Samantha Wendel
Cotton Candy (1978)
Directed bY Ron Howard
Ron Howard—director, producer, actor, writer, narrator and
boyish man of many blunders—presents Cotton Candy, a
ZOOED OUT and TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS film. This made-for-TV
movie comes across as an after school special gutted of its
controversy and stuffed like a Turducken with heavy-handed
innocence, delving into the perils of high school and the
eternal struggle between Bubblegum and Hard Rock.
Amidst a slurry of turkeys, chicks and ripped ligaments,
George Smalley sets out to find an outrageous way to really
blow the doors off his senior year.
George, played with youthful enthusiasm by then
twenty-four-year-old Charles Martin Smith, is a high school
senior desperate to involve himself in more school activities.
Driven by a desire to prove to his parents that he’s more than
a wallflower with latent homosexual tendencies, George tries
out for varsity football. When refused due to inexperience, his
pal Corky Macpherson, played by the illustrious Clint Howard,
pressures him into trying out for an open guitar slot in the
greatest Eric Clapton cover band in the Dallas metroplex,
Rapid Fire.
Rapid Fire front man Torbin Bequette (Mark Wheeler) makes
his first appearance glistening in pyrotechnic splendor and
swollen with vibrato, crooning a very lustful version of “I Shot
The Sheriff.” After Rapid Fire’s intense 40-second set, George
approaches Torbin about a tryout. Torbin scoffs and George,
now rejected from football and by the local rock ‘n’ roll god of
pleather, decides to start his own band. Like most people who
go on to do great things, George takes his inspiration from a
series of events rooted in embarrassment and ridicule–not
that the thing he’s inspired to do is great, because it’s not,
but you know what I mean. After the dismissal of the new
wave-inspired band name Hot Rash, it is decided that Cotton
Candy is more