Uphill All The Way...

The premise of this comedy-western centers around 2 bumbling good ol' boys (Roy Clark as Ben and Mel Tillis as Booger) who, at the start of the film, are tossed off a train after failing to show their tickets. They wander inside a saloon and attempt to cheat their way into a fortune at the card table. Frank Gorshin appears as the drunkest of the crowd (his character is named, Pike). To pull off their scheme Booger has a hat, hidden inside is a mirror, and he nonchalantly walks around the room letting Ben see the other player's hands. One thing leads to another and Booger drops the hat and cracks the mirror. At first the saloon women think Booger's using the hat to look up women's dresses...but eventually a seasoned card player realizes something's fishy and the other players suggest to start a new game since the previous one had been interrupted. Burt Reynolds has an uncredited cameo appearance in this saloon scene as the seasoned card player. He shows off his card tricks, at first, and then wastes little time at stripping an overly zealous but uneducated Ben of his winnings. Ben didn't realize the hand he held (the one he bet all his chips on) turned out to be a losing hand in that particular card game.

After a night of escapist romance with a couple of saloon women (Miss Jessie and Lucinda) they confessed, the following morning, that they didn't have any additional money to pay for the long night's activity. This caused the pair to get tossed out of the saloon/brothel, literally, by the bouncer (Leon). He pushed them down a flight of stairs.

Broke and wandering around they end up becoming fugitives after they innocently visit a bank to ask for a loan. Feeling that a shotgun should be excellent collateral the duo casually enter the bank and stroll up to the window with their shotgun.

A teller (Richard Paul), seeing their shotgun and mistaking their vague, nervous ramblings as some sort of veiled threat, flips the security alarm. After Ben yells that he's never been inside any bank before and is wondering about the reason for the loud noise Booger realizes that the alarm sound is for the police to hear and that they're being mistaken as bank robbers. From there they take off, hopping aboard a car in which the driver, obviously, mistakes the pair as car thieves. The driver asks for his luggage and nervously tells Ben and Booger they can keep the car and he makes a hasty exit. Ben asks Booger if he has any idea of how to drive "this fancy contraption" and of course his answer is "no!".

Meanwhile, the alarm is still blasting back at the bank and the local sheriff (Burl Ives) makes his entrance into the story and it takes a lot of explanation on the teller's part that the alarm wasn't just a test and that there was actually an attempted robbery. The sheriff's annoyance is made loud and clear due to being called to the bank on false alarms many times before.

Soon, though, a posse is formed after the driver of the car Ben and Booger "stole" arrives in town demanding that the 2 crooks face justice. Pike, the town's drunkest drunk, is recruited by the sheriff to join the posse.

By this time Ben and Booger are well on their way at evading a string of law enforcers all over the west due to a series of misunderstandings, confusions, and genuine criminal intent. One of those in the posse is a hysterical military Captain (Glen Campbell).

Burton Gilliam (Corporal) and Gailard Sartain (Private) appear on horseback during a scene involving Ben and Booger attempting to fix a flat tire on their "contraption". The shady servicemen fix the flat but insist on being paid for the labor. Ben says they're broke...this causes the Corporal to pull out a switchblade knife and he proceeds to let the air out of the tire. Fearing the worst and perhaps not looking forward to pumping air back into the tire, yet again, Ben pulls out his shotgun and the 2 macho servicemen do an about face and are now trembling with fear.

Ben and Booger steal the Corporal and the Private's clothes and their horses. The sheriff and his posse meet up ith the vandalized military officers and he insists they join in and track the 2 con-artists/bank robbers/murderers.

Ben and Booger eventually come to a stream...but it's filled up with soapy water. This leads the pair to a couple of alien's doing their laundry. Confusion abounds and the foreign aliens mistake Ben and Booger's demeanor as threatening and they pull out oars...startling the horses. The chaos causes the horses to trample all over the 2 alien's laundry rack...knocking it off into the nearby pond. This incident, as a result, creates more members of an ever growing posse. 45 minutes into the film Glen Campbell's character enters the story. At first he and his underlings are trying to get their vehicle back onto the road. He spots Ben and Booger in their stolen military clothes and on horses and demands that they come down and help get the truck on the road. "You 2...on the horses!!! Get down here on the double!!!". The Captain doesn't have much tolerance and is prone to barking snappy orders. On the count of 4 Ben and Booger take off on the horses as the General and the other officers attempt to keep the truck from sliding further off the hill. The Captain promises a court martial for those 2 once he arrives at the base. The posse meet up with the alien laundry men...and in a running joke they recognize Miss Jessie (Elaine Joyce) as did the Corporal and the Private earlier in the film.

