Customer Reviews

C.C. and Company

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I really thought that with the demise of the video cassette , DVD"S would offer a better quality transfer. It seems that companies are making copies of DVD"S from videos. The quality of this product is horrendous. Faded colors, blurry at times and scaratches. It is not even worth the 10 bucks I shelled out to Amazon for it. The film is very 70's with a sexy performance by Ann Margret. Buy it only for her performance and a great song she sings "Today". Better yet rent it first! This is worse than the average bootleg copy!

I am very dissatisfied with this DVD. The quality is good, but this is not the complete version. There are several parts in the original that are not in the version I purchased. This is clearly not the entire movie. I am considering returning it.

I'm a fan of cheesy, low budget movies, but this TRULY is an unwatchable film. The transfer to DVD is one of the worst I have ever seen. Color is bleached out beyond belief, soundtrack is garbled, overall DVD quality is one of the worst I've ever seen. Save your money, or you'll regret this purchase, just like I have. It's in my Goodwill pile.

"You've seen too many motorcycle movies!" cries fashion designer Ann-Margret to some lust-crazed bikers at one point in the irresistibly awful 1970 biker flick C.C. AND COMPANY. Well, somebody has. Our guess is that it was Ann-Margret's husband, Roger Smith, who penned this laughable compendium of chopper cliches about five seconds after EASY RIDER became the number-one box-office smash all over the world.

Football hero Joe Namath, making a (thankfully) brief stab at screen stardom, plays a thieving, lowlife biker who, while cruising the desert with two fellow gang members, comes across mini-skirted, maxi-haired Manhattanite Ann-Margret stranded in a broken-down limo. "You guys gonna sit there like 'The Wild Ones' or you gonna give a girl a hand?" A-M vamps, as only a half-clad sex kitten stranded in the middle of nowhere might think to do.

When Namath's pals predictably move in on A-M and one threatens to strike her, Namath nobly intervenes with this bit of roadside rape etiquette: "Man, you don't hit something that looks that good. I mean, laying her is one thing, but bruising her--that's something else again." After the two ill-mannered bikers ride off, A-M realizes that Namath was only saving her for himself, but before she gets a chance to show him how much she doesn't mind, a tow truck shows up and he takes off.

Fortunately, the star-crossed lovers meet again soon, this time at a dirt-bike track where A-M is overseeing a fashion magazine shoot of models wearing her latest couture designs while bikers race around them. When Namath appears in the background of the pictures, A-M has to ask him to sign a photo release, for which she promises him what sounds suspiciously like what the studio must have offered him to star in this movie: "Your name in a magazine, fan mail from oversexed housewives, a year's subscription to Popular Mechanics -- anything but money."

But Namath balks at signing, whereupon A-M utters the fateful words, "I need a release!" With that, Namath puts the comely fashionista on the back of his Harley for a long, hard ride, then takes her go-go dancing, and then gets naked with her. After a happy-lovers montage to the sound of A-M's own voice crooning, "When you smile that special smile/As you listen to whatever I say/You've given me such tenderness/You satisfy me in every way," Namath abandons his biker pals to move into A-M's digs.

Alas, the resentful roughnecks, believing Namath has made off with the group's cash, kidnap A-M and unleash their own skanky motorcycle mamas on her. One Harley hussy buries her face in A-M's bountiful boobage and exclaims, "Oh, fragrance divine!" Then she grabs A-M's titian tresses and snarls, "A natural redhead, you suppose? Only her hairdresser knows for sure." When Namath rides to the rescue, he's told that if he doesn't come up with the missing moolah, "Little Orphan Annie here gets a royal gang bang." Namath proposes instead a tough-guy bikes competition -- a hog-off -- so everyone heads to a deserted university track to watch the race. A campus security guard threatens to break things up, but one of the chopper chicks talks him out of it by explaining that they're actually students making a movie: "It's a cross between Antonioni and A.I.P."

Naturally Namath wins and takes off with A-M on his motorcycle, which leads to the portended Antonioni homage. Stopping at a meaningfully empty intersection where a red light blinks "Don't Walk," A-M asks, with ineffable ennui, "Where are we going?" Namath replies, "I gotta split for awhile." Full of angst, A-M growls, "Remember when we talked about looking for something? I'd like to look with you. For a while, anyway." With that, a green light blinks "Walk" and the two roar off into the night, searching, presumably, for better scripts.

I always loved this picture. Joe is a great actor in my opinion. Ann has always been my favorite sex symbol. I am not sure why the quality of the picture is so poor. This was filmed in 1970 and it looks like a home move shot on 9 mm. If only someone could enhance this and find the missing scenes. There are a number of scenes that are cut from this film. It almost looks like the manufacturer set a video camera in front of a television and filmed an edited version. Many of the initial scenes are too dark to see.

This is another movie that would be much better if it would be digitally enhanced. It's a good 60's motorcycle movie, with some good music. I am a William Smith fan. He does a great bad guy motorcyclist. Joe Namath and Ann Margret do a good job as well.

If you have memories of Broadway Joe in his prime, then this is a pleasant blast from the past. Sports Illustrated did a recent cover story about Joe Namath--his legacy, his ways, his fall from grace...it was a pleasant interlude from the often forced cover stories that have taken over the newsstands. And, what it reveals is that the days of larger than life sports heroes who can actually play the game and who you want to root for (this is a crucial distinguishing factor) are long gone since Joe Willie took off his Jets uniform and headed for the disastrous year at the helm of the Los Angeles Rams.

