Puck You!

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2020)

What DOCTOR STRANGELOVE did for Cold War politics and nuclear war, and NETWORK did for television news, the 1977 film SLAP SHOT does for ice hockey: It skewers the sport in a way that is so scatological and blackly funny. And moreover, it got us to see and hear Paul Newman in a way that we had never heard him before.
Under the assured direction of George Roy Hill, who directed Newman (and Robert Redford) in two incredible box offices smashes (1969's BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID; 1973's THE STING), and a truly explosive, four-letter-word-ridden screenplay by Nancy Dowd, SLAP SHOT stars Newman as the coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a once-proud minor-league franchise that has fallen on a lot of hard times...as in, they haven't had a winning season in ages! Worst of all, the steel mill in town is getting ready to shutter its gates forever, leaving the few fans left in Charlestown without jobs, and hence without enough money to get to see a franchise that continues on the downhill slide towards obsolescence.
But then the Chiefs' general manager, played by the inimitable Strother Martin, concocts a scheme that pays off dividends: He hires three brothers, the infamous Hanson Brothers (Jeff Carlson; Steve Carlson; Dave Hanson) who, how shall we put this, have a far different idea of how hockey should be played. It is with fists, brutality, and a bit of blood being spilled. Newman has already gotten into part of the act by baiting the opposing teams' players and coaches with all manner of imprecations, but the presence of the Hansons just ups the energy even more. The Chiefs suddenly become the toast of the Federal Hockey League and their hometown fans, especially when Newman, over the radio, offers a $100 bounty to knock the living stuffing out of the Syracuse coach during a game. But as it turns out, everything isn't quite what it seems....
Even after having played some fairly non-conformist characters like HUD and COOL HAND LUKE, it isn't likely that audiences had ever seen anything what they saw in Newman in his role here as Reggie Dunlop. The man literally swears like a Marine in this film; and the stuff he says had to have been considered outrageous for the late 1970s. After films like SCARFACE, FULL METAL JACKET, and practically any Quentin Tarantino film you can name upped the four-letter-word quotient into the hundreds, it probably seems less so. But since it was a woman who wrote the screenplay, it's still a bit hard for some to take. The scenes of hockey violence, though far less gratuitous than what was to come, are still fairly savage, given that they are often spiked with the scatologoical language and humor, though the "strip tease" thing at the end, done by the one Chiefs player (Michael Ontkean) who mostly refuses to indulge in the blood and guts aspect of the thing, does "lighten" the mood up, so to speak.
With some solid supporting turns by folks like Melinda Dillon, Lindsay Crouse, M. Emmett Walsh, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jennifer Warren, SLAP SHOT remains easily one of the most jaw-droppingly funny black comedies of all times. Just don't let the under-age set watch it unaccompanied.