Short Takes

VICTORY OVER VHS OBLIVION! After 24 weeks among CineSchlock-O-Rama's Most Wanted, the sad passing of an American icon appears to have expedited this capture.

A widower and Kentucky coal miner (Johnny Cash) packs up his youngins and skedaddles to the big city in search of treatment for his daughter's pretzel'd spine. Yet enrolling his son in high school, applying for a job or even reading a story at the bedside of his little girl becomes rife with tension and prime emotive potential for The Man in Black, because for all his years, JESSE NEVER LEARNED TO READ!!! Oh, if there EVER were a template for the made-for-TV tearjerker! Blackhearted CineSchlockers will be hard-pressed to keep from grinning ear-to-ear as Brenda Vaccaro gets Jesse SO hooked on phonics that, as the genre demands, he also ends up HOT for teacher! Unlike the next made-for-TV gem in the Gary Nelson/Johnny Cash trilogy, Murder in Coweta County, the legend lends a few tunes to the soundtrack: "Moving Up," "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal" and "Paradise." (1981, 96 mins, Fullframe, DD mono, half-hour "The Johnny Cash Story" radio tribute, Photos.)