Cheap Slap Shot (Video) (Paul Newman, Michael Ontkean) (George Roy Hill) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Slap Shot

Slap Shot Shoots & Scores
Paul Newman & George Roy Hill had teamed together to make such movie classics like The Sting & Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid prior to making this film. Their previous efforts as mentioned had been mostly westerns and period pieces, so it seemed a bit unlikely that they would make a comedy about a struggling minor league hockey team. Just like with their other efforts, Slap Shot is a winner. Mr. Newman is at his charming likable best as an over-the-hill player/coach of the beleaguered Charleston Chiefs. The team is drawing no one and the owner is going to fold the team up. He devises a scheme in which he tells the team that they being sold and moving to Florida if they start winning. In order to win, he encourages his team to goon it up and fight their way to the title. Michael Ontkean is good as the one player who has talent and doesn't agree with the new style and Lindsay Crouse is funny as his drunkard wife who splits from him due to being depressed by the surroundings. The team is made up of misfits and loser and the three bespecaled Hanson Brothers particularly stand out. Slap Shot is one of the best sports movies ever made and certainly one of the funniest.

---

Instant Guide to Canadian Machismo
"In the true spirit of competition, hatreds begin to build." --Maple Leafs' assistant coach Keith Acton between periods during this years Stanley Cup playoffs.

... Slap Shot is virtually a documentary! Not on the National Hockey League, but on many of the minor leagues around North America, and, in particular, the North American Hockey League in the '70s.

In Slap Shot, the Hanson Brothers (Steve Carlson, Jeff Carlson, and Dave Hanson), Ned Dowd (that's Ogie Ogilthorpe) play in the Federal League. In real life they played with the Johnstown Jets of the North American Hockey League. Even Paul Newman's character, Reggie Dunlop, has a basis in real life. Namely former NHL tough guy Reggie Fleming, who, just like Newman in the movie, just wouldn't retire from the game he loved.

The script, written by Ned Dowd's sister, Nancy, was based on her own experiences. Of course, lots of it is pure fiction. But there were also lots of stuff going on in that league that were so unreal no one would believed it. Or would you believe I team being so fight happy that the opponents had to skate off the ice backwards just to avoid being jumped?

Remember. Unlike baseball, football, and basketball players, hockey players didn't go thru college back then. They usually came from mining towns or the wheat country, without any education to fall back on. Hockey was their one-way ticket out.

And, yes, I love this movie. It's easily one of the best sports movies ever made. Don't take my word for it. Most NHL players seem to enjoy it just as much as I do.

And if you're a hockey coach, I can't think of anything better to pump up the players before a game than showing this movie....

---

HAT TRICK.
Many were amazed that SLAP SHOT was written by a woman when it was released in 1977. More amazing was that Nancy Dowd's original screenplay was robbed of an Oscar nomination in 1977. Dowd got the feel of the game and the players as perfect as the paint on the blue lines (her brother Ned Dowd plays the infamous Oggie Ogelthorpe in a nano-second cameo that has reverbs throughout the film). George Roy Hill works his A-list players, Newman, Strother Martin and the now heralded Hanson Brothers, into sports (not just sports films) legends. SLAP SHOT is a winner.