The time this film was made, there was no star brighter than Namath's...and if you enjoy seeing a sport star (a la Jim Brown and definitely NOT O.J. Simpson) stretch their charisma and machismo in front of a camera, then check this baby out. It's a hoot. Based on anecdotal evidence, it seems that Joe had a good time making the movie and hanging out with a babe-a-licious actress (really the Jessica Alba of her time and more since she could sing and act) Ann Margaret. She showed up at a banquet honoring Joe back in the day.

There's an NFL presents book out right now with a DVD included--a documentary on Namath. This guy truly was something special. He had eggshells for knees, a mind as sharp as a razor and an arm like a rocket. Seeing him lope around the field and calling downs exactly one play after he was absolutely leveled by an oncoming freight train made my heart race then and now. So much so I put a picture of him swarthed in green on my son's wall.

You only wish there were stars as bright and as big as he was today...so much so that movie producers wanted to put an athlete in front of the camera--and I'm not talking about Rick Fox trying his hand at character acting. Joe was cool. He was what every guy wanted to be. Good enough at the job to flip a bird at anyone who got in his face.

So, give it a try...check it out!

Stay away from this one! the video transfer sucks, PLUS, it was edited so it lacks the nudity scene. Total play time is 84 min, not 90 or 94 as per their listing.

I wish I had read the reviews before I bought this DVD. As it was, I saw this movie when it first came out at a local drive in, (an outdoor movie theatre, for you youngsters), and enjoyed it. So when I saw it on DVD I jumped on it. That was a big mistake. The picture and sound quality are both terrible and the movie has been heavily edited. This is a definite rip off, stay away from it.

"C. C. and Company" is a film that could only have existed in 1970. Coming off his victory in Super Bowl III in 1969, Namath could do pretty much anything he wanted to, and one of the things he wanted to do was act. I'm normally not much on professional athletes turned actors (although Rosey Grier starring opposite Ray Milland in "The Thing With Two Heads" is an all-time B-movie great,) Namath acquits himself adequately as the unfortunately named C. C. Ryder, the good biker in "The Heads," the rotten to the core gang he finds himself in. The film opens with Namath foraging in a supermarket and making himself a sandwich on the baby seat of a shopping cart. While he was eating the sandwich all I could think of was the recent news report I had read that discussed how that area is the most germ-laden area of a cart due to baby diaper contact.

After downing the sandwich the very mod split-screen credits open up while a generic version of "C. C. Rider" blares in the background (the version by Elvis would have been really welcome at this point; so would the version by Peggy Lee for that matter...) and we quickly find that Namath is the one good guy in the gang when he comes to the aid of beautiful Ann-Margret, whose limo is stranded in the desert, saving her from the ravages of two other bikers, and getting into a feud with the leader of the pack, Moon (William Smith, who turns in a good and genuinely deranged performance) in defense of her honor.

The Heads are a bunch of miscreants with names like Rabbit, Lizard, Pig, Pom Pom, and Zit-Zit, and the backstory explaining Namath's presence in the gang is less than convincing. You know they are real bad characters right off the bat because the first thing they do is enter a motocross race. Settle in, because there's lots of motocross action throughout the remainder of the film, and you will be surprised how boring that can be. Ann-Margret shows up at the race (of course) because there is a cross-promotional contract between a fashion designer and a motorcycle race promoter. (That makes perfect sense.) The simply idiotic love story that follows is only one ridiculous element of the vapid plot structure of this film, but enjoy the cheese factor (the DVD was released by Cheezy Flicks, after all.) To impress Ann-Margret, Namath enters the race and makes quite the impression by taking third place by carrying his bike across the finish line, thus cementing "C. C. and Company" in permanent first place in the lame biker movie awards.

Moon becomes jealous of C. C.'s newfound fame and desire to retain some of the funds he has earned (Moon runs "The Heads" as a commune with himself as head Head and treasurer.) This split in the group leads to fisticuffs that go on for quite a while and end pretty much in a draw. C. C. leaves the group, heads over to Ann-Margret's place, picks her up and goes dancing in the official start to one of the most putrescent on-screen romances in history. The musical romance montage is particularly unbearable. Still jealous, The Heads invade Ann-Margret's house, kidnapping her for a ransom of $2,000. It's really more of a bet, because the resolution involves them breaking into a stadium at night for Moon and C. C. to race. Moon meets a hilariously over-the-top demise, while C. C. rescues Ann-Margret, and they escape in a big nighttime motorcycle chase. If you found the endless motorcycle scenes boring in daylight, just wait until you see the lack of excitement that prevails when all you can see are streams of headlights for minutes on end. It's simply interminable. The film closes with Namath and Ann-Margret outfoxing The Heads and cleverly destroying their bikes (which is a genuinely amusing, if unbelievable scene.) They decide to go on the road together, and the two ride off into a future of certain bliss.

The film suffers from several technical problems that are apparent throughout, one of which is that this print is quite dark and grainy, but the most annoying of which is easily the incidental music which is omnipresent and is xylophone, slide whistle, and trumpet intensive. Don't miss the credits, which explain that the film was made largely in Tucson, but that the dancing part was filmed in the "Fabulous Flamingo Hotel" in Las Vegas. That particular credit may be a bit adjectivally-challenged in the accuracy part in the opinion of some: certainly "fabulous" would not have been a word I used to describe that particular hotel, but to each his own. Please also enjoy the "Intermission" extra, which I found wonderfully appropriate for a film of this vintage.

"C. C. and Company" is entertaining as a B-movie relic of the early 1970's, and although utterly implausible, predictable, and heavy-handed, it's still worth a look for lovers of camp, motorcycles, or football.