Did anyone order a wacky time-travel comedy starring David Cassidy and Devo? Well you’re in luck, because here’s The Spirit of ’76.
Sadly, the recording starts after the film starts, so some of the intricate plot details might be missing, but from what I can gather from the opening, some future people decide to use a time machine (which appears to be made of Papier Maché and papered with banknotes “because money is worthless where we come from”) to travel back to 1776 to learn from the founding fathers, but of course their machine malfunctions and they return instead to 1976.
It’s a very colourful 1976 – clearly America still had access to colours other than brown for their clothes and decor, unlike Britain (if most 70s period dramas are too be believed).
Some of the the cultural references raise a wry smile.
Given that one of the time travellers is David Cassidy, I wonder if they’re going to watch an episode of The Partridge Family at some point? Although this film looks so cheap they probably couldn’t afford the clearance fees.
Rob Reiner turns up as a self-help guru running some kind of self-actualisation seminar.
This is as close as they could get to a clip from The Partridge Family.
I think the best way to describe how bad this film is, is to say that my enjoyment went up quite a few notches when the Bay City Rollers started on the soundtrack.
I hear a recent grammy-winning male rock artist is going to star in a sequel, to be called ‘Beck to the Future’.
Next on the tape is Cameron’s Closet. I don’t think I ever watched it, so here goes.
Cameron is a little boy who has telekinetic and psychic powers. But his father believes something evil lives in his closet, goes a bit mad with a machete, and ends up decapitated in the closet.
Hope from thirtysomething turns up as a Freudian psychoanalyst, first assigned to analyze the police detective who started having strange visions after investingating the case, then she gets assigned to Cameron after his mother’s new boyfriend gets attacked by a strange monster from the closet, and defenestrated.
There’s some fairly random but gory creature effects, courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi, and sometimes it seems like it’s taking Joseph Campbell a little too literally, when Cameron appears to be imagining his inner cave, into which the hero detective must travel.
A couple of credit spots – editor Frank De Palma is a writer on a few episodes of Bugs, and the screenplay is written by Gary Brandner, author of the original novel The Howling on which Joe Dante based his far superior film version (believe me, the novel was awful and bore little relation to the final film). Music by the Friday 13th composer Harry Manfredini.
Director Armand Mastroianni’s name was vaguely familiar too – he directed the 1980 slasher He Knows You’re Alone, one of the many films in that genre that proliferated, following the success of Halloween. I think I enjoyed that film more than this one, but I was younger then.
I do this blog in the hope that I’ll rediscover a lost classic. Today is not that day.
After this film, because it’s Sky Movies, there’s another one. Donna Mills stars in Overruled, which looks like a TV movie to me. There’s a fair chunk of it before the tape finishes, but given the subject matter, I won’t be watching it.
Adverts/trails
- trail: Boomerang
- Mentadent
- Ariel Colour
- Max Factor
- Fairy dishwasher
- Weightwatchers Cheescake
- Lenor
- TSB
- Do It All
- Too Good to be True
- trail: Bob Roberts
- trail: Code 3
- trail: Summer on Sky
VHiStory 