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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writer:
John Cassavetes (writer)
Release Date:
8 October 1977 (Sweden) more
Plot:
A proud strip club owner is forced to come to terms with himself as a man, when his gambling addiction gets him in hot water with the mob, who offer him only one alternative. full summary | add synopsis
NewsDesk:
Son To Remake Dad's Classic Cult Film
(From Studio Briefing - Film News. 5 June 1997)
User Comments:
"The most important thing in life is to be comfortable." more (42 total)
Cast
(Cast overview, first billed only)| Ben Gazzara | ... | Cosmo Vitelli | |
| Timothy Carey | ... | Flo (Gangster) (as Timothy Agoglia Carey) | |
| Seymour Cassel | ... | Mort Weil (Gangster) | |
| Robert Phillips | ... | Phil (Gangster) | |
| Morgan Woodward | ... | John (Head gangster) | |
| John Kullers | ... | Eddie-Red (as John Red Kullers) | |
| Al Ruban | ... | Marty Reitz (Gangster) | |
| Azizi Johari | ... | Rachel | |
| Virginia Carrington | ... | Betty, the mother | |
| Meade Roberts | ... | Mr. Sophistication | |
| Alice Fredlund | ... | Sherry | |
| Donna Gordon | ... | Margo Donnar (as Donna Marie Gordon) | |
| Haji | ... | Haji | |
| Carol Warren | ... | Carol | |
| Derna Wong Davis | ... | Derna |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
135 min | 109 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Certification:
UK:15 (re-rating) | Finland:K-16 | Portugal:M/16 | Sweden:15 | UK:AA (original rating) | USA:R
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
This was actually a story idea developed by John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese years previously. more
Quotes:
Cosmo Vitelli: My mother was very funny. Had a great sense of humor. Yeah, that's right. She was so funny, she ran off with this big, fat butcher. more
Movie Connections:
Spoofed in "South Park: Imaginationland (#11.10)" (2007) more
Soundtrack:
Rainy Fields of Frost and Magic more
FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (42 total)
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I've shown this movie to baffled girlfriends and eye-rolling friends who've left the room after twenty minutes. The picture was essentially unreleased upon its completion in 1976, and is now available on video only because of the retrospectives of Cassavetes' work that followed his death. The movie is considered bewildering even by many Cassavetes champions, but for me it ranks among the greatest American movies. As Cosmo Vitelli, the strip-joint owner who's a clown who thinks he's a king, the sublimely reptilian Ben Gazzara leans into an offstage mike and tells the audience, "And if you have any complaints--any complaints at all--we'll throw you right out on your ass." Like Jake LaMotta, or Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, Cosmo is a walking aria of male self-destruction. He finally pays off the shylocks he's in hock to for his place--the Crazy Horse West--and celebrates with a gambling spree that puts him right back where he started. To pay his debts, Cosmo agrees to murder a Chinese kingpin the L.A. mob has marked for death--but that only gives the barest indication of the strange, ecstatic poetry of Cassavetes' greatest and farthest-out-on-a-limb movie. The movie is a strangely crumpled form of film noir; a classic Cassavetes character portrait, with more than the usual romanticism and self-disgust; a super-subliminal essay on Vietnam and Watergate; and an example of a one-of-a-kind lyricism that's closer to 2001 than a gangster picture. With its odd rhythms, Warholish color and substance-altered performances, it's one of the rare movies for which there exists no point of comparison.