2 Mar 2018

The Bad News Bears (USA, 1976 & 2005)

The Bad News Bears (USA, 1976 & 2005)

The Bad News Bears (USA, 1976) 
Director: Michael Ritchie, starring: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow...

A scene in the Bonanza arcade shows the juvenile delinquent Kelly playing air hockey for money.

From left to right, the complete lineup is:  Hee Haw (Chicago Coin, 1973), Jumping Jack (Gottlieb, 1973), Klondike (Williams, 1971), High Hand (Gottlieb, 1973)...

In the background on the right may be a few more amongst some other arcade games, but too they are hard to make out. There is a racing car game which looks much like a Gran Trak 10 (Atari, 1974), but the side of the cabinet has been repainted a solid color instead of the stencil art, and the front art doesn't quite match either...

The man loses and Kelly tries to hit on a girl playing a wedgehead pinball. The complete lineup is Paul Bunyan (Gottlieb, 1968) (just a bit of the backbox side), Bali-Hi   (Bally, 1970), Big Indian (Gottlieb, 1974), Gulfstream (Williams, 1973), Fun-Fest (Williams, 1973), and the girl is playing a Flip A Card (Gottlieb, 1970)...

Bali-Hi is apparently a rare game, with only 80 units ever made, however, it can also be spotted in an episode of The Rockford Files ("Dirty Money, Black Light", season 3, 1977).

Then Tatum walks in and plays him on condition that if she wins, he has to play ball with the Bears, and if he wins, she goes on a date with him...

High Hand (Gottlieb, 1973) behind her...


Bad News Bears (USA, 2005)
Director: Richard Linklater, starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden...

For whatever reasons, they decided to remake this classic. The air-hockey battle/bet has been "modernized" to a skateboard battle, but  since it was directed by our pinball-loving friend Linklater, he managed to squeeze in a couple of pinball machines, although they are only onscreen for less than 3 seconds.

From left to right, Kiss (Bally, 1979), Skateball (Bally, 1980), and another that I can't identify because the girl is blocking most of it...


3 comments:

  1. Here is a screen grab https://imgur.com/lunfjZM from the 1975 classic The Giant Spider Invasion. Can you identify this machine? I thought it said "BREAD" as in the band thinking how bizarre if they actually had a pinball machine in their honor.

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    1. Whoa! My blog has been inactive for a while now and no-one ever comments, so I didn't notice until now... the machine is a Dixieland by Bally, 1968... https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=692

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  2. I'm here because I also googled about "bread pinball machine giant spider inavasion" lol

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