LoC #132 Top 112 Road Movies / Journey Films

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MILE 62

The Shooting ( 1966 )

Studio: Proteus Films
Director: Monte Hellman

14 Points, 1 List, #12 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

A retired bounty hunter and his moron sidekick are hired by a woman who refuses to give her name to guide her through the desert. She refuses to tell them where they are going, or that she has hired a mean nasty gunslinger to join them.

Monte Hellman was a really good director who mad really bad low budget films, occasionally being able to make the occasional low budget film that got critical acclaim. Although he would later direct Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! and say it was his best work. In 1964 he shot two movies for Roger Corman back-to-back with the same cast to save money on production, Flight to Fury and Back Door to Hell. One of the actors on both movies was Jack Nicholson. Eager to work together again, they both co-wrote a script called Epitaph and submitted it to Corman, who promptly turned it down. But he did ask Nichelson and Hellman if they would like to do a Western for him instead. They agreed, and soon it was expanded to two Westerns that would once again be shot back-to-back using the same cast. The miniscule budget for The Shooting was $75,000. The week shooting was to begin, rain hit the desert they were to film in. Shooting ended up postponed, which cut into $5,000 of the budget. Another $10,000 went to horse wranglers, the only Union members on the crew, leaving just $60,000 when shooting began. Once completed, Corman was unable to find any distributor willing to distribute the film. The foreign rights were sold to a producer, who a short time later went bankrupt. In 1968 the North American distribution rights were finally sold to a distributor, Walter Reade Organization, who in turn decided not to release it in theaters, but instead sold the broadcast rights to television.

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MILE 61

Mystery Train ( 1989 )

Studio: Orion Classics
Director: Jim Jarmusch

14 Poits, 1 List, #12 Charles Castle

TRAILER

An anthology of three stories that take place in the same Memphis hotel, which is inhabited by the ghost of Elvis Presley

The title Mystery Train derives from an Elvis Presley song. Having not seen this, I am not sure if an actual train plays a part in the plot, or what exactly a movie that takes place in a hotel has to do with road movies. But if  a substantial part of the film takes place o a train, then this is one of five films on the list  where the main vehicle is a train. And since I am finding noting much about the background of this film on Wikipedia and have not seen it, I guess I will spent this write-up discussing the train movies that were not on anyone's lists. Too many train films to mention, so I will just mention the more memorable ones. Let's start with what was once a very popular comedy, Throw Mama From The Train ( 1987 ) which in recent years seems to have been forgotten. It was loosely based on the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train ( 1951 ).  Another train themed movie Hitchcock directed was  the mystery, The Lady Vanishes ( 1938 ). Perhaps the most famous train mystery was Murder on the Orient Express  which was adapted to film in 1974, and again in 2017. Another thriller that takes place on the Orient Express is the James Bond film From Russia With Love ( 1963 ) which came very close to making my own 25 list. Going back to Hitchcock, the 70s saw a lot of Hitchcock inspired comedies for some reason. Even Hitchcock himself made a comedy as his final film. Silver Streak ( 1976 ) was among those Hitchcock inspired comedies, which also qualified as a disaster movie owing to the train crashing into the station at the end of the film. A few other train disaster films from the 70s included Avalanche Express (1979 ) which was a curious combination of disaster movie and spy thriller. The Cassandra Crossing ( 1976 ) about a train deliberately going over a bridge rigged to collapse in order to cover up something the government wanted covered up. Also the Japanese movie The Bullet Train ( 1975 ) about a train rigged by an extortionist  to explode if it slowed down, and featured Sony Chiba in a non fighting role as the train's motorman. ( Not to be confused with the Brad Pit film from 2022 called Bullet Train ) Another film about a train taken hostage was The Taking of Pelham 123 ( 1974 )  which was remade into a television movie in 1998, and another theatrical remake in 2009. Runaway Train ( 1985 ) was about a train that could not stop.  And there was Train to Busan ( 2016 ) about a zombie pandemic on a train. Another horror film featuring a train trip was Terror Train ( 1980 ), one of many slasher films starring Jamie lee Curtus as the final girl. There is also the Science Fiction classic  Snowpiercer ( 2013 ) where the Earth is flash frozen, and the only surviving humans are riding on a very long train. And Von Ryan's Express ( 1965 ) where a group of POWs in WWII are escaping the Nazis on a stolen train. And to show that not every train movie has to be a downbeat drama about disasters, murderers or Nazi's, there is the Christmas classic The Polar Express ( 2004 ) which would have made my list, but you don't tend to remember Christmas films in summer. And that is just a sampling of the train movies those submitting lists either forgot about, or for whatever reason, didn't make their final cut.

