Sunday, January 27, 2013

Milk For Burt

Dr. Theresa always says that when the moustache is absent you know it's going to be a serious Burt Reynolds movie. And such was the case with HUSTLE, though Burt's first line is a misleadingly innocuous and wholesome request for a glass of milk. But HUSTLE was rough stuff! Eddie Albert - Oliver Douglas of GREEN ACRES fame - plays a sleazy, murderous lawyer (though I do want his yachting outfit, seen above), but the casting gets weirder than that. Includes Fred Willard, old-timey comic (and mortal enemy of Robert Goulet's son-in-law) Jack Carter, and (spoiler alert) in a last-minute surprise of the downer kind for which the 1970s are famous (though you can guess it from the beginning, as we did, from the way Burt stares longingly at the picture calendar of Rome on his dirty office wall - "He's never getting to Rome!" Dr. Theresa and I both cried simultaneously), the guy who played Freddie Krueger, typecast already, typecast before the fact, the eternally typecast Freddie Krueger, ladies and gentlemen. Incorporates some of the weirder visual effects of SUPERDAD while anticipating Paul Schrader's HARDCORE. A possible inspiration for the Robin Williams episode of the TV series HOMICIDE. I guess I am saying if you like SUPERDAD, HARDCORE, and HOMICIDE, check out HUSTLE! That's a blurb. Chock full of MOBY-DICK allusions!