The Big Bus.

A literal cliffhanger.

Release Date: June 23, 1976. Running Time: 88 minutes. Screenplay: Lawrence J. Cohen, Fred Freeman. Producer: Lawrence J. Cohen, Fred Freeman. Director: James Frawley.


THE PLOT:

At the headquarters of Coyote Bus Lines, a bomb goes off - potentially scuttling the final phase of the company's new project: The Cyclops, a giant, nuclear-powered bus whose maiden voyage will be a non-stop trip from New York to Denver. Professor Baxter (Harold Gould), the lead scientist, is badly injured, along with both the driver and co-driver of the bus. It falls to Baxter's daughter, Kitty (Stockard Channing) to recruit a replacement: Her former fiancé, the disgraced Dan Torrance (Joseph Bologna) to take the helm!

Torrance agrees, and the bus embarks on schedule with more than 100 passengers. But the danger is far from over. The evil Ironman (Jose Ferrer) still plots to sabotage the bus, and has arranged to have a bomb planted in its engine. One of the passengers, clothing designer Camille Levy (Lynne Redgrave), harbors a grudge against the new driver, and plans to murder him before they reach their destination. And if that isn't enough, the final leg of the journey will require Dan to drive the bus through Harbinger Curve - the treacherous mountain pass that claimed the life of his father!

Our heroes: A narcoleptic, a designer, and a cannibal.  Um, alleged.

CHARACTERS:

Capt. Dan Torrance: "You eat one foot, and they call you a cannibal."  Dan was disgraced when his bus crashed atop Mount Diablo - only for him to be found alive and well, with all the passengers gone. Accused of cannibalism, he insists that his co-driver ate them all... except for a single foot, that he acknowledges he unwittingly ate in a soup.  This hiccup aside, Dan is presented as a stalwart hero, determined to bring his passengers to their destination safely.  Star Joseph Balogna has solid screen presence, anchoring the film, but he seems entirely too conscious that the lines he's delivering should be "funny," with overly aggressive deliveries that have a way of stepping on the  actual jokes.

Kitty: Stockard Channing gets some good moments - particularly when she responds to Dan attempting to punch her out "for her own good" by kneeing him in the groin. Unfortunately, she and Balogna lack chemistry, keeping me from feeling invested in (or, for that matter, believing in) their relationship. A scene late in the movie has Kitty neck deep in a sea of soft drinks, a visual that somehow isn't as funny as it should be... But that resulted in Channing herself almost drowning during shooting!

Shoulders: John Beck gets some of the movie's best moments as the incompetent co-driver. When Dan is surrounded by angry bus drivers in a bar, Shoulders comes to his rescue by knocking the top off his beverage and holding them at bay. The problem is, he isn't threatening them with a broken beer bottle, but instead a broken milk carton. His narcolepsy results in him being out of commission at the worst possible moments, and has him unconsciously groping Kitty at one point when she has to sit in his lap to drive the bus.  It's not like he's much more useful when awake, though, as evidenced by his two-word catchphrase: "My goof."

Shorty Scotty: Ned Beatty has fun aping the George Kennedy Airport role, chomping on a cigar even as he (bare-handed) adjusts a nuclear power rod, then trying to help with the series of disasters from the control room. Unfortunately, he's distracted throughout. After his gruff (but not very lovable) nature results in his assistant (Howard Hesseman) quitting, Scotty spends most of his energy trying to get him back, in scenes framed very like a man trying to reconcile with his wife after a spat. Beatty is clearly having great fun, and his scenes are easily my favorites in the film.

