The Big Bounce (1969)

When this film first screened at Warner's 7Arts in Syd, several thought it so cheap and ugly as simply not worth releasing. This was in the days when Australia still had a policy of returning works considered morally (and/or financially) bankrupt - back to their country of origin.The Australian Censor of the day wisely did that for them, so it was packed up with a note:- not wanted in Australia - this decision proved to be of little loss. The film typified a new low grade in movie making that rapidly became the norm in the 60's and 70's, brimming with poorly written, deliberately ugly characters. Ryan O'Neill simply continued his bland character from TV's Peyton Place and was quoted as having said; 'TV is Hamburger, Cinema is Steak' - well, this shoddy offering doesn't even rate as thinly sliced bacon (burn't at that). He's featured staring with his then wife Leigh Taylor-Young, they may have been a hot couple in the social columns but proved Luke warm on screen. Young performed Playboy type nude scenes and indulged in an endless variety of super nasty actions - playing a social vandal come thief/murderess. Her character at one stage is seen kicking the body of the person she had earlier shot multiple times. Nice stuff!Produced, directed and written by a trio of veteran TV makers, who like many others trying to graduate from the small screen seemed to think: if you make a movie in CinemaScope and Technicolor, then add heaps of heavy violence and sexual promiscuity, audiences will begin to take you seriously. How wrong they were... but sadly this trend continued to it's present state. It's not that Cinema 'grew up' (as some try to 'sell' us) it just became more sensationalistic. This movie also features one of the final performances for the great Van Hefflin (he must have needed cash badly) and wastes the talents of the capable Lee Grant in a sad and demeaning role. The best performance, and scene, involved child star Cindy Elibacher (not her sister Lisa, as one reviewer wrongly wrote) playing Grant's daughter. It all serves to prove how difficult it was/is to successfully transfer the writings of Elmore Leonard to the screen ~ some of the better ones were: 3.10 to Yuma in '57 ~ the off-beat 'Valdez is Coming' '71 and to a lesser degree, also in '57 the interesting Randolph Scott film: 'The Tall T'. This film also features one of the most miss-matched music scores ever. Interesting composer/producer Mike Curb gave this a 'beach' movie type sound track with songs better suited to a TV travel commercial. His main-title song "When Somebody Cares for you" is played over a violent opening shot - it's actually a 'nice' song that seemed to have been written for a good Disney family film and is totally wasted in this show.So from being banned in several countries, to now running on TCM with an 'M' rating and no proper warnings of the heavily 'suss' content, this ends up as a barometer - demonstrating how far we've slipped as a non-discerning society. Junk fans may last the distance - others may run for cover....

Taking advantage of the enormous publicity from the small screen when cast members Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young became a small screen Dick and Liz, they were cast in The Big Bounce. Both were cast in roles suitable to each other, but Leigh made far more of it than Ryan.O'Neal is a rather quick tempered drifter who is a Vietnam veteran and doing farm labor work for lack of something better. It also fits the unsettled character of his nature. As the film opens he's in trouble having stabbed one of the migrants, a fellow known for a nasty temper and the fact he was reputed to carry a knife.Knowing all that the local town judge Van Heflin persuades the prosecutor to drop the whole thing and Heflin offers room, board, and a job at his motel. But O'Neal finds something Heflin can't compete with in the intriguing and sexy mantrap Leigh Taylor-Young.Maybe Carroll Baker in Baby Doll made a sexier big screen debut, but she's the only one I can think of. Taylor-Young is a child of the Sixties. She's the kept mistress of Robert Webber manager of the pickle works and the biggest employer in the area. She's also one spoiled rotten and dangerously psychotic woman. What Taylor-Young is is all about kicks, getting them wherever she can.The question is will O'Neal who isn't the strongest of characters be able to resist this woman and the dangerous things she does just to get what she calls The Big Bounce.The Big Bounce is an inauspicious debut for O'Neal who would really hit it big shortly with Love Story. But it did guarantee him a lengthy career. But Mrs. O'Neal really runs away with this picture as the kind of woman that ought to come with a warning label.

