BY TODD GARBARINI
Monday,
January 9, 1978 was an eventful day in my family’s life when childhood friends
of ours from several doors down accidentally locked themselves out of their
house and ended up eating spaghetti with us as their mother gave birth to their
newly welcomed brother. It is an event that we have mentioned time and time
again over the last four decades with fondness and laughter. That same day saw
the broadcast of a MOW, entertainment industry shorthand for a “Movie of the Weekâ€
made specifically for television, of Superdome, a silly, predictable and
pedestrian ABC Monday Night movie about the efforts to throw the Super Bowl at
the Superdome in New Orleans in an effort to make lots of money. This is a
shame considering that Superdome was actually filmed in New Orleans and
a great deal of work was done to ensure high production values. (The Superdome would
become infamous in August 2005 during the Hurricane Katrina fiasco when it
became a makeshift haven for thousands trying to escape high winds, only to
encounter marauders, rapists and overflowing toilets. What a nightmare…) The TV production was one of many films relating to American football that were all the rage in the mid-to-late 1970s. (i.e. The Longest Yard, Semi-Tough, North Dallas Forty, Two-Minute Warning and the best of the lot, John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday.)
The
late great David Janssen, best known for The Fugitive on TV, stars as
Mike Shelley, the general manager of the Cougars, the football team that
everyone wants to win – except for a few. Cue sinister music! Dave Walecki (Ken
Howard of TV’s The White Shadow) suffers from a bad knee, probably
because he drove it into his wife Nancy’s (Susan Howard of TV’s Petrocelli
and Dallas) chest one too-many times. Their marriage is on the rocks
because Dave’s dream is to play football and Nancy is missing the affection her
husband now shows for the sport. If he doesn’t want to lose his wife, he has to
put on his big-boy pants and grow a pair. The New York Mafia strongly
admonishes P.K. Jackson (Clifton Davis of TV’s Amen), a businessman who
once played for the Cougars, that the Cougars must lose…or else! In the midst
of all of this, Donna Mills (of TV’s Knots Landing) pretends to take a
fancy to Shelley but is clearly up to no good.
Superdome sports a supporting cast that includes
Edie Adams, Van Johnson, Ed Nelson, Jane Wyatt, and even an early role by Tom
Selleck in his pre-Magnum P.I. days. I love M. Emmet Walsh, who appears
here as well, though if you blink, you’ll miss him. The first time I ever saw
him was in the theatrical trailer for Ulu Grosbard’s 1978 outing Straight
Time wherein Dustin Hoffman just about pulls his pants down after
handcuffing him to a fence! Not a pleasant sight. He’s well known to audiences
for his role as the racist boss of Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade
Runner.
I
enjoyed watching Superdome for the same reason I enjoy watching adult
movies from the 1970’s: the wall-to-wall sex. Sorry, just kidding, of course. The
locales, the garish colors, the style of the automobiles, the technology of the
time, the wardrobe, the furniture, the ludicrous wallpaper designs, and the
style of the cinematography do their best to make up for the uninspired
direction and overall dearth of excitement. While no one can rightly expect a
film like this to be in the same league as an early Brian DePalma suspenser, it
would be nice if there was some suspense.
The
film is now available on Blu-ray from the wonderful Kino Lorber who have raised
the bar on excellent presentations of older films. The picture quality on this
film is immaculate. It has been transferred from the original 35mm negative and
it looks like the movie was just made. Framed at 1.37:1, the image is
complemented by black bars on the left and right sides of the screen to retain
the integrity of the original aspect ratio.
The
extras on this disc consist of an in-depth, feature-length audio commentary
with director Jerry Jameson and film experts Howard S. Berger and Steve
Mitchell. These historians are inexplicably overzealous discussing the origins
and making of the film, reminding me of my own excitement at seeing Heather
Locklear in NBC-TV’s City Killer…in 1984…when I was fifteen. Even
the director bemoans “what a mess this thing isâ€(!) while the film historians
wax nostalgia on how comparable the climax is to a feature film. IMHO, it’s not.
Jameson also remarks Donna Mills’ makeup job and this was nearly nine years
before her VHS release of The Eyes Have It, an instructional video on
how to apply war paint. Her character reminds me of the Rebecca Pidgeon role in
David Mamet’s 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner. All sweetness and light,
but nefarious underneath it all.
The
climax is clearly inspired by Robert Wise’s The Hindenburg (1975). If
you have a soft spot for Superdome,
then this is the release to own – how that for a tag line?
There
is also a section of trailers for Juggernaut, The Silent Partner,
Slayground, and When Eight Bells Toll, all also available from Kino Lorber.
We
hope Kino is eyeing City Killer for a Blu-ray release, as Heather
Locklear might be willing to pull herself away from Instagram for a few hours to
do a commentary track for it.
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