Mark Turner I can remember when the movie JOE came out. I was 13 at the time and fueled by the counter culture movement that all of us in our pre-teens and teens were involved in. We all though the clothing and choices we made were our own and not part of some systemic norm we would be forced to take part in. Little did everyone realize that by assuming the same clothing, same attitudes and same quotes we were doing little more than every generation before us by revolting against our elders. It wasn't something new and it wasn't something individual. It was just something different.JOE take those differences and adds the twist of violence to the story. It opens with a young couple Frank (Patrick McDermott) is a drug dealer in the seedier side of New York City. Melissa (Susan Sarandon) is a spoiled daughter of a successful white collar couple who has fallen from Frank. The two feed off of one another, Frank the attention he gets and Melissa the love she thinks she has for him. After Frank gives Melissa some pills while they're out before heading off to sell drugs, she trips out in a drugstore whose owner calls the EMS to take her to a hospital.Melissa's parents Bill (Dennis Patrick) and Joan (Audrey Caire) show up and plan on taking her home once she's released. Bill goes to her apartment to pick up her things when he runs into Frank. His disdain for Frank is on full display and Frank goads him on insulting him and his family. In response Bill attacks him and in the process accidentally kills him. Leaving behind a few of his drugs and taking the rest to dispose of he leaves the building and heads to the nearest bar for a drink.It is at the bar he chooses that he runs into Joe (Peter Boyle). Joe is a blue collar worker and stereotypical of those at the time. He hates taxes, his kids, blacks, foreigners and hippies equally. He talks non-stop about all of them and how much he hates them to the chagrin of the bar owner. When he says he wishes he could kill a hippie Bill responds with "I just did". Joe looks at him to see how serious he was and then the two laugh thinking it was all a joke.The next night Joe sees the news talking about the death of Frank and the search for the killer. Realizing Bill was telling the truth he calls him and wants to meet. Joe has no intention of blackmailing Bill. Instead he thinks of them as kindred spirits, brothers in arms and a friend, something we get the impression he has none of. The pair drink and talk and Bill loosens up deciding he likes this breath of fresh air unlike the backstabbing suck ups he works with in advertising.Joe invites Bill and his wife to dinner and Bill accepts. It goes smoothly but the man on edge at all times is Joe. He seems ready to jump at any moment. When they finish eating he takes Bill downstairs to show him his gun collection. He calls Joan down and attempts to calm her down and tell her she has nothing to worry about.But worry she will when Melissa escapes from the hospital after finding out Frank is dead. Overhearing a conversation between her parents when they return home from their dinner, she now knows who killed Frank and runs away.Joe contacts Bill to ask where he's been to find that Bill has been combing the streets searching for Melissa. Offering to help the pair take to the seedier side of NYC and begin their search. Their journey through the coffee houses and macrobiotic restaurants where they're ridiculed by the hippies leads them to a group that makes fun of them. Learning Bill has drugs their attitude changes.The unlikely group parties and gets wasted, has sex and then part of them take off with the drugs. Joe forces one of the remaining girls to tell them where they went and she lets them know. Guns in his trunk he and Bill head out to find them and get back the drugs and discover what happened to Melissa.This may seem like a lengthy synopsis filled with potential spoilers but not really. It provides the bare bones but not the meat that is wrapped around them. The story itself holds your attention and the performances on hand, especially by that of Boyle (a breakout performance it turns out) make this movie one that holds your attention, even if he doesn't show until 30 minutes or so in.Made in 1970 what makes the movie even more interesting is looking back on the story and the culture war going on at the time. The movie depicts three separate categories of people here who all seem more alike than different. Bill and Joan represent the white collar workers, Joe the blue collar and Melissa and her friends the hippy generation. Where the hippies claim individuality and independence they show none of it, all dressing alike, using the same comments and buying products to make be part of the group. It's the same thing that people like Bill are hired to promote and make money from. Looking back we can see that now and realize it better than at the time the movie was released.All three feel trapped in their own environments. Bill by the boring mundane life he must work to live the lifestyle he's chosen, Joe in the daily grind working at the steel mill and feeling trapped by people who have more while doing less and Melissa and her friends who work just as hard selling drugs in order to pay for the things they want. None of the three groups realizes they are the same as each claims only theirs is the real thing.When the movie was released it was considered quite controversial. It drew a lot of attention and discussion among movie goers. Some saw Joe as a hero and others as a villain. In truth he is both. But he is also us, the everyman out there. The movie was also a pivotal film for its director John G. Avildsen who three years later directed the critically acclaimed SAVE THE TIGER which won Jack Lemmon an Oscar for best actor and who six years later directed a small film called ROCKY.The film is being released on blu-ray by Olive Films so fans can now have the cleanest looking copy of it they've ever had the chance to own. Extras are limited to the trailer but it's the movie itself that is worth picking a copy of this up for. By the time the screen credits roll you'll be stunned, you'll be thinking about what group you fit in and you'll realize how talented an actor Boyle actually was.

