HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS

US, 1980, 95 minutes, Colour.
Tony Danza, Michelle Pfeiffer, Fran Drescher, Robert Wuhl.
Directed by Floyd Murtrux.

Hollywood Knights, according to its publicity, is raucous, rollicking and ribald. This is accurate enough. The film was written and directed by Floyd Mutrux who made the interesting drug feature Dusty and Sweets Magee as well as the features American Hot Wax and Aloha Bobby and Rose. This film is much less successful. It borrows heavily from American Graffiti. It is set in Hallowe'en Night 1965 which is meant to be the end of an era. One of the characters is about to go to Vietnam although he thinks that the American presence there is merely advisory.

The setting is Hollywood and Tubby's Drive-In, a very large area where the youngsters could come and listen to music, dance, eat hamburgers etc. The people in the area want it pulled down for development. The adults are presented as hypocritical and receive a fair amount of ridicule. The knights themselves are similar in many ways to the group presented in American Graffiti. However, there is a large influence of American humour of the National Lampoon's Animal House variety. This means a dose of crudity, vulgarity and a wallowing in basic human functions. The film is geared towards an adolescent audience, probably a drive-in audience, but would make impact mainly on American youth. It doesn't travel well overseas. As with American Graffiti, there is a continuous musical commentary of the popular hits of the time. The cast is generally a new cast or a group working in television. The film tries to be irreverent, shows some thing of the humour of anarchy and its poking fun at American traditions. This is not new but the gestures of the makers of The Hollywood Knights are rude rather than satirical. The film raises quite a number of issues but treats them in a simply raucous way.