LoC #132 Top 112 Road Movies / Journey Films

[stethacantus]

MILE 50

National Lampoon's European Vacation ( 1985 )

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Amy Heckerling

16 Points, 2 Lists, #16 Pac-Man

TRAILER

The Griswold family wins a trip to Europe on a game show.

And here we are at 50!! This is where usually the LoC begins. And if I had started from here, I would have been done by now. When I agreed to do this, I thought I would just cut and paste the production histories from Wikipedia for the write ups. It turned out to be a lot harder than that. Movies completely made by auteurs came from the mind of that director, so any production history is slim to non existent. I could probably do a write up of that director's bio, but then that same director has multiple films on this list! Those damn Pixar films are just as bad. Unlike the late Walt, Pixar doesn't adapt existing novels, but stories they made up themselves. Unlike Pinocchio where I could have  added the history of the novel it was based on, Cars exists because one of the executives at Pixar saw a car driving by and thought  "Hey, lets do a film about cars"., or something mundane like that. And then you get something like this. A bunch of films from the same franchise in the same LoC which share the same history. What history of the Vacation franchise is left, I have to save for National Lampoons Vacation which, no surprise, you all know is coming up at one point in this LoC. So I made up my mind, whenever Wikipedia offers nothing for the write-up, then I will have to improvise with a list of the films that no one submitted for this LoC. I am not just doing this to pad out the write-ups, but because it appears some if not all of you have submitted films to your lists that wee either very slight on the Road Movie theme, or were not what you would not consider good, because you could not think of 25 good road films that you have seen! so these lists of films not on the LoC are to remind some of you of the road films you most likely have seen and most definitely would have had on your lists, if only you hadn't  forgotten they existed. European Vacation has Eric Idle billed sixth in the cast. It turns out he only had what amounted to a cameo role, but his name on the marquee  was enough to trick Python fans  into buying tickets, So, because I can think of nothing else to write about European Vacation that I will not be using for the first movie in the franchise, here is a list of the films starring the members of Monty Python which somehow missed this LoC. And lets begin with Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 ) which I wanted in my LoC, but regrettably needed to cut. Basically, I had about 35-40 films I wanted on my LoC list, so to narrow the list down, eliminated the films that were less examples of the Road Movie genre. It would have easily been #2 on my list, but I felt I needed to give priority to the movies which better represented the typical road movie. And Holly Grail is more of a sketch film than an actual journey film. Since others have submitted time travel films, for my money Time Bandits ( 1981 ) would come the closest to being like a traditional road film. The musical Privates on Parade ( 1982 ) with John Cleese is definitely a road movie. So is another film Cleese had a role in, Silverado ( 1985 ) even though it takes place in a West before any roads were built. But a significant part of the movie is the characters traveling to Silverado. Spies Like Us ( 1985 ), which has Terry Gilliam in a brief one line role,  was an attempt to recreate the Bing Crosby / Bob Hope road films for a new generation, and Chase and Aykroyd did plenty of traveling during it. Clockwise ( 1986 ) has Cleese going on a road trip to deliver a speech. Labyrinth ( 1986 ), which had a screenplay written by Terry Jones, is basically a road movie in a muppet maze. Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Barron Munchausen ( 1988 ) has the Barron traveling all over the world to reunite his old gang, which includes Eric Idle as the fastest man in the world. Erik the Viking ( 1989 ) has the characters traveling to Asgard to ask the gods to end Ragnarök. , and are perused by a villainous Viking played by Cleese. Missing Pieces ( 1992 ) has Eric Ide and Robert Wuhl going on a road trip to find a missing inheritance. Two more Gilliam films that court as road films would be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ( 1998 ) and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote ( 2018 ). And there is a brief cameo from Cleese in the 2004 version of Around the World in 80 Days. And  Ella Enchanted ( 2004 ) is narrated by Eric Idle. And almost forgot, but Yellowbeard ( 1983 ) which stars Graham Chapman and has Cleese and Idle in the cast sort of qualifies as a road film as it involves characters on a journey.

[stethacantus]

MILE 49

Fandango ( 1985 )

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Kevin Reynolds

17 Points, 1 List, #9 Stethacantus

TRAILER

In 1971 the five college students who call themselves The Groovers are about to lose two members to the draft, so decide to celebrate their final week together by going on a road trip to visit their favorite road house, and to dig up something they had buried called Dom.


In 1980 film student Kevin Reynolds shot a short film called Proof, where a group of college students dare one of their  friends to go skydiving, only for him to grab a laundry bag instead of a parachute.  The film made its way to Steven Spielberg,  who wanted Reynolds to expand it into a feature film. The end result was Reynolds feature film directorial debut. In Fandango, almost all of the airport scene from Proof was reshot with little alteration other than a new cast. It became just one episode in a film about an eventful road trip. When it was completed, Warner Bros. decided to shelve it, reportedly because everyone in the cast were unknowns. Those unknown actors included Kevin Costner and Judd Nelson. A year later Nelson was a cast member in both The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire and had been dubbed a member of the Brat Pack. So Warner gave it a limited release of just 27 theaters where it earned less than $100, 000 on a $7 million budget. Thanks to the sudden popularity of Kevin Costner, Fandango became a cult hit on home video.

