Movie Slots
The monsters slot machine
Top of the World
Top of the World
In the 1997 all out action movie Top of the World, Ray, an ex-cop newly released from prison for minor embezzlement, goes to Vegas with his wife to get a quickie divorce. Unknown to him, she is currently involved with a casino owner, and on the way to Ray's hotel they stop off at one of his casinos called, well, the Top of the World. Breaking the terms of his parole, Ray goes inside and starts feeding the slots with his last few dollars. Then, hey presto! He wins the jackpot. A cool $430,000. But his timing couldn't be worse.
Because before he can collect the money the casino is robbed. Worse still, he's mistaken for one of the gang. Although the bad guys can't seem to escape, spending a whole twenty minutes on just one staircase, Ray manages to slip away and spends the rest of the film trying to avoid the police and prove his innocence.
If it's a fast paced movie with an enormous body count you're after, then this is for you. A seemingly endless supply of bullets? No problem. Funny jokes important? How's your sense of humour? Plausible plot? Debatable. Great acting? Do you like puppet theatre? Editing howlers? It provides. In the immortal words of Kasper Mortensen from Denmark, 'the only good thing about this movie is that it only wasted 95 minutes of my life.'
What about other genres featuring slot machines?
Well. there are cartoons such as the 1954 Tom and Jerry like caper Of Mice and Menace, the 1938 Ghost Town Frolics, and the 1937 Magic on Broadway, where a player tries to cheat the machines, whereupon they beat him up. For a documentary, there's the 1980 German film Monarch which follows a professional gambler who specialises in playing the Monarch machines. And perhaps the most unusual is the 1936 film Swing It where, between songs, Louis Prima tells how he chanced upon his job in a Hollywood cafe playing music, whilst in the background, a couple totally unrelated to anything, play a slot machine.
On television, even the cult show The Twilight Zone got in on the act, featuring an episode where a man develops gambling fever playing a slot machine he believes is talking to him.
But what about the cowboys?
Where's the spaghetti western?
Well, sadly, the slot machine wasn't invented until 1881, making it much too late for our gun-slinging heroes. But there are plenty of movies about time machines, aren't there? Now, there's an idea......................
Over and out.