Replace Tony Young with Robert Fuller

Expand Peter Brown's part Although he's a tough wiry athletic guy, we still wouldn't let him fight Bill

NITEOWL RECASTING:   Since all of us found Tony Young wrong for this part, a few  suggested Peter Brown and Young should have traded roles.  But we decided if we were going to recast, why not get rid of Young altogether?  We agreed we would bring in Robert Fuller.  But should he replace Tony Young as Mitch or come in as Al and bump Peter Brown up to play Mitch?.  (Although like Peter Brown, we generally prefer Fuller in westerns, he  played a Viet Nam vet on a chopper in The Hard Ride.).  In our video group Peter and Bob both have a strong following but it's the same following.  Since we liked the hint of Chad Cooper Peter brought to Al,  we figured the best thing would have been to expand Peter's part and let the less humorous Robert Fuller play Mitch.

Tom Simcox to
replace Michael Stearns

CHICK NOTE:  We figured if we were going to recast, we'd go one step further and replace the undistinguished Michael Stearns with Tom Simcox.  We'd keep Marvin Gaye though.  He didn't do much but  he looked good in his cowboy hat on the motorcycle.  [Gaye had previously been in a Lee Major's TV movie but otherwise stuck to playing himself in rock documentaries.]

ALTERNATIVE RECASTING:

Some of us  figured the best thing would be to let William Smith play both T.J. and Mitch, although that might have spoiled the fight scenes.

Keep gruff, tough, buff William Smith as T.J.

Add the kinder, gentler (but still buff) William Smith as Mitch. [Pic taken from Run, Angel, Run" 1969]

Note from Bill:  While one of the NiteOwls was doing an interview with Bill, they played Bill's karate  instructor scene from The Insiders aka Policewomen [video title].  That's Bill's only scene in the movie in which Tony Young is one of the stars.  Bill mentioned how much he likes Tony and what a great guy he is to work with.  So now we feel kind of bad.that we slammed Tony in this movie.  To make up for it we'll have to do our page on Rape Squad for our Peter Brown site soon.  We mostly hated Peter in that but Tony had a nice little part as a sleazy date rapist.  We'll treat him better.  He was also good in a Lawman episode in which Peter's character takes him down in a fist fight.