Last Chants for a Slow Dance (1977)

 

Last Chants for a Slow Dance

I am struggling to find anything positive to say about “Last Chants for a Slow Dance”. Everything that comes to mind is negative. Usually, I can then consult the Book. The poorer the movie, the more the editors will gush over its qualities, but I am in Korea this week and the book is thousands of kilometers away. Even Wikipedia is rather laconic on its entry. Well, I guess it is just going to be one of those reviews.

Tom (Tom Blair) drives around in his car. He has picked up a hitchhiker and is busy telling him how awesome he is, especially with the girls, and how his wife has conned him into having two children. As the hitchhiker refuses to be impressed, he is eventually kicked out. Tom returns home and have a row with his wife, Darlene. She is complaining how he is never there and never provides any money. Tom replies by being an asshole. Tom leaves and picks up a girl on a bar. After sleeping with her he calls home and has another row with Darlene. In the bedroom of the girl he just slept with. Then he gushes at pictures of wanted criminals, finds a man stuck in the forest with a broken car and shoots him dead. The end.

The entire thing, and I mean this is really all, lasts an hour and twenty minutes.

First off, I did not get this story. Why is it interesting to follow a loser of a guy who is being an asshole to everybody? He wants to be awesome, but he is just pathetic. I am kind of thinking that he thinks those criminals are super awesome and he wants to be super awesome like them. Or maybe he is just bored.

Not getting the story is probably part of the reason why I was super bored watching it. The long takes and the lack of anything interesting happening was another, but hey, I actually dug Jeanne Dielmann. It also did not help that I do not find idiotic assholes interesting. Why his wife did not simply give him the boot is a mystery. Maybe she is trash too.

Clearly this movie was made on a shoestring budget, it certainly has this home video feel to it. The lack of budget makes it gritty, but not in a good way. It just looks cheap. If somebody told me it was made over a weekend, I would believe them.

If all this was not bad enough, the movie is sprinkled with a soundtrack of country music. I have a very hard time with country music.

I can only wonder how this ludicrously bad movie made it to the List. What secret quality made the List editors chose to include this movie in preference to some of the other movies that was released this year? It actually makes me angry that it takes up a slot on the List.

And thus I enter the year 1977…