Movie review - "The Stalking Moon" (1969) **

 Made by classy people - Alan Pakula, Robert Mulligan, Gregory Peck, Alvin Sergeant, Eva Marie Saint - but it doesn't work. The music score is silly and the story dragged out too much. It should be simple and terrifying from the get go. Gregory Peck and the soldiers rescue Eva Marie Saint and the others too easily. There's too many people around. The film should have kept going right after all the people at the stage coach post are slaughtered - there's this gap where the stagecoach appears and Peck takes them to his farm. The people making this know acting and that stuff but not how to create suspense.

Robert Forster is in the movie to die, so is Russell Thorson. The little kid is stakes - there's little exploration of the fact he wants to go back to his dad.

Not very good. 

Movie review - "Roadie" (1980) **

 Alan Rudolph was in director gaol after Remember My Name so took a studio gig though it was still New Hollywood - anarchic rock and roll film about mechanic/roadie Travis based on an alter ego of a Texan writer.

It's clear what this should be - a romance between Travis and a groupie. Only he looks old and she's meant to be a sixteen year old virgin so that's yuck, even for 1980. And I get why Meatloaf was cast and he's got energy but he doesn't have warmth and the center to play the lead - maybe John Belushi could have pulled it off. And Kiki Hunter isn't right. Meatloaf's family are haw haw caricatures with OTT acting. There's no heart. The movie needed to be made by Alan Arkush or someone. It also needed more 1980 nudity to be freank.

I was disliking this film intensely but it does get better when Debbie Harry and Alice Cooper appear. They are natural and play themselves. But the two leads have no chemistry and both feel miscast.