Sam's Song

There are two sorts of people who should watch THE SWAP: people desperate for every minute of De Niro footage they can get, and fans of ultra-low-budget grade-Z schlock.

Although not quite in the class of such anti-classics as ROBOT MONSTER and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, this moronic little flick is certainly up there--er, down there--with travesties like MESA OF LOST WOMEN, THE SINISTER URGE, and THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (another "Frankenfilm" stitched together from an atrocious low-budget movie and even worse lower-budget new footage).

For a bad movie connoisseur, THE SWAP is well worth the few bucks you'll spend for the DVD.

This movie is the oldest one I've seen of Robert De Niro. I got it for a present from my cousin who knows I'm a die-hard De Niro freak.

The quality of the DVD wasn't excellent, but what can one expect from an almost forty-year old flick. "Sam's Song" is the small story of one Sam Nicoletti. He tries to write and make a living but isn't really succeeding. He gets invited by friends for a weekend. There he tries to relax and enjoy the moment of getting out of his boring life. Eventually some small things happen like couple's betrayal and some weekend loving. If you're a real De Niro fan you just have to see it once. He is the only positive thing in this movie from John C. Broderick and John Shade.

I gave this one a 6/10. The film isn't great, script is just below average, screen quality is mediocre... but De Niro shows early glimpse of his genius!

I have only seen the 'Line of Fire' version of this film, and it was frankly just unbearable. The acting from Charnota is awfully wooden and the rubbish lines they churn out just get worse (eg. "it's written all over your face like egg"). However the film is intriguing as it's probably De Niro's worst film, but despite this it has an interesting look and setting to it. With it's bleak, porno filled and gritty American streets it's a perfect setting for De Niro, particularly as he goes on to embody such settings in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or even Sleepers. Theres also a nice seen on the beach where De Niro acts out a film he saw, and it's intercut as De Niro plays the shooter and the victim. This act is again like an incarnation of De Niro's later action of pretending to shoot himself (in the mirror) in Taxi Driver. However despite my fumbling attempts to find some good points to the film, it is terrible and very hard to watch as it's so bad. De Niro in the film is the better of the cast and perhaps the original 'Sam's Song' version is better.

In 1969 Robert De Niro starred in an unreleased short film entitled 'Sam's Song,' about a group of people on a yacht, or something to such an effect. It seemed to have no plot – and no budget, either, as it was left on the cutting room floor: Where it should have stayed, but it didn't.

Because in 1980 Cannon Films got their hands on the footage. De Niro, by now a huge star (having been in 'Taxi Driver' and 'The Deer Hunter'), was obviously enough of a celebrity to market the picture. Slap his face on a few VHS covers, and you've got yourself a movie.

That's what Cannon did. They took the old footage and inserted it into an entirely new movie that had nothing to do with 'Sam's Song.' They called this new incarnation 'The Swap' – ironic, eh?

'The Swap' takes scenes from 'Sam's Song' and intercuts them with a cheesy film noir revenge story about a guy who gets out of jail to avenge the murder of his brother. It also re-writes its own plots to revolve around the original scenes. De Niro watches a porn movie in the beginning, so instead of merely assuming he likes pornography, 'The Swap' decides to add a little 'twist' into the plot: Sammy (De Niro) was a porn director and he made kiddie porn with 12 and 13-year-olds. Surprisingly, this fact is presented to us in the film quite casually – it's never mentioned twice. Sammy's friends don't care, and neither do the filmmakers, evidently.

Sam's brother Vito, freshly released from jail, decides to do some investigating and unveils a secret plot that has something to do with Sam's murder. Halfway through the film we get a tacky flashback of Sam aboard a yacht with his friends. This was essentially the only footage of the original 'Sam's Song' and it makes no sense to put it in 'The Swap' because it has absolutely nothing to do with the story.

I don't know what to say about this movie because it really isn't a movie. It's a sloppy promotion for a film company that took fifteen minutes of footage from an unfinished film and slapped them in between scenes from another.

It's about as nonsensical as taking 'Raging Bull' and dropping scenes from 'Once Upon a Time in America' in various places, then trying to create a plot connecting the two together. Final analysis: Utterly ridiculous, and not even for De Niro's fans as it was clearly made against his own cooperation.

Just to let you know: Sam's Song is in fact a finished movie. In my country you can buy a very cheap DVD release which is actually titled The Swap, but it does contain the full movie Sam's Song.

Not that you guys are missing out on anything if they only released The Swap in your country. Sam's Song is also a horrible movie which doesn't seem to have any kind of plot.

De Niro plays some kind of amateur screenwriter/director who is invited by a befriended couple to some big mansion for a party. He meets a girl there and most of the movie is basically De Niro and this girl falling in love (which is translated on screen as the two of them just running around on a beach and stuff like that). Maybe they did in fact run out of money at a certain point because there doesn't seem to be a real ending to this mess.

The dialogues are laughable most of the time, the scenes just seem to jump from one thing to another with no real meaning or purpose. And I couldn't call it acting either what those people on screen are doing.

I can only assume this was some lame and cheap attempt at making an arty farty movie but they failed miserably. Or maybe this "style" of movie was just popular in the sixties, because there's another De Niro movie out there (Greetings, which is in fact directed by Brian DePalma) that's just as bizar as this movie.

Maybe some real hardcore De Niro fans would appreciate to see some early De Niro work like Sam's Song, but I can say without a doubt that this is a strong contestant for the first place in my top 10 of worst movies of all time.