Bus Riley's Back in Town

As Bus Riley, Michael Parks shuffles and mumbles his way through this small-town melodrama. He's a former sailor twice jilted by the voluptuous Ann-Margret, who has married a sugar daddy but still fancies Bus. There are lots of secondary characters - Jocelyn Brando is Bus's mother, Janet Margolin the "nice" girl in town - all well knitted together by debutant director Harvey Hart who came from TV. Parks is something of a weakness - the movie really needed a Robert Redford or a Warren Beatty - but this is a quiet, understated study of frustrated ambition. The original author, noted playwright William Inge, had his real name removed from the credits and the movie bombed at the box office.