Skateboard

This movie is worth watching when there's skating on screen; too bad there's isn't more of it. Most of the screen time is taken up with the stupid, predictable plot, and I, too, found myself thinking that the stupid dialouge must have been improvised, plus I can't figure out how they managed to make 35mm film look so bad. Manny reminds me of the park owner from Kiss meets the Phantom, a fat loser frantically running around trying to figure out what's cool and then cash in on it. Perhaps more beer or bad behavior from the kids would improve this movie, too.

It's worth watching this just to spot Tony Alva (I can't believe he's in this turkey) and to see what skaters looked like in 1977. This movie was already a curiosity when I taped it off TV in the 80s.

All that I can say is that the other guy that reviewed this movie knows nothing about the history of skateboarding. In the 1970s skateboarding was one of the greatest spectacles of the time. There were actually skateboard World Championships which drew grand crowds and the invents did include slalom(weaving in and out of cones) and downhill races... I found the other guy to be completely asinine in his reasoning. This movie has a cameo of Tony Alva of Dogtown fame. Who recently was featured in the video game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and the feature film Lords of Dogtown and the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. I would recommend this movie to anyone who loves skateboarding and its history because this is clearly a part of it...

GRADE: A+, excellent

A low rent LA promoter Manny (Alan Garfield) latches onto a bunch of hotshot teenage skaters and turns them into a traveling skateboard demonstration roadshow entering lots of skating competitions to pay a debt back to Sol (Antony Carbone) his mobster type investor.

This is definitely a B movie with stilted acting and weak plot line but it is a fascinating piece of 1970's history chronicling for the first time on film the dramatic rise of the skateboarding craze. It features some of the early real life icons of skating only in their late teens who helped build the sport: Tony Alva, Richard van Der Wyk and Ellen O'Neill along with some excellent footage of skating in deep empty pools that was the forerunner to the big pipes that became a feature of the sport from the 80's on. The skating tricks pulled in the skater boys and throw in 15 year old Leif Garrett who was on the cusp of major stardom as blond eye candy for teen girls (actually Garrett did all his own skating stunts) and the movie wasn't a complete box office flop.

Anyone who grew up in the 70s is going to love the bell bottom jeans, big collared shirts, the proliferation of green and brown styles and short shorts. It also features cameos from WKRP Cincinnati star Gordon Jump and famous Hollywood 50s and 60s icon Orson Bean.

I have a weird history with this movie. When I was a kid, I came across the book adaptation of the movie in a used book store. As a young skateboarder in the early 80s, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Then to my amazement I caught the movie played on Saturday afternoon television and also enjoyed it quite a bit.

Then about 20 years pass and I've long outgrown skateboarding, and what do I come across being played on late night TV? Skateboard! I settle in for a nostalgic return to my youth.

It's obvious that this film had to be mostly improvised by the cast, but to me that's part of the charm. It definitely feels more like a documentary than feature.

Yeah, the skateboarding is completely archaic, but sheesh, this movie is 30 years old. Vert ramps hadn't been invented yet.

If you get a chance to catch it on late-night TV, I definitely suggest a look.

This is actually a pretty decent movie for a B skater movie. What makes it cool is that they used a lot of real skaters! You will recognize a lot of the skaters from this movie once they start doing competitions. Even some old name brands like Sims. Plotwise it's a simple plot. Older dude who looks WAY older than 31 when he started filming this who is balding, fat and has a lot of gray in his hair. He looks about 50. The Nurse lady reminds me of a Sarah Silverman, but I am not a fan of hers, and in the main LA Wheels group you have Tony Alva. Then there is the Sims brand girl, Laura Thornhill, who I had a huge crush on even though she was almost 20 years older than I am. I saw the movie at first when I was very young, and didn't realize when it was filmed and that she was a lot older than I was.