[stethacantus]

MILE 48

Bottle Rocket ( 1996 )

Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Wes Anderson

17 Points, 1 List, #9 Charles Castle

TRAILER

Three friends have agreed to a complicated seventy five year plan where they go on the lam while they pull off several heists.

And here is a familiar story that you may remember from the previous film on this list. A film maker directs a short. It gets a lot of attention. The film maker gets a deal to remake the short as a feature film. It bombs at the box office, but the film maker still goes on to a career as a major director. But while Kevin Reynolds would go on to direct crap like Waterworld, Wes Anderson would go on to direct several critically acclaimed feature films. Back in 1989 while attending the University of Texas, Anderson became roommates with Owen Wilson. They were a perfect match. Wilson was an aspiring actor while Anderson was an aspiring director. In 1994 they collaborated on a script for a black and white short called Bottle Rocket. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival where it impressed producer James L Brooks, who agreed to finance a full length feature film version. On a budget of $5 million, it ended up earning only $560,000. But critics loved it, and it ended up launching the professional  acting careers  pf the Wilson brothers, along with Anderson's directing career.

[stethacantus]

MILE 47

Up ( 2009 )

Studio: Pixar / Disney
Director: Pete Docter

17 Points, 1 List, #9 Pac-Man

TRAILER

An old man attaches a bunch of balloons to the roof of his house, and away he goes.

What can I say? A Pixar film. The same guys work on all the films. The animation comes from thousands of computer programmers. And Pete Docter is very vague when explaining where he came up with the idea for a movie about a flying house. So, it is back to listing the films that no one had on their lists. There are quite a few films about people taking journeys in balloons. The one that comes closest to being like Up was Danny Deckchair ( 2003 ), an Australian film about a man who attaches a bunch of balloons to a chair and flies across the country. The film was based on the true story of Lawnchair Larry, who in 1982 made a 7 mile flight across Los Angeles in a patio chair with a bunch of  multicolored balloons keeping it aloft. Most likely Lawnchair Larry was the inspiration for Up as well. Films with normal passenger balloons include Flight of the Lost Balloon ( 1961 ), Five Weeks in a Balloon ( 1962 ),  The Aeronauts ( 2019 ) and S.O.S. Survive or Sacrifice ( 2020 ). Moving up to airships, there is Cecil B DeMille's weirdest film, the pre-code musical comedy Madam Satan ( 1930 ). Films where the Zepplin take a much longer flight include Dirigible ( 1931 ), Master of the World ( 1961 ), Island at the Top of the World ( 1974 ) and The Hindenburg ( 1975 ). Moving on to airplanes and jets, there was Airplane! ( 1980 ), the movie it was a parody of  Zero Hour! ( 1957 )  and  it's follow-up Airplane II: The Sequel ( 1982 ). And the Airport film series it also parodied ( Airport ( 1970 ),  Airport 1975  ( released in 1974?),  Airport '77 ( 1977 ) and The Concorde -Airport '79  (  1979 ) ). I myself would not count any film that takes place on an airplane as a road movie because the cast is locked inside a cabin and does not interact with the outside environment until they land. However, and exception would have been Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines ( 1965 ). While airliner films would basically not count, I did leave it up to the list submitter to decide if the films on their list qualified for whatever reason. I did get a couple of cruise ship films which are just as bad at interacting with the environment they are traveling through, but no one went for any airliner films. So we will not be seeing Snakes On A Plane ( 2006 ) or Sully ( 2016 ) or Air Force One ( 1997 ) or Passenger 57 ( 1992 ) or Con Air ( 1997 ) or Soul Plane ( 2004 ) or Lindbergh's historic trans Atlantic flight in The Spirit of St Louis ( 1957 ).

[stethacantus]

MILE 46

Speed 2: Cruise Control ( 1997 )

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Jan de Bont

18Points, 1 List, #8 RVRII

TRAILER

A deranged hacker takes over a cruise ship, and it's up to the bus driver from Speed to stop him.


