One of the many things I miss about the late 70's is that the kid's movies back then we're often completely inappropriate for children. Maybe it was because our irresponsible parents were off snorting coke at discos or having wife-swapping "key" parties, and they just didn't care what the hell we were watching when they gave us three bucks and sent us down to the local cinema. Still, if I had to choose between that kind of parental neglect and having the kind of modern-day "helicopter" parent who insist on going to movies with their kids or calling them right after on their GPS-tracked cellphones to "discuss" whatever they've just seen, I'm afraid I'd choose the late 70's any day. But I digress. . .
Brooke Shields was famous when she was young for appearing in movies that were usually not appropriate for someone her age to see. A lot of these movies really sexualized her, especially the more "respectable" ones like "Pretty Baby" and "The Blue Lagoon". This one doesn't do that at least; it's much more weird. Thirteen-year-old Brooke plays a runaway, but she doesn't resort to prostitution or drugs like a normal runaway, no, she's a pinball hustler. She hooks up with an older guy, who was also once a pinball hustler, but is now a (very bad) country singer. They hatch a scheme to finance his music career through pinball hustling, but they make a detour back to his hometown of New Orleans in order to try take on his old nemesis, an overweight hustler called "the Whale" (Charles Durning).
First off, pinball hustling?!--c'mon. Who the hell ever heard of that? The plot is stupid, the music is bad, the acting, generally, is horrid (even Brooke Shields looks good relatively). But Charles Durning gives a performance that is WAY too good for this movie, and the twist his grossly overweight crime-boss type character takes at the end is very interesting. The screenplay was actually written by talented Hollywood maverick Donald Cammell (who was actually English), and it occasionally shows through the incompetent directing of Rudy Durand and the terrible acting of pretty much everyone but Durning. And lest you think this movie might be too appropriate for children, there are scenes like the one where one of my favorite 70's character actors, Geoffrey Lewis (sidekick of Clint Eastwood/father of Juliette), shows up as a horny trucker who picks up a hitchhiking Brooke and hits on her, but then gets offended and calls her a "prevert" when she facetiously offers to do a three-way with his wife! This is by no means good, but they literally do not make movies like this anymore, only in that much more morally confused--but much more honest-- time called the 1970's.
