ALOHA, BOBBY AND ROSE (1975) Blu-ray
Director: Floyd Mutrux
Scorpion Releasing

Fresh off AMERICAN GRAFFITI, Paul Le Mat, his hot rod, and his girl go on the run accompanied by 1970s hits in ALOHA, BOBBY AND ROSE.

Bobby (Le Mat) is a young mechanic who spends his days fixing cars for father figure Uncle Charlie (Noble Willingham, THE HOWLING) and his nights hustling pool. His only loves in life are his car and Rose (Dianne Hull, GIRLS ON THE ROAD), waitress and single mother who has grown tired of their routine of a hot dog, beer, and climbing into the back seat and has grown restless listening to her mother (Martine Bartlett, I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN) reminiscing on the glory days of Hollywood and her youthful indiscretions. Bobby also has started to feel like he is going nowhere when his best buddy Moxey (Robert Carradine, REVENGE OF THE NERDS) decides to go to trade school. Going for a beer run, Bobby decides to play a prank on the cashier and pretends to stick him up, leading to tragedy when Rose tries to prevent the trigger-happy owner from shooting him. Bobby knows no one will believe them but Rose wants to go to the police, and a struggle in her car leads to a crash. Despite attracting the attention of a pair of CHP officers with their bloody and bedraggled condition, they make it to Bobby's car and take to the road. Half-convinced that they can escape to her dream destination of Hawaii, Rose starts to feel guilty about abandoning her mother and son while Bobby sees the possibility of a future in a business proposition from bullshit-spewing ex-football player turned traveling salesman Buford (Tim McIntire, BRUBAKER) and his long-suffering girlfriend Donna Sue (Leigh French, HALLOWEEN II). Wary of the police closing in on them, Bobby and Rose make an ill-fated return trip home to live out the inevitable tragic end to their doomed love.

A near-plotless series of incidents, ALOHA, BOBBY AND ROSE is carried along by one of the most wonderful compilations of American pop music of the era and earlier: from a slow motion car wreck scored to Little Eva's "Locomotion" to a first kiss to the musical commentary of The Temptations "Just My Imagination" along with tender moments accompanied by the recurring use of Elton John's "Your Song" while his "Bennie and the Jets" pines for as much for the fictional band as the film's sense of nostalgia visualized by cinematographer William A. Fraker (THE EXORCIST II) whose glowing neon Los Angeles are as gritty as they are glamorous when two young lovers cut through the night in a hot rod with the more jaded Buford and Donna Sue coming along in the cold light of day. Given little to work with in terms of characterization, Le Mat and Hull do embody their parts with a degree of uncertainty that foreshadows doom when the police presence is absent, dissipating only temporarily when they and we are allowed to be caught up in the moment with the help of the soundtrack, Fraker's soft focus and neon flare, and the song selection. Writer/director Floyd Mutrux – who IMDb lists as an uncredited writing collaborator on the earlier TWO-LANE BLACKTOP – would use McIntire again in AMERICAN HOT WAX and Edward James Olmos – who appears in a pool hall scene here – in AMERICAN ME which he would write and produce.

Released theatrically by Columbia Pictures and on home video by Media Home Entertainment, followed by an Anchor Bay DVD in 2000 that was barebones but featured anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen transfers and a pitiful 2014 non-anamorphic letterboxed DVD from Timeless Media. Scorpion Releasing's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from a new scan of the original interpositive. Beneath the sunbaked, slightly overexposed daylight scenes and the flaring neon haze of the night scenes is an image boasting as good detail in facial features, hair, and clothing as one could expect of Fraker's 1970s photography which was more experimental than his later studio work. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track conveys the mono mix of dialogue and source music with a pleasing warmth while Scorpion has also included optional English SDH subtitles.

Besides the film's theatrical trailer (2:16), the disc also includes a trio of new interviews. In his interview, actor Le Mat (23:11) recalls Mutrux casting him on the strength of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, his feelings about the script and the freedom it gave to shaping his character, and his and Mutrux's observation that Hull was too smart for her character as scripted so a degree of coercion on Bobby's part added to the tension in their relationship. He also recalls that he tried to get a young Harrison Ford the part of Moxey but he did not do well in the meeting, working with McIntire (who he suggests might be have been the illegitimate son of Orson Welles as his mother Jeanette Nolan worked with Welles in the Mercury Theater), and plenty of anecdotes about his hotrodding in the film. In his interview, actor Carradine (8:53) recalls not being into acting before his father (John Carradine) took him down to Florida to understudy for his brother Keith in a production of "Tobacco Road" and having to take the stage when his brother was cast in McCABE AND MRS. MILLER. For the film, he also spends more time focusing on the hot rod stunts and his criticisms of Le Mat's driving to his own, but also mentioning that his big scene after being beaten up by Olmos was cut from the final version. In his interview, director Mutrux (13:33) reveals that he was inspired by BREATHLESS and that upon release a critic cited him along with Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg as upcoming filmmakers. While he did not reach the heights of them, he had a few more hits as writer and producer, including Warren Beatty's DICK TRACY. He discusses the actors, the importance of the soundtrack, and Fraker's guiding hand in the coverage and overall look of the film. The disc also includes trailers for NASHVILLE GIRL, GO TELL THE SPARTANS, KILLER FORCE and TROUBLE BOUND. (Eric Cotenas)

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