And here I was expecting this movie to have no production history to write up about, and resorting to just listing movies that take place aboard ocean liners. You would think the only story here is they rushed out a sequel without Keanu, and everyone thought it sucked. But there is more than that. According to director Jan de Bont, he never intended there to be a sequel to Speed. It was a one off story. And what would the sequel be? Another bus that will blow up if it slows down?  However, after Speed became a huge hit, 20th Century Fox had announced that there would be a sequel. That was when de Bont finally got around to reading the fine print of his contract. He was legally obligated to direct a sequel. Speed being his first movie as director, he had failed to check for a sequel clause. Neither Keanu Reeves nor Sandra Bullock had sequel clauses in their contracts. However, Fox was convinced both actors would easily return for any sequel. Graham Yost, who created and wrote the script for the first film, submitted a spec script for the sequel. His idea was it would be set on an airplane that is rigged to explode if it ascends more than 10,000 feet, and is headed straight towards the Andes mountain range. This, and hundreds of other ideas were submitted to  de Bont that involved vehicles that will explode if they slow down, or land, or do something that would trigger a bomb. He ended up rejecting them all. Told by Fox that the sequel did not have to be a retread of the plot of the first film, but could be about anything as long as it was an action film, he decided he wanted the plot to take place on a cruise ship. This due to his claim that he had a recurring nightmare about a ship crashing into a port village on an island. Although it was more likely he got the idea from an old Disney cartoon short called Little Toot where a baby tugboat causes an ocean liner to crash into Lower Manhattan, smashing through blocks of skyscrapers. Further accusations of plagiarism came from director John McTieman. He claimed a detailed script had been written for Die Hard With A Vengeance which would have taken place on a cruise ship. However, once Under Siege came out, Fox told McTieman he could not use the script because Steven Seagal had already done a Die Hard on a Ship. He claimed that most of Speed 2: Cruise Control was the abandoned Die Hard With A Vengeance script, including the cruise ship crashing into a town. Both Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock read the script, thought it was terrible, and refused to do the sequel. Fox was able to get Bullock to agree to do the sequel when they threatened  not to greenlight  a film she wanted to do called Hope Floats. But they could not get Keanu to return, so decided to write his character out of the sequel by saying Sandra had broken up with him and became a boyfriend to a different cop. De Bont chose to shoot the film on  Saint Martin because the island rarely ever got hit with a hurricane, and he would be shooting the climactic scene during hurricane season. an entire fake section of town was built on a vacant section of Marigot, right next to the actual buildings of that town. Rails that ran underwater from the bay and into the center of town were to guide a full scale replica of a ship's bow into the center of the town, crashing through buildings as it slowly came to a stop. The day before the scene was to be shot, a hurricane directly hit Marigot, Saint Martin, destroying the entire set, and causing the fake bow to fall off it's rails. An entire new set needed to be built while the Bow, which had been built on the rails, now needed to be hoisted out of the bay and put back on the rails. This ended up driving the film $20 million over budget.

[stethacantus]

MILE 45

Blues Brothers 2000 ( 1998 )

Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: John Landis

18 Points, 1 List, #8 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

Elwood Blues decides to get the old band back together so he can make a sequel.  And just as in the original film, the band ends up perused in car chases by every group they pissed off, including the police.

Dan Aykroyd and John Landis underestimated the ire of fans of the first film for making another Blues Brothers film after the death of John Belushi.  It was as if Bud Abbott tried to make another Abbott & Costello film after the death of Lou Costello.  But they had their reasons, other than Landis having wanted to do a sequel since the first movie. After Belushi died, his Blues Brothers act with Aykroyd was in effect dead as well. However, Aykroyd would occasionally perform as a solo act called Elwood Blues, or the Elwood Blues Review when backed by the original band members. A proponent of the Blues, Aykroyd co-founded and financed The House of Blues, a combination performance hall and restaurant modeled after The Hard Rock Cafe. The first location opened on November 26, 1992 in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a performance by The Blues Brothers. Jim Belushi, an investor in the restaurant chain, replaced his brother as Zee Blues.  With the audience responding enthusiastically to the official reunion, Aykroyd and Jim decided to continuing performing as the Blues Brothers, mostly at openings of new House of Blues locations. On occasions where Jim was unavailable, friend John Goodman would sub as Mighty Mack McTeer.  In response, Aykroyd would occasionally make a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live as Elwood Blues whenever Goodman hosted, and on one occasion they performed together as The Blues Brothers, where once again the audience cheered. On October 1st, 1996 a live album was recorded  during a performance, and released  in May of t1997 as  Blues Brothers and Friends Live From Chicago's House of Blues. UPN paid for the rights to produce The Blues Brothers: Animated Series. Jim Belushi was asked to voice Jake Blues, while Dan's brother Peter Aykroyd was signed to voice Elwood. Production began on animating the first eight episodes.  Aykroyd and Jim Belushi were interested in officially reviving the Blues Brothers beyond House of Blues openings and cartoons. They asked John Goodman if he would be interested in doing a Blues Brothers sequel, and once both Belushi and Goodman were on board, contacted John Landis. Both Aykroyd and Landis began writing the script. On January 26 1997, Aykroyd, Belushi and Goodman headlined the halftime show for  Super Bowl XXXI as The Blues Brothers. Despite critics saying it was one of the worst halftime shows ever ( Really? Worse that Presto Elvis, the marching bands from the first 20 years of broadcast, and the four years Up With People were the headliners? ) Despite criticism for their performance, Universal green lit the sequel. However, in May, ABC picked up the pilot for Total Security, a series that had Jim Belushi in the cast. Now legally obligated to begin shooting the series, Belushi had to drop out of the sequel. The script was rewritten to eliminate the Zee character, giving some of his lines to other characters, mostly to John Goodman. While the sequel, now called Blues Brothers 2000, was being shot, UPN cancelled their Blues Brothers animated series without airing an episode. The reason given, that Jim would no longer be available to voice Jake. Blues Brothers 2000 was released on February 6, 1998, a little over a year since the halftime show aired. It underperformed and just barely broke even.

[stethacantus]

MILE 44

No Country For Old Men ( 2007 )

Studio: Paramount /  Miramax
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen

18 Points, 1 List, #8 Charles Castle

TRAILER

A hunter discovers a drug deal gone bad where everyone has killed each other, leaving behind drugs and a briefcase with $2 Million. The hunter  decides to keep the money for himself, but is soon perused by a hired killer who the mob sent to recover the money.

