Dancer, Texas Pop. 81

TCM did a spotlight some months back on films set in Texas. One of the more recently films that I had never even heard of was Dancer, Texas Pop.81. But it was another of those movies where the synopsis sounded interesting enough, so I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it.

The movie opens with four adolescent boys sitting in the middle of the road and one of them doing a voiceover about the town of Dancer in west Texas and how Rand McNally doesn't have it on their maps apparently because it's so small. The four young men are about to graduate high school in what is Dancer's largest graduating class in years: five of them, with one girl in the graduating class. (You'd think they'd go to a larger school, but questions about things like groceries are never quite answered.)

The young man doing the narration is Keller Coleman (Breckin Meyer), who lives with his grandfather because his parents have died. So Keller and the other three boys made a pact years before, when they were maybe 10 or 11, that they would get on the first bus out of town and go to Los Angeles to try to find a more successful life for themselves, something millions of small-town people in America have done for generations. The other three young men are:

Terrell Lusk (Peter Facineli). He's the son of one of the richer families in town, as his father works in the oil industry. Mom expects Terrell to go straight into management at Dad's business and is quite insistent on it, to the point that you can see why Terrell would want to get out of town.
John Hemphill (Eddie Mills). John's father runs a ranch, so there's definitely a career waiting for John if he wants it. And he could even go off for a few years to study at the nearby ag school.
Squirrel (Ethan Embry). Squirrel is the one who really has no prospects, as he's got an alcoholic father (Keith Szarabajka) who's screwed up his life so much that he lives in a trailer that's not even level.

So as we see, all four have good reason to leave. But there's also things that could lead each of them to stay: Keller's grandfather is doted on by the town's elderly widows to the point that Grandpa can't give the various Tupperware bowls back to the right people. Terrell and John both have jobs waiting for them if they want, while Squirrel could be seen as basically abandoning his father to die if he goes off to Los Angeles, even though you couldn't really blame Squirrel for doing so. Additionally, town members put subtle pressure on the four young men to stay, to the point that some of them place bets on how many of them are going to get on the bus. All of this leads up to the point where the bus does pull in to town and... how many of them leave?

There's a lot to like about Dancer, Texas Pop. 81, certainly for anybody who grew up in a smallish place. I went to a large high school, but it was a "consolidated" school district and I grew up in one of the outlying areas that was small even if it was a lot closer to a fairly large (and giant by Dancer standards) place, so I get a lot of the vibe here. The movie, however, does have some problems, mostly relating to the fact that although this is supposed to be a town of 81, the way the peripheral characters act and the number of them implies that this is a rather larger place even it if it a small town. (Wikipedia says it was filmed in Fort Davis, Texas, a town of about 1,000 people.) The relationships between the four young men also seem more Hollywood than small town. But overall, if you want a more loving look at small towns than you normally get from Hollywood, I can certainly recommend Dancer, Texas Pop. 81.

Briefs for October 18-19, 2026

As I've intimated on several occasions, I live not all that far from Woodstock, NY, where the infamous concert was conceived, but rather farther from where the concert was held, which is in Bethel down in Sullivan County probably a good 90 minutes from here if not more. Woodstock being an arty tourist trap, I'm sorry to say, they have an annual film festival that was held this week. Forgive me for not mentioning this earlier, not that I was planning on attending anyway. Just for kicks I looked at the prices of the festival tickets a few weeks back, which were way out of my league. And I can only imagine how much virtue signaling there's been. Somewhat surprisingly, the local paper's website hasn't put up any articles about the festival since the opening festivities.

YouTube TV's cloud DVR saves multiple airings of a program if you've got it set to "record", so if you watch something like Noir Alley you'll see both editions of it when you click the movie title. Sometimes when a movie is run weeks or months apart, the two will have different running times. I recently watched one such film where one of the airings was an hour longer than the other. It turns out that TCM was re-running Some of the Best to fill out the longer time slot. I actually watched a bit of it again, curious to see what movies MGM picked for which year since, as presenter Lionel Barrymore informs us, they only have time to highlight one movie from each of MGM's first 25 years. What I found interesting this time is how MGM fudged the years. James Stewart won the Best Actor for 1940 for The Philadelphia Story, which presumably got a 1940 release in Hollywood to be Oscar-eligible. IMDb says it got a December 1940 release in several cities, but the main page for the movie lists a January 1941 release, which I'd guess was broader national release, not that movies in those days were released in large nationwide premieres the way they've been since Jaws really ramped up the idea of the summer blockbuster. Similarly, Dinner at Eight only got a broader US release in January 1934 even though IMDb says the Hollywood premiere was in August 1933.

