{"id":9463,"date":"2024-11-30T12:27:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T17:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9463"},"modified":"2024-11-30T12:27:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T17:27:48","slug":"smokey-bites-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/30\/smokey-bites-the-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"Smokey Bites the Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Smokey Bites the Dust <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, vehicular mayhem)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Charles B. Griffith\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Max Apple\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bent Myggen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gary Graver\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jimmy McNichol, Janet Julian, Walter Barnes, Patrick Campbell, Kari Lizer, John Blyth Barrymore, Kedric Wolfe, Bill Forsythe, Charles Howerton, Mel Welles, Michael Green, Don Corey, Dick Miller, Linda Gary, Adriana Shaw, Rance Howard, Beach Dickerson, Robert Beecher, Nancy Parsons, Dan Sturkie, Angelo Rosito, Joe Anthony Cox, Jessica Griffith, Teda Bracci, Angelo Grisanti, Gene Le Bell, Mickey Fox, Ben Frommer, Cary Michael Cheifer, Charles B. Griffith, David McLure.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0You must be thinking Movie Guy 24\/7 has finally lost his mind in liking Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong>, a low-rent Smokey and the Bandit knock-off starring Jimmy McNichol (California Fever) as a Bandit wannabe who leads law enforcement and others on a wild, high-speed chase through several Southern small-town counties. To be honest, I\u2019ve been questioning my own sanity for years. The fact that I enjoyed this movie confirms what I\u2019ve suspected all along. I must be crazy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Charles B. Griffith (Eat My Dust), Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong> is cheap, corny and dumb. It exists for no other reason than to show 101 ways to wreck a car. It makes any entry in the Smokey and the Bandit look like Shakespeare. This one didn\u2019t open in Philly. I would have been all over it if it had. At 13, I wouldn\u2019t dare miss a PG movie with wall-to-wall vehicular mayhem. I didn\u2019t see it in its entirety until \u201992 when I rented it from West Coast Video for $1. I didn\u2019t care much for it then. I fully expected to have the same reaction when I opted to revisit it on Amazon Prime the other night. Instead, I had a pretty good time with it. I forgot Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong> is a Roger Corman production. That name carries a lot of weight with yours truly as you well know.<\/p>\n

\u00a0McNichol, older brother of Kristy (The Pirate Movie), plays high school rebel\/car thief Roscoe, a joyriding hellraiser who enjoys tormenting local law enforcement with his automotive antics. Typical of a small Southern town, the police department consists of a pot-bellied sheriff (Barnes, Every Which Way But Loose) and a dimwitted deputy (Wolfe, Up from the Depths). The chase begins when Roscoe kidnaps homecoming queen Peggy Sue (Julian, Humongous) who just happens to be the daughter of the insanely overprotective Cyco County (as in psycho) sheriff who immediately begins hot pursuit. He\u2019s joined in the chase by team quarterback Kenny (Forsythe, Raising Arizona), a sanctimonious jerk suffering from a case of unrequited love. The best friends of Roscoe and Peggy Sue, Harold (Barrymore, Drew\u2019s older half-brother) and Cindy (Lizer, Private School), are also trying to catch them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The sheriff can\u2019t drive worth a damn. He manages to total every vehicle he operates. This includes a cruiser he \u201ccommandeers\u201d from neighboring Knotsie County PD (as in Nazi) which incurs the wrath of the rival sheriff (Howerton, Eat My Dust). Another subplot has local bootlegger Lester (Campbell, Saturday the 14th<\/sup>) selling his secret moonshine formula to a group of Arabs for \u201cone million clams\u201d. Being that it\u2019s pre-PC 1981, the Arabs are of the stereotypical variety complete with tunics, sabers and hookahs. And what of our couple on the run? Well, you know how it goes. Peggy Sue\u2019s initial dislike turns to love as she starts to enjoy what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0I cannot defend Smokey Bites the Dust <\/strong>as fine cinema. It\u2019s totally NOT! It\u2019s easily one of the dumbest movies I\u2019ve ever seen. That\u2019s what\u2019s so good about it. It doesn\u2019t even try to pretend it\u2019s anything more than a silly, simple-minded car-crash picture with lots of vehicular mayhem and destruction. I\u2019m not exaggerating when I say a car gets destroyed every five minutes. Property isn\u2019t safe either. More than one structure falls victim to reckless driving. If you have all that, there\u2019s no need for trivialities like acting, character development and competent filmmaking. It\u2019s all equally bad. The only praiseworthy element is the stunt work. That aspect of Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong> is A-1 stuff.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong> is what I call stupid-funny. It\u2019s so idiotic, you have to laugh at it. It\u2019s also likely to raise a few eyebrows in these more enlightened times. I\u2019m referring to the scenes showing a little girl smoking cigarettes. She cons Roscoe and Peggy Sue into buying them for her in exchange for letting them steal her father\u2019s car. She gets off one of movie\u2019s best lines during the climactic free-for-all when she muses from the sideline, \u201cWhat, I ask you, is the point of growing up?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0You want to know the secret to enjoying Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong>? It\u2019s easy really. Watch it late at night. It\u2019s like one of those low-budget jobs that frequently showed up on the late movie on UHF channels in the 70s and 80s. Because it\u2019s a New World flick, keep an eye out for Dick Miller. He usually shows up in these things. Although he\u2019s not that great an actor, it\u2019s always fun to see Jimmy McNichol, a true teen relic of the 70s. Janet Julian is easy on the eyes. It\u2019s cool seeing the great William Forsythe in a very early role.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess that\u2019s all there is to say about Smokey Bites the Dust<\/strong>. It\u2019s great low-budget fun that I won\u2019t call an insult to the viewer\u2019s intelligence. How can I when it doesn\u2019t require any of the viewer to begin with?\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Smokey Bites the Dust (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, vehicular mayhem)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Charles B. Griffith\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Max Apple\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bent Myggen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gary Graver\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jimmy McNichol, Janet Julian, Walter Barnes, Patrick Campbell, Kari Lizer, John Blyth Barrymore, Kedric Wolfe, Bill Forsythe, Charles Howerton, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-comedies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Smokey-Bites-the-Dust-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9697,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions\/9697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}