Lets all remove our hats, bow our heads and say a silent prayer for author Cormac McCarthy, who passed away very recently on June 13th at the age of 89. Died during the submission period for this LoC, and sadly is not the only celebrity connected to this LoC who has passed away while it was in progress. Considered the greatest living American author ( well, until recently, ) his 1985 book Blood Meridian has been deemed by some critics as The Great American Novel, sharing that honor with To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Little Women, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and 18 other contenders for that honor. Critically acclaimed since his first novel, The Orchard Keeper in 1965, he would not have a successful novel until All The Pretty Horses in 1992. He wrote five screenplays between 1976 and 2013, one which was turned into a film directed by Ridely Scott. One of his unsold scripts was No Country For Old Men. Written in 1987, it would be adapted into a novel in 2005. The film rights were immediately bought by producer Scott Rudin, who then offered it to The Coen Brothers, the directors behind Blood Simple ( 1984 ) and Fargo ( 1996 ). Since the novel had been a novelization of a screenplay, the Coen Brothers were able to do a straightforward adaption with very little altered from the novel. The movie would end up earning eight Academy Award nominations, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Nest Supporting Actor ( Javier Bardem ) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Not including his screenplay The Counselor which became a Ridley Scott film in 2013, No Country For Old Men was one of four of Cormac McCarthy's novels adapted into motion pictures. This included All The Pretty Horses, Child of God and the postapocalyptic thriller  The Road, which sounds like something which could have been submitted for this LoC, but wasn't.

[stethacantus]

MILE 43

Lost in America ( 1985 )

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Albert Brooks

18 Points, 1 List, #8 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

A married couple in their 30s decide to quit their jobs, buy an RV, and spend the rest of their lives traveling the roads of America.



We now have two movies I'm a row without any online production history at all to write about.  So instead, I am going to use this write up for the biography of Albert Einstein.  He was born to a theatrical family. His mother, Thelma Leeds, was a bit part actress in Golden Age Hollywood. It was on the set of New Faces of 1937 she met Harry Einstein, a popular radio comedian just beginning his own movie career who went by the stage name of Parkyakarkus, which was also the name of his Greek chef stage character. They both fell in love and after marrying Thelma retired from showbusiness. Albert continued appearing on film as Parkyakarkus, and eventuality became the star of his own radio series.  On November 23, 1958 Parkyakarkus was delivering a monolog during a Friars Club roast of Lucille Ball when he had a fatal heart attack and died. Albert's older brother Bob, who was 16 at the time, had been trying to launch his own career as a comedian, but abandoned it after his father died on stage. Instead, he became a comedy writer  for variety shows, only playing a character in the occasional sketch. He would eventually become a full fledged performer after creating the daredevil character Super Dave Osborne. Albert dropped out of college at age 19 to begin his own stand up career. Deciding a name like Albert Einstein would not work, due to there being another famous Albert Einstein, he changed his stage name to Albert Brooks. He soon became successful at the profession, and had two successful comedy albums, one which earned a Grammy nomination.  It was then that he decided to retire from stand up to follow his newest passion, making movies. He had made six short films for Saturday Night Live which were all very popular.  His SNL films were mostly parodies of popular culture, as was his directorial debut Real Life which parodied the first reality show America Family which had aired on ABC in 1973. Lost In America was his third movie. And the only production history I can find is that it was originally to star Bill Murray, with Brooks only acting as the writer and director. However, Murray was forced to drop out at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict with another film, so Albert reluctantly became the lead in order for filming to begin before the deadline.

[stethacantus]

MILE 42

Tommy Boy ( 1995 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Peter Segal

18 Points, 2 Lists, #16 RVRII

TRAILER

Tommy Boy has inherited an auto parts plant, only to learn the bank is about to foreclose. He makes a deal with the bank that if he can sell enough break pads to prove his company is still viable, they will not foreclose. So he sets off on a cross country sales trip with his father's former assistant to save the company. 

Yep. Nothing. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, this film just showed up. No explanation from Bonnie and Terry turner, the husband and wife team that wrote the script, where they got  the idea for this film from. The Turners became writers for Saturday Night Live in 1986, and after helping Mike Myers write the script for the Wayne's World movie in 1992, would also go on to co-write scripts for  Wayne's World 2 ( 1993 ) and Coneheads  ( 1993 ).  It was the debut of what Paramount Pictures hoped would be a new comedy team, Farley & Spade. Although thanks to NBC, that was not very likely to happen. Just two months after Tommy Boy was released, NBC ordered Lorne Michaels to get rid of half of the cast, who they blamed for that season's low ratings. Some of the cast members on NBC's hit list were already leaving the show. Jay Mohr, Adam Sandler and Chris Farley were fired. David Spade was also on their hit list, but Michaels convinced NBC to let him stay in a reduced capacity of only appearing on Weekend Update. Both Spade and Farley were under contract to Paramount Pictures, the studio that was then working with Lorne Michaels to make his Saturday Night Live spin off films. With Farley fired from SNL  and Spade on his way out, neither were that interested in continuing to work for Michaels. Farley was definitely fed up with working for Paramount. He was offered the lead in The Cable Guy and Ismael the Amish bowler in Kingpin, both which he was forced to turn down because Paramount wanted him and Spade to do another buddy film.  His contract was about to expire if he wasn't assigned a new movie in a week. Screen Writer Fred Wolf was given four days to write a script, which was Black Sheep ( 1996 ). So Farley was contractually obligated to do another buddy comedy with David Spade on a 45 page script written in four days. Once that film was completed, Farley's contract with Paramount was fulfilled,  and with that Paramount could not order him to do anymore buddy films. Farley died a year later without teaming up with Spade again, and at the time of his death, had no plans to team up again.

