Mother, Jugs & Speed *** (1976, Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, Harvey Keitel, Allen Garfield, Bruce Davison, L Q Jones, Larry Hagman) – Classic Movie Review 8465

The 1976 comedy drama film Mother, Jugs and Speed stars the unlikely trio of Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel as paramedics working for a privately owned Los Angeles ambulance company.

Director Peter Yates’s 1976 comedy drama Mother, Jugs and Speed stars the unlikely trio of Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel, and is written by the expert Tom Mankiewicz, based on the story by Mankiewicz and Stephen Manes. It is not a great movie but it is quite a good one.

Cosby (as Mother), Welch (and yes, Raquel is alas called Jugs) and Keitel (as Speed) star as three paramedics working for a privately owned Los Angeles ambulance company. Cosby plays the rogue veteran driver, Welch the despatch woman and Keitel a cop suspended on charges of selling drugs. Their cut-throat company is competing with a rival to get to the scene accidents first and thus get the money for transporting the injured.

Mother, Jugs and Speed is an unwieldy scattershot mix of black farce and wild drama, but it is very likeable and rousingly done, with the exciting performances to the fore — Allen Garfield as Harry Fishbine, Bruce Davison as Leroy, L Q Jones as Davey and Larry Hagman as Murdoch score strongly too. The fired-up British director Yates (1929–2011) directs with all the inspiration and energy of the man who did the action and car chases in Robbery (1967) and Bullitt (1968).

Cosby’s the driver and Welsh the nurse. Thanks guys for the pre-movie warning that real life isn’t like this!

The producers turned a condemned pool hall in Venice, California, into the F & B Ambulance Company.

It was a hit. Costing $3,000,000, it grossed $20,000,000 in the US.

Also in the cast are Dick Butkus, Valerie Curtin, Milt Kamen, Barra Grant, Allan Warnick, Ric Carrott, Severn Darden, Bill Henderson, Michael McManus and Linda Geray.

Harvey Keitel celebrated his 80th birthday on 13 May 2019.

The legendary Harvey Keitel celebrated his 80th birthday on 13 May 2019. He is famed for a whole slew of great performances in great movies but Bugsy (1991) is his only Oscar or Golden Globe nomination.

He has most memorably appeared in Mean Streets (1973), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), The Duellists (1977), Blue Collar (1978), The Two Jakes (1990), Thelma and Louise (1991), Bugsy (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992) Pulp Fiction (1994), The Piano (1993), Bad Lieutenant (1992), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Cop Land (1997), and Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (2015).

Jo Raquel Welch (née Tejada; September 5, 1940 – February 15, 2023) .

Raquel Welch [Jo Raquel Tejada] died at her home in Los Angeles on 15 February 2023 after a brief illness, aged 82.

Raquel Welch was first cast in small roles in A House Is Not a Home (1964) and the Elvis Presley musical Roustabout (1964). Her first featured role was in the beach film A Swingin’ Summer (1965). She landed a seven-year non-exclusive contract with 20th Century Fox. After casting Welch in a leading role in Fantastic Voyage, 20th Century Fox loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in the spectacular 1966 prehistoric fantasy adventure One Million Years BC, as Loana the Fair One, dressed only in mankind’s first two-piece deer skin bikini.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8465

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