of why the urge to film certain books ought to be resisted. [25 Apr 1980, p.C1]

Happily, director Peter Medak is aware of the fundamental absurdity of his ghost story. In fact, he's taken considerable care to compensate with virtuoso displays of scenic and atmospheric suggestiveness. The Changeling has a stylistic gusto and polish that were conspicuously missing from The Fog and The Amityville Horror. [28 Mar 1980, p.F1]

There's an adult mentality throughout the film, and not a nice one. It gets all the smirking fun it can, then tacks on some quick sermonizing at the end. One minute sex is like a camp food-fight -- against the rules but everybody has a good time-- and the next it's the grown-up activity that leads directly to that other favorite grown-up activity -- depression. The accompanying adult had better be prepared to explain not sex, but "Do as we say, don't do as we show."

Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." No -- less. Except for one grisly, chilling scene too horrible to describe, this one was an unintentionally funny stroll. And pity the poor actors -- George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes; it's the TV-jeebies. Strictly second-string city. [9 June 1980, p.B1]

Although their film resolves itself into a lurid shambles, screenwriter Gerald Ayres and director Adrian Lyne demonstrate a certain flair for foxy exploitation. [19 Apr 1980, p.C3]

Huston's straightforward, sardonic direction reinforces a compact, unusually literate screenplay. [07 May 1980, p.C1]

Hackneyed at exposition, Miller demonstrates breakneck prowess at chase sequences and terrifying shock effects. [29 April 1980, p. B1]

Stanley Donen's otherwise witty and diverting science-fiction thriller Saturn 3, a parable of jealousy set on a remote, futuristic Eden suddenly contaminated by insane lust, suffers desperately for the lack of an epilogue. As a result, an hour and a half of tense, funny sexual melodrama is squashed flat by a dud of a fadeout. [18 Feb 1980, p.B1]

Technically the movie is flawless. One scene in Central Park, when Pacino confronts the murder suspect on a deserted rain-slicked path, is haunting and beautfully photographed. But that's hardly a reason to sit through the rest of this wretched film. [22 Feb 1980, p.19]

An acceptable scene-setter, Carpenter reveals glaring inadequacies as a storyteller. [15 Feb 1980, p.C3]

Imagine National Lampoon's Animal House without the raunch, originality or wit and you have Midnight Madness. [08 Feb 1980, p.16]

This is basically a story about the pastime of shopping as an antidote to boredom, only the shopper has wandered into a cocktail lounge, instead of a store, and is looking for something live, or nearly so, to try on. That any human activity worth considering should ensue from this situation would be ridiculous to expect. [8 Feb 1980, p.20]

Going in Style is cautiously conceived, but it also projects a sincere human interest and reveals a command of intimate, subtle dramatization that is likely to prove Brest's artistic and commercial fortune sooner or later. [25 Dec 1979, C1]

The perceptive dramatic touches of Fonda and Redford take the stereotypical edge off the stock characters of "cowboy" and "career girl." But these serve ridiculous story making a mushy, if not disreputable, moral point. [21 Dec 1979, p.32]

Despite its obviously derivative elements and lack of flair in certain areas, notably writing and casting, the movie is at worst an entertaining redundancy, a brisk and diverting pastiche of familiar science-fiction adventure hokum. [24 Dec 1979, p.C1]

Scavenger Hunt, a solvenly farce about a frantic competition for a multi-million dollar legacy, is the studio's bottom-of-the barrel Christmas treat. [29 Dec 1979, p.C6]

By the time the film is over, the movie has degenerated with a jaundiced vengeance. Fosse's sour, grandstanding cynicism imposed an intolerable burden of self-pity on his talent, our compassion and the tradition of the backstage muscial.

The fragile satric fable seemed to defy adaptation. But despite its shortcomings, director Hal Ashby managed to transplant the undernourished narrative with remarkable success. [08 Feb 1980, p.D1]

The complications of international diplomacy have been ridiculously simplified -- a bare room with an obviously pasteboard view symbolizes Soviet duplicity. Scenes that ought to be suspenseful are put into flashbacks, so that you know in advance that the dangers were survived. [18 Apr 1980, p.19]

1941 represents an appalling waste of filmmaking and performing resources. As one would expect, Spielberg, who directed "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," sustains a high energy level. But the energy is expended on material that is pointless at best and occasionally hateful. [15 Dec 1979, p.C1]

For my taste a little bit of Steve Martin goes a long way. Moreover, a rickety vehicle like The Jerk is apt to wear out as aspiring comic star's welcome in one swift stroke.