[stethacantus]

MILE 41

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey ( 1991 )

Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Pete Hewitt

19 Points, 1 List, TIIEBREAKER,  #7 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

A dictator from the future sends evil Bill and Ted robots to the present to kill the original Bill and Ted and take their place, sending the original Bill and Ted to the Underworld.

Another film without any production history. But why would it? The first film was extremely thin on it's production history. Written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon based on a comedy routine they did together in college. But then when op look up their bios, they are both a paragraph long and just a list of the scripts they wrote professionally without any mention of this so called comedy routine or how it was developed. For the sequel, nothing. No production history at all. But this was basically a situation where the first movie was successful enough that the studio asked fora sequel, the script was spitballed and competed fast enough for the studio not to hand it over to other writers, and they just reused the same cast, because at the time Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves had nothing better to do. So why would there be any history on this? It was the second in the Bill & Ted trilogy, with the third movie released in 2020. And if you are wondering why the 30 years between the second and third film, it all comes down to Keanu became a major star due to Speed and didn't need to do anymore sequels. Not Speed 2, and certainly not a third outing as Ted. 2020. his career was not as hot. So since I have nothing to fill this write-up with, then lets just list all the time-travel films that did not make anyone's list. I personally would not think of time travel as the same as traveling on a road. Especially since Time Travel in film is usually portrayed as instantaneous, from pulling the lever to being there after a few seconds of light effects. But the two Bill and Ted films on this LoC came from two different members. So if time travel is a variant of the road movie, then that means that these were missed:

The most famous time travel story ever is still the original. H. G. Wells The Time Machine which has been turned into a feature film three times, in 1960, 1978 and 2002. There is also the film Time After Time ( 1979 ) which had H.G. Wells inventing an actual time machine and perusing Jack the Ripper to what was current day California. The most famous time traveler would be Doctor Who, which had an entire pilot movie made for FOX in 1996 for what could have been a reboot series continuing from the original series. Not continuing from the series was two films starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor,  Doctor Who and the Daleks ( 1965 )  and  Daleks Invasion of Earth 2150 A.D. ( 1966 ). Monty Python's Terry Gilliam co-wrote and directed Time Bandits ( 1981 ). Not his only time travel film, he also directed Twelve Monkeys ( 1995 ). This after he was to direct an adaption of the second most famous time travel story,  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court before Warner Bros. decided to pull the plug. The Mark Twain novel actually predates H.G.Wells by five years, but has no time machine. The hero magically ends up in Medieval times after receiving a blow to the head. There have been numerous film adaption of the novel so far, including the first in 1921 which was also the first film adaption of a Mark Twain novel, one in 1931 with Will Rogers, and a 1949 musical with Bing Crosby. There was also the live action Walt Disney film Unidentified Flying Oddball ( 1979 ) which altered the story so that the hero was an  astronaut who travels so fast in his space ship that he travels back in time to King Arthur's age. And a comedy that is a comedy variant of the story starring Martin Lawrence called Black Knight ( 2001 ). And another variant of the story with Army of Darkness ( 1992 ). We also have a time traveling Jean Clause van Damme in Timecop ( 1994 ), an aircraft carrier going through a time portal to the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor in  The Final Countdown ( 1980 ), Looper ( 2012 ), Tenet ( 2020 ), Hot Tub Time Machine ( 2010 ) and Hot Tub Time Machine 2 ( 2015 ). And the trilogy Back to the Future ( 1985 ), Back to the Future Part II ( 1989 ) and Back to the Future Part III ( 1990 ) which at the least has a car as a time machine. There were also a few existing franchises which threw time travel into one of there films. Such as the time travel heist in Avengers: Endgame ( 2019 ). Also X-Men: Days of Future Past ( 2014 ), the recent and perhaps final DCEU film The Flash ( 2023 ), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III ( 1993 ), Men In Black 3 ( 2012 ) and more than one Star Trek film, Star Trek: The Voyage Home ( 1986 ), Star Trek: First Contact (  1996 ), and the reboot Star Trek ( 2009 ) where time travel from characters from the original time line create the altered reboot timeline. And let's not forget the greatest time travel movie ever made, Time Chasers ( 1994 ).

[stethacantus]

MILE 40

Wild at Heart( 1990)

Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Company
Director: Davil Lynch

19 Points, 1 List, #7 Charles Castle

TRAILER

A young couple goes on a road trip to California, unaware the girl's mother has hired hitmen to track them down and kill her boyfriend.

Okay. Remember Million Dollar Mystery? The film at #67 on this LoC which was indirectly made possible by the film at #53 on this LoC? Well that film was responsible for this film existing. After directing his first feature film Eraserhead,  David Lynch wanted to follow it up with a movie equally as nuts called Ronnie Rocket. Unable to find a studio to finance the film, he turned to a new company called Brooksfilms, founded by Mel Brooks to finance his films. Brooks was producing a film based on the life of  the famous deformed circus freak Joseph Merric called The Elephant Man which had previously been the subject of  a popular play of the same name. On thing lead to another and Lynch ended up being offered to direct The Elephant Man. Ultimately Brooksfilms would not finance Ronnie Rocket, so Lynch went elsewhere, eventually finding Producer Deno de Laurentiis. He ended up directing both Dune and Ble Velvet for de Laurentiis before the producer greenlit Ronnie Rocket. And then de Laurentiis made Million Dollar Mystery which bankrupted his production company. Which in turn had Ronnie Rocket as one of he production company's assets put into legal limbo until the bankruptcy was litigated. So he moved on to another project, the pilot for a television series called Twin Peaks. Dring the editing of the pilot, one of it's associate producers, Monty Montgomery, gave Lynch an unpublished manuscript called Wild at Heart: The Story Of Sailor and Lula and told him he was going to direct a movie adaption of it. But in order to get it made, could Lynch possibly attach his name as an executive producer. Lynch read the book, and decided he wanted to direct it himself. And as Ronnie Rocket was still in legal limbo, he had the free time.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I loved Million Dollar Mystery just because it is so god damn stupid.  So much about that movie is so poorly written and acted and just dumb.  My favorite part is Kevin Pollack as the cop who does terrible impersonations, and the two hot ladies who are so amused by them.  It really is one of those movies that is so bad it's good.

Blues Brothers 2000 is a crappy movie, but it gets a lot of shit for being a poor imitation of the original.  But the original was terrible too.  At least the sequel had an amazing soundtrack.

[stethacantus]

MILE 39

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie ( 2004 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Stephen Hillenburg

19 Points, 1 List, #7 Pac-Man

TRAILER

SpongeBob and Patrick go on a journey to find the stolen crown of King Neptune

Nickelodeon began as a channel that  aired foreign kids programming, primarily shows from Canada, which included the pre-teen sketch comedy show You Can't Do That On Television which featured among it's cast members a 13 year old Alanis Morrissette. It was this Canadian show which created the idea of dropping slime on it's cast members after particularly bad jokes were told. By the mid 80s Nickelodeon was co-producer of the foreign shows.  Viacom purchased it's parent company Warner-Amex in order to own another Warner-Amex channel MTV, ending up combining  all the channels under the company MTV Networks. With money provided by Viacom to produce their own programming, They stopped relying on buying or co-producing foreign shows and began producing shows of their own. These were mostly cheap game shows for kids, like Double Dare. But by 1991 they convinced Viacom to finance the more expensive Animated series, The channel had been airing animated shows from the beginning, but were mostly cancelled Saturday Morning network cartoons, and cartoons from England. The first three Nickelodeon produced cartoons were Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show. To their amazement The Ren & Stimpy Show was a hit, mostly due to it being edgier than the normal cartoon. It's creator John Kricfalusi had grown sick of the content restrictions he worked with animating cartoons for the networks, and wanted something that he knew would really appeal to 12 year olds. It ended up appealing to viewers as old as 35. But it also became a bone of contention with Nickelodeon, who for the first time began to receive complaint mail from parents. They began demanding he tone down his cartoons. Having to replace content they began objecting to delayed completed episodes being delivered on time. So after he refused to censor an episode where Ren & Stimpy are taken to a dog show, Nickelodeon fired  him and replaced him with show runner Bob Camp. Viewers complained about the quality of the shows, and it being far less edgy. And as word spread of John K.'s firing from the series, stopped watching out of protest. Nickelodeon eventually pulled the plug on the series in 1995 with one episode unaired. Nickelodeon desperately wanted another cartoon with the crossover success of Ren & Stimpy, but obvious attempts to repeat the formula with The Angry Beavers and CatDog just didn't catch on. One of their more successful attempts at the Ren & Stimpy formula was Rocko's Modern Life created by animator Joe Murray. But after three seasons he handed directorial duties to Stephen Hillenburg. And at the end of the fourth season, announced he was leaving the series. Instead of continuing the series without him, Nickelodeon chose to cancel it, but then gave Hillenburg and the rest of the staff at the cartoon the opportunity to come up with another cartoon that fit the Ren & Stimpy formula.

Joe Murray had discovered Stephen Hillenburg at the 1992 Ottawa International Animation Festival where he saw his experimental short Wormholes. Murray was looking for new talent to take over directorial duties at Rocko's Modern Life and hired him on the spot. Hillenburg was a marine biologist who wanted to make the transition into animation. His lifelong passions was drawing, and while working at the Orange County Marine Institute, his artistic abilities were noticed. The institute wanted to publish an educational comic book about sea life, and asked Hillenburg to create and draw it. The book had anthropomorphic sea creatures explaining how they survived in the ocean, including a character named Bob the Sponge. His passion for art grew, and he inevitably left the institute to learn how to animate cartoons. Wormholes was his second attempt at animation.