disinterested_spectator Bill, a respectable businessman, kills his daughter's drug-dealer boyfriend in a fit of rage after she overdoses. In shock over what he has done, he goes into a bar to have a drink. In the bar is Joe, a man who hates blacks and hippies, and who is giving full vent to his spleen. In one sense, Joe's rant is dated, couched in terms of the events of the late 1960s. But in another sense, his diatribe is a timeless expression of bigotry, one that it is just as fresh in the twenty-first century as it was back then.Bill confesses to Joe that he just killed one of those hippies, because it eases his conscience to admit his crime to someone who "understands," though he quickly says he was just kidding. Later, when Joe realizes that Bill actually did kill a hippie, something he has always wanted to do, but probably never would have, he calls Bill up and says he wants to get together. The two of them form a deadly combination, resulting in a massacre of hippies. Inadvertently, Bill kills Melissa, his own daughter.The first time I saw the movie was in 1970. As the years passed, my memory was that Bill and Joe killed a bunch of harmless, peace-loving hippies. But having seen the movie recently, I realize that the hippies are not portrayed sympathetically. Early in the movie, when Melissa enters the room she shares with her boyfriend, he is taking a bath. She gets in the tub with him, and he immediately gets out. It is not clear whether he is merely indifferent to her romantic gesture, or whether he despises her, but either way, he treats her like dirt.Speaking of dirt, that reminds me of their feet. Notwithstanding the bath, their feet are filthy. Back in those days, having dirty feet was de rigueur for hippies, because being unclean was a way of displaying contempt for the rules of society. And just to make sure we know they have the required dirt and grime, when they get in bed together, the camera films them from the end of the bed so that we get full view of the bottoms of four filthy feet.Later, when Bill and Joe participate in an orgy of sorts, we get the spectacle of Joe's naked beer gut coming down on top of some hippie chick as he prepares to have sex with her, after remarking that he doesn't need any foreplay. While this allows us to see how crude Joe is, as if we were not already convinced, it also tells us something about the hippie chick on whom he descends, for a girl would have to be pretty much of a lowlife to take part in such a degrading act.Furthermore, the hippies are thieves, for they rob Bill and Joe of their wallets, which angers them so much that they track the hippies down, at which point things get out of hand and the massacre ensues. In other words, the hippies are unlikable, dirty, and immoral. And while it would be going too far to say that they got what they deserved, their behavior does seem to vindicate much of what Joe was saying about them in the bar.

Michael Berry This was the first movie I viewed, just by chance, after my discharge from active duty in the Army in 1970. Forty-two years later, remembering nothing of the plot, only that I left the theater very emotional (rare for me), I found a DVD copy at a local library.I now realize why I have since not been able to regard Peter Boyle as anything but a frightening character, even in his comic role on the TV series "Everybody Loves Raymond." To be fair, his 1976 role in "Taxi Driver" didn't help, but his face, as seen in "Joe", is still the stuff of nightmares for me.That said, I learned that it was the now long-forgotten hostility between sectors of our society, so brutally represented in the film, created by the debacle in Vietnam that affected me so deeply in 1970. Today, even to one who was there, the experience of living in an America so torn, so close to open rebellion, is hard to conceive - even harder to explain. But fresh off the plane, still somewhat glum from the cold stares at the airport caused by my uniform, this film hit me like a hammer. And guessing from the huge profit it made, it did the same to many.It shocked me that I hadn't remembered Susan Sarandon was in this film - she has been one of my favorites - and, as a bonus, the then 24 year-old Ms. Sarandon appears nude. How could I have possibly forgotten that?

John Wayne Peel The story is simple. A racist blue collar guy recruits a wealthy white man to kill hippies, This is also the first motion picture for Susan Sarandon and the flick that made Peter Boyle an actor who worked a lot and made his name.This film I found greatly upsetting and I remember when it premiered at the Harvsrd Square theater in Cambridge, Mass. when I was still in high school. I never understood why such a movie would be popular with the very group it excoriates. Maybe it was a primer for those who wanted to avoid such psychotic baddies. When I first heard of the film, I had no idea that the composer of the music in it would become a close friend, supporter and benefactor. I also never envisioned being treated as something nasty on his shoe by the star, but these two things did occur.But back to the film. It seems all too real and the rich man turned killer by the protagonist/antagonist played a racist in an episode of All In The Family as well.I can't give away the finale of this movie except to say that it is rather abrupt and, unless you are a sociopath, unsettling to say the least.The N word is one of the most offensive things in this films the swear words are mild compared to some other films. This was, I believe, the film that introduced the future director of Rocky.But Bobby Scott's music as always is remarkable. Scott is a name that should be better known and I do hope people will try to find as much as they can about this Irish/Native American super talent, As for Peter Boyle, I wish I had told him of my friendship with Bobby and that he should not look at me as some sort of annoying gnat. After all, it is my friend's work that is the best thing in this film that gave Boyle his career. Talent is a wonderful thing, but humility should come along with it towards the people who made you a celebrity in the first place. Jerry Orbach thought that way. We could all learn from this.