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The movies that made me.......... #3 - THE DOUBLE MCGUFFI...
2 years ago
"If you think no one cares about you...
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God bless Joe Camp.
Hes always going to be known for the family gem "Benji" film series and a lot of people still give him credit as one of the first directors to use a stage animal throughout an ENTIRE movie, we're talking from sun up to sun down, his antics, his places to go, the people he meets, everything. "Benji" (1974) is probably one of the most perfect animal adventure films youll ever see. :D (definitely see it if you haven’t yet)
But of course you say, ‘okay but WTF is the Double McGuffin???’ :D
It’s a 1979 Joe Camp film about a group of high school football players who discover an assassination plot. And that should be all you need to know to think ‘huh. Okay, I should check this puppy out!’
That’s basically what the TV Guide read when I checked it out and HBO was just getting its roots. These were the days of the “early cable”, you know, those shiny plastic boxes with the Chicklet keys. :D You could rig a small cardboard piece, some aluminum foil, hell, just about anything to unscramble a signal and “port” it to any room in the house. My fortune was that we could port it downstairs in the basement where my bedroom was, and let me tell you guys, the Cinemax “skinamax” movies were quite arousing to go to bed to. :D
So its 1981. I’m 14, brisk March day, and “The Double McGuffin” is on HBO. I take a look at it….. THIS WAS A DAMNED GOOD MOVIE! :D I hadn’t ever heard of it before and it didn’t get any run in theaters that I was aware of, so it must have gone right from Camp Productions to video.
The movie stars Dion Pride, (yes, country singer Charley Pride’s son) as the quarterback at this prestigious academy and his friends (including one guy you MIGHT know, Vinnie Spano) who have a penchant for rigging the system, shall we say. Underage drinking, loud music, phone phreaking, computer hacking, these are a bunch of little scamps. But then a briefcase full of money changes everything, and these kids need to use a lot of cunning and smarts to unwind the puzzles and guess whats going on.
Its just so cool. When I watched it, I swear I immediately thought I should get a computer. So I managed to get a commodore Vic-20 the very next month (after much begging and pleading and chore-doing) and sat down and……………………. Didn’t play games. :D
Nope…I started writing.
The Vic 20 had a powerful word processing program I got from Compute! Magazine (yeah, memories!) and I was excited. I wrote about a kid growing up on the wrong side of the tracks with a street gang and thrust into a murder plot and it became “RiffRaff”. To date, I haven’t found that document. But there’s a whole bunch of floppy disks in my possession that MAYBE its on, so who knows, maybe I’ll figure out how to read them somehow and publish that novel.
I credit “the Double McGuffin” for truly creating my writing career…I was still in Boy Scouts at the time, so I was still going through the merit badge BULLSHIT that was supposed to show you where your talents are. Was there ever a merit badge for writing and creative arts?! Don’t think so! Back in those days, you were in basic ARMY training, dawgs. :D
“the Double McGuffin” also had some pretty potent movie stars attached. Oscar Winner Ernest Borgnine, famed actress/model Elke Summer, football giants Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Lyle Alzado, and the king of the mountain, Oscar star George Kennedy as the beleaguered police chief of the small Washington DC town. :D (filmed in Georgia)
So yeah, I wish this movie had gotten more attention. It might drag a bit in spots, and the child actors surrounding Pride weren’t so hot (Vinnie was okay though, Vinnie is ALWAYS okay) :D I would have loved to see a group of British kids doing the roles and maybe there’s a remake on the horizon, who knows, since Camp is still alive and well. :D
JOE! You reading this?!
REMAKE! :D
It’ll be a smash hit. Guaranteed. ♥♥♥
Hes always going to be known for the family gem "Benji" film series and a lot of people still give him credit as one of the first directors to use a stage animal throughout an ENTIRE movie, we're talking from sun up to sun down, his antics, his places to go, the people he meets, everything. "Benji" (1974) is probably one of the most perfect animal adventure films youll ever see. :D (definitely see it if you haven’t yet)
But of course you say, ‘okay but WTF is the Double McGuffin???’ :D
It’s a 1979 Joe Camp film about a group of high school football players who discover an assassination plot. And that should be all you need to know to think ‘huh. Okay, I should check this puppy out!’
