Movie Details
| Title: | Fer-de-Lance | |
| Director: | Russ Mayberry | |
| Year: | 1974 | |
| Genre: | Disaster | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 08.16.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 08.16.06 | Weird Wednesday | Since Snakes on a Plane comes out tomorrow, Weird Wednesday cooked up a companion in the form of this movie... which should've been called Snakes on a Submarine. It's actually a TV movie... which explains a lot when you actually watch it. It's a 70s TV movie though... and as we should all know by now, when it came to filmed entertainment, whether in a theater, drive-in or TV set, the 70s were just better. Lars listed off like 5 TV movies which apparently all kick ass. I wrote down the title of one, Bad Ronald, which I'm sure I'll have lots of fun trying to track down. Anyway, beforehand Micah has warned me that this might bore a lot of people in the theater. At a certain point it really stops being a snake movie alltogether and focuses on typical disaster action... there's a very lengthy underwater diving sequence that is pretty laggy and lots of the action is played on cheap sets and whatnot. Surprisingly though, the film played very well to a full house and had people clapping and cheering even in places where it wasn't mandatory. like huh, ok i guess people want to clap here... cool. A very kind reception for the film all the way through. My personal hunch on the success of tonight's screening is Quentin Tarantino. He was in the house tonight along with Nicotero, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, and a whole cadre of hot Death Proof women to watch the show. It's actually his print that they played tonight so Lars introduced him for a little impromptu QT intro to the film. He set us up pretty well, reiterating some of the stuff Lars brought up (like how badass macho David Janssen is in this) and also adding his own personal memories of seeing it on TV and somehow remembering that Leonard Nimoy was in it and one of the things he likes about collecting 16mm is that he can find all of these crazy made-for-TV 70s movies and watch them again. So after that, I think the whole audience was really primed to love this movie. And with QT a few rows behind you, are you really gonna walk out on his print? Have that walk of shame right by him and forever mark yourself as a tool to Quentin Tarantino himself? Yeah, I wouldn't either. Whatever though, I'm glad he was there. The crowd really helped this movie along and made it a fun experience. It's a good case for the power of a full movie theater... This is probably pretty unwatchable alone... There's really no snake gore... not much snake tension unless you get really freaked out by shots of lethargic snaked hanging out on pipes and whatnot, and again... most of the movie is a standard submarine disaster flick with altogether way too much time spent on random technicalities about saving the ship. Yay for Weird Wednesday and Yay for finally living in Austin so I can say "yeah, Tarantino dropped in again tonight to watch the movie" even though I'd never say that because I'm not a name dropper. ok that's a lie I will tell everyone I know how they missed it. |