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MILE 60

Rain Man ( 1988 )

Studio: MGM/UA
Director: Barry Levinson

14 Points, 1 List, #12 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

Hustler  Charlie Babbitt discovers his late estranged father has left $3 million to a trust for an asylum which is currently taking care of Raymond, an autistic brother Charlie didn't know he had. Chalie removes Raymond from the asylum and home with him to California, as the asylum will not receive money from the trust unless Raymond remains a patient. He lets them know that he will return Raymond if they will agree to give him a cut of the inheritance. Since Raymond refuses to fly in a plane, Charlie has no choice but to bring him to California on a road trip.


When Bill Slacker was seven years old, he failed a mandatory intelligence test and was diagnosed as subnormal. Doctors advised his mother to institutionalize him. His father had just died of the Spanish Flu, and his mother was unable to take care of him and his two sisters, so she agreed. He ended up in an asylum for 44 years, until 1964 when  the attitude towards locking the mentally disabled away in asylums for life was changing. A psychiatrist diagnosed  his intelligence to be near normal, and  Bill was deemed mentally fit enough to be sent to a halfway house, and eventually became a handyman at the  Minikahda Club, where aspiring screen writer Barry Morrow was a member. Marrow became friends with Bill, and eventually agreed to be his Guardian. Realizing he had a fascinating life story, Morrow wrote his first script for the television movie Bill which starred Mickey Rooney.  Years later Morrow met another mentally disabled man named Kim Peek who was socially challenged, yet was a savant who had a phenomenal memory. This inspired Morrow to combine the conditions of both men when he created the character of Raymond for the fictional story Rain Man. Director Barry Levinson became attached to the script. Levinson began his directorial career six years earlier with Diner, and followed that with The Natural and Good Morning Vietnam. With the respected Levinson as director, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise agreed to play the leads. It was filmed during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, and the final draft was completed just hours before the strike. That screenplay would end up winning an Oscar, as the film also earned Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.

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MILE 59

Dumb and Dumber To ( 2014 )

Studio: New Line Cinema / Universal Pictures
Director: Peter and Bobby Farrelly

15 Points, 1 List, #11 RVRII

TRAILER

Lloyd and Harry go on another road trip to find Harry's estranged daughter, who is his last hope as a kidney doner.

If this film makes it into the LoC, then you just know the film this is a sequel to is also in the LoC somewhere further up the list. Which means pretty much 90% of what would be in this writeup would be needed for the write-up of the first film. So, not to detract from that, I have decided to instead list all the Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels road films that did not make anyone's lists. Of course we have Sonic The Hedgehog which I now know missed the LoC due to an oversite. But there was also Finders Keepers ( 1984 ), one of Carrey's early films with him in a minor role. it is a comedy that takes place on a train, and probably should have been mentioned in the list of train films. ( Like I said there, too many train movies to mention. ) He also had a small role in Pink Cadillac ( 1989 ) a comedy starring Clint Eastwood. He is the star of another  Farrelly brothers film Me, Myself & Irene ( 2000 ). As for Jeff Daniels, there is Something Wild ( 1986 ), Fly Away Home ( 1996 ), and the third and final Divergent film Allegiant  ( 2016 ).

[Pastor of Muppets]

I loved Million Dollar Mystery just because it was so god damn stupid.  It's really one of those movies that is so bad it's good.  It wouldn't make good riffing fodder though, since it is a comedy.  My favorite part is Kevin Pollak doing terrible impressions while these two hot ladies are incredibly amused by them.