Tonight's TCM Imports is a pair of Carl Theodor Dreyer movies that I think show up often enough but for some reason I've never actually recorded and watched. The first one is Day of Wrath (2:00 AM) from 1943, which is of course smack dab in the middle of World War II, something that always makes me wonder how such a film could be made considering Denmark was occupied by the Nazis at the time he made it.

So This Is Love

I've commented before on how there seemed to be a vogue of musical biopics in the decade or so after World War II. One that I hadn't seen before it showed up on TCM is So This Is Love. Unsurprisingly, not having seen it, I recorded it so that I could do my usual thing here of watching it and then writing up a post on it.

So This Is Love tells the story -- or the first half of the story -- of Grace Moore (Kathryn Grayson). Moore was a multitalented singer who transitioned into becoming a film and radio star before her untimely death in a plane crash in 1947, half a dozen years before this movie was made. But as the movie opens, Moore is backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, about to make her debut there in 1928. Grace talks about how this was always her dream, so as you might guess, we get another highly original flashback here....

The flashback is to about 1906, when Grace would have been eight years old, living in the small town of Jellico, TN with her parents (Walter Abel and Ann Doran). She's a precocious and somwhat mischievous girl, as we see her having gotten atop a circus elephant of her own initiative to advertise the circus coming through town! Her "trouble" raising gets to be too much, and Mom gets Grace enrolled at a Washington DC finishing school.

There, Grace and the other students meet singer Mary Garden, and Grace is forward enough to get an invitation to do a guest spot in a year's time. But Dad finds out about the singing, and is not pleased about it, coming up to Washington to get Grace. Grace learns what her dad is planning, and runs away to New York to pursue her musical dreams. But New York is a big, tough place, especially for someone who hasn't worked professionally in any of the entertainment fields before, and she almost fails.

She does finally get a job, with the help of promoter boyfriend Buddy Nash (Merv Griffin). But just as she's about to get an audition for a better role, she develops a severe case of inflamed vocal cords. the cure for this is complete rest without talking. Buddy, meanwhile, has been putting pressure on Grace to marry him, but with the expectation that she more or less give up her career to have children. So after the three months of enforced silence at a cabin in Maine, Grace learns that Buddy has gotten married to another woman.

Grace returns to New York and is able to get roles in musical comedies, but still harbors the dream of appearing in serious opera. As we know from the beginning of the movie, as well from Moore's real life, it's a dream that comes true. It all happens fairly quickly to wrap the movie up too.

So This Is Love is the sort of movie that Hollywood liked to make back in the Studio Era, but the sort of film that I can't imagine a studio putting money into today. The movie is competently made, although it's clearly a vehicle for Kathryn Grayson and not a "serious" biopic. Ending the night of Moore's met premiere isn't the best choice, although I read the suggestion that this might have something to do with the movie being made at Warner Bros. and Moore's Hollywood career not being at Warner Bros. (In that regard, it would be like The Will Rogers Story overlooking Rogers' sound era movie career with it having been at Fox.) Grayson does well, but there's nothing terribly original here and Grayson's vocal stylings are definitely an acquired taste.

Maynila, sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag

Another of the foreign films that was just about to expire from my Youtube library that I had to make an express point of watching before it expired is Manila in the Claws of Light. (Youtube's library calls it Manila in the Claws of Neon, but every other source uses "light" instead of "neon".) As always, having watched it, now I can write up the obligatory post on the film.

Julio Madiaga (Rafael Roco, Jr.) is a laborer in Manila, in a time when the Philippines was poor enough that the construction laborers were the sort of men who migrated from the even poorer outlying islands to the big cities. Julio had been a fisherman living with his siblings after the death of their parents, something we see a bit of in flashbacks. But the flashbacks reveal the much bigger reason that Julio left for Manila.

Back on his home island, Julio had a girlfriend Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), whose family seems to be poor but not quite as poor as Julio's family. They also don't think a fisherman is a good choice of boyfriend for Ligaya. So when Mrs. Cruz shows up from Manila looking for people to work in the factories of Manila, Ligaya's mother signes her up. It'll be a chance for Ligaya to make a better living, possibly send some remittances home, and complete her education. Except that this isn't why Cruz came to a small village like this. Ligaya sent a couple of letters home, but then everything stopped.

