In 2023, I started to have an itch to find a 1970s movie that I didn’t even know the title of. I described it in my article, “My Quest to Find an Obscure 1970s Film.” It’s frustrating to be convinced that I know something but not be able to describe it well enough to have anyone else recognize it.

As time passed, and I didn’t find what I was searching for, I started to question my own memory. Did I actually watch a movie when I was a teenager that I knew at the time was old and obscure?

A Turning Point in My Quest

Watching Standout: The Ben Kjar Story recently reminded me of a website I had gone to a while ago to help me in my search. That film was directed by Tanner Christensen, the son of T.C. Christensen, who directed lots of films I’m familiar with, like The Touch of the Master’s Hand.

This proved to be a turning point in my quest. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the obscure movie I was looking for involved Latter-day Saint filmmakers like the Christensens. So I went back to http://ldsfilm.com/dir.html to look at the films listed on there. It hasn’t been updated for years, but that’s okay because I wasn’t looking for anything new.

I scrolled for a while until I finally saw something that caught my eye: Rivals (1979; a.k.a. “The Stranger at Jefferson High”, 1981). I remembered that the film I was looking for involved a competition between a new boy in school and a bully. Both of those titles seemed to call out to me because they seemed to describe those ideas. And that film was made in the 1970s!

I Found the Film

Here is how I described the plot of the film I was seeking in my previous article:

“A teenage boy moves to a new town and gets bullied by a bigger boy. He starts to fall in love with a nice girl, and the two share a disco dance together at a party one night. At the climax, the boy races against his bully in his car on a beach, and one of their cars crashes, pinning a passenger inside as the tide is rising. I don’t remember who is trapped inside, but I do know it’s not the bully because he has a change of heart and helps in the effort to flag down a driver to help them save the passenger who’s in danger of drowning.”

As it turns out, I nailed the plot almost perfectly, including the disco dance at a nighttime party. Rivals is the movie I was trying to find all these years! It’s not the best movie ever made, but you can watch it here.

Similar to Films That Came Before and After It

Rivals has elements of lots of films I enjoy. These include:

• American Graffiti – The film’s climax involves a car race and crash.
• Edward Scissorhands – The hero gets conned into doing something illegal, and he gets trapped by the bully and delivered to the authorities. He takes the fall for the crime and refuses to give up the names of anyone else involved in it.
• The Karate Kid – When I would tell people about this film, they assumed I was talking about The Karate Kid, but I promised them it was different, even though both involve a teenager driving across the country with his family to California to start a new life, falling in love with his bully’s old girlfriend, and facing off with him in the end.
• Uncle Buck – The hero uses creative means to prevent a female family member from making a big mistake with a horny boyfriend. Uncle Buck turned out to have the wrong girl, but the principle is still the same. In both cases, the girl is thankful for the hero’s actions.

Unmistakable Handprint

It’s so satisfying to have a long search come to an end like this. The reason Rivals felt like an LDS production is because it was in some ways. The composer is Lex de Azevedo, the writer is Kieth Merrill, and the director is Lyman Dayton, all of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That’s pretty cool! Their work left an impression on me. When you meet a Latter-day Saint or see something they’ve made, you tend to get a feeling about them that they can’t hide.

If you’d like to watch a film that involves a good kid doing his best to navigate a world of cynicism, Rivals might be just up your alley. I like films where one character makes a positive difference in other people’s lives. Probably because that’s what I try to do in my own life.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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