Ben and Booger find themselves in a shoot out after they come across what appears to be an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere. During the shootout a man emerges from the shack and shoots at all of the bandits as Ben and Booger race inside the shack. The stranger introduces himself as Anson Sudro (Sheb Wooley) and introduces his family.

The posse meet up with the Captain and the wrecked vehicle. The sheriff informs the Captain that the 2 people on horseback are impostors and don't belong to the military at all. Back at the shack Ben, Booger, and Anson continue to have a shoot out. They begin shooting at another shack in which holds dynamite...hoping the gunfire will ignite the dynamite in some way. The shot up shack explodes and the 2 flee Anson's residence and top a hill and see Mexico just across a river. They return to Anson's shack and help fight off the bandits. Eventually the posse come upon the shoot out and they, unknowingly, drive into it. The military vehicle had since been salvaged and it enters the chaotic surroundings. The Captain and the rest of the officers start firing at the bandits, too.

After things settle and the shooting stops the Widow Quinn (Trish Van Devere) makes a big showing of thanking "those 2 brave soldiers" (Booger and Ben) who had by that time vanished to the river to escape into Mexico. The Sheriff prevents the Captain and several others in the posse from revealing the true nature of Ben and Booger's 'fame' and he more or less bribes the posse to keep their mouths shut due to Ben and Booger unknowingly helping the daughter of a local politician.

Ben and Booger end up back on a train and they read a paper about the battle and fallout that took place in Sudro Springs and that the 2 mysterious saviors (Ben and Booger) vanished into thin air. They learn that the the Widow Quinn happened to be a daughter of a Senator and a reward's been offered. Ben suggests they return to collect their reward. Just then they're asked to turn in their tickets...to which Booger can't find them...and they're promptly tossed off the train once again just like at the start of the film. They bicker over their goals and whether or not to return to collect their money but in the end the 2 head off down the railroad presumably to their next get-rich-quick adventure.

This film hit theaters in 1986. Roy Clark, at the time, had been co-host of the syndicated television series Hee Haw dating back to 1969. Mel Tillis was certainly no slouch, either...for he not only is a great singer-songwriter but he displays good comedic skills in practically every project he's appeared in. Glen Campbell is also a legendary entertainer...at the time of this film's release he had been riding a crest of popularity that dated back to the 1960s. One of Roy's fellow cast-members from Hee Haw, Gailard Sartain, is another one of those performers loaded with talent. Frank Gorshin, the legendary impressionist and The Riddler from the Batman television series, had a memorable role as town drunk, Pike, but he didn't necessarily have too many lines. Gorshin's physical performance made the character memorable. Elaine Joyce had become so famous as a character actress and as a panelist on game shows, by 1986, and she eventually hosted a version of The Dating Game later on that year.

This movie can be purchased on DVD and it can be viewed, as of this writing, in it's entirety on YouTube. Search the video hosting site for the film.

The Love Boat: 1977-1986...

A happy birthday greeting goes out to Gavin MacLeod...reaching 82. I usually don't pay attention to celebrity birthdays but I heard it was his birthday today and so I decided to make note of it. Why? Well, he was part of an ensemble cast on one of the classic television comedies of all-time plus he starred in another one of my favorite television programs. MacLeod portrayed Murray Slaughter in the 1970-1977 classic comedy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Prior to the role on Moore's sitcom he had a role in McHale's Navy as a character referred to as Happy Haines. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, MacLeod's character was forever annoyed at Ted Knight's character, the often inept news reader Ted Baxter. The big reason stemmed from the fact that Murray wrote the news scripts for Ted's show...only to have Ted bungle his lines on a daily basis.

After Moore's program ended production in 1977 both Ed Asner and Gavin MacLeod starred in highly successful programs on into the 1980's. Asner, who had played Lou Grant on Moore's show for 7 years, starred as the same character in the dramatic Lou Grant series for five more years (1977-1982). MacLeod, on the other hand, landed the starring role on The Love Boat. In this series MacLeod portrayed Captain Merrill Stubing, a single father and captain of a cruise ship. The program featured a crew and loads of extra's in addition to guest stars each week. The program typically aired on Saturday nights on ABC-TV and was one of many programs airing on ABC that was associated with and, or, produced by Aaron Spelling and his associates. A companion series arrived in 1978 in the form of Fantasy Island. The weekly series was tested in 1977 via a made-for-TV movie and it became a series the following year...airing right after The Love Boat on Saturday nights. Fantasy Island starred Ricardo Montalban as Mr. Roarke and Herve Villechaize as Tattoo. Each program had a similar formula which consisted of special guests each week who often appeared in separate, unrelated story-lines that were ultimately tied together by episode's end.

