CANDY MOUNTAIN

Candy Mountain is your basic road movie with the extra added attraction of famous musicians in the cast. While that might not sound good, in this case, all of the musicians in Candy Mountain do a good job, even better than some the other actors in the film. Directed by Robert Frank (Cocksucker Blues) as a slow unfolding story written by Rudy Wurlitzer (Two Lane Blacktop), the movie was able to hold my attention from start to finish.

Kevin J. O'Connor plays a wanna-be rock star, who is better at growing sideburns than actually playing the guitar. At the first of the movie he quits his carpentry job and goes to retrieve his guitar from a couple of his friends, played by Joe Strummer and Arto Lindsay. They refuse to give him his guitar, but set him up to jam with a famous musician (David Johansen). O'Connor's guitar playing is so bad, he's kicked out of the band; but when he hears Johansen and some others in the music business talking about the great guitars of Elmore Silk, he bluffs his way into getting an advance to go find the reclusive Silk. 

Along the way he meets Silk's brother (Tom Waits), Silk's brother-in-law (Dr. John) and a dubious law enforcement father and son (Leon Redbone) team. All three of these musicians do a great job in their roles and it's hard to pick any one of them as being the best: Tom Waits with his garish golfer outfits, Dr. John as the wheelchair bound cranky brother-in-law or Leon Redbone as the backwoods lawman.

These three musicians really made the film for me and perhaps if they weren't in Candy Mountain, I might not have found it quite as entertaining. There's also a cameo appearance by the late Canadian singer Rita MacNeil. If you're a fan of any of these artists or just like a good road movie, you'll probably enjoy watching Candy Mountain.

PRAY TV (1980)

Pray TV is a 1980 theatrical release and should not be confused with the 1982 TV movie of the same name. Pray TV (1982) is a drama starring John Ritter, while Pray TV (1980) is a screwball spoof starring Archie Hahn, who is best known to my family as Doughie Duck. Archie's character at the first of Pray TV has many references to ducks and Hahn even does a short bit as Doughie Duck. One other interesting side note to Pray TV is that it was the first big screen appearance of Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman).

Pray TV is about a failing TV station placed in the hands of Dabney Coleman, who promises to make a success of the station. He does this by changing the format of the station to anything with a religious subtext, from cooking shows to exercise shows. This sets the movie up for a series of comedic vignettes, most of which are fairly humorous.

My only disappointment with Pray TV was Dr. John and Devo are both seen primarily as background to other events happening on the screen. Dr John leads the choir at a drive-in movie theater that has been converted to an evangelist's church and he sings "The Collection". Devo appears as Dove at a religious award show singing "Shrivel Up". It's a puzzlement to me why the producers went to the trouble to hire Dr. John and Devo and then under-use them in the movie.

I couldn't find a trailer for Pray TV, but I did find a video clip from the movie featuring Devo as Dove.