That’s basically what the TV Guide read when I checked it out and HBO was just getting its roots. These were the days of the “early cable”, you know, those shiny plastic boxes with the Chicklet keys. :D You could rig a small cardboard piece, some aluminum foil, hell, just about anything to unscramble a signal and “port” it to any room in the house. My fortune was that we could port it downstairs in the basement where my bedroom was, and let me tell you guys, the Cinemax “skinamax” movies were quite arousing to go to bed to. :D
So its 1981. I’m 14, brisk March day, and “The Double McGuffin” is on HBO. I take a look at it….. THIS WAS A DAMNED GOOD MOVIE! :D I hadn’t ever heard of it before and it didn’t get any run in theaters that I was aware of, so it must have gone right from Camp Productions to video.
The movie stars Dion Pride, (yes, country singer Charley Pride’s son) as the quarterback at this prestigious academy and his friends (including one guy you MIGHT know, Vinnie Spano) who have a penchant for rigging the system, shall we say. Underage drinking, loud music, phone phreaking, computer hacking, these are a bunch of little scamps. But then a briefcase full of money changes everything, and these kids need to use a lot of cunning and smarts to unwind the puzzles and guess whats going on.
Its just so cool. When I watched it, I swear I immediately thought I should get a computer. So I managed to get a commodore Vic-20 the very next month (after much begging and pleading and chore-doing) and sat down and……………………. Didn’t play games. :D
Nope…I started writing.
The Vic 20 had a powerful word processing program I got from Compute! Magazine (yeah, memories!) and I was excited. I wrote about a kid growing up on the wrong side of the tracks with a street gang and thrust into a murder plot and it became “RiffRaff”. To date, I haven’t found that document. But there’s a whole bunch of floppy disks in my possession that MAYBE its on, so who knows, maybe I’ll figure out how to read them somehow and publish that novel.
I credit “the Double McGuffin” for truly creating my writing career…I was still in Boy Scouts at the time, so I was still going through the merit badge BULLSHIT that was supposed to show you where your talents are. Was there ever a merit badge for writing and creative arts?! Don’t think so! Back in those days, you were in basic ARMY training, dawgs. :D
“the Double McGuffin” also had some pretty potent movie stars attached. Oscar Winner Ernest Borgnine, famed actress/model Elke Summer, football giants Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Lyle Alzado, and the king of the mountain, Oscar star George Kennedy as the beleaguered police chief of the small Washington DC town. :D (filmed in Georgia)
So yeah, I wish this movie had gotten more attention. It might drag a bit in spots, and the child actors surrounding Pride weren’t so hot (Vinnie was okay though, Vinnie is ALWAYS okay) :D I would have loved to see a group of British kids doing the roles and maybe there’s a remake on the horizon, who knows, since Camp is still alive and well. :D
JOE! You reading this?!
REMAKE! :D
It’ll be a smash hit. Guaranteed. ♥♥♥
Re: The scouts- My dad and his twin brother grew up with scouting, making it to Eagle Scouts. He really loved it, and he dearly wished me to get into it, but I just couldn't do it, mostly due to the uniform thing. Too militaristic and rah rah American for me, it being the middle of the Vietnam war and all.
Closest I got was in junior high, when we moved from Berkeley to Marin County. The local troupe were mostly made up of some of the hipper dope smoker kids who were a year older than me and that I hung out with. They took me along once for my first bike ride down Mt. Tamalpais, before that became the cool thing to do and bomber bikes were a thing.
So................yeah.
And they wonder why the boy Scouts has gone bankrupt. It was a nice enough thing for wartime in the 1940s maybe but....now?
You can do more and learn more by just going out and learning more and doing more.... if that makes sense. :D
I suppose scouting can be a good thing for some, but "Adults" have a tendency to come in and ruin things.
I never heard of any abuse in any of the local Scout troupes here. Not quite the case at the local Catholic high school or a number of local Catholic churches though...
My ex Gf came from a deeply Irish Catholic family, complete with nuns and all, with a long history of abuse, and freely proclaimed herself to be Catholic damaged, in spite of having escaped their clutches in her childhood.
WATCH "Spotlight". :D
as soon as possible.
It and it's 30-lb dot matrix printer have long gone to the big dumpster in the sky. What a trip!
Commodore ruled the world for a while, man... then the IBM and Apple computers said, "uh uh...cant let you rule the world." :D
And we got the TRS-80 and the Apple Mcintosh to follow and it was goodbye Commodore.