When Nickelodeon asked him and the rest of the staff of Rocko's Modern Life to come up with a show that was similar to Ren & Stimpy, the first thing he though about was the comic book he made for the Marine Institute, creating the series SpongeBob SquarePants. It soon became one of Nickelodeon's top rated series. As it's first season drew to a close, Nickelodeon asked Hillenburg to write and direct a SpongeBob SquarePants theatrical film. He initially refused believing he could not transfer a series designed for television into a full length feature film. But with Nickelodeon continuously asking him to do a film, he finally relented and agreed to begin the film just as soon as they completed the third season. What Nickelodeon didn't know was that Hillenburg intended the movie to be the series finale. Convinced the series had peeked, he wanted it to end on top. And a big budget theatrical film would be a great way for his characters to take their final bow. Of course Nickelodeon had never agreed to the series ending after three seasons, so Hillenberg resigned and handed the show to other show runners. Season 4 began airing a year and a half after the release of the movie.

[stethacantus]

MILE 38

The Warriors ( 1979 )

Studio: Paramout Pictures
Director: Walter Hill

19 Points, 1 List, #7 Stethacantus

TRAILER

Cyrus, the leader of the Gramercy Riffs, New York City's largest gang, holds a night time piece conference in the Bronx which nine delegates from each gang are to attend. He proposes  a citywide truce and a merger of all the gangs into a single gang who could  overpower the police and rule the city. But Luthor, the leader of the Rogues, shoots and kills Cyrus, then when the other gangs turn around to see who did it, claims he saw the leader of The Warriors shoot Cyrus. Police raid the conference and the gangs quickly disperse, but the city wide truce is off, and the Gramercy Riffs announce a hit on The Warriors, meaning they have to spend the rest of the night fighting their way back to their home turf in Coney Island.

Sol Yurick was born in the slums of Manhattan in 1925.  The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, his father was an active member of the American Communist Party. At 14 Sol became disillusioned  with the U.S.S.R. when Stalin signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler, who his community knew were brutalizing German Jews and seen as a villain. His father remained stubbornly pro Soviet, so as soon as he was old enough, Sol left home to enlist in the United States Army to fight the Germans in World War II. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, he enrolled in college and majored in literature. After graduating, he took a day job as a social investigator for the welfare office, which constantly brought him in contact with the New York City youth who had joined or formed street gangs, and politicians had written off as juvenile delinquents. They would become the inspiration for his first novel, The Warriors, which he wrote after retiring from his job in 1965. Much of the novel's plot was based on Anabasis, an ancient Greek  epic attributed to the ancient writer Xenophon, where a group of mercenaries known as the Ten Thousand are hired by Cyrus the Younger to march from Greece  to Persia in order for him to take the throne from his brother Artaxerxes II.  Anabasis tells the tale of the Ten Thousand as they are forced to fight there way through hostile nations on their way to Persia, and then on their way back to Greece when Cyrus is killed in battle.

In 1969 the film rights to The Warriors were bought by API with plans to turn it into one of their biker gang films. However the film was never made. When the rights expired, they were then acquired by producer Lawrence Gordon. He had been producing films for new director Walter Hill, who had success with his first film Hard Times ( 1975 ). Intending The Warriors to be a follow up to Hard Times, he tried to convince Hill to direct it. But after reading the novel, Hill was convinced no studio would ever greenlight such a film. So they instead changed the setting to the old West, and pitched it as a Western similar to The Magnificent Seven ( 1960 ).  A deal with a studio had been struck to make that Western, but with the popularity of Westerns on the wane, it ended up not being finances and eventually cancelled. Hill went on to direct The Drive ( 1978 ), and was co-producing Alien ( 1979 ) when Gordon told him he had just signed a deal with Paramount to make The Warriors. At the time Paramount had just had success with Saturday Night Fever ( 1977 ) and Grease and wee interested in making more of what they called 'Youth Films', agreeing to make the movie because Gordon promised it would be done fast and for a low budget. Paramount wanted it in theaters before rival studio Warner Brothers released their own gang movie The Wanderers ( 1979 ). The book was adapted into a script by David Shaber, who made many alterations including changing the Jewish-American gang The Delancy Thrones into the African-American gang The Gramercy Riffs, as well as changing their leaders name from Ishmel to Cyrus ( a nod to the original source material of Anabasis, and changing the name of the protagonist gang from The Coney Island Dominators to The Warriors. ( No gang was called The Warriors in the novel. ) Further alterations to the novel were mad by Hill by including cartoonish gangs like The Baseball Furies, and making the lead character a white gang member named Swan, possibly as a concession to Paramount, when in the novel the Coney Island Dominators were all African-American and Hispanic. Hill later admitted hat Paramount had no idea what film was being made, and had thought Hill was going to make something similar in tone to Saturday Night Fever. Thanks to the speed in which they wanted it finished and released, they didn't realize it was going t be a violent gang film until they saw the final cut. It was already halfway through principle photography when The Driver was released and bombed, earning no money at the box office in America, and getting  bad reviews from every critic who saw it. Hill was convinced Paramount would have either cancelled The Warriors or at the least replaced him as director if it had not been halfway completed when The Driver was released. Stuck with a violent gang film directed by the director of one of the biggest bombs in recent memory, Paramount released it with almost no money spent on publicity. Neve-the-less it earned three and a half million dollars on opening weekend. But it also drew a lot of street gangs to theaters to see it, who would fight with the rival gangs who also came to see it. The film itself was blamed for inciting the violence, and Paramount was forced to pull any television and radio spots for the film, and change the print ads from the movie poster of a mob of gang members to just the movie's title. In response to the violence, some municipalities banned the movie, whether any theater in their area was screening it or not, and many other theaters across the nation removed the film. Still, it earned $22 million at the end of it's run.