There are only so many ways to photograph black starry space and the under-bellies of spaceships, and the films that got there first used them all up.

The best reason to see The Rose is to be in a position to relish the inevitable parody on "Saturday Night Live." Here's a sitting turkey that virtually sits up and begs to be plucked. [8 Nov 1979, p.F1]

Moses has staged one totally abstract, contemplative sequence of Erving practicing by himself on a playground court at night. The succession of slow-motion, overlapping dissolves of Erving gliding and dunking in solitary grandeur is a rather pretty abstraction, but it seems to stylize his prowess in a misleading way. The transcendant thing about Erving is that he's capable of performing feats in competition and in real time that the rest of us only dream of doing while playing one-on-none.

Fred Walton, who directed Stranger, seems more skillful at orchestrating creepy atmospherics than John Carpenter was in Halloween. At the same time, he's scarcely clever or stylish enough to make Stranger a thriller worth going out of your way for. [20 Oct 1979, p.F6]

For all its awkwardness and mawkishness, Santini deserves the shot. It has an authentic core of family drama and humor that could stir a large public. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Taking frantic aim at a fairly promising target -- American jurisprudence -- And Justice for All makes a trigger-happy, scatterbrained spectacle of itself. Although it shatters all over the screen, this would-be topical satire may strike enough chords among rabble-rousing yahoos to become a hit of sorts. Profoundly depressing sorts, that is. [19 Oct 1979, p.B6]

Shocking and relentless, the movie pioneers an unholy border between Rembrandt and pornography, finding a transcendent unity in the abasements and attainments of man.

The Black Stallion is one of the few movies that justifies the word "sublime." It casts an immediate pictorial spell of wonder and discovery and sustains it until a fadeout that leaves you in a euphoric mood, lingering over images whose beauty and emotional intensity you want to prolong and savor. [9 Dec 1979, p.G1]

A sporadically funny, marginally interesting fiasco that might have evolved into a memorable romantic comedy.

There's no doubt about Burt Reynolds' skill. Starting Over finds Reynolds at a level of proficiency that approaches the awesome. [05 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Herzog has nothing of lasting value to offer the vampire tradition. His Nosferatu is at best unintentional, fitfully risible camp.

Diverting, polished chase thriller. [28 Sep 1979, p.E1]

The character is again a lackluster after-thought, exploited by a new Universal assembly line that specializes in the serials manufactured for weekly television consumption.

The movie version of The Onion Field offers a compelling buildup of suspense and apprehension, culminating in the shocking murder of a young policeman. But it gradually begins to diminish in force, transforming a gripping, realistic reenactment of a murder case into a prosaic and somewhat baffling grind. [19 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Something is missing, and you feel that its absence prevents both the characterization and movie from going decisively over the top.

Unfortunately, even for devotees of the derivative, Legacy has all the scarifyin' power of National Geographic. It is a gross, hollow and hokey joke in which even the red herrings prove anemic. [05 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Given the current heightened tenor of religious rhetoric and paranoia, it may well wind up pushing brand-new buttons today. To quote Michael Palin quoting Jesus, "There's just no pleasing some people."

This conflict between love and ambition is finely depicted as far as it goes, and the period setting, in a time when birth control problems made the choice of marriage a commitment to unlimited family life, could have reinforced the poignancy of the choice. But because the character has been thinly written, her decision seems selfishly arbitrary. [14 March 1980, p.17]

The finished film remains a mess of tangled, turgid continuity and florid, mock-operatic style -- at best a collection of production numbers and set pieces waiting in rain for a story capable of accumulating suspense and meaning.

It's a riveting look at what goes on behind the scenes -- mainly pills, booze and shots. If you ever entertained any fantasies about America's autumnal rite's being good clean fun, this movie should set you straight...At the same time, North Dallas Forty is terrifically funny, done with enough humor and wit to offset any potential heavyhandedness -- a Burt Reynolds movie with bite. [3 Aug 1979, p.25]

More American Graffiti suffers from a terminal case of the cutes. Made with the approval of George Lucas, the director of American Graffiti, and perhaps with his misbegotten collusion, More American Graffiti succeeds in making a blithe mockery of its predecessor. [03 Aug 1979, p.D4]

The Amityville Horror is a feeble excuse for a haunted-house thriller, but given the source, who could ask for more?

