Here Come the Tigers

My God, how could man have created such a monstrosity as "Here Come The Tigers."

All I can say is this film - which I have been curious about seeing since my youth - is absolutely unwatchable. It's as if the creators turned on a few cameras, threw bad actors in front of them and walked away.

I'm in need of professional help to get over the pall of boringness that had wafted over me after sitting through 1/2 hour of this mess. Even fast forwarding was a task.

Sean Cunningham should have been arrested for even thinking about making this film, let alone releasing it onto an unsuspecting public. Stay away. Even the opening credits are too cheap for words.

The saddest part of this is the fact that these are 87 minutes I'll never get back. I knew this was terrible from the get-go, with the guy dressed as a lunatic Indian chief on top of the roof. (See if they could get away with that in 2008). My 10-year-old boy is really into baseball right now, so we decided to rent it on a rainy day. Even though he seemed to enjoy parts of it, I had to cringe when I heard all the needless foul language. Bad, bad movie. This was an awful ripoff of Bad News Bears. Completely shameless and completely predictable. I don't mind a predictable movie if it's done well, but this one absolutely was not.

I remember seeing the trailer for this film on television. It seems like they ran it alot around release time (usually during re-runs of Gomer Pyle). The producers hired baseball announcer Mel Allen to voice it. After seeing the film years later (also on TV), I can't help but think the money they paid Mel for his voice work probably constituted one of the largest production expenditures.

This movie never fooled anybody. It was conceived and produced to cash in on the wild success of "The Bad News Bears". It flopped and was nearly forgotten (except for this imdb entry).

I don't think you'll see this film on a future AFI treasure list anytime soon.

as a long-time baseball fan who has seen many baseball movies, there have been many hits such as Field of Dreams, Major League, The Natural and my all-time favorite The Bad News Bears. But there have been a number of errors in the mix, including Here Come the Tigers.

First of all, almost all the common player stereotypes that were in the successful Walter Matthau movie, except for the fat catcher were in this one. The two additions were the Japanese home run hitter who can also hit balls with his fist, even though he only utters the sound "OOH!" throughout the movie since he doesn't speak English. The other was a deaf-mute pitcher who got into a fight with some members of the rival Panthers at an arcade and suffered a broken arm but recovered in time to pitch in the championship game.

Second, there are no name actors in the movie. Is Richard Lincoln a household name? I'm sure a lot of people have never heard of him. It seems that the producer didn't have the money to pay a "name" actor to play the Tigers coach, so they went with unknowns.

As for the movie, it suffers from predictability and a weak script. It also has the standard slow-motion cliché scene of the big hit and the end of the movie.

The only bright spot was that when the movie first appeared in theaters, the long time Voice of the Yankees Mel Allen did the promo. Other than that, it's a forgettable baseball movie that definitely goes down swinging.

Two years before cashing in on the great success of John Carpenters' "Halloween" with his own memorable slasher film, "Friday the 13th", filmmaker Sean S. Cunningham did a similar thing within the family-oriented sports movie genre. Capitalizing on the success of "The Bad News Bears", "Here Come the Tigers" tells of a hapless Little League team whom the coach (Richard Lincoln) tries to turn into contenders. Predictably, the kids are a colorful bunch who constantly spout colorful dialogue and include such characters as a nose-picker and another whose flatulence is clearly deadly.

Considering the formulaic nature of "Here Come the Tigers", and the fact that it has no good ideas to call its own, this viewer wouldn't dismiss it as readily as most movie watchers. At least the kids are reasonably appealing, and the adults reasonably solid. (James Zvanut plays Lincolns' bumbling, goofy partner turned assistant coach, and Fred Lincoln of "The Last House on the Left" infamy has a quick cameo as a drunken bum with key knowledge to divulge to the coach.)

Written by "Arch McCoy" (actually "Friday the 13th" scribe Victor Miller), this is obviously a shameless cash-in and not exactly a classic, but this viewer found it likeable enough. Overall, it's fairly harmless (with the exception of some of the language), and may entertain the less demanding members of your own family.

Cunninghams' son Noel plays one of the Tigers; longtime Cunningham friend Wes Craven was the stunt gaffer!

Followed by another Miller / Cunningham kids' sports comedy, the soccer film "Manny's Orphans".

Six out of 10.