[Pastor of Muppets]

MILE 59

Dumb and Dumber To ( 2014 )

Studio: New Line Cinema / Universal Pictures
Director: Peter and Bobby Farrelly

Lloyd and Harry go on another road trip to find Harry's estranged daughter, who is his last hope as a kidney donor.

I am really hung up on the obvious implication that one of these idiots actually managed to convince a woman to have sex with him.

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MILE 58

Vacation ( 2015 )

Studio: New Line / Warner Bros.
Director: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley

15 Points, 1 List, #11 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

Feeling nostalgic for his childhood, a grown Rusty Griswold decides to take his wife and kids on a road trip to Walley World.


The Vacation movies were a franchise within a franchise. And by the 00s that franchise was pretty much dead with the final film being a made for television movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure, which was a spinoff of the series and didn't feature the Griswold family. In 2015 New Line Cinema came up with the brilliant idea of rebooting the series with a grown up Rusty taking over for Clark Griswold, as they felt Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo were too old to be the leads. And instead of giving the Griswold's a brand new story, the new film would just rehash the same plot about going on a road trip to Disneyland Walley World. But not bother to pay the National Lampoon franchise fee, so that the reboot is just called Vacation.


National Lampoon began making movies in the 70s, beginning with their classic Animal House. The movie division was a way for Lampoon to get films based on their articles greenlit, and were to feature the same Second City comedians they  had used in their various stage and radio shows. This came to an end with The Joy of Sex. In 1972 a book called The Joy of Sex was written by Alex Comfort ( Yes, that was his actual name ) and spent 11 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestsellers list. In a "What the Hell were you thinking about!" moment, someone at Paramount gave Comfort millions for the exclusive film rights, perhaps not realizing The Joy of Sex was a sex manual. Needing to justify the money spent securing the rights, Paramount went to great lengths to produce a Joy of Sex movie. They were still at it in 1978 when an offer was made to Charles Groden that he could write any script he wanted and they would green light the film  as long as the title was The Joy of Sex. Realizing the studio wanted him to adapt a book into a film that had no business being adapted into a film, he came up with a script where a screen writer is asked to adapt The Joy of Sex. Paramount executives were not amused with Groden making fun of their plight, and their offer was revoked. Groden shopped the script to other studios, and it was eventually made under the title Moves & Shakers. The collapse of the deal with Groden came just as Animal House became a big hit. Paramount contacted National Lampoon and asked if they would adapt the book into a movie. At the time, most of the National Lampon staff was working on what was to be their second film, National Lampoon Goes To The Movies, so they handed the film to contributing writer John Huges to write a script. Penny Marshal was hired to direct what would be her first movie, and Paramount had coerced John Belushi into starring in it by promising that if he agreed to be in the National Lampoon film, the studio would green light another script he had written called Noble Rott. On March 5th, 1982 John Belushi died of a drug overdose. National Lampoon's: The Joy of Sex was postponed while the studio searched for a suitable replacement for Belushi. Meanwhile the long delayed National Lampoon's Class Reunion and their movie film now retitled National Lampoon's Movie Madness were both released in the fall that year, and both were both financial and critical bombs. Realizing John Huges was credited as the screen writer for Class Reunion, Paramount decided to scrap the entire film, replaced Penny Marshall with the director of the cult hit Valley Girl  Martha Coolidge, who brought in script writer Kathleen Rowell who had previously written the screen adaption for The Outsiders ( 1983 ).  Meanwhile National Lampoon's Vacation was released and was a success. When Paramount fired director Martha Coolidge during post production over the final edit, Paramount executives referred to the film as National Lampoon's The Joy of Sex. National Lampoon suddenly realized that Paramount still had the rights to release it as a National Lampoon film. Not wanting to ruin their reputation with yet another terrible National Lampoon film, National Lampoon chairman Matt Simmons paid Paramount $250.000 to remove National Lampoon from the title. It ended up being released as The Joy of Sex. In a press release, National Lampoon said the decision to have their name removed was not necessarily  due to the film's quality, but that none of their writers had anything to do with the film that was made.