The Villain is the sort of dumb comedy that never smartens up. [23 July 1979, p.B11]

The plot - obviously derived from Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" - has the customary quantum of Disney cuteness as the story unravels predictably...But it takes advantage of the situation for some funny lines. [11 Aug 1979, p.B4]

Breaking Away is a film with a happy and intelligent imagination, crediting the American teenager with more inventiveness than a more mean-spirited popular culture would admit, these conflicts have a charming originality. [03 Aug 1979, p.27]

The new Dracula is a dazzler, a classic retelling of a classic text. From opening wolf howls through ominous, ambiguous concluding images, it sustains an exciting, witty, erotically compelling illusion of supernatural mystery and terror. [13 Jul 1979, p.E1]

The finished film obliterates whatever promise of novelty and human interested existed in the basic idea of Belinski's culture shock. If the rabbi's odyssey was embryonically appealing, the filmmakers have nurtured it along pact from an elephant trying to hatch a robbin's egg. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

The Wanderers is a well-made movie that leaves a so-what impression. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

Moonraker, the newest James Bond spectacle, is a cheerful, splashy entertainment. The curators of the Bond museum do not surpass themselves with this exhibition, the 11th in the series, but they haven't fallen down on the job either. Moonraker is a satisfying blend of familiar ingredients, from the highly polished to the barely adequate. [29 June 1979, p.C1]

Murray, though, is wonderful. He doesn't quite duplicate the manic madness of his "Saturday Night" bits, but his performance as Tripper, the camp's head counselor, almost makes the film's sophomoric humor worth sitting through. He's a master of improvisation, flitting from role to role - one minute a swaggering, would-be Lothario, the next a frenzied coach - with Morkian speed. He's also got a human side. When he's not clowning around he takes time to befriend a homesick 12-year-old camper (Christopher Makepeace), thus displaying a streak of responsibility that would curl John Belushi's hair. [13 July 1979, p.24]

It's a like a film made by people who don't really care, for an audience of people who don't really care. It stars Tim Conway and Don Knotts, who are not exercising their legitimate comic talents beyond one expression each: Conway crosses his eyes, and Knotts makes his eyeballs disappear upwards. [13 July 1979, p.25]

It's a half-baked stopover in the big house, relying on Eastwood, rather than a particular prison theme, for focus and continuity. For better and worse, Eastwood's peculiarly intimidating personality - solitary, sarcastic, fearless - has become its own predominant, suggestive theme. Escape From Alcatraz is poorly orchestrated, but the Eastwood melody still comes through, laconic and clear. [22 June 1979, p.C1]

Rocky II doesn't merely recall its Oscar-winning predecessor, a modestly produced but astutely calculated inspirational fable about the rehabilitation of a down-and-outer. It slavishly repeats the plot of Rocky, achieving differentiation only in dubious forms: soap opera detours, delaying tactics and an ugly new mood of viciousness surrounding a rematch between the boxers. [15 June 1979, p.B1]

The film's inconsistencies, inaccuracies and disjointed editing can be explained by Lee's untimely death; the producers had to piece the movie together from the available footage. But what's the excuse for the other wretched performances? [25 May 1979, p.39]

Phantasm will not be remembered as a masterpiece of the horror genre, but it sustains a gauche, hokey, desperately improvisational charm.... It entertains through a half-facetious juvenile gusto.

Witty as they sometimes are, Romero's ironies aren't subtle or devastating enough to justify lengthy comtemplation. "Dawn" seems like a good 80-minute horror premise stretched out at least half an hour too long. Moreover, the excess running time appears to be filled by repeated shootings, clubbings, stabbings and munchings, always vividly depicted, rather than further character exploration or mordant strokes of humor.

