As mentioned before, I picked up a couple of Burt Reynolds starring films that hadn’t been released to BluRay until now.  Though copies of these films could be found before this release, word was these presentations had very inferior quality video and sound.  Thus I was hoping the BluRay release of both 1978’s Hooper and 1981’s Sharkey’s Machine would prove to be worth getting, if only to see each films presented closer to its original theatrical clarity.

Well, I haven’t gotten to Sharkey’s Machine yet but I did give Hooper a whirl and found both picture and sound very strong.  So if you’re like me and were holding out on buying a copy of this film until it received a proper presentation, rest easy.  The Hooper BluRay is very much worth getting.

As for the movie itself, this is the first time I’ve seen Hooper start to end since it was originally released to cinema way back in 1978.

My feelings for the film were decidedly mixed.  Like many young fans of cinema back then, Burt Reynolds was a movie GOD.  Just the year before he starred in probably his biggest box office hit, Smokey and the Bandit, and any follow up feature that involved vehicular mayhem was something I was eager to see.

Hooper would come out the next year and was directed by his Smokey and the Bandit director, former stuntman Hal Needham, so I came in hoping to see another comedy/action film very much along the same lines.

I recall, however, walking out of Hooper disappointed.  Unlike Smokey and the Bandit, this was no light-hearted humorous affair.  The film felt too serious and the stunts, remarkably, didn’t thrill me as much as they had with Smokey.

And yet, so much of the film remained recorded in my head.  Why would that be?  I wasn’t particularly crazy about the film the first, and only, time I saw it yet why did it linger in my mind some (gasp) 37 years later?

I had to check it out and did so.

And found the film was much better experience this time around.

The simple fact is this: Hooper aspired to be an “adult” film, even while it had a few elements that didn’t quite gel in that respect.  It took your basic, by now cliched boxer storyline and laid it over the world of stuntwork.

Burt Reynolds is Hooper, a high in demand, devil-may-care stuntman who is currently working on a big budget film directed by an odious “high art” type (Robert Klien doing, it has been rumored, an impression of director Peter Bogdanovich).  Despite his lighthearted attitude, audiences learn from the very first scenes in the film that Hooper’s body is littered with very painful looking scar tissue.  After Hooper performs his initial stunt, a motorcycle crash, we further learn that he’s in considerable pain and the wear and tear of this type of work endangers his health.

His right hand man and best friend Cully (delightfully played by James Best), gives him pain killers following the stunt but begs Hooper to go to a Doctor and get himself checked out.  Hooper declines and, almost simultaneously, hears about a new, young stud entering the stunt field who has set his eyes on being a stuntman as great as Hooper.

There is a certain irony to this situation as Hooper’s girlfriend is Gwen (Sally Field, looking absolutely beautiful) and her father Jocko (Brian Keith) was himself a legendary stuntman…until Hooper took his place.  (A bit of trivia: In real life Sally Field’s step-father was Jock Mahoney, a famous stuntman who also had acting credits.  “Jocko” was inspired by Jock Mahoney and Sally Field, in real life dating Burt Reynolds at the time, essentially got to play a version of herself!).

As the movie progresses, Hooper comes to know his young competition, a hungry and clever stuntman named Ski (Jan Michael Vincent).  To the movie’s credit, he’s never presented as a nasty would be rival or young punk.  He is as I stated: A clever yet hungry young man who wants to make it in the stunt field, though he doesn’t realize that by doing so he will eventually push Hooper out, just as Hooper pushed Jocko out.

There’s plenty of stuntwork to see within the film, including high wire falls, overturned cars, explosions, fires, and, in the movie’s climax, a long car jump.

Sadly, like Smokey and the Bandit, the passage of time has made most of these once thrilling stunts looks rather ordinary.

On the plus side, the film moves well, at times surprising you with some of the story choices and more adult themes.  The acting is also almost uniformly good and at times clever and amusing.  Adam West, the “star” of the film Hooper is working on, plays a superstar actor named…Adam West!

But, as mentioned before, there are bumps in the road (ouch!) as well.  The movie at times shows a childish, almost silly attitude (the two encounters Hooper has with police look like they belong in another film.  In “real life” they wouldn’t end quite so nicely).  Further, I’ve always been bothered by the grand finale stunt(s).  Why exactly did they have to capture it in one take?  Given the piecemeal way films are made, doing this in one take made little sense.

Still, watching Hooper again after all these years was a fun experience.  One can see why Burt Reynolds was such a superstar back then, even as some of the movie’s excesses and silliness pointed to where his career would eventually go wrong.