Cold Turkey (1971)

People are voting emotionally.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The idea for "Cold Turkey" was a good one, and it had a lot of potential. It could have been a first-rate satire, but instead we have a film that goes part way and then losses its steam. So, it comes off like a light-hearted soap opera. The film has a few good laughs, but as another reviewer noted, it begins to wear thin. It's too long for the content. Had there been more meat with the potatoes, it could have become a full-scale satire. I'll grant that it starts in that direction, but most of the film is obvious and repetitious. Great satire sneaks up without warning and sometimes doesn't make much of a noise. It comes out in witty dialog or clever scenes that we viewers don't expect. But this plot, with all the buildup and TV coverage as part of the story leaves little room for anything surprising. So, instead it seems like tongue-in-cheek preaching to the audience. It tells us that this is dumb, that these people are in denial, the pastor is a hypocrite, the people are just grubbers, etc. Those who think this is great satire should watch masterful examples. Start with "Dr. Strangelove," "The Mouse that Roared," "The Great Dictator," and "Ninotchka." Then see how this movie stacks up. There can be no real comparison. For the parts they had to play, most of the cast are OK. Dick Van Dyke, Edward Everett Horton and Tom Poston have been in much better comedies and roles than they have here. Again, it's an idea with a lot of potential. Norman Lear just needed to be a little more creative and imaginative. One shouldn't announce that people are about to see a satire, and then deliver them predictable bits and pieces. Without its comedic punch, satire slips into lecturing and finger pointing. My five stars are for the idea, a few laughs, and the decent effort some of the cast put into their roles.

Cigarette smoking, though legal, is looked upon as an ugly vice with ugly consequences (lung cancer, premature aging, second-hand smoke, etc.) To make a satire of it takes courage and adult sitcom savant Norman Lear ("All In The Family", its many spin-offs, "Sanford & Son", "One Day At A Time", "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman") did it in the form of the scatter shot, brilliantly cruel yet honest fable "Cold Turkey". If you know Mr. Lear's work, you know the battlefield. If not, hold on to your seat.P.R. man Mervin Wren (an underhanded Bob Newhart, a bit away from his first sitcom) convinces his mute, feeble, wheelchair-bound employer, Hiram C. Grayson (comic character actor Edward Everett Horton, his last role here), the head of the Valiant Tobacco Company, to do good things, despite being a producer of bad things, a la dynamite and Nobel Prize creator Alfred Nobel. The "capper", as Wren calls it, is to offer $25 million to any US town if its citizens can quit smoking for thirty days. This puts the company's board of directors in a ****-fit, but Wren calms them down with the fact that no group can go "cold turkey" and they approve of the deal.However, they didn't count on the 4,006 citizens of the dying Iowa hamlet, Eagle Rock, taking the challenge. Led by the religiously ambitious yet vain Rev. Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke, miles away from his titular sitcom and "Mary Poppins"), the people go through withdrawal syndrome. The results? Let's say whoever makes straight-jackets will be richer than the tobacco companies.Based on "I'm Giving Them Up For Good", an unpublished novel by Margaret and Neil Rau, "Cold Turkey", like the animated sitcom "The Simpsons" (note the similarities, people), takes no prisoners in its narrative. Corporate greed; political, entertainment and news manipulation; the naiveté, self-exclusion and self-exploitation of small-town America and the military-industrial complex (a colonel promises the installation of a missile factory, after the town gets the money) are targets, and Mr. Lear, who wrote (shared story credit with William Price Fox Jr.) produced, directed this yarn, is an expert marksman (and a World War II vet to boot). With a misanthropic tone, it's understandable that United Artists, the film's distributor, shelved "Turkey" for two years, but it's a crime, due to Mr. Horton's passing.Lear has a nimble cast; some players would later show up in his sitcoms. Mr. Van Dyke (who starred in the Lear-penned "Divorce, American Style") is righteous to save his town but careless with his wife (Pippa Scott) who's silenced by his pomposity while Mr. Newhart performs his signature buttoned-down mind routine with sly dog confidence and doe-eyed dopeyness. Other players include Tom Poston (Mr. Newhart's second sitcom) as a rich, die-hard lush; Barnard Hughes ("The Lost Boys", a recurring role on the aforementioned "Family") as a nicotine-loving sawbones; Jean Stapleton (also of "Family") as the mayor's neurotic wife; Paul Benedict ("The Jeffersons") as an anti-smoking zen Buddhist; Graham Jarvis (the aforementioned "Hartman") as an anti-"Big Government" wing-nut and (my favorite) Judith Lowry (also of "Hartman") as a foul-mouthed, Commie-hating crone. Vintage radio comics Bob Elliot (real and sitcom dad of Chris Elliot of "Get A Life") and Ray Goulding show up as walking parodies of famous newsmen ("Walter Chronic" and "David Chetley" may confuse young viewers, but there's the Internet!!!). Lear himself has a cameo as a crying man, going without a smoke.On the technical side, there's d.p. Charles F. Wheeler, who captures the sweet rural look of Eagle Rock with some helicopter shots and wholesome, rural street shots (predating the opening sequences of Lear's sitcoms) while editor John C. Horger masterfully employs quick-cuts, like Lou Lombardo on "The Wild Bunch", when displaying the slapstick "withdrawl syndrome"gags (i.e. a husband slaps his wife while driving; a dog's kicked (!); a bowler throws himself onto a lane, crashing into some pins, etc). Award-winning composer Randy Newman (the ToyStory films, "Monk") makes his film debut here; the ironic tune that bookends the film, "He Gives Us All His Love" is dead-on funny, sweet and sad. Bottom line (to borrow a line from Mr. Wren): "Cold Turkey" is about how society can be so dumb. The only heroes are the town's youth; "Eagle Rock, where's your head?" one young man chants in a circle of protest as the town becomes a tourist trap and enjoys being one. Like most of society, its' head is in a hole that's rank. The youth are ignored, but, by the end, they have the last laugh. So will you.

I watched this film several times on television before I finally came to love it. I have come to measure films on their own terms, not necessarily my idealized ones. The movie is extravagantly playful with polemical outbursts and subtle undertone as well. The image of the town doctor with a pacifier is, perhaps, my favourite icon, a simple, silly, but funny one. How being on the cover of a national news magazine trumps realization by the pastor of how shallow the town is a lovely motif. I liked the pastor's desire to serve in Dearborn, Michigan as a desirable goal. I think that Pippa Scott's character defines the reality behind the story. Her pastor's wife is a fine work. Again, this is a movie I did not see when it was first released and would not have seen. That was my loss; for what it is, this is fine entertainment. Tgibbs279 gets this one right on target.

I saw 'Cold Turkey' on TV back in 1978 or 1979 when I was eleven. Twenty-five years later I can still remember Bob Newhart's portrayal of the evil, wily tobacco executive and his motto "I believe in Wren." Even better was the little old lady in the pro-tobacco group who compared the organizers of the tobacco boycott to the troops who invaded Czechoslovskis in 1968. Dick Van Dyke was brilliant as the befuddled minister who had to put up with the everyone from larger-than-life TV anchormen and pot smoking hippies to evil tobacco executives. Norman Lear was way ahead of his time by using Randy Newman to write the soundtrack and I hope there are still copies of the movie on VHS or DVD.