Sometimes, celluloid magic doesn’t happen for a particular film. Sometimes, the thrill of an idea pitched in a meeting never gets translated to anything of actual interest on the screen. Sometimes, the actors and script and director are all assembled, and guess what? Without a script that makes sense, or an original entertaining idea, one is left with a dud—the crazy idea about everyone turning blind, or an ecological disaster gone yawn, or yet another remake of Invasions of the Body Snatchers that just ain’t happening.

Well, sometimes a film is good old-fashioned popcorn-worthy, and not a lot can be said about its story, or substance. The thing, the MacGuffin of it all, whatever that IT may be, just works, and one sits back and enjoys the ride for two hours. This week’s Hidden Flick is a simple tale of a kidnapping, flying circus performers, an ancient monastery on a mountain range, and the daredevil spark of an actor able to pull off action-adventure.

Sky Riders, stars the rugged anti-hero James Coburn, and a beleaguered yet always interesting Robert Culp who played in a tremendously tight duo with Bill Cosby in I Spy on television way, way back in the days of innocence and rabbit-eared antennas. Culp’s wife, young son and daughter are kidnapped by a group of terrorists demanding a large ransom from the wealthy American businessman. Coburn is the ex-husband who sits by while witnessing foiled attempts by others to recapture the trio, and he’d like to just go and get them himself—sort of a simple line in the initial pitch coming to life on screen…let’s see: “Fuck this incompetence. Let ME go get them before they’re killed.”

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick: Sky Riders…

Culp receives a photo of his wife in a jail cell where they are now located. Coburn notices an ancient iconic religious painting on the back of the wall in the cell. In a cool scene of silent research, Coburn flips through art books until he finds the painting, and locates its origin on a wall in the very monastery where the ex-wife and children are located.

Coburn, as an anti-hero is wont to do, comes across some hang-gliding ‘sky riders’ in a circus act on a beach, and he sees it all so clearly…THE answer to his problems. Huh…how does one infiltrate an enemy fortress tucked in a tall mountain range somewhere in Europe if a ground assault is out of the question? Land from the air near the monastery, secure the location and its parameter, and THEN call in for reinforcements waiting somewhere near the bottom of the mountain. Popcorn popped, soda slurped, mind erased of troubles, and feet propped up on the dog…film happens.

And there you go…a simple entertaining film for extraordinarily complex times. Yes, while banks teeter on the edge, economies rise and fall and fall, house mortgages shoot down, credit gets crunched, gas prices hover around 4 dollars, and we all patiently await the Apocalypse while secretly pushing that date into the next millennium as Phish plans Summer Tour 2009 and, well, Trey, Mike, Page, and Jon wouldn’t plan a party if we all couldn’t find a way to get there, right? Yes, I believe that sometimes it is the simple pleasures of life that transcend our problems. We aren’t necessarily forgetting or denying the existence of the troubles that remain, but we’re remembering that, in the end, family counts, and we do what we can, when we can, to save the very thing worth saving. Ahhh…indeed, the hook. See you on the other side, in Hampton, in a field, or in some place that is a little brighter than the place we find ourselves currently, that dark moment of modern times known as the dying ember of the Bush flameout of a presidency.

Sometimes, things aren’t so complex, and one just needs to take to the proverbial air to see what is possible on the ground below and in Sky Riders, you’ve got a little minor gem of a film worth the time while pondering that next move into the Great Unknown.

• Previously on Hidden Flick: Bang A Gong, Women and Children First and Rock ‘n’ Roll Drive-In

Randy Ray

Randy Ray is a Senior Editor at Jambands.com, and a Contributing Writer with Relix magazine. He has written Hidden Flick, a look into obscure films, for Hidden Track since early 2008, and is a published author in various fiction mediums, as well.

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