Steelyard Blues

Given the people involved, it is hard to see why this movie should be so messed up and dull. The writer, David Ward, wrote the amazing caper film "The Sting" two years later, Jane Fonda had just won an Academy Award for Klute, and Donald Sutherland had just done excellent work in films like "Klute," "Start the Revolution Without Me," and "Kelly's Heroes." Plotwise, the movie is a caper tale, with a small gang of bumbling misfits planning a big heist. At the same time the movie wants to be hip satire, a series of comedy sketches of the type that the NBC television show "Saturday Night" would do so well two years later. The bad result is that the plot makes the comedy bits seem awkward and forced and the disconnected comedy bits destroy any kind of suspense that the heist might have. It is quite literally a movie that keeps smashing into itself, just as the cars in the cars in the demolition scenes run into each other.

The only real interest for me was watching Jane Fonda. Her "Iris Caine" is supposed to be a light hearted version of her dramatic Bree Daniels prostitute character in "Klute" Yet, one doesn't believe her for a moment. It is always Jane Fonda pretending to be a prostitute that we are watching. It is as terrible a performance as her performance in "Klute" was terrific. It would be a good lesson for acting teachers to run the two films together to show how the same actress in the same type of role can be great or pathetic. It suggests that actors are only as good as their writers and directors.

... required.

Escapism grounded in grim reality. You just really want them to get away with it, and then, even when it's all going horribly wrong, they somehow do!!! Excellent early 70s vibes aplenty.

Sadly, Peter Boyle passed away today, so I should point out that his presence lights up the whole film. I can never understand why he never got more character parts.

I include this film with a number of other early 70s films such as Easy Rider, Two Lane Blacktop and The Getaway. Intelligent escapism, with a tinge of cannabis. Cannot understand why it doesn't have a DVD release, especially when many other, lesser, movies are brought into the equation. It deserves the whole extras/commentary/scene setting that Fear and Loathing got, after all!

"I dunno nothing about climbing... except onto broads and motorcycles." --Peter Boyle replies to Donald Sutherland in a Brando voice when asked to climb into someplace to steal something.

"A '50 Studie!" --Donald Sutherland exclaims when he sees a 1950 Studebaker at a demolition derby, the only model he had yet to crash into in his derby driving days before prison.

Most, if not all, of the members of the comedy group The Committee appear in the movie and there's a great bit that defies description involving Hessman, his henchman, a sort of movie-prop housefront with someone pretending to be an out-of-control guard dog barking at the window while one of the others tries to hold him back.

I think Sutherland said in a Playboy interview that it was during the filming of this movie that Jane Fonda raised his consciousness.

Sigh, I never would have seen most of my favorite movies if it weren't for revival houses that brought this and other classic or off-beat movies back from time to time. Sadly, most of those theaters are long gone too these days.

Steelyard blues is a terrific addition to the Woodstock, or anti-establishment, era movies which include Easy Rider, Vanishing Point and Zacharia, to name a few. Peter Boyle is priceless as he does an impression of Marlon Brando and later scales a building without the use of ropes -- also a terrific early performance by KWRP's Howard Hessman. Don't miss this hip, fun farce. They don't make em like this anymore. Fantastic sound track featuring Maria Muldaur -- among others.

After making the cult classic, Klute Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland followed their big screen collaboration with this amusing black comedy about a bunch of oddballs repairing an old plane in the hope of flying away from it all.

Some fair moments of high farce, and a good supporting cast, including Peter Boyle.

However, the off set stories, such as the alleged fling between producers Julia Phillips and the late Don Simpson, proved to be far more interesting than the movie itself.