Corvette Summer (1978)

[Flack]

On May 25, 1977 (the day Star Wars was released in theaters), a lot of people's lives changed -- perhaps none more than the film's principle actors. From that date forward, Carrie Fisher was Princess Leia, Harrison Ford was Han Solo, and Mark Hamill was Luke Skywalker.

Which is what makes 1978's Corvette Summer such a curiosity. Corvette Summer is a poorly written and largely forgettable film that just so happens to star Mark Hamill. It was filmed in the summer of 1977, two months after the release of Star Wars and before anyone knew what that franchise would ultimately become. Thanks to lucky timing, MGM was able to pick up a shooting star for next to nothing.

Hamill stars as high school student Kenneth W. Dantley, Jr., a wrench monkey who lives for auto body class. His pride and joy is a 1973 Corvette Stingray that he and his classmates rescued from a local salvage yard and spent the school year restoring. To celebrate the completion of the project, the students spend an evening driving the car around Southern California, where it is quickly stolen.

Although Dantley is told by his classmates, the police, and his shop teacher that the car has most likely already been stripped and parted out, the high school student sets out on a mission to recover the car (even though it has been established that he does not own the car). A random guy sets the plot in motion after he tells Dantley he's sure he saw the car displayed inside a Las Vegas casino. The information is enough to send Dantley (with no car and little money) hundreds of miles east to to find the car.

Things get complicated after Dantley hitches a ride with Vanessa (Annie Potts), a hooker with a waterbed in the rear of her van who is relocating to Vegas. The film's subplot follows their relationship, which never makes sense. He hates that she's a prostitute, she asks him for money each time they make out, and the best possible outcome is that a high school senior ends up in a relationship with a prostitute. It's hard to root for either side here.

The car on display turns out to be a red herring, but fortunately Dantley spots the stolen Corvette multiple times on the streets of Vegas. Dantley tracks the car down to a ring of car thieves who ultimately beat him up real good. Before he has a chance to go to the police, Dantley's shop teacher, Mr. McGrath, arrives and confesses that he is working with the thieves and selling the school's shop cars to them to supplement his income. Dantley is broken-hearted and still wants to go to the police but Mr. McGrath convinces him otherwise by saying he's going to have him killed. So, instead Dantley gets a job doing auto body work for the bad guys making $850 a week. This cause Vanessa to leave him and go back to working as an escort and adult film star. Star Wars, this ain't.

Dantley eventually has a change of heart, at which point he steals back the stolen car, forcibly abducts Vanessa, gets in a car chase and a shoot out, and eventually returns the car to his old school but chooses not to narc out his old shop teacher in an ending that resolves nothing and is really terrible. None of the bad guys get their comeuppance. The closest any of the characters come to having any arc of change at all is Vanessa, who decides to start dating the high school senior who literally threw her over his shoulder, tossed her into a car, and drove her 300 miles away from Las Vegas.

Worse than being a bad movie, Corvette Summer is a forgettable movie.

[Tdarcos]

"Crew people gotta eat." If you're a top-shelf person or a star, you can reject bad stories. If you're lower tier, your question isn't, "Is it a good script?" Your two-part question is "Will my paycheck clear? And for how many weeks?"

I presume a lot of people working on crew are salaried or houly workers who are guaranteed a minimum number of weeks work a year, according to their union contract. So the studio execs have overhead and people they have to pay, whether or not they have work for them. So, if you don't have really good scripts on hand, or if you don't have the budget to do high-quality scripts, you use what you have that can put those people to work.

Realize with the enormous maw of broadcast and pay TV channels (back in 1978) constantly hungry for content, if a film could be done cheap enough, even if ticket sales are low, pay and broadcast television can cause a film to at least break even or maybe even make a small profit. This worked even though they didn't even have video rental or sales revenue.

The idea of "if the movie is made cheap enough, you can still make money" is proven in just two words: Roger Corman.

[Flack]

"Crew people gotta eat." If you're a top-shelf person or a star, you can reject bad stories. If you're lower tier, your question isn't, "Is it a good script?" Your two-part question is "Will my paycheck clear? And for how many weeks?"

I presume a lot of people working on crew are salaried or houly workers who are guaranteed a minimum number of weeks work a year, according to their union contract. So the studio execs have overhead and people they have to pay, whether or not they have work for them. So, if you don't have really good scripts on hand, or if you don't have the budget to do high-quality scripts, you use what you have that can put those people to work.

Realize with the enormous maw of broadcast and pay TV channels (back in 1978) constantly hungry for content, if a film could be done cheap enough, even if ticket sales are low, pay and broadcast television can cause a film to at least break even or maybe even make a small profit. This worked even though they didn't even have video rental or sales revenue.

The idea of "if the movie is made cheap enough, you can still make money" is proven in just two words: Roger Corman.

Somehow you managed not to mention "Corvette Summer," "Corvettes," or "summer."