Over the Edge is an oafishly made movie that claims to deal with a documented case of adolescent unrest in an authentic upper-middle-class social setting, then manipulates the situation only for hypocritical suggestions of teen-age vice and picturesque sprees of teen-age violence. [04 Mar 1982, p.C13]

One detects flickering intentions of enlarging on the formula material -- especially in the byplay between the actors playing narcs -- but the prevailing mood of the entertainment is decidedly bargain-basement. [11 Oct 1979, p.D15]

Thanks to the heavy synthetic hand of director George Roy Hill, the potentially charming aspects of the kids' infatuation curdle into syrupy gruel.

Unfortunately, The Champ does not let well enough alone. It slogs on for about two reels too many, concluding on a note of utterly contrived tragedy that should make just about everyone feel wretchedly deceived. [04 Apr 1979, p.B1]

It becomes apparent during the stuttering course of the movie itself that exploiting a nuclear power plant as an effective deathtrap in a doomsday thriller requires more than melodramatic wishful thinking. [16 March 1979, p.B1]

Before it takes an appalling turn for the vicious, The Silent Partner seems an uncommonly clever and gripping suspense thriller. Even after the story threatens to self-destruct, you fight the impulse to suffer a major letdown, for the sake of the swell nerve-racking time you've been having up to that point.

The director, J. Lee Thompson, was once a proficient craftsman. Not all that long ago he and Quinn were associated on the prestigious hit The Guns of Navarone. You can't help wondering what they, along with Mason and Neal, talked about between the takes of this howler. [29 Mar 1979, p.D15]

Until betrayed by its essential docility, The Promise promises a fairly stimulating wallow in the tear-jerking depths. [10 Apr 1979, p.B3]

If not new and significant, it's at least a funny attempt to pull off the trick of holding a mirror to our hall of mirrors. [1 June 1979, p.22]

As a rule, the filmmakers manufacture fake climaxes every 10 or 15 minutes, poop out and lapse into forgetfulness, just as if they were structuring the material for television. Norma Rae seems to reflect the confusion of veteran filmmakers so eager to please that they cease to think straight.

None of Hill's dynamism will save The Warriors from impressing most neutral observers as a ghastly folly. It seems a little demented to choose gang warfare as a pretext for showing off virtuoso technique. [10 Feb 1979, p.C7]

Purely visual cinema was accomplished successfully in "Days of Heaven," where there is no story line to speak of, but people and nature are made memorably vivid through the moving picture.Picnic at Hanging Rock is not up to that level visually, because it occasionally slips into the hair-color advertisement school of slow-motion beauty. But even the attempt is marred: Looking for game clues would spoil any painting, but having to look and not being able to find them is worse. [16 March 1979, p.18]

Schrader's second feature, Hardcore, is more confidently made than his first, Blue Collar, but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying. [10 Feb 1979, p.C1]

Ice Castles has been shamelessly, and none too slickly, engineered to empty the tear ducts of customers primed to blubber at the sight of a Pavlovian cliche. [03 Feb 1979, p.D7]

Director Philip Kaufman and producer Robert Solo cleverly entwine such elements as disorienting low-angle shots, an ominously pulsating soundtrack and eerie gloom with the tried-and-true plot and come up with a tight thriller. [29 Dec 1978, p.20]

This time, Eastwood has traded in his magnum for a Chevy pick-up truck and crime-ridden city streets for a netherworld of highways, honky tonks and trailer parks. But there are still enough bodies smashed - automotive and human - to keep his followers happy. [22 Dec 1978, p.20]

King of the Gypsies gets caught in a paralyzing bind between sordid subject matter and ridiculous casting. Ostensibly a serious, compelling melodramatic chronicle about dynastic conflict within the gypsy subculture of contemporary American, the movie resolves itself lickety-split into a laughter. [20 Dec 1978, p.E1]

Despite a lull here and a lapse there, this superproduction turns out to be prodigiously inventive and enjoyable, doubly blessed by sophisticated illusionists behind the cameras and a brilliant new stellar personality in front of the cameras -- Christopher Reeve.

If any one made a respectable effort to invest this story with authenticity or tension it is not apparent on the screen. Even the big spectacle, the demolition of a dam, is going to look unimpressive to moviegoers who've already been to Superman and seen the identical illusion depicted with far more skill. Force 10 is a mission that should probably have been aborted. Instead it's been allowed to abort on the screen.

