Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5468 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-10-07
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 119 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Paul Newman and his Butch Cassidy director, George Roy Hill, made a very original comedy in this 1977 story of an over-the-hill player/coach (Newman) for a lousy hockey team who gets results when he teaches his players to get dirty. One of the most hilariously profane movies ever to come out of Hollywood, this is the kind of film that makes its own rules as it goes along. Newman is very good, and while Hill goes for the gusto in terms of capturing the violence of this world, his instinct for comedy has never been sharper. Great support from Strother Martin, Paul Dooley, and the rest. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
A rougher version of George Roy Hill's pet theme of men as overaged adolescents, SLAP SHOT stars Paul Newman as Reggie Dunlop, the venerable player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a fifth-rate minor league hockey team. When their blue-collar town falls prey to Rust Belt ills of the 1970s, attendance drops, and the greedy owner starts looking for a buyer, anxious to cash out. Dunlop is informed that the players need to crank up the box office to keep their jobs in what will likely be their last season. To the coach's dismay, general manager Joe McGrath (Strother Martin) imports the Hanson brothers, a hockey Three Stooges who like to assault soda machines and play with toys. But once Dunlop turns them loose, they're a Panzer division on ice, and the team starts winning by adopting their bone-crushing style. Although the team is on the upswing, Dunlop's wife, Francine (Jennifer Warren), seems to be through with him, and the isolated wives of the other players aren't much happier with their fate. This sidesplitting, profanity saturated film is one of the funniest ever made about any sport. While writer Nancy Dowd intended to probe darker issues--such as the greed of ownership, the blood lust of fans, and the childishness of the players--Hill submerges them in raucous laughter. Newman is near his peak as the romantic, manipulative, womanizing, hard-drinking coach, and the high-sticking Hanson brothers achieve comic immortality in their only film appearance.

Customer Reviews

Ice cool Newman should win some scalps for this one
A laugh out loud tale of naked protests, team fights, and blood thirsty goons.

Whoever says this film is strictly for ice hockey fans needs to cool off in the sin bin.

The movie is more in the tradition of the likes of Brassed Off and The Full Monty (there is even an on-ice strip show of sorts during the film's finale) than a sports buff's movie.

Of course, ice hockey fans will love it, but so will cult film enthusiasts, Newman fans, and your typical lads and ladettes.

The movie's lead, ice-cool Newman, is on familiar territory as an anti-hero. His Chiefs player-coach is a boozed up loser with an estranged wife, a mid-life crisis and and a team full of misfits.

To exacerbate Newman's problems, the main factory in town goes bust. With the townfolk struggling to put food on their tables, Newmans gate receipts will plummet. The team will soon face ruin. And without a single hint of tealent between them, the players futures look grim at best.

With the debtors zeroing in, the Chiefs manager gives in to the inevitable - he puts the rink up for sale to big business to turn it into a shopping centre. But steel-eyed Newman rumbles him. With the Chiefs his and his team's only hope of a sufferable future, he has to get his skates on (sorry!) to solve the mounting crisis, and get the fans back in - whether they can afford it or not.

Rumbling a plan is one thing, but making money out of the league's least-liked team is another entirely.

But Newman has an inspiration - and this time it's not eating eggs cool-hand Luke style. He gets his team to pander to the ice hockey crowd's instatiable thirst for blood.

And to inspire his Chiefs to brutalise some scalps, he hires the most feared players in the league: the lank-haired, bespectacled Hanson brothers, whose casually violent schtick is nothing less than hilarious.

The immature agressors beat up vending machines, trash hotel rooms, crunch opponents, and slam referees even before games start - they even knock out the organ player!

Hell, it's carried outn with such humour and aplomb that it is a side-splitting ride. Of course, as with all films where humour or action is the main point of interest, the links to the action are dull. But with action as bloody, gritty and funny as in Slapshot, the lulls are well worthwile.

Anway. Do they win through in the end, or does Newman's Stone Ageplan force a retreat to the caves? The only way to find out how the visual feast unfolds is to experience itn yourself. So what the puck are you waiting for?

Slap Shot - Side splitting humour.
A film for everyone who laughed at anything. From sheer slapstick humour to black comic violence, it is a sheer eye waterer. The Hansons should have had ther own film.

It has lots of set plays where you just wait to see what happens next, from the drunk hockey star to the poser - it's got it all. From a bunch of loser with no back bone to the roughest toughest bunch of winners in the league it builds up to a bloodbath then leaves you completely bemused with the weirdest ending to a sports film ever.

You have to see this film. If only just to say you have, but once isn't enough.

the best shot ever at sports genre

Paul newman is class itself as the leather adorned ,abusive ,crooked but delightful hockey coach in a great sports comedy dealing with the on field and behind the scenes adventures of an ice-hockey team .

it is screwball,pantomime ,satire whatever but never has a dull moment to reckon .

there are multiple strands and lots of foul mouted, sordid ,sporty men with loads of profanities both verbal and visual but it is all relevantly integrated into the compact script.

roy hill was a really great maker who had a great sense of comic timing and he has a script to reckon with a fabulous cast -the results are an exemplary sports genre comedy for all times.

newman aged really gracefully and he looks so comfortable in his glorious middle -age with the younger players ,this is a very amusing movie despite it's conventional theme and somewhat predictable premises because it is great entertainment .

look out for micheal ontkeans hilarious dance act-striptease on the pitch -a must see.
- jbz7879