Rant #2,453: Saturday Night At the Movies

Really nothing to report on the job front.

I attended a class on Friday related to networking, which did give me some ideas, and I proceeded as I have been doing, applying for a variety of jobs left and right.

And I will continue to do that today, while I drive both my wife and my son to work, and pick them up too.

So that being said, what did I do this weekend?

Nothing much, to be honest with you.

I did my job searching, which is much less during the weekend, and when that was done, I pretty much settled in to watch some movies.

I love exploitation movies from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the first movie I watched was pretty much a stepping stone for some of the actors who were in it, and for others, it was just another movie on their long resumes.

"Six-Pack Annie" was one of the first movies starring Lindsay Bloom, a pretty blond who went on to a fairly successful career as an actress on a number of movies and TV shows in the 1980s.

In this 1975 American International film aimed at drive-in audiences, she played Annie Bodine, a blond, bodacious, 100 percent Southern girl who believes in two things: tying up any guy who has eyes for her in knots, and in her family and friends, including her aunt, who also happens to be her employer at the roadside diner where she works as a waitress.

One of her suitors is Bobby Joe, played by Bruce Boxleitner, who like Bloom, went on to greater fame as a movie and TV actor in the 1980s.

Anyway, Annie's aunt's diner has a mortgage payment due, and if it is not paid, her mom will lose the diner, which has become a major hangout for some Grade-Z list stars, such as Doodles Weaver and Stubby Kaye.

Faced with the loss of the diner, Annie--the character might have set the tone for the "Daisy Dukes" character in the later "Dukes of Hazzard" TV show, among other elements in this film that appear to have spurred that series, including the character's interplay with the town sheriff--travels with her friend Mary Lou--played by another popular future TV/movie actress Jana Bellan--to go to Las Vegas, where Annie's sister Flora works, and is a success. The girls hope to ask Flora for a loan of the money, but Flora--played by vivacious Louisa Moritz in all stages of dress and undress--turns them down.

Flora, who has many male suitors, including one played by former "Make Room For Daddy" cast member Sid Melton, tells the two girls that they should do what she did, and find their own "sugar daddy." She gives them a few leads which never pan out, putting them in bad situations or even danger more than once.

After Annie hooks up with a very sleazy potential suitor, played by 1950s/1960s movie actor Joe Danton--who gives Annie a necklace to wear as he seduces her, the girls, completely down on their luck, return home penniless.

Ready to turn over the diner to the bank, Annie is still wearing the necklace as she sorrowfully tells those in the diner that she failed to find her "sugar daddy." But Kaye, playing a traveling salesman, eyes the necklace, asks to look at it, and says that the pendant is flawless, and he would give Annie $6,000 for it, which would more than pay off the mortgage.

Annie agrees, her aunt gets the diner for good, and everyone is happy as the movie ends on a positive note.

No, this is not "Gone With the Wind," but the film does have its moments in its PG/soft R setting, with minimal nudity and cursing. The film, directed by Graydon David and somehow written by three scribes, Norman Winski, David Kidd and Wil David, does have its moments, and certainly greatly inspired "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show.

It also was a stepping stone kind of film for some of the actors in the cast, and I was so particularly taken by Jana Bellan as Annie's best friend--who served in a relatively smaller role in this "hicks-sploitation" flick--but was an acting standout.

The curvy brunette actress was in a couple of more exploitation movies during her short career, and I checked out another one of them, "Black Heat," to see if her acting chops were real--and they were, even in decidedly low-grade fare

This 1976 "blaxsploitation" film, certainly modeled after "Shaft," starred Former NFL star Timothy Brown as "Kicks" Carter, a with-it Los Angeles police detective who is on the trail of a gun smuggler who is using the locale as a starting point for his international business.

No character has any redeeming value in the film, including "West Side Story" star Russ Tamblyn as Ziggy, the owner of a surly. Tbe only standout is, once again, Bellan, as a girl with a gambling problem so acute that she gives up her body for a chance to win.

There is one scene, where she loses at cards and is attacked by the men she loses to, which doesn't show much but is put completely over by Bellan. She was quite a good actress, although her career faded pretty much by the mid 1980s into oblivion.

Being in this turgid piece of trash couldn't have helped.

So there you have it. Now, back to the job hunt ... .