Kid Colter

This film starts out with a somewhat spoiled Boston city boy flying out to Oregon, none-too-enthusiastically, to spend a few weeks with his divorced father in his new house. Here Dad has set himself up to enjoy all the beauty of the wilderness outside and all the cozy comforts of civilization inside. For at least half an hour we see a routine but heartwarming renewal of a father-son relationship. There is no premonition of what is to follow.

Then, suddenly, on his way back to Boston, the boy becomes the unwitting possessor of an undeveloped roll of pictures so valuable to the spies who took them that they will coldly kill not only to get them back but to cover up all trace of the confusion. They kidnap him and deposit him with a pair of heartless roughnecks living up in the mountains, whom they pay to dispose of him. The plot and mood take a very dark turn-- as abrupt, unpredictable, and merciless as real life.

While perhaps not a masterstroke, I can buy this particular twist. Why dramas so seldom allow events to unfold in front of the viewer without foreshadowings every few minutes escapes me.

The trouble is that, having taken this turn, these movie makers can't decide whether they are producing a thriller or a comedy. The left-over hippies are clowns, but they are so nasty that laughter were tasteless. The 12-year-old hops into the driver's seat of their rickety pickup truck and peels out for a brief, and incredibly poorly edited, dirt-road spin. His captors chase him uphill and down, and everyone gets lost-- including all sense of direction in the film.

It is not difficult to understand why few have seen it and fewer still have bothered to vote.

Let me preface my statement, by saying, that the only reason I didn't give this film a 1 out of 10 was the cinematography was decent. Other than that, this film is despicable. The dialogue, acting, music and general feel of the movie angers me. It angers me that people with obviously no talent for expressing valid feelings and dialogue get to make movies. Who actually read this script and thought this sounded like a winner! This is the kind of movie that makes any person think they can be in movies. Absolutely terrible, I only watched because I was violently ill and couldn't get out of bed. Unless you feel like making your brain melt, for two hours, I would stay away from this garbage.

I am writing this review from memory, as I have not seen it since the 80s. It really felt like someone took two random scripts and combined them, decided to playing "eenie meanie miny mo" on picking the cast, instead of auditioning. Then gave it to some high school kid to direct. Some of the nature photography was pleasant, but in the Northwest that is a pretty easy thing to do.

The editing was terrible, the cinematography was mediocre, and the film was absent of any sort of talent. Yet, there was a general curiosity of how it would conclude. In the end, I felt robbed of 3 hours only to discover that the movie was only an hour and forty-one minutes.

I saw this movie when I was around the same age as the title character. Actually I was a bit younger. I have to say that for a 10 year old kid watching this movie I was amazed! I love this movie, well, maybe i loved this movie, I haven't seen it in over 13 years. I'd love to see it again, but the chances that it's on Video or DVD are pretty nonexistent. I remember it was on Cinemax in the eighties, because I taped it on VHS back then.

This movie was incredibly funny, rather it was intended to be or not is beside the point, there are some movies that just make you laugh because they are so dumb, this is one of those movies, of course I may just have a warped sense-of-humor. Who knows. At any rate I loved it, still do.