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Roger Ebert

Self - Host

Gene Siskel

Self - Host

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Goofs
Gene says that he and Roger are going to review Goin' South (1978) on the next episode, but they never reviewed it.

Quotes
Himself - Host: [on Pirahna] My favorite scene is when a victim is in the water being eaten alive by millions of Piranha and Kevin McCarthy comes to the rescue by diving into the water naturally and swimming toward the piranha. That's really great thinking, right? Next, they'll probably make a rip-off of The Towering Inferno in which one guy just off the building and another guy jumps off the catch him.

Connections
Featured in The Siskel & Ebert 500th Anniversary Special (1989)

... since that is usually between the summer blockbusters and the winter releases and thus a traditional lull in the film industry, and yet Roger and Gene review seven films this week.

Some of these I had never even heard of before this. Of course, "Death on the Nile" gets plenty of repeat viewing, and Gene and Roger both liked this one. But it's hard to remember when Farrah Fawcett was getting her starring role in a feature film in "Somebody Killed Her Husband". This was apparently a bad one, but at least Gene and Roger point out that her role didn't give her a chance to act. Interiors is Woody Allen' first completely serious film, and they both give it a thumbs up, but Gene didn't like how depressing it is. Today it is well known that depressing is Woody Allen's fallback position on anything.

Roger and Gene had a mixed reaction to "A Wedding", which is one I'd never even heard of, and I thought it strange that neither of them noticed that this film - at least from the description and the excerpts - looked just like 1970's "Lovers and Other Strangers". People in the late 1970s often liked to pretend that the early 1970s never even existed.

They had a reaction to "Boys From Brazil" that surprised me. They both panned it saying that it was too campy and made Gregory Peck and Lawrence Olivier look like bad actors, when today it is obvious that the campiness is part of its charm.

Finally they trot out their dogs of the week. Even today "Piranha" is laughed at as one of those weird 70s disaster films. But "Up In Smoke" is a drive-in classic, being the first of Cheech and Chong's joint movies. I wonder if they ever changed their minds on this one, or if it just wasn't their cup of tea?

It was a busy week of movie watching for Roger and Gene this week, and it's odd I don't remember this one as I was a regular viewer of the show at the time. Just one more thing - It was odd seeing movies reviewed that had Mia Farrow in them, and movies made by Woody Allen, but none involving both. The two would not meet for another two years.