Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Bill Bixby stars in this weird adaptation from the Broadway show Steambath. It opens with Tandy (Bixby) going into a steambath for the first time, and talking with the odd characters found there. Herb Edelman (Stan, from Golden Girls !) is in there, and is a crusty, disagree-able type. Valerie Perrine is the chick who walks into the steamroom and takes a shower...showing some side-boob. Valerie will go on to be "Samantha" in Can't Stop the Music.... and of course, the Superman movies. Then two gay guys come in and do a dance routine (of course.) Their dance routine is also provocative, and they slowly lose their towels. Don't forget Kenneth Mars, from Young Frankenstein, What's Up Doc?, and my favorite, The Producers. There IS cussing, and plenty of what are now incorrect slurs of the time. Bill Bixby, already 40, runs around in his tighty whities. I knew him from "Incredible Hulk", but apparently he was also in "Magician" series. Stephen Elliot is the old guy, who seems to know what's really going on here. Elliot was the chief in "Beverly Hills Cop", and also Bert in "Arthur". Jose Perez is "Morty", the steambath attendant; I won't say too much about him, or that would give away important plot points.Lots of 1970's references -- All in the Family, psychedelic music, automats, roller skating rink. The writer, Bruce Friedman, was also one of the writers of Splash (1984), and was nominated for an Oscar for that. Very good, but LOTS of talking.. Long, wordy speeches by Tandy and The Attendant. Clever idea, though - some of the experimental stuff from the 1960s and 1970s. The last 20 minutes are one long diatribe by Bixby. So serious. and L O N G. Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff...started as an actor. Looks like he did TONS of TV movies and series.

I came across this play after hearing a reference to it in a conversation I had with one of my gay friends. I immediately went online and found a DVD version. I've since watched it half a dozen times or so.People keep going back to Valerie Perrine's "nude" appearance in the play but really it's a distraction from the actual content. The dialogue written by Bruce Jay Friedman is sharp, poignant but badly needs revising to meet today's world as opposed to 1973. The two gay characters are not how you would portray the gay community today. Yes, queens exist in the gay community but I do believe they would be portrayed differently, with different songs, different attitudes and slightly different behaviors.Valerie's character is a bit of an "airhead." And I think in today's feminist culture, that character would badly need to be updated with a kind of woman who offers more than just good looks. Bixby's character should also be revised because he's blatantly sexist and admits as much in some of his references and in his monologues. The power of this play really comes down to Bixby's character and how he realizes that he's now come full circle and is atoning before God all of this "sins" and now wants to lead a good and just life and just when he's ready to do so, he dies of a heart attack in a Chinese restaurant. It's a question we all mull from time to time. We wrestle with our own personal and spiritual demons. Have we lived a good life? Could we have done better? What would you say to "god" if h/she actually presented him/herself to you? And is there any need for atonement? Should you even care? And what if you're stuck in purgatory. Is a steambath the opportune place for you to redeem yourself before god? And what if you have no faith to begin with? How will god convince you that h/she is god? These are the questions that Tandy's character faces and they are brilliant questions.And the ending is powerful. We all leave this life, ultimately, ALONE, and we must prepare ourselves and hopefully, we have enough time to have done so before our lives end. It's just that Tandy's character needs to be updated and revised to reflect today's world and not 1973.Some of Bruce Jay Friedman's dialogue is just dated, pure and simple. People today wouldn't understand or get references to the 1930's at all and I would update some of the other characters as well.God as a Puerto Rico janitor is brilliant and I wouldn't change much other than having him work with an Apple computer instead of the piece of junk that's used in the '70's version.This play at its core is fantastic. It just needs an rewrite to reflect the times we live in TODAY. Matter of fact, I'd love to rewrite this play and see it get produced!

Steambath starts out with a whole cross section of the human race waking up in a steam room, wrapped in nothing but towels and wondering just how they got there. These people are not an easy fit with each other, but the clue should have been that this particular steam room also has a woman in it, not something usual in the Seventies or now, and definitely not something that the two gay men in the place would have found inviting even with the woman being Valerie Perrine.It's Perrine and Bill Bixby who realize the situation and also the various waiters are not quite human. Where is God in this whole affair and he makes his appearance shortly in the form of Jose Perez, the washroom attendant.What author Bruce Jay Friedman has done is given us a Seventies version of the old after life classic Outward Bound which got two big screen versions under its original title and later as Between Two Worlds. The majestic figures of Dudley Digges and Sydney Greenstreet as the Great Examiner are replaced here by Jose Perez who has a sardonic view of the highest life forms on the pecking order he's created.There is no great moralizing here, death is merely a process whereby you transition from one existence to another. The Steambath is merely a synonym for purgatory like the ocean liner was in those two films Only Bixby really does want to go back and he and Perez get into a bit as to just what he's going back to.Steambath is an amusing and existential take on life and death and man's ultimate place in the universe. Maybe a Steambath is what our souls need, a place to dry out and relax before moving on.

I saw this movie over 25 years ago on TV. Several times as a matter of fact...the late, late, very late show! It really got under my skin. I've been looking for it forever, because the film really made an impact on me. I was beginning to doubt I had actually seen it. The film opens in a steam bath. Bill Bixby, confused in a towel, is told that he has died and the steam bath is the holding pen before moving into the netherworld (there's actually a door leading to eternity (heaven or hell??). He eventually determines that the skinny little Puerto Rican janitor on the other end of the room is God. "God" stands at a computer terminal making fateful decisions for those on earth (ie, Mary drives down Rt 1 in San Francisco, makes a fatal driving error and goes off the cliff). This film was highly thought-provoking and eerie. The entire film took place in the steam bath. Creepy. Makes you think.