In short, Magic is unworthy of its name. It's frightfully feeble and obvious. [11 Nov 1978, p.F11]

Barely adequate as a pictorial rendering of the book, the movie still thrives on the rousing nature of this unlikely but enthralling epic. [08 Nov 1978, p.C1]

Halloween is a stab at a derivative minor classic. It's apparent where Carpenter got his horror devices - and a minor misfortune that he hasn't been able to synthesize them in a fresh or exciting way.

Each new attempt to revive the Western seems to plunge the patient into a deeper coma. Arriving on the heels of Jack Nicholson's Goin' South, Alan J. Pakula's cataleptic Comes a Horseman suggests a conspiracy to kick the poor old Western while it's down. [25 Oct 1978, p.D13]

Lumet and his inspired collaborators have succeeded in fabricating and navigating one majectic, rabble-rousing Mother Ship of a musical, a sublimely happy moviegoing experience. [27 Oct 1978, p.D1]

A bucolic sex comedy in which Nicholson the director indulges Nicholson the star an orgy of coy monkey-shines in the role of a scruffy outlaw who enters into a marriage of convenience with a demure young woman who owns a ranch and a goldmine - expires right before your eyes from a terminal case of the feebles. Goin' South is the most flat-footed comedy to collapse on the screen since Nickelodeon.

Midnight Express is an outrageously sensationalistic movie version of a non-fiction cautionary tale, Billy Hays' account of his imprisonment in Turkey after being convicted for drug smuggling. Parker has upset the book's delicate sense of balance. He uses Hays' dilemma as a springboard for sensationalism, especially sustained depictions of brutality and hysteria. Midnight Express sets a new standard in shamelessness. [28 Oct 1978, p.B6]

One of the worst ideas in Murder on the Orient Express was the repeated reenactment of the murder scene. Death on the Nile compounds this vulgarity by visualizing almost every speculation Poirot entertains about his fellow passengers. The redundancy of it all becomes ridiculous. [29 Sep 1978, p.D1]

Stallone hasn't done himself proud in Paradise Alley. The film could still use a director, a scenario writer and someone to discourage the star from lapsing into happy-go-lucky imitations of Lee J. Cobb. Still, there's something likeable about this zany manipulator. [10 Nov 1978, p.E1]

Unfortunately, Up In Smoke winds up as a hapless attempt to wrap a few very funny Cheech and Chong routines around a tired plot of counter-culture cliches. [6 Oct 1978, p.19]

Days of Heaven leaves one wanting more: either a totally revolutionary approach to pictorial storytelling or traditional dramatic interest....It may be artistic suicide for Malick to continue his style of pictorial inflation without also enriching his scenarios. If he doesn't, he's likely to be remembered not for his undeniable pictorial talent but for his eccentricity. [5 Oct. 1978, p.B10]

Interiors imposes a portentous formality that seems deliberately starved of sensuous appeal. It's obvious that Allen has serious intentions, but they're expressed in bloodless, superficial, derivative ways. [29 Sept 1978, p.D1]

You find yourself chewing over Laura Mars after the lights come up. Unfortunately, it's the kind of chew that leaves your jaw feeling tired and your mouth tasting sour. [03 Aug 1978, p.B6]

The movie is a stunning example of collaborative fidelity and artistry directed by Karel Reisz, and its impact may be heightened if one is in the dark as to the plot of its literary source, Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers. Suddenly you find yourself in the grip of an overwhelming cinemate and melodramatic undertow, at once thrilled, astonished and dreadfully uncertain of where it may set you down. [09 Aug 1978, p.B1]

Belushi also controls a wicked array of conspiratorial expressions with the audience. His smoldering pouts, crazed gleams, elevating eyebrows and erotically-contended smiles generate gleeful rabble-rousing excitement. And he can seem irresistibly funny in repose or invest minor slapstick opportunities with a streak of genius.

His witty, endearing performance in the title role of Hal Needham's terrific new pick-me-up, Hooper, a rousing and sweet-tempered sentimental comedy about the professional vicissitudes and fellowship of movie stuntmen, should finally secure Reynolds a preeminent position in the affections of contemporary moviegoers.

The Driver is a chase melodrama abstracted to the verge of pointlessness. [31 July 1978, p.B1]

The music isn't bad, but there's something more than a little blasphemous about hearing She's Leaving Home or A Day in the Life sung by the likes of the Bee Gees.

