Les aventuriers du Lucky Lady

Burt, Liza and Gene as a trio of rum runners during prohibition in the 1930's who have a menage-a-trois! Liza sings!

Favorite Line: "You ever get tired of having yourself around?" - Claire (Liza Minnelli) (to Kibby) (Gene Hackman)

Stanley Donen directed, he had a very hard time filming on the ocean, and the three main cast members all recall it being one of the hardest films they ever made.

The title refers to the name of the yacht they use to run rum, but I suppose it could apply to Claire who has two men in her life at once!

Another "flop" at the time, but I liked seeing these three interact together on screen, and the movie is good too. Nice to see Burt's frequent costars John Hillerman, Geoffrey Lewis and Robby Benson with him here again.

Released in Sydney in 1976 in the beautiful lost Plaza cinerama-screen theatre LL was crazily blown up to 70mm for release here and suffered horrible cropping to make it a rectangle 2.2 ratio pic when it seemed to be shot 1.66-1. Heads were cut off, or in one famous scene with Liza in a chair with Hackman and Reynolds standing behind her (the famous "fish fart" line) all we saw was her eyes on the stage and the men's chins at the top. I saw it again in proper ratio and it was far better, so whoever's idea to blow it up literally only added to the maligned 'bomb' status of this very expensive ($13m) 1975 film. Yes, the washed out image also looks weird, and makes you yearn for better access into the antics on screen. We had one of the 3 reported endings: the silly happy one where they all surface in the water after being blown up. The Butch Cassidy ending where the guys die and she is left would have been much better. Amazing that this film cost $4m more than STAR WARS filmed the next year. I saw a terrific 'making of' featurette at a nearby cinema at the same time which was in focus and offered a witty and attractive lead to the film, so there is plenty for the DVD if we get it. Reynolds other films of the time AT LONG LAST LOVE and NICKELODEON deserve favourable DVD releases too; all 3 are funny and enjoyable and compared to new multiplex releases from the USA, are masterpieces. LL is almost a musical and Reynolds is a hoot. The John Held artwork on the credits will make you rush to buy a book of his delicious 1920s cartoons.

Might be called "Sally Bowles Comes Home And Runs Liquor." Her character is almost a parody of her "Cabaret" role. Hackman is Buck Barrow with a comedy twist and Reynolds is perfecting that moron-suave character that he took to such heights in "At Long Last Love."

The film has the distinction of having had, if memory serves, three different endings. I saw the first in previews. A real curve ball in which the male leads get killed and Minelli is left bereft. They went back to the drawing board and the movie premiered with a tacked on scene shot much later which involved the three stars, with the tackiest of make-up jobs, rolling around in a bed in their "elderly" years. From what I can tell by watching it recently, they dropped that entirely and simply cut together some outtakes which they ran under the credits which give us the impression that everybody ended up okay.

There was also this mid-70's technique of film "flashing" which involved pre-exposing the stock to give the film a lighter, airier look. Taken to ridiculous extremes here, it almost looks as if someone just scratched up the lens faces with a Brillo pad.

Liza Minnelli plays such a selfish harpy in "Lucky Lady" that it's easy to see why this film won her no new admirers. Fans of 1972's "Cabaret" were already softened to love Minnelli no matter what, but here director Stanley Donen seems intent on making Liza's character Claire as brittle and abrasive as possible. The lumbering plot, about a trio of rum-runners in the 1930s who outsmart the competition and fall into an oddly casual three-way love affair, isn't worked out cohesively in terms of the narrative (and the overlapping scenes of raunch, comedy, and mobster melodrama eventually cause impatience and resentment). At first it's a bit shocking to see Liza in bed between Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, however the movie isn't all about after-hours fun under-the-sheets; Donen turns the third act into a violent extravaganza (with a slapstick bent), including boats blowing up, guns going off, and dead bodies everywhere. The picture walks a shaky line between nostalgia and bloodshed, with echoes of "Bonnie & Clyde"'s jangly tone. Little of it jells, though the attempt is certainly a curious one. **1/2 from ****

I saw this many moons ago as a kid on a late night show fell in love with it then and still love it now.

It is a strange mix with some great comedy and then some downright mean moments of violence, but that was one of the films nice little quirks.

Minelli's Fish Fart line has stuck with me for years, and recently the film made it to cable where I was able to get a copy.

With all the dross being rereleased onto DVD it's well overdue a release.

One of those guilty little pleasures we all have.