National Lampoon began to realize how valuable their moniker was. If it took them $250,000 just to remove their name from a movie, how much could they make selling their name? At first they only licensed the National Lampoon name to the first two Vacation sequels, European Vacation ( 1985 ) and Christmas Vacation as both were still being written by John Huges. However, the began to realize the National Lampoon concept was dead. Their staff writers had either lost interest in writing movie scripts, or were offering scripts to production companies other than National Lampoon. One of the magazines biggest successes was he characters OC and Stiggs, a pair of destructive teenagers who were created by writers Todd Caroll and Ted Mann. Instead of adapting OC and Stiggs as a National Lampoon film, Tedd Mann took the property directly to M.G.M.  The studio signed Robert Altman to direct, who only agreed to do it because he hated teen sex comedies, and wanted the script rewritten as a parody of those films. OC and Stiggs antics were toned down in the rewrite. Not happy that Altman altered the story from the source material, M.G.M. ended up shelving the film, which only got a home video release years later. Aside from their own staff writers taking their material elsewhere, their usual Second City cast members, most of who became famous on Saturday Night Live, were no longer interested in working for National Lampoon. Films such as Meatballs and Caddyshack would have been perfect as National Lampoon movies, but no offer was made to them. With Christmas Vacation, John Huges said he was done writing Vacation films. Unable to get their own talent to make any films for them, National Lampoon decided that from now on, they would license their moniker to whoever would pay them. Dozens of comedies a year were released as National Lampoon films. Many were cheap direct to video comedies. Some wee even pe-existing foreign comedies imported to America which had the National Lampoon title added to them.  When Warner Bros. made Vegas Vacation without Huges, they decided it was not worth paying for the National Lampoon name, so it was released without it. NBC agreed to pay for the moniker for the Christmas Vacation spin-off, but New Line Cinema refused to pay for the license for Vacation, as by then National Lampoon's reputation was in the toilet.

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MILE 57

Kid With The Golden Arm ( 1979 )

Studio: Shaw Brothers
Director: Chang Cheh

15 Points, 1 List, #11 Stethacantus

TRAILER

In Quing Dynasty era China, The government has hired a security company to escort a carriage full of gold bars  to a region devastated by drought. Every step of the way they are under attack by the feared Deadly Valley Gang, who's  leaders are evil martial arts masters, and will try every trick in the book to kill the escorts and steal the gold.

This write up is probably going to be brief because there is literally no existing production stories on any of the Shaw Brother films. The studio produced and released films that fast. From concept to complete within a month in some cases. This was just one of six movies Chang Cheh directed  in 1979, four of them Venom Mob films. The best known and most successful of the Shaw Brothers directors, Chang Cheh's filmography includes The One Armed Swordsman ( 1967 ), Vengeance ( 1970 ), The Duel ( 1971 ), The Boxer From Shantung ( 1972 ), Heroes Two ( 1974 ), The Savage Five ( 1974 ), Five Shaolin Masters ( 1974 ), The Brave Archer series, Chinatown Kid  ( 1977 ), Five Venoms ( 1978 ), Crippled Avengers ( 1978 ) and Five Element Ninjas ( 1978 ). And that is only a third of his films which are considered classics of the martial arts genre. His last years at Shaw Brothers were spent directing the highly successful Venom Mob films, which starred the same group of actors introduced as a team in the Five Venoms.  There are pleanty of films in the Shaw Brothers catalog which would qualify as road films. Usually they were shot outdoors. This film, where almost all of it takes place on the road, was shot entirely indoors on a sound stage.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I guess when the people at National Lampoon started licensing their name, they were hoping it would trick people into thinking something like "National Lampoon's Vacation was a great movie.  This must be a great movie too if it has the National Lampoon seal of approval on it."

