Stunts

source: Stunts

***SPOILERS*** A number of accident have been occurring during the filming of this action movie that has stunt man Glen Wilson, Robert Forster, suspect that their no accidents at all but being committed, by acts of sabotage, someone on the set. This all started when Glen's younger brother a stuntman himself Greg, Gary Davis, was killed in a stunt, hanging on to a helicopter, that went terribly wrong and fell to his death. Now taking Greg's place in the movie Glen is risking his life to find out if his suspicions are right and is soon in for a big surprise! Not that he's not only right he dead right with what's waiting for him as his fellow stunt men working on the movie! It soon becomes evident that someone is out to not only kill , by staging accidents, all the stuntmen in the movie but is trying to bankrupt the person or studio that's financing it! Glen with the help of magazine writer B.J Parswell, Fiona Lewis, came to that conclusion when stuntman Chuck Johnson, Bruce Glover, fell to his death when he slipped off the rope that was greased that he was holding on to as well as stuntman Paul Salerno,Ray Sharkey, was burned to a crisp in another failed stunt when he was locked in a burning house that Glen in a fire resistant outfit escaped from. ***SPOILERS**** With Glen ready to duplicate his dead brother Greg's hanging on to a helicopter death defying stunt that the killer, who just before beat his wife into a black & blue pulp, was exposed but by then it may have come too late with Glen already airborne and about to take his final dive! In fact it was the killer who gets the worst of it with Glen landing in his getaway car and during the struggle having him run off the road into a mobile home when he ended up incinerating himself. That last scene was so good even though it wasn't to be in the movie that it ended up not only being the highlight of the film but saved it from going bust or bankrupt!

STUNTS opens with a pair of black-gloved, up-to-no-good hands, as they tamper with a helicopter's safety line. Not long after, a stuntman tumbles from the same craft. Splat! Enter Glen Wilson (Robert Forster), who also happens to be a stuntman. Attempting to uncover the truth about his brother's demise, Wilson finds out what we already know. Soon, Wilson's stuntman friends start having tragic "accidents" of their own. While not overly thrilling, this movie does hold its own as a murder mystery. Forster is as good as ever, and he's joined by Fiona Lewis as stranded reporter, BJ Parswell. Co-stars the wonderful Joanna Cassidy and Richard Lynch...

In the 1960s, Robert Forster was starring in major studio movies like "Medium Cool" and "Reflections In A Golden Eye". But something happened to his career, and by 1977 he was appearing in low budget product like this movie. All the same, Forster gives a pretty credible performance, and the general level of acting by the other performers is acceptable. But it's hard to think of anything else positive about this movie. There are a number of stunt sequences, but they come off as just okay at best, routine at their worst. The main problem is with the script. Forster's character is supposed to be investigating his brother's death as well as the deaths of other stuntmen, but he hardly does any investigating at all. Most of the movie is obvious padding, and the revelation of the culprit only seems to come because the movie can't be padded out any more. Only if you're desperate.

Robert Forster plays a professional stuntman who discovers his younger brother, also a stuntman, was killed during filming of a movie being plagued by production problems. He suspects foul play and must discover what really happened. He eventually finds romance with an ambitious journalist doing a story on stuntmen, but he discovers something more sinister when his fellow stunt pals start turning up dead, one by one. The stunts make up for the rather standard plot, plus there's a nice supporting cast including Fiona Lewis, Ray Sharkey, Richard Lynch, Candace Rialson, Bruce Glover, and James Luisi.

I wish I saw "Stunts" when it first came out. I would have been thirteen years old and I would have loved every second of it. Watching it today, I liked a whole bunch of it. This movie has goodwill to spare. The cast is very likeable and most of them give nice performances. The story is silly but the stunts are cool so that balances out. The location photography is very good. I feel like visiting that hotel. All in all, I plan on watching "Stunts" again real soon. Honorable mention: Ray Sharkey.

Some fairly good stunts, with authentic setups, make this one worth watching. It's supposed to be a murder mystery, but the story just fades away and they pick a culprit near the 85 minute mark because it was time to wrap. Terrible writing and acting abound, but the motorized skateboard is a great blast from the past!