So Julio went to Manila to look for Ligaya. Of course, having no idea where Ligaya is, Julio does the next best thing, which is to find where Ligaya sent the letter from and look for Mrs. Cruz is. Meanwhile, Julio is also learning that life as a construction worker isn't all that it's cracked up to be, as the contractors building the buildings are notoriously scammy and not paying the workers what they're really worth. Presumably there's such a glut of people coming in from the outlying regions that it's a buyers' market for labor.

Julio eventually spots Mrs. Cruz, and ultimately learns that Mrs. Cruz works for what we might call human traffickers, except that it's all domestic here and not crossing international borders. The young women are brought to Manila to brothels and service rich men, usually multiple men in one night. Ligaya's story is, however, a bit atypical in that she has a different sort of sadness from the other women. She was noticed by Ah Tek, a Filipino of Chinese descent who took a liking to Ligaya and protected Ligaya from the worst predations of the traffickers. There's a quid pro quo, of course, which is that Ligaya is supposed to marry him and live with him. But, Ah Tek is extremely possessive of Ligaya, and doesn't let her leave the house, which is why it's a bit of a shock when Julio is able to find Ligaya in a church. She wants to escape, but there's a catch, which is that Ah Tek knocked her up and keeps the baby with a nanny so that Ligaya could only escape without her baby.

Manila in the Claws of Light isn't a bad movie, although I have to say that it's overlong. It's a story that could have been told in 90 minutes but runs over two hours. It's also the sort of movie that Hollywood could never have made, in part because even the socially conscious Warner Bros. of the 1930s would have found it too depressing. That, and as poor as America was during the Depression, it was never this poor. I don't know if I'll be watching Manila in the Claws of Light again, but I'm glad I watched it once.

James Bond mines for coal

Another of the movies that was just about to expire from my DVR that I was glad to see show up on TCM was The Molly Maguires. I think I'd come across it on one of the FAST channels that's part of Pluto's set of channels, the movie having been made at Paramount and Pluto being owned by Paramount. I'd wanted to watch it so when it wound up on the TCM schedule I made a point to put it on the DVR.

It's Pennsylvania in 1876, in one of those coal-mining towns that nobody ever really gets out of, or didn't in those days, although it's the sort of town that immigrants came to because the work was less bad than what they faced in their home countries. In this case, the immigrants are Irish, and we see before the opening credits just how hard the mining work is. They have to set charges to open up new tunnels to dig out more coal, although in this case they're actually setting the charges to blow up the mine as a part of protest as to how brutal their conditions are.

Into all of this comes James MacParlan (Richard Harris). Nobody knows him, and he walks into a bar talking to the miners asking about how to get a job. They don't trust him, and for good reason, when they see his hands and realize he's the sort of person who hasn't done a day of manual labor in his life, because look at his hands. He gets in a bar fight, observed by Black Jack Kehoe (Sean Connery), and gets arrested for it. The arrest is a ruse, however, as we learn MacParlan's real reason for being here. MacParlan is working for the Pinkerton detective agency, and they want to learn who's responsible for the sabotage. They've heard of an organization called the Ancient Order of Hibernians and their support for the Molly Maguires who they think are behind the sabotage. MacParlan's job is to get work at the coal mine and figure out who's leading the Molly Maguires to commit all this sabotage.

Now, any number of the miners are suspicious of him, to the point that he finds it hard to get a place to stay, under the fake name McKenna. Eventually, a poor spinster living with her father, Mary Raines (Samantha Eggar), takes him in. As you might guess, the two begin to fall in love, although things are going to be difficult because of his job being to take down the Molly Maguires and not being able to be honest about why he's in town.

Still, Kehoe and the other miners suspect him, even after he claims he fled here after murdering a man (a lie, of course, but he has to have some back story). Still, there's the old line about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, so they bring him into the fold if only to be able to catch him out at working for the bosses. There's also the sabotage from the miners, as well as the revenge from those members of the police who are violent enough that simply taking the guilty and imprisoning them isn't enough. Will MacParlan be able to catch out the Molly Maguires before they discover he's a spy?

The Molly Maguires is the sort of movie that I don't think would have been able to be made under the Production Code, or at least would have had to be severely sanitized. A movie like Black Fury comes to mind: well-made, but a bit tame and studio-bound. The Molly McGuires has the benefit of location shooting, along with excellent performances from Connery and Harris.

I'm very glad I got around to watching The Molly Maguires, and am not sure why it isn't as well known at it should be considering the presence of Connery and Harris.

