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floydsmoot
Reviews
Knots Landing (1979)
The first 4 years were the best...
I've always found it a bit disingenuous of (creator) David Jacobs and (executive producer) Michael Filerman to claim that "Knots Landing" was about real-life, middle-class American life. As much as I enjoyed the series as a whole, and feel that it is an excellent example of the prime-time soap genre, that description really only applies to the first 4 years of the show, when the focus was on the 5 families who lived on Seaview Circle. After the arrival of William Devane's Greg Sumner at the beginning of the 5th Season, "Knots Landing" started coming up with outlandish, ridiculous storylines (the Wolfbridge Group? Val's Babies? Empire Valley, anyone?) rivalling anything on Dynasty or Falcon Crest. "Dallas" in California is the best way to describe the show's transformation during this time. I found the 1983-87 years to be heartless and dreary as a whole, and the series reclaimed its footing only with the arrival of the Williams family (Larry Riley, Lynne Moody, and Kent Masters-King) on the cul-de-sac. Their presence helped to refocus the show back to its roots. The show's best storyline was the Chip/Ciji story in the 1982-83 season. My only complaint with that year was that John Pleshette, Kim Lankford, and James Houghton's characters were phased out by the end of it, and the wonderful Joanna Pettet was sadly underused as a sympathetic police detective. As wonderful as most of "Knots Landing" was, I still view it as a missed opportunity to side-step the conventions of the 1980s prime-time soap genre.
Night of the Running Man (1995)
Despicable, disgusting, stupid...shame on Scott Glenn in particular...
I've always liked the work of actress Kim Lankford, who starred on the prime-time serial Knots Landing for the first 4 years as Ginger Ward. Therefore, I was pleased to see her turn up for a few minutes playing a waitress who covers for Andrew McCarthy (playing a cab driver on the run from the mob) in "Night of the Running Man." Lankford made the most of her screentime and brought some warmth and humanity to a drab direct-to-video actioner. Therefore, (spoiler coming up ahead, folks), I was thoroughly disgusted with the scene where mob hitman Scott Glenn dangles Lankford's terrified character from high up on a Dam in order to coax McCarthy's whereabouts from her, then drops her to her death. I'm not politically correct by any stretch of the imagination, but I've seen more sensitivity shown towards women in the cinema of Dario Argento, Brian DePalma, and Jess Franco. This was offensive, pointless, disgusting and despicable--and shame on Scott Glenn for participating in such a mean film!
Red Line 7000 (1965)
Only James Caan and Marianna Hill are worth watching...
Red Line 7000, one of Howard Hawks's later films, is generally considered one of his worst, thanks to fake-looking racing scenes, hilariously inappropriate dialogue and musical sequences, and ghastly performances from never-weres such as James Ward, Laura Devon, Gail Hire and particularly John Robert Crawford. But the film is redeemed by the dynamic chemistry between James Caan and the exciting Marianna Hill in their individual scenes together. Caan shows in this film the intensity and talent that would make him one of the best actors of the early-1970s, and Hill's performance, on-par with other memorable Howard Hawks discoveries as Lauren Bacall and Angie Dickinson, makes you wonder why she didn't become a bigger star before fading into obscurity. Particularly memorable are Hill's two lusty dancing sequences, at the nightclub and later in front of the Holiday Inn Pepsi machine, as James Caan observes her from afar. Caan and Hill redeem Red Line 7000 from being a total disaster--the movie should have focused only on their characters and gotten rid of everybody else--but, even with its many weaknesses, the film is still more intriguing than the overrated Grand Prix (1966) anyday.