I am here to tell you that the tactic worked, and I was one of those people who swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

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MILE 56

Badlands ( 1973 )

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Terrence Malick

15 Points, 1 List, #11 Charles Castle

TRAILER

15 year old Holly falls in love with  25 year old Kit. Her father disapproves of him, and when he refuses to allow Holly to see him again, Kit shoots him dead. The couple hide out in the wilderness in a treehouse until they are discovered by hunters, who Kit kills. Leaving the treehouse and going on the run, they end up in a crime spree as Kit murders just about anyone the couple comes across.

Screen writer Terrence Malick had grown sick of others directing his scripts, and raises the money to direct his first feature film. Warner Bros. Liked it and paid Malick three times it's production cost for distribution rights. The plot was based on the real life 1958 murder spree in Nebraska and Wyoming of 19 year old Charles Starkweather and his 14 year old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate who would claim she was his hostage, although Starkweather would insist she had killed half of their victims. Starkweather was already a suspect of the murder of a gas station attended during a botched robbery in November of 1957 when he showed up at Caril Ann's home on January 21st, 1958. When her mother and stepfather told him to leave, he produced a shotgun and killed them both, then clubbed her two year old sister to death with the butt of the gun. Starkweather hid the bodies and he and Caril Ann spent the next six days in the house. Concerned friends and relatives alerted police that the parents hadn't been seen in days, and on January 27th the house was raided, only to find it empty. Relatives would locate the hidden bodies a few days later. The couple had fled to the house of a family friend who was also killed along with his dog. For the next two days while on the run from the law they murder a teenage couple during a carjacking, wealthy industrialist Chester Lauer Ward, his wife and their maid along with their dog during a home invasion, and a salesman during another carjacking.  With the murder of Ward, the fugitive couple became notorious outlaws, and the public began calling the police incompetent for failing to capture them, and vigilante groups were organized. The couple were finally captured by police when a sheriff spotted them attempting yet another carjacking.  Charles Starkweather was convicted and executed. Caril Ann Fugate was sentence to 50 years and served 18 before being paroled.

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MILE 55

The Wiz ( 1978 )

Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Sidney Lumet

16 Points, 1 List, #10 Stethacantus

TRAILER

After getting sucked up in one of those rare upper east side snow tornadoes, Dorothy Gale from Harlem and her dog Toto land on top of and kill a woman, who the locals insist was a wicked witch. She finds out the tornado has transported her to a doppelganger of New York City called Oz, and if she wants to get back home, must seek the help of the Wizard who lives in the Emarald City.

We begin this story back in 1974, the year the movie Live and Let Die introduced one of Bond's strangest villains. The immortal Voodoo witchdoctor Baron Samedi, which is probably the role you remember character actor Geoffrey Holder from. ( That, and being the pitchman for 7up where he coined the phrase "The un-cola" ) Originally a ballet dancer, he moved on to acting on Broadway before being offered movie roles. The same year he played the only supernatural character in the James Bond franchise, he had accepted a job from stage producer Ken Harper in Baltimore directing a new musical being developed. Ken wanted to do an all black version of The Wizard of Oz, but had little idea what the musical would be like beyond that. Under his creative guidance, Holder developed the musical, picking the songs, deciding the tone should be more in tune with black culture rather than just the same story replacing white actors with black actors, and even designing the costumes. He was also responsible for the casting, which included aspiring pop star Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. That musical would eventually be called The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" with music and lyrics  written by Charlie Smalls and book by William F. Brown, and choreography by George Faison.  It opened on October 21, 1974, at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore, then a pre-Broadway tryout at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit in November 1974, and at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia from December 11, 1974, through December 21, 1974. It finally opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre on January 5, 1975, the name shortened to The Wiz. Critics thought it was silly. It was so poorly reviewed that Harper wanted to close it immediately and cut his losses. However, the commercials for it had aired. And the box office for the first week sold out. And it was soon the biggest hit on Broadway. Geoffrey Holder won two Tony Awards, Best Director and Best Costume Design. The first African American to win a Tony.

