Slap Shot

Slap Shot (1977) is George Roy Hill's sports comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Paul Newman plays Reggie Dunlop, the graying player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a going-nowhere club stuck at the bottom of a dead-end minor league.

The mill town that feeds the team is shutting down, the fans have stopped coming, and the franchise is days from folding. Out of desperation, Reggie bets everything on brawling. Enter the Hanson Brothers — three bespectacled goons who turn into a wrecking crew the second the puck drops, flattening anyone in their way. Crowds starved for a spectacle pour back into the rink. The wins return along with the blood on the ice, and Reggie, a cynic to the bone, keeps dragging his squad deeper into goon hockey until he has to decide what matters more — the gate receipts or the dignity of the game.

Nancy Dowd wrote it from stories her hockey-playing brother told her, which is why the locker-room profanity and grind ring so unnervingly true. The raw language and violence scandalized 1977 audiences, then the film became a cult favorite among sports fans, with the Hansons a legend all their own. Crude, very funny, and quietly sad about dying towns. Stream Slap Shot (1977) online on iFILM.