Edwards and his collaborators have wisely chosen to give an audience just what it wants and expects from a Pink Panther film - riotous slapstick, spectacular stunts and Sellers in a variety of accents and disguises that give him free reign and lead to inevitable uproariousness. [19 July 1978, p.E1]

Higgins can't keep his mind from wandering. Foul Play never begins to make sense as a mystery - Dudley Moore and the 3-foot-9 Billy Barty, become the butts of grotesquely conceived and staged sight gags.

On the plus side, Allen's basic movie-making skills are sound. The $13-million film looks crisp and clean. An idiot could follow the story line and two hours could go by without many glimpses at the wristwatch. In short, the perfect made-for-TV movie. [15 Jul 1978, p.E1]

By and large the film seems humorless, the reflection of exhausted or snide entertainers. [21 June 1978, p.B13]

This is a very sweet movie to watch, the pleasant cinematic equivalent of light summer reading.

Peckinpah is a filmmaking heavyweight, but in Convoy all he's doing is fighting off the boredom and frustration that grow out of coping with stupid material. [28 June 1978, p.E4]

One wonders if such a story is worth recycling. [16 June 1978, p.18]

If a movie can be said to snore before your eyes, Damien sustains an ungodly, unstimulating buzz. [13 June 1978, p.B1]

The premise breaks down just at the point when it needs to be cleverly elaborated into a story. [05 Aug 1978, p.H1]

Steve Rash directs the firm in a clean, observant and confidently transparent style - making an impressive debut after several years of TV pop-music specials - and demonstrates a flair for expressing Holly's appeal. [18 Aug 1978, p.B1]

Martin is pretentious in a way that pornography is when it is dressed up for people who don't want to admit to their taste. We're not really coming for that , it seems to say; that is just there because it is an integral part of the story.

The End never really lives up to its beginning. It's much too long and, after a while, the one-track theme - how a man reacts when he's suddenly told he has less than three months to live - begins to get old. [26 May 1978, p.20]

F.I.S.T. may be given patronizing credit for reflecting some vague desire to do an important picture about the perils of corruption within the American political system. Unfortunately, it can't be given credit for realizing that desire with much skill or credibility. [26 Apr 1978, p.B1]

Is "The Last Waltz" the greatest rock movie of all time? It makes its case persuasively in a restoration overseen by director Martin Scorsese and producer Robbie Robertson that's been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the concert it made famous.

Director Robert Zemeckis has created a hodgepodge of amateurish, pie-in-the-face humor. The six young stars are untalented, unattractive and about as believable as characters from a Laverne and Shirley episode, and for a solid hour and a half they run around bumping into things. [28 Apr 1978, p.19]

What makes it so bad is the jokes, a collective of offensive jokes - imagine uncomic Polish jokes applied to every race, religion, form of life and nationality, even including Polish - which are so poorly acted out by a cast including Imogene Coca, Alice Ghostley, George Gobel, Fannie Flagg and Roddy McDowall that they actually sound funnier in the recounting that they are on film.

Malle's most forcefull dramatic element is the feeling of rivalry and resentment that exists between mother and child without the characters being conscious of it. The script is eloquently supplied with scenes illustration this fundamental conflict and bond. [26 Apr 1978, p.B1]

This story has explosive screen possibilities. What it seems to lack is an incendiary star. [22 Mar 1978, p.D9]

Far from insipid, it's one of the funniest, and most affecting, movies to come around in a long time. The acting is polished, the writing superb. The jokes make you laugh. That's no small feat. [10 Mar 1978, p.15]

It's a frequent theme of bad children's pictures that knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is the opposite of unspoiled childhood goodness,and here it is again, only weakly contradicted by the one pleasant actor in the film, Jack Soo, as an idealistic truant officer. It's as if kiddies' mindless escape films, unlike adults', needed to carry their own internal justification. [31 March 1978, p.15]

Some of the intuitions and sentiments shared by Ashby and the cast result in affecting interludes, but on the whole the material is too diffuse and complacently wistful to accomplish its ultimate goal of getting you there, breaking your heart, scaling the summit of old Mt. Pathos.

