Review for Baxter!

1973 was a good year for movies. Soylent Green, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist, Badlands, to name but a few (The Sting, The Last Tango in Paris, and American Graffiti just to name a few more, though you’ve got the idea).
Set against such incredible competition during perhaps the last of cinema’s halcyon years, it’s little wonder that a film like ‘Baxter!’ should be somewhat side-lined.


It’s a film that has gained a considerable cult following amongst enthusiasts who remember it and its release will be much welcomed. After all, dodgy off-air recordings have been trading for north of £20 for some time.


Scott Jacoby, who plays ‘Baxter’, has a frighteningly familiar face though I’ll be damned if I can recall seeing him in anything else specifically. Perhaps it’s because he looks frighteningly like a young Paul Michael Glazier from Starsky and Hutch . He just exudes early seventies USA to me – not as exotic as it sounds as I lived there then, eventually moving back to the UK at the age of 13, replete with pudding bowl Jimmy Osmond haircut and broad American accent. So the movie would have definitely appealed to me in the day. Had I seen it. Which I hadn’t.

The trouble with not having seen ‘Baxter’ in the day is that I can’t now view it with the same rose-tinted spectacles as those that did – so I can only really imagine the strength of its nostalgic appeal.


Scott plays a young American teenager, Roger, who, following the break-up of his parents, travels to the UK with his Mother who is far too pre-occupied with her own demons to notice Baxter very much. What’s worse for Baxter is that he suffers from a Jonathon Ross like speech impediment with his ‘r’s sounding like ‘w’s. Weally wotten luck.


As a result he has speech therapy, and all this in parallel with his ‘coming of age’ among a tribe of British school kids. Roger Baxter is adrift in London. Now living with his selfish, uncaring mother in an unfamiliar city, it is only the kindness of his neighbours that begins to show Roger the love that has been absent from his life.


It definitely pulls at the heart-strings as he finds three different types of love in the most unexpected of places. First up is his speech therapist Dr. Roberta Clemm (Patricia Neal) who becomes the youngster’s confidante.


Then he lucks out by having Britt Ekland as a neighbour (probably hot off the set of ‘The Wicker Man’ which was released the same year. Nice!) , Chris Bentley, who really cares about him, and who introduces him to another neighbour, Jean-Pierre Cassell who, whilst referencing ‘The Galloping Gourmet’ (a popular TV chef of the day) has fun cooking with Baxter and shows him that not all men are aloof , controlling and angry, like his Father.
Add to that a frisson of adolescent ‘stirrings’ in relation to a certain Sally Thompson (her off ‘The Railway Children’ and ‘Man About the House’) who is in every way a smokin’ babe in Baxter’s adolescent eyes (well, she literally smokes which is a bit risqué and edgy).



However, it could all be too little too late as his pent up anxieties start to get the better of him, leading to some pretty dire consequences. Whatever the case, at least he knows that there are now people around who really do care about him.


Baxter! is presented in a brand-new digital transfer in its original theatrical aspect ratio from original film elements and, apart from a little 70’s grain (that grading was popular at the time, almost as if it gave films an air of ‘realism’) it looks in good shape.



It comes with the original trailer (full of spoilers so don’t watch until after!), an image gallery and a PDF of some promotional material featuring a great period illustration that looks like it came straight off the cover of ‘Look-In’. Fab!



Probably a bit marginal for the casual viewer though absolute gold-dust for those who remember this with the warm glow of nostalgia which it positively oozes.