1992 - YEAR OF THE COMET, attempt at a romantic action comedy

The Year of the Comet should have been a winner but for some reason the film just never came together.  The story is one of those couples on the run from bad guys in pursuit of something.  It's clearly trying to be an Alfred Hitchcock film.  While Hitchcock was working at Paramount Studios he developed a story formula called "beautiful people, beautiful places."  Put an attractive couple together, have them fall in love where the backgrounds are all beautiful locations in Europe or somewhere and you have an entertaining film.

The film was written by William Goldman who was considered one of the top screenwriters in the film business.  Peter Yates was the director.  The on location filming was in Scotland and France so all the ingredients were there for a entertaining rom-com but the film just doesn't work.

 

The leads were Timothy Daly who had been working on the comedy series TV series Wings so he knew how to put over a joke or humorous situation.  His romantic partner was a young woman named Penelope Ann Miller who had appeared in Kindergarten Cop, Biloxi Blues and The Freshman.  She also had a decent background in comedy.  But these two just didn't seem to have the chemistry to play a couple who fall in love.  If a film couldn't really work up any "juice" between the two leads it has a serious problem.

The director Peter Yates had made many fine films but  he just didn't seem to be able to make the story interesting.  Frankly a lot of the humor in the screenplay was kind of labored.  William Goldman may have been a great screenwriter but the comedic and chase scenes had a seen it all before feeling to it,

Probably the only interesting thing in the film is the actor Louis Jourdan who at the time was 71 years old and knew how to provide the light comedic touch the other actors were missing.   Although the critics really crucified it, The Year of the Comet isn't really a bad film, it's just kind of a mediocre film.

The running time is 91 minutes.

1976 - MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED - a comedy/drama about ambulance chasers

The director is Peter Yates a man who flipped between interesting pictures like, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and junk like For Pete's Sake.  The writer is Tom Mankiewicz the son of director Joseph Mankiewicz who specialized in standard light Hollywood entertainments like the James Bond movies and garbage like the movie version of Dragnet.  Mankiewicz was a go to guy when you needed your script doctored.  His hands are all over a lot of 70's and 80's movies and TV shows which he was not credited for.

 Mother, Jugs and Speed is a black comedy about an independent ambulance service in Los Angeles.  They are in competition with another another ambulance service to secure the rights to providing the city of Los Angeles with transportation to their hospital.  The film has lots of  bits of black comedy as they drive around dealing with sick people in need of their services.  The film is interlaced with dramatic scenes as a counterpoint to all of the comedy.  The film clearly wants to be the MASH of the contemporary 1970's Los Angele scene I guess.

  

Harvey Keitel is "Speed" a disgraced cop working for the service.  Where someone got the idea Keitel a rather intense actor from the Martin Scorcese school would be a leading man is kind of a head scratcher.  Raquel Welch is tastelessly nicknamed "Jugs." Her main duty is to apparently provide the sex in the movie.  Bill Cosby is "Mother,"  who does most of the heavy comedy lifting in the film.

 

Is the film funny? I guess so, but even for a black comedy it's awfully cynical.  This is a slick piece of product from the Hollywood studio system. No auteur stuff here thank you.

The running time is 98 minutes, apparently it made money.

1968 - BULLITT, vintage circa 60's cop movie

Wearing cool 60s turtle neck shirts, Steve McQueen is tough cop Frank Bullitt.  Bullitt is assigned to guard a Mafia witness but things don't go as well as they should.  The witness ends up dead and Bullitt is left hanging by his own department and an ambitious politician played by Robert Vaughn as one slimy dude.

This film actually has a decent plot for a cop thriller which had as the big selling point an extended car chase through the nearly deserted streets of San Francisco.

Bullitt well made by a good director, Peter Yates.  McQueen was playing a bad ass strong but silent cop character butting heads with "the system."  However for all his bad assedness he still gets to sleep with Jacqueline Bissett who has the usual cliched part of the girlfriend.  

This film still holds up pretty well and looked good on Blu ray.

113 minutes written by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner.

1983 - KRULL, kind of flat footed fantasy

Krull never quite had the stuff to make it as a fantasy film.  The film is a Lord Of The Rings type story which came out years before those films but was clearly influenced by the Tolkien books.

There is enough going on to keep you engaged in watching the film but all of the episodes don't add up to an interesting story. Every scene seems to have come from low budget fantasy films from the 1940's and 50's.  Almost any Ray Harryhausen film had more imagination in it than Krull. 

The film also suffers from very bland characters which the actors can't get a handle on.  There is the handsome prince, beautiful princess, the magician, the comedy relief and a little kid who is tagging along for no particular reason.

Krull was an expensive film to make at the time, it has big sets and bright color photography,  However the special effects were standard movie making stuff, with optical tricks, stop motion, animation and matte painting effects used throughout the film.  This was very old fashioned approach considering Star Wars had come out in 1977 and had completely changed the way special effects were used in films.

The climatic fight at the end of the film with the prince throwing come sort of souped up Frisbee called a "gaive" at the monster was kind of lame and anticlimactic.

Krull belongs in the film category called "OK time killer."

121 minutes, written by Stanford Sherman.