[stethacantus]

MILE 37

Speed ( 1994 )

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director:Jan de Bont

19 Points, 1 List, #7 RVRII

TRAILER

Something about a bus rigged to blow up if it drops below 50 MPH?

The origin of this film begins with one of the greatest film directors who ever lived. Akira Kurosawa, who gave us such classics as Rashomon ( 1950 ), Seven Samurai (  1954 ) and Yojimbo ( 1961 ), and made some films like The Hidden Fortress ( 1958 ) which would have easily qualified for this LoC. ( Sadly, everyone ignored the Chanbara genre when making their lists for this LoC. No Zatoichi or Lone Wolf and Cub or any other traveling ronin films. )  In 1963 he read an article about a train that the motorman was unable to stop, and thought it could make for an exciting movie. Wanting to make the movie in America, a deal for a co-production between Toho and Embassy Pictures was made. Kurosawa wrote a script about two convicts who escape from Sing Sing Prison who hide on a train, only  to inadvertently  open the throttle before locking themselves out of the front cab. Filming was to commence as soon as Kurosawa completed shooting  Red Beard ( 1965 ). Filming was to begin in October of 1966, but was delayed by Embassy twice. During the second delay Kurosawa was offered to direct Tora! Tora! Tora! and asked for a third delay.  Tora! Tora! Tora! was his first experience directing for an American studio, and he only lasted a week before he quit. Not use to studio executives showing up on the set and ordering to make changes, or having an agreed upon budget cut and asked to throw pages of a script out, he finally had enough and asked to leave. Fed up with the American way of making films, he decided not to work for Embassy. Toho pulled out once Kurosawa was no longer on board, and Embassy never did go beyond pre-production. The script would languish for another 15 years. The rights to the script passed to the Nippon Herald Company which thought people would pay to see  a film scripted by the great Akira Kurosawa. All they needed was an American director of the same stature. And they thought they had one. Francis Ford Coppola had directed the two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now ( 1979 ) but had recently had a fall from grace with the box office bomb One from the Heart ( 1982 ) and would probably be more willing to shoot a film  for hire. And, he was openly a fan of Akira Kurosawa, so probably would jump at the chance to direct the script. Coppola was interested, but had to turn them down because he was just about to make two back to back films with author S.E. Hinton. He did suggest they hire Andrei Konchalovsky, an acclaimed Russian director who had just moved to the United States and was looking for work in Hollywood. The film was eventually made under the title Runaway Train ( 1985 ).

So what is the point of writing up the production history of a film that could have been but isn't in this countdown? Well, aside from it having a rich production history which makes me wish it was on someone's list, it directly lead to Speed being made. The story moves along to Canadian television presenter Elwy Yost, who since 1974 was the host of Saturday Night at the Movies, a series that aired two movies, and in between both had critical analysis of the films and interviews with any available stars or crew from the films. Runaway Train was one of the films that aired. A decade later Elwy was having a conversation with his son Graham when he began to talk about Runaway Train. Not entirely remembering the plot, when Graham asked why the convicts trapped on the train didn't just pull the break, Elwy responded that there was a bomb on the train that would explode if the train slowed down. He was actually recalling the plot of a different movie, Bullet Train ( 1975 ) which had also aired on Saturday Night at the Movies where criminals attach such a bomb to a bullet train and refuse to disarm it unless they are paid a ransom. At the time Graham was just starting out as a script writer for television, and looking to write scripts for feature films. Believing the premise of Runaway Train would have worked much better if it was on a bus instead of a train, because a bus would not be limited to the same track, he began writing a script for a film called Minimum Speed, where a bus with a bomb is forced to speed around the streets of Los Angeles, eventually crashing into and blowing up the Hollywood sign. Paramount was interested as they thought it would be a great movie for action movie  director John McTieman who had previously directed Predator and Die Hard and who they wanted to direct an action movie for their studio. And could get Jeff Speakman to play the heroic cop who rescues the passengers prior to the bus crashing. However, McTieman saw it as just an attempt to make Die Hard on a bus, and turned the film down. He did suggest they hire cinematographer Jan de Bont, who had worked for McTieman on Die Hard as the director. Jan de Bont was hied, but without McTieman attached, Paramount gradually lost interest in making a film which took place entirely on a buss, and inevitably cancelled the film. De Bont suggested they take the film to 20th Century Fox. They were interested, but insisted on the word "Minimum" be removed from the title, and action scenes be added that took place off the bus, and a few other changes. Speed became a critical and financial success, and 20th Century Fox asked for a sequel, which I already went over.