The ship on The Love Boat served mostly as a backdrop as the crew and the Captain were rarely shown performing their duties. There were brief scenes in practically every episode showing Isaac the bartender, for example, serving drinks and cracking jokes with passengers but for the remainder of the episode he was often roaming around the ship mingling with the guests. The ship's doctor, Adam, occasionally shown his medical prowess but was much more interested in flirting with female passengers. The cruise director, Julie, was shown performing her tasks at the beginning and end of each voyage but like the other crew members she spent her time socializing.

It's long been something of a habit for some people to make fun of Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Dynasty, Hotel, and other programming associated with Aaron Spelling. The common criticism expressed is "escapist drivel" or "trash TV". Even today there's often some critic or blogger making fun of the celebrity guest star concept and making it sound as if every legendary actor and actress that guest starred on The Love Boat or Fantasy Island did so out of desperation in order to be in the spotlight again. How cynical can people be? The Love Boat, as well as Fantasy Island, are/were available on DVD. You can check Amazon and other on-line stores for DVD availability, obviously. I am not much of a watcher of television too much anymore unless it's a sports program or news and so I don't know if any of those programs are currently airing on TV Land or Nick-at-Nite. I saw some uploads of Fantasy Island on You Tube and they had a TV Land logo on the lower right side of the screen and so I know at one time it aired on that channel.

John Conlee vintage recordings...

I was looking through Amazon and came across the news that a John Conlee CD will be released this coming May 8th. This particular CD will feature two of John's studio albums from his Columbia Records days (1986-1987). Upon leaving MCA after Greatest Hits, Volume Two and the big success of his single, "Old School", in 1985 John joined the Columbia label sometime later and his first release, Harmony, hit in 1986. The album contains three Top-10 hits: the socially aware title track, "Harmony", the wonderful life-lesson-in-song tale of "The Carpenter" which hit the Top-10 here in America but reached #1 in Canada, and the America #1 hit "Got My Heart Set On You". The second album on the CD is 1987's American Faces which builds on the socially aware sentiments heard in "Harmony" a year earlier. The socially aware theme would also visit John's following album in 1989, Fellow Travelers, but that release was on the 16th Avenue label and has no relevance to what will be on the upcoming CD in May but I figured I'd mention it because it fit the pattern of his album's using socially aware recordings as titles.

Like the 1986 album, the follow-up from 1987 also features three songs released as singles. "Domestic Life" became his last really big radio hit (hitting the Top-5) but a close second would be "Mama's Rockin' Chair" which had a nostalgic feel to it as John told the story of how imaginations develop while listening to stories. The rocking chair song reached the Top-20 in 1987 (almost making the Top-10).

The previously mentioned "Domestic Life" is still performed in his concert's to this day and it tells the story of a couple who are proud of their low-key, average lifestyle in spite of living next door to people with money and the trappings that go along with wealth. "Living Like There's No Tomorrow" was the third single from American Faces. It hit early in 1988 but it didn't reach the Top-40 country chart...a strange occurrence at that point in time for one of John's singles. What was happening was country radio was amidst their slow but certain airplay ban of practically every singer that didn't appeal to a specific age group. Some artists, even a few that had been in the business longer than John, were able to continue having Top-10 hits into the early 1990's but then they, too, saw their chart placement's sliding and airplay spots vanishing as country radio began playing more and more newer singers just for the sake of the singers being new (whether or not these new artists could sustain a career or develop a following apparently wasn't a priority).

But anyway...like a lot of his peers, John Conlee continued making music and touring throughout the late '80s and the '90s. He wasn't as active in the recording studio in the 1990's, unfortunately, but he was still on the road and becoming a semi-regular on the Grand Ole Opry (he became a member in 1981). By the late '90s he'd become what's known as a regular at the Opry...hosting his own 30 minute segments each Friday and Saturday night. He's still highly visible at the Opry and he continues to do show dates to this day...and sometimes he'll put out a new song or two. A religious CD from 2004, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, was his first studio album in 15 years and it featured the topical hit, "They Also Serve", which didn't get much radio airplay but it became a hit with the public through on-line exposure and repeated performances at the Opry.

Harmony and American Faces represent two of John's classic studio albums and I say it's about time those two albums were brought back into circulation again!