Word: howler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...definitive catalogue of A Star Is Born clichés. The heroine battles with booze and men and show-biz tycoons, but somehow always manages to get out onstage and give a hell of a show. She has only two temperaments, childlike vulnerability and childish tempestuousness. The howler-ridden script makes little effort to tie these bromides to a plot or flesh them out with psychological insights. We are asked to believe that Rose's problems all stem from a fateful night when she let the entire high school football team have its way with...
...when he discovered an invitation on a colleague's desk announcing a cocktail party honoring the Black Panthers. The event was to be held at the Manhattan home of Maestro Leonard Bernstein. Wolfe attended, steno pad and ball point ready. The result was Radical Chic, another heretical howler that captured the well-intentioned banalities of "limousine liberals." A few years later, in The Painted Word, Wolfe took on the New York art establishment, setting forth the impish thesis that a few powerful critics controlled what was painted and sold...
...many of us went through puberty with Mary Ann on our minds? And how many of us were parked in front of our T.V.s, waiting for that fascist howler CHiPs to end, wondering what our favorite characters would look like after all these years, and hoping that Sherwood Schwartz and company had taken the time and money to do this thing right, to make the ending of Gilligan's Island. Well, you can't go home again, and besides--what kind of first name is Sherwood...
ALTHOUGH BELUSHI walks away with the film, several strong performances add to the general insanity and make the difference between a mildly amusing comedy and a gut-wrenching howler. Donald Sutherland makes one of his infrequent appearances, putting just the right gleam of depraved obsession into his all-too-brief characterization of the dope-smoking, corduroy-clad English professor. The scene in which he and three students conspiratorially share a joint in his darkened cottage is one of the most effective in the film, thanks largely to Sutherland's knowing grins and his wolfish, slightly stoned expression. Karen Allen charms...
...automated dialer and recorded-message player that can make up to 1,000 calls a day. Because the device blankets entire telephone exchanges-automatically dialing all the numbers, both listed and unlisted-no one can escape the unwanted pitches. And taking the phone off the hook activates a "howler" device of slowly rising intensity...