Tilt

A teenage Brooke Shields stars as the title character, a pinball playing savant who's recruited by a singer who plans to exploit her talents to get even with a smug bar owner known as The Whale (Charles Durning). Despite Shields' popularity at the time, this one squeaked in and out of cinemas unnoticed. It's ploddingly paced (eleven minutes were later trimmed by the director) but good performances make up for some of the film's other shortcomings. Two things struck me when I viewed it again recently. First, it feels like a film version of a stage play. Second, "Long Road to Texas" is one of the weakest songs on the soundtrack and it's very annoyingly used as the recurring theme song.

TILT never had a DVD release, and it should be noted that there's two different versions of the film circulating. The original version runs 111 minutes and includes brief appearances by Lorenzo Lamas and Fred Ward (TREMORS), who were chopped out of the abridged print.