Anastasia

I've been mentioning a couple of times how FXM runs most of the movies it runs multiple times, although currently it feels as if there are a few more movies in the rotation than normal. One movie that only seems to have gotten one ainig that that I haven't seen on the schedule in months is Anastasia.

Russian Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917 after the first of the 1917 revolutions in Russia, but stayed in the country with his family. After the Communist October Revolution, the Tsar and his family were placed under house arrest in western Siberia, and ultimately murdered in the summer of 1918. However, the Communists initally only announced the death of Nicholas.

In 1928 in Paris, it was well known among the Russian émigré community that there had been at least one woman claiming to be Anastasia, the youngest of Nicholas' children, who had shown up in various parts of Europe. General Bunin (Yul Brynner) leads a group of émigrés who is trying to get at the money that Nicholas had deposited in a bank in the west, since the western countries weren't about to hand this money over to the Soviets. But to do it, he's going to need to find somebody descended from Nicholas to get the trustees to release the funds, and time is running out.

Enter Anna Anderson (Ingrid Bergman), who has previously been in Berlin and Bucharest claiming to be Anastasia but having spent time in various institutions with a substantial case of amnesia. Now, in this version of the story, Bunin considers Anna a fraud, and we're in on that knowledge. (DNA evidence from after the fall of the Soviet Union confirms Anastasia did not survive the killings.) In the 1920s, there were a lot of skeptics, but no way to confirm that Anna was in fact not Anastasia beyond intuition. So Bunin plans to train Anna to pass herself off better as Anastasia, in the hopes that this time people might actually believe that she is in fact Anastasia.

Bunin can't get the proper people in Paris to believe Anna's story, so the only other option is the long shot of going to Copenhagen, where the Dowager Empress Maria (Helen Hayes), mother of Nicholas and grandmother of Anastasia, lives after having to been able to escape Russia before the Bolsheviks took over. She understandbly doesn't believe Anna's story at all. But a member of her retinue, Prince Paul (Ivan Desny), either does believe it or is going along with it because he has a romantic interest in Anna. Meanwhile, there's also some suggestion that perhaps Anna and Bunin are also developing a romantic relationship. If Anna isn't Anastasia, perhaps she can live happily ever after some other way.

Ingrid Bergman won the Oscar for Anastasia, but after having watched the movie again (I first saw it ages ago, probably before I started this blog since a search of the blog claims I haven't done a post on it), I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised by the Oscar win here. I suppose you can argue that having to play an amnesiac pretending to be royalty is a demanding role, but it doesn't seem all that great a role to me. Then again, the other nominees aren't a particularly strong lineup. (Looking at the other nominees, I think I would have voted for Deborah Kerr in The King and I.) I'm also not certain what the Academy boters would have thought of Bergman at this point. She had been forced to leave Hollywood after her marriage to Roberto Rossellini, and this was her first role back in Hollywood. I wonder if perhaps they had more sympathy than objectivity.

Anastasia is certainly competently made, and a good example of the studio system making an opulent movie to compete with television. But I can't help but think it could have been better.

Michael York and Germany don't mix

Another of the movies that I forgot to record off of TCM and had to watch on the Watch TCM app before it expired was Zeppelin.

The year is 1915, which means that the UK and Germany are at war during the Great War. As you may recall, back in that war the Germans hoped that their relatively new airships would be able to bomb London from the air, since planes were not advanced enough to drop bombs until the next war. The British are well aware of what the Germans are doing, setting up the sort of searchlights that you've seen in a hundred other movies about the two world wars.

Stationed in London is British army lieutenant Geoffrey Richter-Douglas (Michael York), who, as you might be able to discern from the name, is of mixed heritage, both Scottish and German. Now, for various reasons, including the fact that his girlfriend is a spy, both the Germans and the English have reason to believe that Geoffrey might be useful to their side in intelligence gathering. With that in mind, Geoffrey's commanding officer suggest that he fake a defection back to Germany.

The reason for this is that the British have reason to believe the Germans are working on a more powerful zeppelin than what they've been trying to deply up to this point. Geoffrey's mission would be to get the information on the new Zeppelin, code named LZ36. He flees to Germany, even getting himself shot in the process, which also helps in that the Germans might be more likely to believe that he's sincere about his defection should anyone question him.