Like the Dustin Hoffman film Straight Time, Schrader's picture sustains a certain interest despite its faults. You stick with both movies because of the promise of something authentic and tragically revealing, even though the promise is never fulfilled. These films don't really work, but they're the sort of films that don't work in interesting ways. [24 Mar 1978, p.D1]

The finished film has no thematic or emotional integrity. It flip-flops withdesperate hypocrisy between clownish antics and indignant orations. [09 Feb 1978, p.B13]

Ridley Scott has made a triumphant directing debut by creating a film that looks beautiful but never loses sight of the capacity for animosity and conflict lurking in the human psyche. [08 Mar 1978, p.D1]

There is no attempt to explain why an actress would go to pieces when she discovers a point of identity with her role; nor why an actress who is constantly loony, drunk, abusive or all three would not be understudied, let alone replaced. It should be noted that the play-within-the-movie is even worse than the movie-about-the-play. [14 Apr 1978, p.18]

Some of the jokes are so raucously or goofily low-minded that you may laugh out of a kind of shocked weakness.

Vicious and hypocritical as it is, The Gauntlet remains an entertaining sort of disreputable show, considerably more proficient and interesting than junk melodramas in a dogged vein.

Candleshoe isn't immobilized by wholesomeness, as Disney movies go, it's unsually spirited as well as pleasant. [11 Feb 1978, p.E1]

The Goodbye Girl itself represents a satisfying step back in the right direction for the purposes of light, optimistic film romance. Its appeal isn't exactly novel, but it is ingeniously and refreshingly traditional. [21 Dec 1977, p.D1]

Well supplied with both raunchy humor and star appeal, particularly in the person of Burt Reynolds, the film seems certain to become a crowd-pleaser.

The most attractive and persuasive movie about ballet performers ever created for a mass audience.

It is a beautiful, moving tale, a love story even, sad without being schmaltzy, full of funny, knee-slapping moments and sufficiently thrill-packed without the usual padding of cheap thrills. Despite the dramatic imbalance, and the need for some fine-tuning in an otherwise sensitive script, Heroes, directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, remains a stunning film. [04 Nov 1977, p.11]

It must weather some bummy mid-passage exposition, but the movie survives its flaws triumphantly, evolving into a uniquely transporting filmgoing spectacle.

"Dragon" was apparently meant to be a big, rousing musical comedy-fantasy, but it's staged and photographed without musical-comedy energy, flair or coordination. [17 Dec 1977, p.D7]

Rolling Thunder certainly has enough to recommend it to Walking Tall fans with strong stomachs. But moviegoers yearning for a sensitive attempt to graft the nation's most recent scar tissue onto the screen will have to wait. [04 Nov 1977, p.11]

A light inoffensive satire that brings God back to earth as crusty, caring George Burns to tell mankind to stop mucking up the river-fouling the air, killing each other off, preaching exclusive paths to heaven and to get back to the business of loving. [14 Oct 1977, p.11]

Despite its gentility and evasiveness, Julia may have come much closer to the truth about Lillian Hellman on the strength of Jane Fonda's edgy, persuasive performance, which reveals an intelligent woman who couldn't feel more unsuree of herself or less like a conquering heroine.

An uncoordinated tear jerker certain to double up cynics and touch only those fans who prefer their favorites lost in a narcissistic fog. [26 Oct 1977, p.B1]

An absorbing but rarefied, introspective variation on traditional thriller motifs, it's probably not the synthesis between the personal and traditional that Wenders needs but it's a fascinating compulsively watchable experiment.

The vacuous quality of Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" would be better represented by a title like, "Bore Me to Death, Charlie Brown." [24 Aug 1977, p.B4]

A ridiculously self-indulgent spree of satanic bogeymannerisms entitled Suspiria, virtually self-destructs in the opening sequence. Eager to menace the audience from every sensory direction, Argento doesn't so much create and sustain an illusion of terror as invite you to marvel at his garish ingenuity, at the spectacle of a filmmaker who can't resist overstylizing and upstaging his material.

While it's too pat, Little Girl is several cuts above thrillers in the dopey, bedraggled class recently exemplified by Burnt Offerings and The Sentinel. [17 May 1977, p.B9]

A diverting hit-and-miss satirical anthology in the same spirit as The Groove Tube and Tunnelvision. [13 Oct 1977, p.B15]

While it never sags as alarmingly as its immediate predecessor, Spy, the 10th film in the series, is at best a tolerable disappointment.

