June Fairchild Movies

Then professional potheads Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong teamed up for Cheech & Chong: Up In Smoke, which features the drug-addled duo on a road trip throughout California; that is to say, a road-trip they hope will culminate in finding some quality weed. Instead, a series of mishaps result in their respective deportations to Mexico. Desperate to get back to the states so they can perform in their band's gig later that night, Cheech and Chong unwittingly agree to drive a very unique car across the border -- rather than steel and various metal bits, the vehicle is constructed entirely out of marijuana. Back in the States and accompanied by two extraordinarily out-of-it female hitchhikers, the stoned group meanders about in an attempt to get their musical performance together, and narrowly escapes from local law enforcement agencies on numerous occasions despite their complete inability to realize they were being tailed to begin with. The incredibly low-budget movie surprised critics, grossed millions, spawned a series of lesser follow-up films, and cemented Cheech & Chong's cult-status among potheads across the globe. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

As much an eccentric character study as a road movie, Michael Cimino's directorial debut follows the adventures of a quartet of misfits in their life of crime. Retired thief Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood) and sweet drifter Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) meet cute when Thunderbolt jumps into Lightfoot's stolen car to escape a gunman. The pair embarks on an oddball journey to get Thunderbolt's loot from an old robbery before his former associates, the sadistic Red (George Kennedy) and cretinous Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), get to it first, but all four are too late; the one-room schoolhouse hiding place has apparently vanished. So instead, the four play house and work legit jobs while they plot to rob the same place Thunderbolt and Red hit before. Although the plan goes awry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot discover that they may still have succeeded-or so they think. As the easy-going mediator between the two, Eastwood's Thunderbolt was a move away from his tough cop-westerner image; his audience accepted this then-atypical performance enough to turn Thunderbolt and Lightfoot into a moderate hit. Bridges received his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but Cimino turned down a subsequent deal with Eastwood, moving instead to his artistic peak with The Deer Hunter (1978) and career nadir with Heaven's Gate (1980). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Titled Detroit Heat for video release, this blaxploitation flick concerns two Motor City detectives (Hari Rhodes, Alex Rocco) on the trail of a gang of thieves who attacked a political rally. Noted blaxploitation fan Quentin Tarantino sponsored a theatrical re-release in 1998, with a video reissue following. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

As he lies dying in Vietnam, a young soldier (Michael Douglas) recalls the events leading up to this moment. He remembers his sweetheart (Brenda Vaccaro), to whom he couldn't make a commitment. He recalls the battles he'd had with his parents (Jack Warden, Barbara Bel Geddes), when he forsook college to become a musician and when he planned to evade the draft. And he remembers the "summertree" where he spent many of his happiest days before being shipped off to Southeast Asia. Based on Ron Cowen's off-Broadway play, Summertree has one or two compelling moments, but most of it is a compendium of 1970s movies cliches, right down to the fragmentary storyline and "hip" photography. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ocean View High is an upscale suburban school in an otherwise unidentified community. It's 1971, the point when the sexual revolution started moving into full swing and even a lot of Middle America, at least on the two coasts, admitted the existence of same revolution. It seems like the guys and girls at Ocean View are all loving pretty freely, and that extends to the school's resident faculty hero, football coach/guidance counselor "Tiger" McDrew (Rock Hudson), who -- despite his being married, with a child -- has been bedding many of the prettiest girls at the school. The only kid seemingly not "getting any" is Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), who is starting to get neurotic and suffer academically, so much so that he seeks advice from McDrew, especially where his new substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), is concerned. But then various girls start turning up at the school dead, in various states of undress, with cryptic notes pinned to intimate parts of their anatomy. The lunkhead county sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is forced to defer to a state police investigator (Telly Savalas), who starts nosing around the school and uncovers more than he bargained for in terms of libidinous students, among other problems. Meanwhile, Ponce finds his problem taken care of by Miss Smith, at McDrew's request. But there's still a killer stalking the school.

If the plot and ambience of this movie seems shocking today, that's because it would be. Made at the outset of the sexual revolution, this was MGM's desperate attempt to run with the times, in terms of depicting a high school where sexual relations between students are considered routine and even those between faculty and students are accepted as long as they're kept quiet. Anyone trying to make such a movie in 2006 would face threats of prosecution, investigation, etc., and probably find it impossible to get the movie booked into theaters; MGM didn't have that easy a time in 1971, though (amazingly) the movie has been shown on television. Precisely what director Roger Vadim brought to Gene Roddenberry's screenplay (based on a novel by Francis Pollini) is difficult to tell, though he at least makes the sleazy and tawdry, smirky sex scenes and leering camera shots flow smoothly -- screenplay, director, and cameraman alike are fixated on the female anatomy throughout, though not in as distinctive a manner as Russ Meyer and his attachment to breasts. The presence of a couple of Star Trek co-stars and supporting villains, James Doohan and William Campbell, also makes this especially weird to watch. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The Monkees -- Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork -- didn't really enjoy being labelled the Prefab Four back when their TV series was all the rage in 1966. With the help and support of Bob Rafaelson (co-producer, co-writer and director) and Jack Nicholson (co-producer, co-writer, and, if you look closely, bit player), the Monkees expressed their displeasure over being packaged for popular consumption in the non sequitur masterpiece Head. At least, it seems that the film is an indictment of the merchandising of pop stars. It's hard to tell at times, because Head literally has no plot; it is instead a patchwork of loopy sight gags, instant parodies, "camp" cutups, musical numbers and wry inside jokes. Clips of such old movies as the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi epic The Black Cat pop up every so often, as does an impressive lineup of pop-culture icons: Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, Sonny Liston, Frank Zappa (he's the one leading a cow) and Ray Nitschke, as well as such movie-trivia "answers" as Timothy Carey, Vito Scotti, Teri Garr, Percy Helton, Logan Ramsey, Carol Doda, and pre-Divine cross-dresser T.C. Jones. The best bits include a lengthy Golden Boy parody which does double duty as a lampoon of the network's efforts to create "personalities" for the individual Monkees, and a psychedelic buck-and-wing performed by Davy Jones. One gag, in which Micky Dolenz blows up a Coca Cola machine, is usually excised from TV showings. Head did zero business when it first came out thanks to poor distribution, but it has since become a fixture of midnight-movie showings and campus cinema classes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide