Matilda (1978)

Director: Daniel Mann

Starring: (if you can believe it) Elliott Gould, Clive Revill, Harry Guardino, Roy Clark, Lionel Stander and Robert Mitchum (!?!?!?!)

More info? IMDB

Tagline: Quirky family fun that packs the meanest of punches!

Plot: A small-time talent agent discovers an amazing boxing kangaroo and figures to use it as his stepping-stone into the big time.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? Aw, HELL, no!

#31 on Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)


If the Pat Boone & Debbie Boone theme song at the top of the film doesn't make you vomit in your own lap and stop you dead in your tracks, there's nothing I can say that will do it.

Holy shit! It's Luca Brasi himself (Lenny Montana)...and he plays...a sterotyped Italian mob enforcer? Say...it...ain't...so!

I seem to recall seeing this in the theater when I was a kid. There's probably a good reason why it's been blocked from my conscious memory. Woof. What I found striking about it was how serious so much of the cast was. Gould and Mitchum especially. This was no different to them then any other gig. I kind of respect that and it's for that reason that this has any redeeming quality. But then it's so ludicrous that it's kind of entertaining. I can't believe I'm saying this.


MATILDA is an exercise in "Who THE FUCK greenlit this thing?". Were all the studio execs freebasing during a pitch meeting when they were trying to come up with something that would rival ROCKY (1976)?

Studio Exec: "So how do we top ROCKY?"
Ideas Man: "How about having a USA boxer fight a Russian boxer in the fight of the century?"
Studio Exec: "Lame"
Ideas Man: "How about a high profile boxer fighting a wrestler? That'd be different!"
Studio Exec: "You just don't care about this business anymore, do you?"
Ideas Man: [sounding sad] "Fuck it! Let's put a guy in a kangaroo suit and have him box the heavyweight champion of the world."
Studio Exec: "That's goddamn brilliant, Spielberg, let's do it. Now hand me some of that blow, will ya?"

I demand better from my boxing kangaroo movies. What the hell is that boom mic doing in the frame?

The sad thing is, is that no matter how fucking outrageous of a concept this is, no matter how stupidly obvious that it's a man in a kangaroo costume, that no matter how lame this is, it's not that much of a stretch to think that something like this could happen again. They say that if we do not learn from history then we are doomed to repeat it. We must never forget. Never forget. Never!

Somehow I sense a studio executive reaching for the phone now and looking through his Rolodex for Will Ferrell's number...