We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
HOOPER (1978)
Chasing the success of Smokey and the Bandit, director Hal Needham and stars Burt Reynolds and Sally Field re-teamed for this action comedy that is no Smokey and the Bandit, but it has its own charms and watchability. This time around, Reynolds plays veteran stuntman Sonny Hooper, who has earned a reputation as being the greatest stuntman alive... but his body has paid the price for that. He’s busted up and scarred, getting through his work days by popping pain meds and washing them down with alcohol. At the moment he’s working on a spy movie called The Spy Who Laughed at Danger, starring Adam West – who doesn’t have nearly enough screen time in Hooper. The film is being directed by a egomaniacal hotshot named Roger Deal (Robert Klein), who keeps pushing his stunt team further and harder... which young stuntman Delmore "Ski" Shidski (Jan-Michael Vincent) sees as his chance to prove himself to be the next greatest stuntman.
Hooper has some fun scenes with his buddy Cully (James Best) and there’s some drama between him and his girlfriend Gwen (Field), who is the daughter of Hooper’s stuntman mentor Jocko (Brian Keith). Hooper and Jocko both have health scares along the way. But for the most part, this movie is just an excuse to put a bunch of stunts on the screen. We see Hooper at work, doing high dive stunts and fire stunts, we see him and his friends doing stunts just for the hell of it in their personal life, pulling tricks like driving down the highway in reverse and passengers moving from vehicle to vehicle while they’re at top speed. And of course there’s a highly destructive barroom brawl at one point.
It all builds up to Hooper and Ski working together on a spectacular stunt Deal has concocted for his movie that involves an earthquake, vehicular smash-ups, explosions, and a rocket-propelled Trans Am jumping 325 feet across a busted bridge. In the midst of this, there’s the jaw-dropping sight of the Trans Am just barely avoiding getting crushed under a falling smokestack. I don’t think Hooper is great, but there is fun to be had from watching it.
FALL (2022)
James Harris and Mark Lane were two of the producers on the shark thriller 47 Meters Down, which trapped two female characters in a diving cage at the bottom of the sea. Now they’re two of the producers on the thriller Fall, which is also about two women being trapped in a terrifying situation. But instead of being underwater, this one goes in the opposite direction: the characters in this one are stuck at the top of a 2000 foot tall TV tower. It could have been called 610 Meters Up.
Directed by Scott Mann from a screenplay he wrote with Jonathan Frank, the concept of Fall is something I never would have thought of, because climbing a rickety old 2000 foot tall tower is not an idea that would occur to me, let alone be appealing to me. But Mann and Frank were able to make the set-up believable enough that I could go alone with it... and I realize there are people out there who would really be into doing something like this.
Virginia Gardner of Halloween 2018 plays Shiloh Hunter, who shoots daredevil videos for likes and followers on social media. One year ago, Hunter was there to witness as Dan (Mason Gooding), the husband of her friend Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) died in a mountain climbing accident. So she decides that the best way to pay tribute to Dan is to go out into the desert and climb an old TV tower with Becky so they can scatter Dan’s ashes from the top.
The tower is rusty, with screws falling out all over the place, but that doesn’t stop Hunter and Becky – who shows reluctance at times, but goes along with what Hunter wants like an obedient follower – from making it all the way to the top. Ashes are scattered, it seems like a successful trip. But then they try to climb back down the ladder. And that’s when everything falls apart. Literally.
Over an hour of Fall’s 102 minute running time is devoted to Hunter and Becky’s struggle to survive on the tower, their desperate attempts to figure out a way to get help... and Mann and Frank were able to make sure the situation sustains the running time quite well. There’s always something thrilling or disturbing going on, and this is the kind of movie where the viewer will start thinking of possibilities and making suggestions on what the characters might be able to do as well.
This is a very effective, engaging thriller, that will be even more effective for you if you happen to be afraid of heights.
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