bkoganbing Taking advantage of the enormous publicity from the small screen when cast members Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young became a small screen Dick and Liz, they were cast in The Big Bounce. Both were cast in roles suitable to each other, but Leigh made far more of it than Ryan.O'Neal is a rather quick tempered drifter who is a Vietnam veteran and doing farm labor work for lack of something better. It also fits the unsettled character of his nature. As the film opens he's in trouble having stabbed one of the migrants, a fellow known for a nasty temper and the fact he was reputed to carry a knife.Knowing all that the local town judge Van Heflin persuades the prosecutor to drop the whole thing and Heflin offers room, board, and a job at his motel. But O'Neal finds something Heflin can't compete with in the intriguing and sexy mantrap Leigh Taylor-Young.Maybe Carroll Baker in Baby Doll made a sexier big screen debut, but she's the only one I can think of. Taylor-Young is a child of the Sixties. She's the kept mistress of Robert Webber manager of the pickle works and the biggest employer in the area. She's also one spoiled rotten and dangerously psychotic woman. What Taylor-Young is is all about kicks, getting them wherever she can.The question is will O'Neal who isn't the strongest of characters be able to resist this woman and the dangerous things she does just to get what she calls The Big Bounce.The Big Bounce is an inauspicious debut for O'Neal who would really hit it big shortly with Love Story. But it did guarantee him a lengthy career. But Mrs. O'Neal really runs away with this picture as the kind of woman that ought to come with a warning label.

wes-connors One of the mysterious young women trying to fill the footsteps left by a fleeing Mia Farrow on ABC-TV's "Peyton Place" was lovely Leigh Taylor-Young. Instead of providing the camera with clues for locating Mia, the coy Ms. Young hooked up with roddy Ryan O'Neal, who had been serving as the town's good-looking hunk for several years. Mr. O'Neal was looking to follow castmate Farrow into movie stardom, and newcomer Young encouraged changes. Call it "The Big Bounce".Alas, millions did not flock to the sinsational new gossiped-about couple on the big screen, although the film featured beautiful California scenery, a very generous helping of Young's naked form, and some brief views of hunky O'Neal's buttocks. The Mike Curb score may be a deterrent, but the movie could grow on you. It's a sexy time capsule, at least. Veteran Van Heflin gets the best of writer Elmore Leonard's lines, and Lee Grant (yet another "Peyton Place" alumni) always helps.**** The Big Bounce (3/5/69) Alex March ~ Ryan O'Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young, Van Heflin, Lee Grant

jaxla In its own sexy, shoddy way, this 1969 film version of an early Elmore Leonard novel is better than the recent "hip" version with Owen Wilson. It mixes film noir conventions with teen exploitation riffs and a fair amount of nudity for a guilty pleasure that's redolent of late 60s/early 70s cheeseball cinema.Ryan O'Neal is a drifter (good hearted, of course) who hooks up with Leigh Taylor Young, a bad girl out for "kicks." Leigh gets Ryan into bed and then into vandalism and robbery and...well, you know where the film is going. It's the journey that's the fun.O'Neal had a sort of bruised likability that worked for him on TV's Peyton Place and he uses it effectively here. Young, married to him at the time and his PPlace co star, is sulky and seductive and, oh yes, naked a lot as a girl who just wants to have fun. Their brief love scenes have a fair amount of steam to them and watching them drop their bell bottoms to go skinny dipping gives the whole movie a certain "Boogie Nights" flavor. The (then) O'Neals were one hot couple.There's a good supporting cast: Robert Webber, Lee Grant, doing a dry run for "Shampoo" as a horny divorcee, James Daly, a nice, slimy villain who pimps out Ms. Young to some business men, and Van Heflin in what may be his last role. On the downside, the direction is a bit flat, lacking in the kind of edge that can really make a crime story cook. And the score, as noted in another post, is atrocious, poured like syrup over scene after scene.The Big Bounce definetly qualifies as a guilty pleasure, what with Ms. Young going hysterical and smashing a living room up with a fire poker and O'Neal smashing an opponent smack in the face with a baseball bat, and in the credits no less. All in all, this version is preferable to the Owen Wilson one in which you can practically see the actors' tongues push out their cheeks as they condescend to the materail. Here there's a fair amount of sweat, exploitation and a hint of camp as the good looking leads go through their noir paces. Worth a rental.

sep1051 I watched this movie with curiosity rather than interest inasmuch as I'd seen some comments that it had "bombed" when initially released. The ratings in IMDB, where as many people rated it a four as rated it a ten, clearly showed that it elicits a wide range of individual reactions. Personally I thought that it was worth watching but has a number of weaknesses. Jack Ryan (Ryan O'Neal) is a drifter working as a farm field worker. Fired for getting into a fight he escapes trial due to the intervention of the local judge, Sam Mirakian (Van Heflin). Jack is told to leave town by the farm supervisor Bob Rodgers (Robert Webber). However he stays after meeting the farm owner, "pickle king" Ray Ritchie (James Daly) and his secretary/mistress Nancy Barker (Leigh Taylor-Young). Jack takes a job as handyman at a hotel owned by the judge where he also meets a divorced woman, Joanne (Lee Grant), and her daughter. Unfortunately Jack begins to romance Nancy who turns out to be a thrill seeker (nice 1960's exploitation movie term!). Thrills include vandalism, breaking and entering and more (no sense giving away the plot). The movie is not entirely successful. In large part this is because it was taken from a book by Elmore Leonard. His works have a significant element of black comedy but, when played straight as here, it comes off as absurd melodrama. This movie has none of the sense of fun (i.e. Get Shorty) that this nuanced material needs. Fortunately Elmore Leonard's plots are relatively complex and full of incident so the movie keeps going and doesn't sag. The actors, aside from the pleasure of seeing them all so young, are mixed. Ryan O'Neal is best at light comedy which is to say that his performance here is limited. Leigh Taylor-Young displays a far greater range although, from time to time, a little histrionic for my personal taste (but then again I'm not a big Bette Davis fan either). While I've always looked forward to seeing Robert Webber I have to admit that he has only one expression throughout this movie. James Daly is underutilized but does have one extremely nasty scene, in the delicious sense of the word, pimping Nancy ("How would I know, I'm in produce"). The revelation is Van Heflin who is far more avuncular than I've ever seen him. I swear he was "channeling" Brian Keith! Unfortunately he lived only another two years and we lost what could have been a very interesting career as an older "character" man. RIP. The technical credits are fine and the gorgeous California scenery, I suspect the Monterey peninsula, would convince me to move. Overall the movie is worth watching but shows why Elmore Leonard's novels have a reputation for being poorly adapted to the screen.