This was Bob Shaye's - and New Line Cinema's - first full-length production after a decade as a pure distribution company. Director Mark Lester would tell The Pink Smoke, "They were distributing Truck Stop Women to college campuses and they already had a script, so I was hired to direct it. We hired Robert Forster because he had done Medium Cool. Don Stroud was supposed to star in it but he got into a motorcycle accident the night before shooting." The film starts with the death of one of Greg Wilson, one of its stuntmen, who was set up. His brother Glen (Forster) arrives on the set, along with B.J. Parswell (Fiona Lewis!), a reporter who wants to write about the danger of the stunt game. The minute Glen gets there he gets hit on by the producer's wife (Candice Rialson, in one of her last roles; she's also great in pretty much everything she ever did, like Chatterbox, Hollywood Boulevard and Moonshine County Express). Glen joins the stunt team of the film, who all promise one another that if anyone gets hurt, they'll always pull the plug for one another, predating Dr. Kevorkian by several years. Screw the law. We're stuntmen! One of the people that have to get the plug pulled on them is Chuck, played by Bruce Glover, always a welcome sight. He's married to Joanna Cassidy, who is - again, you're going to get this a lot with this cast - astounding in everything I've ever seen her in. In this one, more than aardvarking with Crispin's dad in a waterbed in the back of a custom van, she's punching the faces of an entire bar of rednecks. The death keeps coming, as Paul (Ray Sharkey? This is like a B&S About Movies dream cast and it gets even better) gets trapped in a burning building. That means that our hero has to finish the film, figure out who the killer is and get some revenge. Former pro wrestler Hard Boiled Haggerty shows up, as does Richard Lynch. And you know how I feel about Mr. Lynch and the fact that he can make any movie better just by walking on set. Suffice to say he does way more than saunter on here. This is why we're doing an entire week of Mark Lester's films. He knows how to get a story told, gather the right people to help tell it and get out of the way. He's never let me down yet.

"Stunts" is a combination of action movie and murder mystery that works well both ways: there are some truly impressive stunts (duh!), but the mystery plot ain't bad, either (I was almost certain about the person who was behind the killings based on Roger Ebert's "Law Of Economy Of Characters"....I was wrong). The actors give understated performances and create believable characters. Joanna Cassidy, in one of her first roles, has the one big physical and emotional outburst in a bar, showing hints of the talent that has kept her career going for more than four decades. The efforts of many real-life stuntmen (like Gary Davis, who plays Robert Forster's brother) guarantee the stunts' authenticity and legitimacy. **1/2 out of 4.

I searched for this very old & obscure 70's film because of my love for the great ROBERT FORSTER R.I.P, I've been a massive fan of his since the genius "Tarantino" resurrected his dead Career & put him in a lead role in his 90's MASTERPIECE "Jackie Brown" & since then I've been finding & getting his old films, which is a very hard thing to do as his old flicks are so rare & unavailable, it took me years to find a dvd copy of "Alligator" his 1980 B-movie creature feature!!! Anyway the dvd copy i have of "Stunts" is very poor in quality in fact it actually looks like how it would've looked watching it on the big screen in an old grindhouse theatre back in the 70's lol as it's full of old scratches & grain, it's a relic of a copy problem a vhs version put on to a dvd I'm guessing? Stunts is a fun & easy watching little low-budget B-movie Mystery, it felt like a Sunday afternoon t.v movie or a "Columbo" movie & that's fine i enjoyed it. Stunts is a mystery about a stuntman is killed during a big action scene stunt while making a movie but there seems to be foul play!!! The dead guys brother who is also a stuntman travels to the place where they're shooting the movie to take his place & investigate his brothers death, other friends of his stunt crew start to have dangerous "Accidents" & begins a race against time to stop the next stuntman from getting hurt or worse. Stunts has humour & danger mixed in with the the Action, the stunt team are a likeable bunch but it's Robert Forster who obviously stands out, nice to see Forster in the lead role as "Glen Wilson" a cool & calm stuntman. Robert Forster is great once again, he has such a natural rugged blue collar kinda guy charm that he's a joy to watch & that's one of the reasons he became one of my favourite actors. There's some good fun stunts & a nice "Columbo" style mystery atmosphere, so Stunts is a solid little movie & a nice look at making action scenes & movies from the inside of the Stunts team. A good mystery Thriller & a nice performance from Robert Forster