And as you might guess, people are going to question him. Working on the LZ36 is Prof. Altschul (Marius Goring), who has a much younger trophy wife named Erika (Elke Sommer), although she's no dummy herself and is actually working on the zeppelin, not just married to the professor. Erika thinks Geoffrey might be a spy. Some in German intelligence think so, too, but need him in part for his knowledge of the Scottish coastline which is going to be necessary for their mission. Besides, if they take him aboard the LZ36, they can keep their new friend close and enemies closer, as the phrase go.

As for that mission involving knowledge of the lay of the land in Scotland, it's a fairly audacious mission. One is to bring paratroopers armed with mustard gas over to Scotland; the other is a morale-sapping mission to invade the castle where a whole bunch of historical documents have been moved to to get them out of London where the documents would be in greater danger of being destroyed. Crazy, I know, but some of these war movies have even dafter missions.

Zeppelin isn't exactly great, but it's definitely modestly entertaining. It's definitely worth watching if it shows up again, but I'm not certain I'd pay the Warner Archive prices for it.

The Thin Man Goes Home

Myrna Loy is the Star of the Month on TCM for October, presumably because of her well-known association with the horror genre that's appropriate for Halloween. Or maybe not. Anyhow, six of her movies were part of the Thin Man series with Willam Powell, and unsurprisingly TCM are showing all six of them in a row, tonight in prime time. The fifth movie in the series, The Thin Man Goes Home, comes up overnight at 3:30 AM.

Nick Charles (William Powell again) grew up in a typical-for-Hollywood small town called Sycamore Springs, where his father Bertram (Harry Davenport) is a prominent research doctor hoping to get the money to build a new hospital with more laboratory space for him. You'd think Dr. Bertram would be old enough to retire, but he still works and his wife (Lucile Watson) is alive, the two of them living with maid Hilda who seems obnoxiously nervous all the time.

Nick and Nora (Myrna Loy, again) are returning with Asta, but not with their son who was conceived at the end of the second or third movie, the excuse being that the son is in kindergarten and Nick and Nora don't want to disturb that. Just running off and leaving him with the hired help, is, however, perfectly OK apparently. Nick has father issues, or perhaps it's Dad who has Nick issues, as Dad isn't too happy about Nick's drinking and being a police detective. But in one of this film's running jokes, Nick has given up drinking for the duration, since the film was made in 1944 at the height of World War II.

And with the war on, it's unsurprising that the murder that Nick winds up investigating is going to involve the war effort, although that's not totally revealed until the end of the film. The first night Nick and Nora are in Sycamore Springs, a man shows up at the house and wants to see Nick, only to get shot for his troubles. Obviously not by Nick, although that might make for a more interesting movie. The man in question is Peter Berton, a young but not very talented artist. In fact, Nora buys one of Berton's paintings not knowing it's by the guy who got shot in Dr. Charles' living room.

As you might guess, there are several suspects. Berton was seeing a young woman, Laura Ronson (Gloria DeHaven) although Laura's father Sam (Minor Watson) doesn't exactly like Peter as a suitable romantic match for Laura. Meanwhile, when Nick goes to the auto camp where Peter is staying to investigate Peter's death, he gets hit over the head by Crazy Mary (Anne Revere). He doesn't seem to suffer much of a concussion, however. Then there's Crump (Donald Meek), the art store owner who deals Berton's paintings, as well as the Draques, who had purchased one of Berton's paintings. There's a fairly convoluted mystery that Nick solves, bringing together all of the suspects for the final reveal that this time is a bit self-referential as Nora explains to the local police how Nick brings everyone together and how these reveals generally go.

I found The Thin Man Goes Home a rather weak entry in the series. Part of it is that the murder doesn't happen until a third of the way into the movie, and it seems unlikely that anybody would be able to put all the pieces together to solve this one. The humor isn't as funny as you might expect from a Thin Man movie, with the portion before Nick and Nora arrive in Sycamore Springs as well as every scene involving Hilda being particular weak points.

Still, the movie was a success because fans were so happy to see Nick and Nora Charles back together, and it is still William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Another movie with 1960s views of Italy

Back in the 1960s, international travel was nowhere near as easy as it is today, so one of the drawing cards of certain Hollywood movies was to film in "exotic" locations in Europe that the viewers in America would enjoy seeing, especially if people could look glamorous in such locations. The movies are of varying quality, with an example of one of the lesser movies being Three Bites of the Apple.

