Product Details

• Actors: Reggie King, James Coburn, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Hooks, Perry Hayes
• Directors: Sidney Lumet
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: X (Mature Audiences Only)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303113249
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #162,229 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Seven Descents of Myrtle involving a volatile interracial love triangle set in the deep south.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Southern Crazy-Quilt Of Guilty Pleasures..., July 29, 2011

By 

4-Legged Defender "Anthony C. Rubbo" (ATL. GA.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Last Of The Mobile Hot Shots (DVD)

[LAST OF THE MOBILE HOT-SHOTS -(1969)- Widescreen presentation - directed by Sidney Lumet] As we've come to learn in hindsight, the celebrated works of Tennessee Williams have transitioned to the big screen with varying results, and this film is no exception. The familiar themes of Southern white trash, racial tensions, familial skeletons, class division, backstabbing bigotry and incestuous relationships are all fondly recalled here, making this an odd duck of a film, maybe even a platypus, among the cinematic canon of Williams' plays. This isn't a 'big screen' adaptation like 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'; no, this one's pared down to three eccentric characters stationed in a dilapidated dwelling with all the accommodations of a cave or tree house, and the occupants are scheming malingerers the likes of which you've probably never seen. (And I hope for your sake that this is true). Claustrophobic, anyone?

James Coburn plays the main miscreant, a lecherous lizard in a dirty linen suit who spots wacky Lynn Redgrave on line to get into a local TV game show where contestants are pulled from the audience and given a chance to win prizes. It's a lowbrow, redneck version of 'Let's Make A Deal' minus Monty Hall as host. He follows her inside and sits nearby, and when she's picked to get onstage as part of a couple's competition, she grabs Coburn's hand and drags him up there with her. Moments later, they're in deep - in order to win a houseful of electronic appliances, they must agree to get married right there on the spot during a televised segment. Instead of chewing his hand off at the wrist and hightailing it to a nearby saloon, he submits to the marriage, in spite of the fact that Lynn Redgrave has six kinds of crazy tattooed all over her.

Well, the lucky newlyweds win the appliances, hitch a trailer to his car and drive through a downpour back to Coburn's 'estate', a rundown decrepit mansion with no windows, hot water, electricity, heating or a/c. Lots of filth, though, if that's your thing. Coburn thinks that he and Redgrave will restore the mansion to its once-stately condition and live like land barons in their own Garden of Eden (have I mentioned that he's a highly delusional drunkard?). But the new Adam and Eve have a houseguest, in the form of a half brother, who just happens to be black and has the deed for the property in his back pocket of a pair of pants that haven't been washed since, oh I don't know, ever? And Coburn wants Redgrave to get that deed and deliver it to him by any means necessary. All the while, it's torrential outside and the levee's about to break, just as it has several times in the past, and when it does the only safe place to be is on the roof. Plot-wise, that's all you'll get from me.

As usual, James Coburn is himself, as we like him, just seedier and slimier, but not as Southern-sounding as he should be given the film's roots. Lynn Redgrave, however, is so genuinely Southern, warp-speed wacky and blistering over-the-top she's phenomenal to watch, chewing up every scene she's in, much to my delight. I never knew she could be this good, no, make that magnificent. And Robert Hooks is shrewd and shifty as Coburn's brother (he's much better here than in 'Hurry Sundown'), and sparks do fly in the scenes he does with Redgrave, the chemistry between them is abundant. This time out, Coburn gets almost lost amid the complexity of his co-stars, something I've never witnessed before. They're overpoweringly perverse in their roles and make the film stand up straight, something Gore Vidal's screenplay (whose next script would be 'Myra Breckenridge'- ouch) and even Sidney Lumet's direction couldn't bring to the table intact. The film sways and staggers intoxicated from time to time, buckling under the sheer weight of its characters, their motivations and the knotted back-story that's led to the current crisis while attempting to tie up all loose ends before final credits roll. It succeeds just as often as it fails - this is no 'Dog Day Afternoon' for sure, but it is one helluva train ride over bumpy terrain. To some it may be considered a trainwreck, but I enjoyed it for what it was, not what it wasn't. If you're still reading, you'll probably want to check out these 'Hot Shots' long before the levee breaks. Another interesting addition to the Warner Archive collection.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Film from Tennessee Williams, August 9, 2002

By 

Michael Raines (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Well, until "Not About Nightingales" makes it to the screen, "Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots" will be the last of original, never-before-filmed Tennessee Williams scripts. Some parts of this movie are so slow, but the images are timeless. James Coburn descending the stairs in a wedding dress, Lynn Redgrave winning on a TV game show, the flooding of the Mississippi delta are all hard-wired in my mind. After this 1969 Lumet film, only retreds of older Williams scripts ensue. Critics of the play "Kingdom of Earth" complain that it is so derivative of earlier material that neither the play nor the subsequent film version are sucessful. I tend to agree with the previous writer from Australia--the movie is subversive in the best sense of the word. Like the flood, it will creep up on you and change the way you see some things in your life, forever.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only in America, July 23, 2001

By 

"mandyloo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I loved this film. I loved the story and the stars and the way out way that it was staged. I have not read the original play but I felt that this film caught the spirit that is Tennesee Williams not like the mess made of some of his other plays including A Street Car Named Desire. This film showed the sickness, the desperation and the lies that make up so many lives. I was so surprised to note that it has been unpopular and I cannot understand why, except that people missed the point. James Coburn always excellent, was a wonderful pick as the desperate, dying southern aristocrat living on hate and Lyn Redgrave was so loud and so lush that it was important to have a contrast in the half brother. This was well done and he was not just more of the same. It was in the colour of the film and the tension of the impending death and disaster (which would be first) that the film's tragedy was really felt.