Fantastic!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Not-bad adaptation of Richard Bradford's coming-of-age novel about an Alabama teenager in 1944 relocated with his mother to New Mexico. His naval officer father has left for service, leaving the young man to deal with the culture clash alone, including race relations, a Hispanic bully, a flirtatious tomboy and the destructive behavior of his mother, who doesn't value her reputation. In the lead, Richard Thomas does his affable nervous-teen bit, an overeager colt desperate to fit in with the pack (he's like a G-rated James Dean). He is especially good in his scenes with forthright little Catherine Burns, however the interplay between the young people pales in comparison to Frank Perry's "Last Summer" from 1969 (which featured both Thomas and Burns). Director James Goldstone keeps the pacing brisk, juggling many different episodes, but he doesn't have the knack for this kind of material, which is pitched far too high. ** from ****

I am not sure just what a spoiler is. I am not trying to write a spoiler. I am just trying to tell it straight. This turkey movie makes no sense. A young man lives in Alabama where his father owns a ship yard. World War II breaks out and his dad can't run the ship yard because he is called up by the Navel Reserve. OK Then what. There is a war on. That leaves the guys mom to run the shipyard. Wouldn't you think he would be doing everything to help her and help the war effort by helping out at the ship yard. I sure would. I worked when I was a teenager. So what does he do? Does he even try to help out? No. He goes out to New Mexico to goof off. You know John Boy was more helpful working at the saw mill at Walton's Mountain than he was in this turkey movie. Now when he gets to New Mexico he gets in fights with some Hispanics. John boy fight the Germans not the Mexicans. I can't see why anybody would think this was a good movie. Thanks. I am not trying to knock it. I am just telling it like it is. I hope this helps.

For 70s completest and those who have nostalgia for it. Had really looked forward to this one after seeing a bunch of the photo stills and reading all the positive reviews. Finally saw it on IFC recently and found it to be real disappointment, Richard Thomas does an almost laughable job of acting. An OK period piece with some interesting moments and nice cinematography, but certainly not worthy of the raves it often gets from those who are remembering their reaction to it back in 1971 rather than the film itself. There are so many great lost films of the 60s and 70s-and then there are some pretentious clinkers-this falls into the later

When the navy officer father goes off to war and leave his son and wife to cope and the uncle moves in to be the "man of the family" but is nothing more than a leach things get interesting. Set against the background of the second world war and new Mexico I find many contemporary comparisons. Richard Thomas as the son and Claire Bloom as the mother are both excellent. Gregory Sierra as the sheriff trying to maintain order in a mixed race town is excellent. In our world today there is always a background of war as there was then, yet young people must come of age and mature and this movie captures that time of youth as no other I have seen. It is not sugar coated, but presented as life is. It mesmerizes you and at the same time makes you feel slightly uneasy about a time when the world was at war, fathers left to serve and families coped as best they could. I recommend seeing red sky at morning and let yourself be taken back to another era and at the same time to the era in which we live.