Berry Gordy wanted to produce the film version under Motown Productions. Originally founded to produce television specials for the artists of Motown Records, by the 70s Motown Productions had moved into theatrical films with the Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams films  Lady Sings the Blues ( 1972 ) and  Mahogany ( 1975 ). It went on to produce fluff like Thank God It's Friday ( 1978 ) and Almost Summer ( 1978 ). When Diana Ross learned that her label Motown was producing a movie version of The Wiz, she immediately asked Berry Gordy if she could have the role of Dorothy. Gordy declined. Ross was 33 and way too old for the role. He wanted Stephanie Mills, who had been phenomenal playing the character on stage, and was still a teenager. Not taking no for an answer, Ross went behind Gordy's back. Motown Productions was in the middle of negotiating a deal with Executive Producer Rob Cohen for Universal to be the studio and distributor. Ross met with Cohen and convinced hm that the deal with Universal would only go through if she was attached to the film. Gordy originally had the director of Saturday Night Fever ( 1977 ) John Badham on board to direct the movie. But once he found out Stephanie Mills was to be replaced with Diana Ross, he quit. Badham was replaced with Sidney Lumet, a director who's  films included Serpico ( 1973 ), Dog Day Afternoon ( 1975 ) and Network ( 1976 ), but didn't include any musicals. A new screen writer and aspiring director named Joel Schumacher was hired to write the script. Schumacher had written two previous scripts. The musical Sparklewhich followed the rise and fall of a Supremes like girl group, and the urban comedy Car Wash ( both released in 1976 ) and who Cohen thought would be perfect for The Wiz. Cohen would later say that he hated the script Schumacher wrote, but could do nothing about it because Dianna Ross loved it and insisted they use it. Another thing Ross insisted on was casting her close friend Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. Director Lumet had wanted Jimmy "J.J." Walker for the role, and Berry Gordy was not happy with Michael as the Jackson 5 had left Motown Records two years earlier to accept a deal with Epic Records. To humor Ross, they gave Michael a screen test, and were blown away at how much talent the 19 year old  had. Quincy Jones was brought in to be the musical director, working with Michael Jackson for the first time. The two hit it off so well, that Jones ended up producing Jackson's solo albums Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad. A lot of songs from the stage show were cut from the film, including any the Wizard was to sing as the role was cast to non-singer Richard Pryor. A few new songs and one instrumental were written especially for the film.

Universal was so enthusiastic about the film that they gave Lumet any money he needed. The budget ballooned to $24 million. But it only earned $13 million at the box office. Much like the classic 1939 The Wizard of Oz, this bombed as well, making all screen adaptions of the Baum Oz books failures. ( This trend would continue with Disney Studio's Return to Oz in 1985 ) Most critics hated it, although Siskel and Ebert  both gave it a raving review. Among those blamed for it's failure were Diana Ross for being too old to play Dorothy and the controversy of her replacing Stephanie Mills who created the role. Joel Schumacher's script. Director Sidney Lumet's decision to replace the fantastical Oz sets of the stage show with an Oz that was a run down urban landscape. ( which Lumet did because he wanted to distance himself as much from the 1939 film as possible. ) And the decision to cut a lot of the original songs from the Broadway musical, which alienated fans of the stage show  and gave the film bad word of mouth before it was released. Having seen this film in theaters on opening day, I can say that it is a great musical   that does have problems, but is still great. Was Dorothy miscast? Definitely. Dorothy comes off as a spinster rather than a child. Changing her home town from Kansas to Harlem necessitating an inexplicable small snow tornado that only takes Dorothy and her dog, because apartment buildings are too big to be lifted like a farm house, is far more ridiculous than the source material. I would probably have preferred Oz being a fantasy realm rather than the graffiti and garbage filled streets of New York City with a few minor fantasy elements added. And I guess I may have liked the songs that were cut. The original songs that did make this movie are far superior than what was in the 1939 film ( with exception to Somewhere Over the Rainbow ) so I would probably have liked the rest. But the real problem with this film is that it is too God damn long. Two hours and ten minutes, which is exhausting for a musical.  This is no problem on home video, where you can pause it at any time and take a break. But not in a theater. There was a time when longer musicals like West Side Story stopped midway through for a mandatory intermission where audience members could stretch their legs, take a bathroom break, fill up on snacks, smoke a cigar, and generally unwind before seeing the second half of the movie. But they stopped doing that in the 70s. If they cut this down by 15 minutes it would have worked a lot better. However, I have no idea what they could cut. The only thing that deserves to b cut is the Emarald City scene at the World Trade Center which is the only weak song in the movie ad adds nothing to the story. But it was also the most expensive musical number ever shot, so there was no way it would be cut from the film. In short ( which The Wiz isn't ) it is a musical that is not for everyone, but something I enjoyed enough to put in my top ten.