Chelsey Tours is one of those British companies that ran guided bus tours of Europe, making it easier for people to see a checklist of the important sites for a modest amount of money. Not that I'd want to be stuck with such touriss for a week or more. Working for the company as one of their guides is Stanley Thrumm (David McCallum). As the movie opens, the tour bus is arriving in France, on its way to Italy. They get stuck in a small town in Italy when Mrs. Tomlinson (Avril Angers) gets sick and her husband (Harvey Korman) buys her some medicine. So they have to stay in a small town for a few days longer than expected.

This gives Stanley the opportunity to walk into a building that happens to be a casino. Due to a comedy of errors a chip gets put on a number and, wouldn't you know it, that's the number that hits. Stanley feels that, being honest, he didn't intend to make the bet, so he's OK letting it ride in the hopes that it will lose and he'll be even. Instead, the number hits two more times, leaving Stanley with gambling winnings just shy of £12,000, which was a huge sum for the mid-1960s. At the casino, Stanely meets a glamorous young fellow gambler, Carla (Sylva Koscina, obviously being groomed for American stardom that never came.

Stanley likes Carla, although that's going to be complicated by the fact that another of the tourists, Miss Sparrow (Tammy Grimes), is interested in Stanley to an extent that would really be unprofessional for Stanley to get involved with. More pressing is the thought that it's going to be tough to get those gambling winnings out of Italy because of capital controls and the thought that the money might be taxed to a substantial extent. Stanley comes up with a plan that perhaps Carla can help him get the cash out of Italy.

Carla starts thinking about a way to get the money for herself. She's got an ex-husband, Remo (Domenico Modugno), who might be able to help, although he's also going to get in on the deal for his own interests and not so much Carla's. Stanley seems to be oblivious to all this as he brings Carla on the tour. Miss Sparrow gets jealous of Carla and threatens to bollix everything as the tour goes through various scenic spots in Italy and into Switzerland.

The plot of Three Bites of the Apple doesn't really work, and it's remarkable that a guy like Stanley could seem so stupid. The movie also tries to inject comedy into the proceedings, which also doesn't really work. I couldn't help but wonder whether the studio and second-tier director cared more about showing scenery than moving the plot along and making the story work.

Harry and Walter Go to New York

One of the movies that TCM ran on Diane Keaton's day in Summer Under the Stars was Harry and Walter Go to New York. As is my wont, a made a point to watch it since I had never seen it before, which would give me the opportunity to put up a post on it.

The movie opens up in Sudbury, MA, in 1892. Harry Digby (James Caan) and Walter Hill (Elliott Gould) are a vaudeville double act doing a musical number, although they also do other stuff like a phony clairvoyant bit. In between the two acts, the action shifts to New York. Adam Worth (Michael Caine) is a gentleman thief who likes to rob banks, keep the cash, and then sell back the bonds. Indeed, he's about to sell the bonds back that he robbed from a bank in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the bank president brought some police with a Massachusetts bench warrant.

As for Harry and Walter, their clairvoyant act is an excuse to pilfer cash out of the paying customers' wallets. Multiple men figure out that they've been robbed, and they too bring in the police. So as you can guess, Harry and Walter also get sent to prison, and it's the same prison where Adam is sent. Why else would the characters be introduced in this way? Anyhow, Adam has the sort of pull that Noël Coward's character in The Italian Job does, and is able to get the plans to a bank in Lowell, MA, that he's planning to rob just to show that any bank can be robbed.

This gives Harry and Walter an idea. When the reformer Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton) shows up with a newspaper photographer, Harry and Walter plan to get a picture of the plans, so that they can rob the bank themselves. Not that they know anything about how to carry out a bank robbery. And not that Adam is going to be happy with them if he finds out, which he is because in their attempts to get the photo they burn the plans. But they're able to escape prison with the help of some nitroglycerin, while Adam gets pardoned and goes back to New York. Unfortunately Harry and Walter have to go to New York themselves to get the picture they took of those plans, meaning they run into Adam again who is really pissed.

Eventually everybody gets to Lowell for the climactic bank robbery. The bank is next to a theater, and Harry and Walter plan to blow the door off the vault during the big musical number near the end of the show so that nobody will hear the explosives. Of course, the plans don't quite go off as planned, forcing Harry and Watler to take more drastic action while both Adam and the bank president Crisp (Charles Durning) are on their tails.

With a cast like this and a wacky heist plot, you'd think you're in for a fun little caper movie. Unfortunately, the movie totally fails. Caan and Gould are both irritating in their comic mugging, and the plot is full of incongruencies, with no good reason for Harry and Walter to wind up in the same cell as Adam as one example. It also goes on much too long, at 111 minutes.