While it's fitfully, harmlessly diverting, Breaking Training never overcomes the handicaps that derive from its fundamentally derivative character. [04 Aug 1977, p.B11]

The director appears to be stuck with rather drab shots from inside the racers showing one car creeping ahead and then falling back. The effect is not exactly thrilling, but the audience is obviously eager to be thrilled and more than willing to do its imaginative share. Greased Lightning never generates enough momentum to meet the audience half-way. [16 July 1977, p.E5]

Both The French Connection and The Exorcist gave Friedkin a reputation as a talented manipulator, but it appears that he may have begun to overestimate the appeal of manipulation for its own sake. The characters and episodes in Sorcerer seem totally arbitrary. They're used to implement certain pictorial or inconographic notions, but they're never developed dramatically.

Since I had been fortunate enough to miss or avoid the earlier installments, "The Love Bug" and "Herbie Rides Again," the latest entry in the Disney studio's cycle of farces about the exploits of a sentient, racy Volkswagen, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, came as a more stupefying shock than it probably should have. As excruciating kiddie vehicles go, a Herbie is certainly more diverting than a Benji, but comparison at this level smack of sheer desperation. [27 July 1977, p.B7]

One of the most rousing and appealing animated features ever made by the Disney studio. [24 June 1977, p.B1]

An overwhelmingly friendly climate of opinion awaited "New York, New York." Scorsese has squandered it by backing off from the very challenge of rationalizing and sustaining a musical romantic drama.

Exorcist II seems to have evolved out of delusions of cinematic grandeur shared by Boorman and writer William Goodhart. It's obvious that they wanted to contrive a metaphysical thriller that would be astonishing and spiritually inspiring, but their thought processes are so muddled that the movie degenerates almost instantly into a confounded shambles. [18 June 1977, p.B1]

One may feel limitations on the dramatic side, but Bridge is an unqualified pictorial achievement.

A Benji movie can't be the most boring thing under the sun, but while struggling to stay awake during something as tedious as "For the Love of Benji," now at area theaters, you begin to imagine that the minutes might pass more quickly and vividly if you were watching the grass grow or contemplating the horizons in Barstow or Wendover. [24 June 1977, p.B9]

Smokey and the Bandit is an unexpected good time, a playful, wisecracking and curiously revealing example of All-American escapist entertainment. [29 July 1977, p.B1]

Star Wars had all the right stuff, and unlike its confounding progenitor, "2001: A Space Odyssey," it was fairy-tale simple: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," good met evil. [Special Edition]

There's no telling how many sounder, wittier scripts, including stories in the same genre, might have been overlooked or rejected in order to waste time and resources on this feeble in-house imitation.

Perhaps their quest had a mythic significance in Richard Sale's original novel that has somehow eluded his screenplay in which it's impossible to believe that the movie heros are doing anything more than beating on a dead prop. [03 Jun 1977, p.B1]

After slapstick farces as exuberant and hilarious as Sleeper and Love and Death, it comes as a soft, fuzzy, mildly diverting letdown.

Demon Seed might have been a genuinely witty and terrifying thriller if someone had taken advantage of the story's glaring sadomasochistic implications. Nevertheless, Cammell plays it dumb at a thematic level, ignoring the sci-fi sexual bondage satire staring him in the face. [08 Apr 1977, p.B11]

Eagle flops around trying to sustain a premise that defies suspenseful elaboration from the outset. No one with his wits about him believes the conspirators will succeed in capturing or shooting Churchill. More to the point, who would want them to? We're asked to suspend disbelief for the sake of a gimmick that not only insults common sense and general knowledge but also betrays old loyalties and convictions. [26 Mar 1977, p.B5]

Black Sunday takes such a plodding literal-minded approach with an extravagant thriller premise that we have more than enough time to watch the gears working and all too often jamming. [01 Apr 1977, p.B1]

Slap Shot comes at you like a boisterous drunk. At first glance it appears harmlessly funny, in an extravagantly foul-mouthed sort of way. However, there's a mean streak beneath the cartoon surface tha makes one feel uneasy about humoring this particular durnk for too long.