Oh, and by the way. We are now into the top tens, which means we are getting there. It also means that only the top 9 on your list were guaranteed to make the top 50, which is usually where these lists begin. We have 54 more to go before this wraps up, and I seem on track to complete this by Labor Day, perhaps sooner. Hopefully there will be a lot more films which have as much production trivia and history as this movie had. This took me three hours to condense everything I found online about it, and I still left a lot out.

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MILE 54

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World ( 2012 )

Studio: Focus Features
Director: Lorene Scafaria

16 Points, 1 List, #10 Pastor of Muppets

TRAILER

A mission to stop a 70 mile wide asteroid from hitting Earth has failed, and with just days left before the end of the world, Dodge Petersen  decides to search for his old high school sweetheart he believes may have been the love of his life. He is joined by his neighbor Penny, who is trying to find a way to return to England to be with her family before the end comes.

This was the first film to be directed by Lorene Scafaria, who had previously written the script for Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist. She said she wrote the script for this film "because I wanted to tell the story of boy meets girl with a really ticking clock". Despite being an original story, it is screen credited as: Based on Chris Cornell's "Preaching the End of the World He gets the screen credit just so they could use one line in the chorus of that song:

Call me now it's alright
It's just the end of the world
You need a friend in the world
'Cause you can't hide
So call and I'll get right back
If your intentions are pure
I'm seeking a friend for the end of the world

The song itself makes no reference to a meteor, searching for a lost love, or anything else that happens in the movie. I guess they wanted to use the title so bad that they gave Cornell the credit. The song is not even listed in the soundtrack. This was the first film role for Steve Carell upon leaving his hit series The Office. And that's about it, Sometimes you are given a lot of production history for a write-up, and sometimes nearly nothing.

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MILE 53

La Strada ( 1954 )

Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Federico Fellini

16 Points, 1 List, #10 Charles Castle

TRAILER

A  girl named Gelsomina is sold to an abusive traveling strong man named Zampano to be part of his act.

This is perhaps the most critically acclaimed movies in this LoC, and it lead to what is perhaps the worst reviewed films in this LoC. It was the first major success for the Dino De Laurentiis production company . It's worldwide acclaim helped Laurentiis become a major producer and gave him a foothold in Hollywood, where successes like Death Wish the 1976 remake of King Kong, Flash Gorden and Conan the Barbarian made him one of Hollywood's top producers. And then he made the box office and critical disaster Million Dollar Mystery. According to Fellini, the development of the plot began with him having feelings of sadness, which he described as: "a kind of tone that lurked, which made me melancholy and gave me a diffused sense of guilt, like a shadow hanging over me. This feeling suggested two people who stay together, although it will be fatal, and they don't know why."  Of course, this was actually the early onset of clinical depression, which would eventually give him a nervous breakdown near the end of shooting the film. But he saw this as a creative process and eventually it became the sad story of a clownish girl living with an abusive strongman. Production was halted when actress Giulietta Masina broke her leg. Filming resumed in the winter, but forced Anthony Quinn to shoot two movies at the same time, La Strada in the morning and Atilla in the afternoon. La Strada would  win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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MILE 52

Vegas Vacation ( 1997 )