I'm giving this seven although the terrible music almost makes the picture unwatchable. What is interesting is Leigh Taylor-Young's portrayal of an under-age woman driven mad by being debauched, perverted and corrupted by a string of rich old men to whom she is pimped by her ageing moneybags employer. Dutch Leonard, author of the original novel, got his facts right here, and it gives the movie an underlying force that can't be denied. It's a surprise to find that the principal character is not Ryan O'Neal, who is wooden and sulky as the out-of-place "anglo" farm-worker in rural Monterey, but instead his then-wife and co-star Taylor-Young. Her character has gone over the edge as a result of being seduced by the local Senator at the instigation of her employer and bed-mate, the local landlord. Taylor-Young gets right into it, yipping and chortling as she turns over other cars and pumps bullets into mistaken interlopers. Her plan to rip off her employer for the fortune in his house-safe never comes off (at least not during the picture's action), and she escapes a murder charge, but as Van Heflin's character grimly points out: "Give it a month or ten years: she'll get hers". Worth watching just for Taylor-Young's performance, about one-third of which is in the nude. This film is a rare insight into female psychology, almost in spite of itself.

Out of curiosity, I rented the 1969 film version of THE BIG BOUNCE from Netflix, and it proved the underrated 2004 edition (which I reviewed elsewhere on the IMDb) to be another example of a remake that's way better than the original! The two versions of TBB are fairly close in plotting, but this year's model captures source author Elmore Leonard's loopy, cynical sense of humor much better, skipping the original film's mawkish asides and heavy-handed attempts at poignancy and psychodrama. For instance, the self-pitying, self-destructive, male-afflicted single mom played by Lee Grant in 1969 is rebooted in the latest edition as a cheerfully coquettish tourist played by Anahit Minasyan, whose fate is much more upbeat than poor Grant's. Also, TBB Mark 2's Hawaiian setting and George S. Clinton's playful score combining rock and Hawaiian-style music appealed to me more than TBB Mark 1's been-there-done-that Los Angeles locales (by the way, I seem to recall that Leonard's book is set in Detroit) and syrupy soft rock by Mike Curb, of all people. Next to The Mike Curb Congregation, The Brady Bunch's album sounds like the Rolling Stones' greatest hits! Even if it didn't sound hilariously dated to early 21st-century ears, Curb's score is still all wrong for a downbeat crime drama like the '69 model (not that the first film is completely humor-free; Van Heflin's eccentrically-decorated home was one of the film's few bright spots). I almost got the feeling Curb originally composed the music for an entirely different kind of film, perhaps some perky, inspirational heart-warmer starring the folks from Up With People which never got off the ground, so someone decided to graft Curb's score onto TBB v. 1 instead of letting it go to waste. While both films have great casts overall (the original includes Heflin, James Daly, and Robert Webber in the roles played this year by Morgan Freeman, Gary Sinise, and Charlie Sheen), in the starring role of ex-con Jack Ryan, Owen Wilson's wisecracking slackertude in TBB Mark 2 is much more engaging than Ryan O'Neal's personality in TBB Mark 1. While I've enjoyed O'Neal in comedies, particularly 1972's WHAT'S UP, DOC?, I've never liked him in dramas. To me, O'Neal has always come across as moist and mewling when he's supposed to be tender and sensitive, and surly and petulant when he's supposed to be tough and hard nosed, and his performance in TBB #1 is no exception. However, both films have terrific leading ladies playing thrill-seeking kept woman Nancy: the current version marks Sara Foster's screen debut, while the original starred the lovely and beguiling Leigh Taylor-Young, then O'Neal's real-life wife and former co-star on TV's PEYTON PLACE. (Fun Fact: Leigh Taylor-Young was nominated for a Laurel Award for Best Female New Face for her performance in TBB.) The chemistry between O'Neal and LT-Y is one of the film's few saving graces; they sure seem to enjoy tearing their clothes off, and they look good doing it, too! :-) Alas, except for the occasional memorable line (for example, here's Heflin slyly commenting on O'Neal's phone chat with LT-Y: "You look like the mouse that got swallowed by the pussy."), Robert Dozier's screenplay can't seem to decide whether Nancy is a victim of callous men, a calculating femme fatal, or a plain old homicidal psycho. The critics who panned TBB Mark 2 obviously never had to suffer through Mark 1! If you've got your heart set on an at-home Elmore Leonard film festival, rent GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, even the overlong but still exceptional JACKIE BROWN, and include THE BIG BOUNCE -- but unless you lust after Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young in their prime, make sure you get your mitts on the superior 2004 version!