Yee-ha-ha, it’s Burl, here to review the picture Steven
Spielberg made just before he tackled Jaws!
Yes, it’s The Sugarland Express, and
it’s a movie I’d never seen before, ha ha!
I think the reason I’d always avoided it was that it
promised a not inconsiderable number of Goldie Hawn moments on screen, and if
you’ve ever read my review of Protocol,
you know that ol’ Burl can surfeit of Goldie Hawn moments pretty easily! Not
that I really dislike her or anything; it’s just that my Hawn reservoir, being
perennially untapped, overflows at the slightest refill!
But when the picture came on the old-movie network, I
thought it was finally time to have a look! Ha ha, it was apparently Goldie’s
first dramatic role, and though there are many of her goofette traits on display,
she also gets to cry and rage and play sly and other things Laugh-In just didn’t allow for! She’s
not bad, overall, though the character comes off as being really not so very
bright at all!
She plays a young lady who’s just come out of the hoosegow,
and her husband, a fellow named Clovis, happens also to be in the pokey, though
he’s got a few months left to go! (Clovis is played by William “Ghostbusters”
Atherton, back in the day before he was known mainly as a guy who played
jerks!) But the couple’s little baby has been handed off to a foster family,
and to prevent the lad from being lost to them forever, Goldie’s plan is to
break Clovis out of the pokey and for them to somehow then go get the wee lad!
This leads to a police chase and the kidnapping of a young officer, and then an
ever-escalating mega chase led by courtly Ben “Terror Train” Johnson!
The young officer is played by Michael Sacks, who was also
the lead in the movie version of Slaughterhouse-Five!
It turns out he was only ever in a grand total of twelve movies and TV shows,
the last of them in the mid-80s! But he was a good actor with a very appealing
presence, so that makes me wonder just what happened to the poor guy!
In any case, the movie is very nicely done, though not the
most thrilling and original thing ever made! It looks good, thanks to Vilmos “The Witches of Eastwick” Zsigmond, and
it has some funny bits and plenty of nice performances! Ben Johnson is a
particular delight – I’m always cheered up when he comes on screen, ha ha! I recall
that, after seeing Jaws, some friend
of Pauline Kael’s told her that Spielberg was the first director to come without
a proscenium arch hovering over his head, and while that’s obviously not true,
you can certainly see what he meant when you watch his early work!
It’s a nice little picture even if the John Williams score too often
sounds like a Christmas carol (I forget exactly which one, ha ha), and so I’m
going to give The Sugarland Express
two and a half Louisiana lunkheads!
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