Supporting Cast: The great Jose Ferrer is largely wasted as the villainous Ironman, so named because he does all his evil plotting from within an Iron Lung; Richard Mulligan and Sally Kellerman are a divorcing couple who can't stop arguing - only to interrupt every argument by making out like newlyweds. Rene Auberjonois is a priest having a crisis of faith. There's also an obnoxious piano player (Murphy Dunne), a veterinarian (Bob Dishy), and a man with six months to live (Richard B. Shull). Each of them at least earns a chuckle, though often not much more than that. Ruth Gordon comes off best as the requisite "comedy old woman," her every line at least raising a smile - though as much of that has to do with Gordon's deliveries as with the lines themselves.

Shorty Scotty (Ned Beatty) and wife.  Um, assistant.

THOUGHTS:

Four years before the release of Airplane! came The Big Bus. Airplane! would, of course, draw rave reviews and huge box office on its way to becoming an iconic movie; in 1976, however, The Big Bus met with a mixed reception and weak box office, and remains largely forgotten by general audiences.

I think one reason for the disparity has to do with timing. Airplane! made fun of disaster movies at a point when audiences were weary of them and therefore quite happy to see the clichés and melodrama sent up. The Big Bus attempted to do the same at the height of the genre's popularity... And audiences who were still lapping these films up just weren't yet in the mood to see them mocked.

Still... I don't think it helped that The Big Bus is rarely as sharp or funny as it so clearly wants to be.

There are plenty of funny moments. The problem is, few of these are developed beyond a single joke. Late in the film, lead character Dan Torrance goes to rescue Kitty, vocally apologizing for all the times he cheated on her - only for it to be revealed that his mic is on and she's hearing every word of it. This is funny... but it's also the first we hear of him having cheated. Surely it would have been better to have made this, rather than a generic "left at the altar" backstory, the reason for their original split? A running joke could have been made of Dan protesting his innocence with increasingly implausible excuses before the end revelation. Instead, it's a single gag, existing largely in isolation.

The same is true of other major moments. With the villains ultimately too ineffectual to be threatening, the climax revolves not around the sabotage but instead around the dreaded Harbinger Curve. A better-constructed script would have set it up early in the film. Perhaps it would be a point the planned route was specifically avoiding, only for the complications of the sabotage to force the bus in that direction. Instead, the deadly curve is introduced literally at the point the bus reaches it, with not a single mention before then. The Curve appears to have been plucked wholesale out of a certain deep, dark valley... one located just above where the screenwriters were sitting.

It's notable that the few threads that are developed tend to be the most successful ones. The entire subplot with Shorty Scotty and his assistant is a delight, in part because it plays so amusingly against the "gruff-but-lovable" type so often featured in these movies, and in part because the conflict between them is set up early in the picture and followed up in a way that makes logical sense. The strand with Richard Mulligan and Sally Kellerman is similarly well-developed, their relationship following an arc that feels more complete and substantial than that of the two actual leads!

There's also a great running joke involving Harold Gould's professor. After he's injured at the beginning of the movie, a doctor (Larry Hagman) firmly declares "He can't be moved." He then spends the rest of the movie in that parking lot, with the film cutting back to him in a rainstorm, wrestling with the doctor for an umbrella, taking the "he can't be moved" cliché to its ridiculously literal conclusion. If the gags could be developed for these supporting strands, why wasn't the same scripting care taken with the main characters and plot?

Kitty (Stockard Channing) finds herself drowning in a sea of soda!

OVERALL:

The Big Bus has plenty of funny moments, many of which I haven't even mentioned simply because a joke described is often a joke destroyed.  This makes it worth watching... but more as something to catch on late-night television or as a cheap rental, rather than as genuine appointment viewing.

The biggest problem is that story and character strands are often haphazardly assembled, particularly those involving the actual main characters.  This isn't helped by some of the cast - particularly star Joseph Balogna - seeming just a little too aware that they are in a comedy.

Don't get me wrong - The Big Bus is pleasant enough to watch, and more of the individual jokes hit than miss.  But I can't help but feeling that with a little more fine-tuning in the scripting, this might have been a genuine classic.


Overall Rating: 5/10.



Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me on Twitter:
Follow @RandomMusings09