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Stephen Kessler

16 Points, 2 Lists, #17 RVRII

TRAILER

The Griswold family go on a trip to Las Vegas

Not much to say about this film. Christmas Vacation had made enough money that Warner Bros. wanted a sequel. John Huges didn't want to write any more Vacation films because he had run through the National Lampoon articles they were based on. Inevitably Warner Bros. decided to make the film without him. This time Warner Bros. didn't pay National Lampoon to attach their name to this film. It was directed by a first time and last time director, and a script writer of only a couple of television films, with script rewrites from the film's editor! Most of the effort behind this film went into the casting. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo were back again as the parents, Randy Quaid was back as Cousin Eddie and Miriam Flynn as his wife Catherine.  They even got Christie Brinkley to return as the hot girl driving the Ferrari.  But once again no effort was made on the casting of the Griswold children. Clark Griswold even makes a fourth wall joke that he hardly recognizes them after remembering the past via flashback clips to the previous films. In the first movie Anthony Michael Hall played Clark's son Rusty.  Shortly after that his career exploded as he was considered a member of the Brat Pack, starring in the classic John Huges films of the 80s, and as a cast member of Saturday Night Live for one season.  Too busy to return to do another Vacation film, and most likely with an agent demanding a substantial paycheck if he was to return, Warner Bros. decided just to recast the children as the series was supposed to center around Chevy Chase anyway.  Which was bad news for Dana Barron who played the daughter Audry. Perhaps her agent did try to play hardball with Warner Bros. over her salary.  But at the time her career was minor parts in films and television shows. Two television actors were cast as the children.   Jason Lively as Rusty, who would go on to star in a couple of low budget horror comedies, and Dana Hill as Audry, a promising child actress at the time, who became a voice actress for cartoons just after making the Vacation film. Now no longer caring about keeping the same kids in the cast, Christmas Vacation recast again with Johnny Galeki as Rusty and Juliette Lewis as Audry, both who would go on to have successful careers. Vegas Vacation did not bother bringing any of the former actors back, even though in this film the Griswold children were being depicted as having grown into young adults. ( And in the case of Dana Hill, she tragically passed away a year before this film was shot. ) The part of Rusty went to Ethan Embry, an actor who actually had a prior successful career under the name Ethan Randall,  which included the film Dutch. On the other hand, Audry was played by Marisol Nichols, an actress of minor roles in television and movies. NBC did bother to bring original Audry Dana Barron  back for the Cousin Eddie spin off TV film, but by Vacation the kids were now adults, and played by Ed Helms and Leslie Mann.

[stethacantus]

MILE 51

Duel ( 1971 )

Studio: Universal
Director: Steven Spielberg

16 Points, 2 Lists, #17  Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

While driving cross state on a desert highway, a motorist is stalked by an insane driver of an oil tanker who continuously puts his life in danger.


This movie was based on a short story of the same name Richard Matheson wrote for Playboy for their April 1971 issue, which was inspired by an incident of road rage he himself had experienced. And here is a too strange to be true story. Aside from writing novels and short stories, Matheson wrote television episodes, among them sixteen episodes of The Twilight Zone including Nightmare At 20,000 Feet  ( which was later remade for Twilight Zone: The Movie. )  Naturally he submitted episodes for Rod Sterling's Night Gallery. One of the stories he pitched was Duel, which was rejected mainly because of the budget the episode would require. So Matheson decided to turn into a short story and sell it to Playboy Magazine. Where a Universal executive read it and bought the rights for a television film. Spielberg, then just a television director, found out it was to be turned into a movie of the week, and volunteered  to direct it. And here is the strange part. Spielberg was one of the directors for Night Gallery, and could very possibly have directed a shorter version of the story on a smaller budget. Instead he shot a 74 minute version, which did well enough that Universal asked Spielberg to shoot an additional 16 minutes so it could be turned into a 90 minute feature film for the foreign markets. And since that is pretty much it for the production history of this film, lets spend the rest of this write-up looking at the Spielberg road films that did not make anyone's list. All of the Indiana Jones movies ( Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981 ), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ( 1984 ), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ( 1989 ), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ( 2008 ) and maybe the new one which I haven't seen yet. ) are basically road films. There is also Saving Private Ryan ( 1998 ), A.I. Artificial Intelligence ( 2001 ), War of the Worlds ( 2005 ) and The Adventures of Tin Tin ( 2011 ) which feature characters traveling for a significant part of the run time.