Malone

Malone (1987)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by Harley Cokeliss (i.e. Cokliss; I’m not sure which spelling is more giggle-inducing)

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Cliff Robertson, Kenneth McMillan, Cynthia Gibb, Lauren Hutton

From: Orion

Here’s a movie that I randomly saw a few days ago when it was on the MGMHD channel. It’s also available on Hulu. If you click on the movie title at the top, you’ll be taken to its IMDb page (as always), and as long as you have a free IMDb account there to verify that you’re old enough to see this rated R movie, you can watch it on there.

Burt is known for not having the best tastes in the projects he wants to get involved with. That’s why many of his films are not that good, and some of them are really awful. I’ve seen one of those real stinkers before, The Cannonball Run II. I’ll talk about it one of these days, but there’s another brutally unfunny comedy. I’ll say that this one shouldn’t belong in the “bad” category. It’s middle of the road average but it does have its charms.

This movie is about a CIA dude (Reynolds) who retires from the force and he decides to randomly drive around, more or less. His car, a bitchin’ 69 Mustang, breaks down right by a tiny little town in the middle of Oregon (actually, this was filmed in British Columbia, and the scenery does look very pretty). He encounters the town’s resident mechanic/gas station owner and his young underaged daughter (the very cute Gibb, who was in her 20’s when this was filmed, don’t worry). It turns out that the town is just about deserted, as nefarious people have been buying up land-and also have bought off the town’s sheriff-as they’re actually right-wing extremists who are using the area as one of many bases to try and start their plan to rule the world! I’m not making any of this up, by the way. As Burt stays in the house of the mechanic while the car’s transmission gets fixed, he finds out what’s going on, and he eventually has to use his specially trained skills. Meanwhile, his old bosses find out that Burt is causing trouble, so they dispatch his old CIA pal (Hutton!) to track him down and “take care” of him.

This movie is pretty goofy and low-budget, but it’s still entertaining and it’s funny to see multiple people walking around in Member’s Only jackets… or one of the villain’s henchmen having braces (!) and sporting a rather hideous distracting faux combover hairstyle. I mean, it was really distracting. But, if you like goofy movies with action in them, it’s not the worst way to spend an hour and a half watching something for free on the Internet.

I do have to focus on one thing, though. As I mentioned, Gibb’s character is underaged in the movie. It’s proven right away when she states that she’s younger than Burt’s ’69 car, meaning that in the movie she’s at most 17… yet Burt seems to enjoy hanging out and talking to her. Then, later on she meets him in a nightie-where it's clear that she has on no bra underneath-and she's all teary-eyed around him and he gives her a hug... and he almost makes a move, but then realizes that he doesn't want to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Then, the last we see the two together, she tells him that in 5 years, "I'll be older", and he responds, "I'll be older too", as if he's bragging about being an old coot already and being an even older coot when he gets to legally bang her. They then kiss! I was not expecting Burt, playing an almost 50 year old dude in the movie, having a budding romance with a really cute but yet still jailbait girl.

Then again, let's be honest here; in the movie world, there were other (unseen) visits to Malone's room by that budding young teenager wearing a nightie with no bra! We all know he showed her the long barrel of his gun-and I don't mean that .44 Magnum he kept in that case and ended up using-more than once or twice. But anyway...

I'll be back Monday night with a new review.