Cocaine Cowboys (1979)

Rock star Destin relates in an interview with Andy Warhol about how once he and his band secretly smuggled cocaine into the States, until their manager and mediator with the mafia Jack Palance...er, Raf, decided that it was time to pull out. Unfortunately, on their very last drop, a bag worth two million dollars goes missing, and the mafia gets very unahppy....

The 70s! Rock n' roll! Jack Palance! Andy Warhol! Drugs! The mafia! Sexy women! Yes, this movie does include all of the above, to one extent or another, and you'd think because of that I'd have a lot to say here, wouldn't you? Well, the truth is, I really don't.

I've been sitting idly at my desk staring at the screen, a Rev. Horton Heat album playing in the background as I occaisonally sip some coffee or scan uselessly over the scarce, random notes I took on the film. I'd been at it for about ten minutes, the monotony broken only when the album finally grinded to a halt. As I'm typing this paragraph, I'm debating whether or not I should replace it with a R.E.M or Nick Cave album. Maybe even P.J Harvey, or perhaps something from my paltry 70s rock collection?

*extended pause*

In case you were wondering, R.E.M won the competition...for now.

Now, its not that this film is really all that bad. The direction is competent; the acting is, even at its worst, tolerable; the lighting seems to be pretty bad, although I can't tell if that's more of an issue with tape quality (the copy I watched was second-hand); even the musical numbers played by the main characters scattered sporadically through out the film weren't that terrible, unless you really have a vendetta against music from the 70s, of course.

You also have Jack Palance being, of course, Jack Palance, which is always a treat in itself, although even he cannot reverse the tides of boredom this film brings on. Nor can Andy Warhol, although he only sits around long enough to pick up his paycheck and give the film his "personal endorsement." But I'm somewhat astonished that a film can include all those elements I listed above, have a fairly fun-sounding plot about rock-star drug dealers chased by the mob, and still be so utterly boring. They even scuceeded in making a drunken shower orgy scene look dull. I think that in itself deserves some kind of award.

Things do start to speed up toward the end, as you'd probably expect, but well by that time I was already in listlessly-flipping-through-various-books-and-magazines mode. I can't really think of many more ways to say, "This movie was pretty damn boring," so I'll cut it short. Only rent if you really liked the 70s, and even then, why can't you just rent Phantom of the Paradise instead?

Cast Connections:


-Tzi Han (the band's private chef Buddy) was Akita in Robocop 2.

-Richard Young (Terry) was Fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.