Here Come the Tigers

My God, how could man have created such a monstrosity as "Here Come The Tigers."

All I can say is this film - which I have been curious about seeing since my youth - is absolutely unwatchable. It's as if the creators turned on a few cameras, threw bad actors in front of them and walked away.

I'm in need of professional help to get over the pall of boringness that had wafted over me after sitting through 1/2 hour of this mess. Even fast forwarding was a task.

Sean Cunningham should have been arrested for even thinking about making this film, let alone releasing it onto an unsuspecting public. Stay away. Even the opening credits are too cheap for words.

as a long-time baseball fan who has seen many baseball movies, there have been many hits such as Field of Dreams, Major League, The Natural and my all-time favorite The Bad News Bears. But there have been a number of errors in the mix, including Here Come the Tigers.

First of all, almost all the common player stereotypes that were in the successful Walter Matthau movie, except for the fat catcher were in this one. The two additions were the Japanese home run hitter who can also hit balls with his fist, even though he only utters the sound "OOH!" throughout the movie since he doesn't speak English. The other was a deaf-mute pitcher who got into a fight with some members of the rival Panthers at an arcade and suffered a broken arm but recovered in time to pitch in the championship game.

Second, there are no name actors in the movie. Is Richard Lincoln a household name? I'm sure a lot of people have never heard of him. It seems that the producer didn't have the money to pay a "name" actor to play the Tigers coach, so they went with unknowns.

As for the movie, it suffers from predictability and a weak script. It also has the standard slow-motion cliché scene of the big hit and the end of the movie.

The only bright spot was that when the movie first appeared in theaters, the long time Voice of the Yankees Mel Allen did the promo. Other than that, it's a forgettable baseball movie that definitely goes down swinging.

Have not watched kids films for some years, so I missed "Here Come the Tigers" when it first came out. (Never even saw "Bad News Bears" even though in the '70s I worked for the guys who arranged financing for that movie, "Warriors," "Man Who Would Be King," and "Rocky Horror Picture Show," among others.) Now I like to check out old or small movies and find people who have gone on to great careers despite being in a less than great movie early on. Just minutes into this movie I could take no more and jumped to the end credits to see if there was a young actor in this movie who had gone on to bigger and better things--at least watching for his/her appearance would create some interest as the plot and acting weren't doing the job. Lo and behold, I spied Wes Craven's name in the credits as an electrical gaffer. He'd already made two or three of his early shockers but had not yet created Freddie Krueger or made the "Scream" movies. Maybe he owed a favor and helped out on this pic. More surprising was Fred J. Lincoln in the cast credits as "Aesop," a wacky character in the movie. F.J. Lincoln, from the '70s to just a few years ago, appeared in and produced adult films. He was associated with the adult spoof "The Ozporns," and just that title is funnier than all of "Tigers" attempts at humor combined. Let the fact that an adult actor was placed in a kids movie be an indication as to how the people making this movie must have been asleep at the wheel.

In 1978 I was in a drum corps that played the marching band in the movie. The movie was made in October they wanted you to think it was summer but look at the actors and steam is coming out of their mouths . The drum corps members played as people sitting in the stands. A friend of mine took off his shirt to make seem like summer I was standing next to him he got a close up a screen we thought that cool back than.When the corps play the national anthem on screen we were really playing the theme from rocky.Also look at the trees no leaves. The movie was made in Westport Connectitcut. That day it was cold around 40 degrees.Another friend got a close doing a big cymbal crash at the end song that was the national anthem but not really.

Two years before cashing in on the great success of John Carpenters' "Halloween" with his own memorable slasher film, "Friday the 13th", filmmaker Sean S. Cunningham did a similar thing within the family-oriented sports movie genre. Capitalizing on the success of "The Bad News Bears", "Here Come the Tigers" tells of a hapless Little League team whom the coach (Richard Lincoln) tries to turn into contenders. Predictably, the kids are a colorful bunch who constantly spout colorful dialogue and include such characters as a nose-picker and another whose flatulence is clearly deadly.

Considering the formulaic nature of "Here Come the Tigers", and the fact that it has no good ideas to call its own, this viewer wouldn't dismiss it as readily as most movie watchers. At least the kids are reasonably appealing, and the adults reasonably solid. (James Zvanut plays Lincolns' bumbling, goofy partner turned assistant coach, and Fred Lincoln of "The Last House on the Left" infamy has a quick cameo as a drunken bum with key knowledge to divulge to the coach.)

Written by "Arch McCoy" (actually "Friday the 13th" scribe Victor Miller), this is obviously a shameless cash-in and not exactly a classic, but this viewer found it likeable enough. Overall, it's fairly harmless (with the exception of some of the language), and may entertain the less demanding members of your own family.

Cunninghams' son Noel plays one of the Tigers; longtime Cunningham friend Wes Craven was the stunt gaffer!

Followed by another Miller / Cunningham kids' sports comedy, the soccer film "Manny's Orphans".

Six out of 10.