Smokey and the Hotwire Gang (1979)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

The Worst Film Ever

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This has to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I bought it because it has Alvy Moore, Mr. Kimball from Green Acres, in it. And of course I liked the fact that it has women running around in Daisy Duke shorts in some of the scenes. But that doesn't account for the fact that the movie has no plot whatsoever. It's just a bunch of characters driving around with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. I thought about bringing this movie to a pawn shop to get a few cents for it, but it's so incredibly lousy that I think I'll keep it instead.

Here's a perfectly brainless, senseless, shiftless, witless, virtually plot less and basically pointless 70's drive-in car chase comedy time capsule relic that's ripe to bursting with all the right rotten stuff so it can measure up as a fine bit of lobotomized "we're all just having a little fun" dippy entertainment. We've got Stacy Keach's forever trapped in a B-movie grind brother James and no-name numbskull Stanley Livingston as a pair of nitwit drifters who bumble, fumble and stumble their aimless way throughout the entire picture. Then there's groovy disco music and even groovier disco dancing. Moreover, for your viewing pleasure there's lots of good-looking gals in tight cut-off shirts and hot pants. The hilariously dated CB lingo makes for mighty funny listening (my favorite lines are "We're going 10-7" and the often repeated "See you in a short-short"). "Green Acres" TV series regular Alvy Moore portrays a feckless hillbilly sheriff. Familiar 70's exploitation feature face Albert ("The Hard Ride," "Sweet Sugar") Cole appears as a greasy hood. Funky wah-wah guitar riffs rip away on the soundtrack. Two mellow dudes who sell grass for a living figure as secondary characters.But that's not all. There's more. A 70's feminist strong-minded chicks pushing around wimpy-willed dudes subtext ala "Truck Stop Women" gets clumsily tossed into the ramshackle brew. An armored car robbery occurs in such a quick and cursory manner that it seems tacked on as an afterthought. An endless "running around in circles" search for a stolen van owned by blustery Kustom Kar King George Barris takes center stage as the key piece of the action. A sub-Mickey Rooney raspy-voiced speed demon middle-aged guy who helps the sheriff by driving him willy-nilly all over the county and a rascally midget provide comic relief. Busty brunette Carla Ziegfeld fills out her role in more ways than one as "Hotwire," a nasty wench socialite who runs a combo drug, stolen car and prostitution ring. Hey, what's missing? Oh yeah -- a story. Well, there ain't one. Instead, director Anthony Cardoza and screenwriter T. Gary Cardoza allow the sloppy, digressive, permanently stuck in park free-form narrative to grind its wheels into the ground in a strangely amiable and hence oddly enjoyable fashion.

It was my friend Mike Lamb's 11th birthday, in 1980. How bad does it have to be for 6th graders to walk out on it? This movie has yet to get the five votes to have the rating listed, but if it does, I can bet that the 4 votes will be from the kids we were hanging out with, because we are the only people who will ever remember this thing.

This ain't no SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT! The IMDb, having left this title without a clue, finally has a long lost item for "Smokey" fans to check out. Through my best guess, a releasing company that specialized in Z-grade material apparently wanted to cash in on the incredible success of the Burt Reynolds movie, resulting in blatant rip-offs. Here's what the scoop is, the once-future basis for THE DUKES OF HAZZARD involving big vans, C.B. radios, rowdy sheriffs, mountain road chases, catchy character names, and broads in "Daisy Duke" hot pants, making this a unique and trendy twenty-year flashback that is all but no more today. Find this one while you can, but I have a feeling that after one single viewing, it's another trip back to the store rushing to put the video into the drop box and to forget it forever. You know how it goes, a very low-budget picture offering little plot and big confusion that is hard to have a fun time. Too bad about that dismal scenario, but if you're looking for a little nostalgia, give this a shot before it vanishes off the shelves. And who wrote the terrible lyrics to that god-awful "Hotwire" song?