Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976)

          Offering a slight twist on the disaster-flick formula, bland telefilm Smash-Up on Interstate 5 begins with the titular catastrophe—a 39-vehicle accident in Southern California—then rolls back to the clock 48 hours. This structure sidesteps the fact that a car accident, by its nature, precludes conventional narrative tension. After all, it’s impossible to anticipate a freak occurrence, whereas if an ocean liner is sinking, a skyscraper is burning, or an earthquake and its aftershocks are happening, characters have time to contemplate impending doom. Smash-Up at Interstate 5 makes a reasonable effort to contrive drama between the setup and payoff, and to create empathy for a spectrum of characters played by a typically hodgepodge TV-movie cast.
          The nominal protagonist is California Highway Patrol Sergeant Sam (Robert Conrad), an adrenaline junkie whose girlfriend, nurse Laureen (Donna Mills), worries she can’t build a life with such a reckless man. Laureen’s sister, Barbara (Sian Barbara Allen), is married to another cop, Jimmy (Tommy Lee Jones), and they’re expecting a child. You get the idea—per the template for this sort of thing, Smash-Up invents lots of ticking-clock plotlines to give the accident as much impact as possible. Other threads include an elderly couple (Buddy Ebsen and Harriet Nelson) dealing with terminal illness, a middle-aged woman (Vera Miles) swept off her feet by a younger man (David Groh), and a small-time crook (Scott Jacoby) taken hostage by a robber on a killing spree. It’s all quite pedestrian, of course, but the ensemble approach ensures that whenever a scene starts to drag, the film is just a cut away from something livelier.
          Directed by small-screen workhorse John Llewelyn Moxley, Smash-Up on Interstate 5 delivers the requisite mixture of romance, pathos, schmaltz, and tragedy. As with most such telefilms, whether any particular scene commands the viewer’s interest depends largely on the viewer’s enjoyment of particular actors—Conrad does his stoic bit, Ebsen provides folksy warmth, Miles lends a touch of elegance, and so forth. (Points to Herb Edelman for his brief but pungent appearance as a swinger.) Alas, the element the movie handles least effectively is the big accident—despite giving a solid blast of crashes and explosions and stunts, the movie rushes through the aftermath too quickly, denying viewers the carnage they’ve been promised for more than 90 minutes.
 
Smash-Up on Interstate 5: FUNKY

Not a Pretty Picture (1976)

          Before launching her long career as a director of mainstream comedies and dramas for both film and television with the 1983 teen romance Valley Girl, Martha Coolidge mixed documentary and fiction techniques for her feature debut Not a Pretty Picture, a cinematic meditation on Coolidge’s experience as a victim of sexual assault. (Long available only on the fringes of the marketplace, the film received a posh Criterion release in 2024.) This is bracing work with enduring relevance—one of the movie’s first conversations involves women saying “me too” while sharing their stories. In some ways, Not a Pretty Picture provides even more fulsome discourse on sexual assault than is present in today’s comparatively enlightened climate, simply because the actor tasked with portraying the rapist offers a perspective on male sexual impulses that would get a man cancelled today. His honesty reflects the ethos of the project.
          Not a Pretty Picture is divided almost equally between dramatic re-creations of Coolidge’s high-school years and behind-the-scenes footage of Coolidge rehearsing her actors. The most ingenious aspect of the film’s structure is that the actual assault is never shown. Additionally, the moments immediately preceding and following the assault are presented only as rehearsal footage, rather than staged scenes. Coolidge has said she wanted the ability to interrupt the assault sequence so she could rap with her actors about their feelings. Michele Manenti, who plays 16-year-old Martha, was also raped in high school, so her ability to compartmentalize her emotions while acting is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist but was in real life a longtime friend of Manenti’s, talks about how the male adolescent’s drive for conquest (combined with the pervasive fallacy that all women secretly desire forceful sex) renders the male adolescent blind to moral implications when things get heated.
         Not a Pretty Picture doesn’t achieve everything it attempts. The staged scenes are credible but stilted, and the inexperience of the performers is apparent when they read scripted dialogue (less so when they improvise). Coolidge appears onscreen throughout the rehearsal scenes, so it’s both distracting and fascinating to guess at her thought process while events unfold—she mostly lets the film speak for her, though powerful exchanges about agency and guilt happen between Coolidge and Manenti. The movie also doesn’t have much of an ending—hardly a design flaw, since Not a Pretty Picture was engineered to spark conversations, but the lack of resolution is awkward. Viewed critically, the movie comes across as a rough draft for some more polished effort that never materialized. Viewed empathetically, it’s a deeply personal statement in which a filmmaker uses her chosen medium to explore a traumatic experience.

Not a Pretty Picture: GROOVY

8.5 Million Views!

Hey there, groovy people! I remain humbled and thrilled that even as Every ’70s Movie moves inexorably toward its 15th birthday (coming your way this October), new and longtime readers alike continue to enjoy this content. For those who’ve been here a while, you know where this is going: the blog just crossed another wild milestone because the lifetime-view tally is now more than 8.5 million. This sustained enthusiasm is all the encouragement I need to keep going with the project. Happily, the set of titles I mentioned in the last post of this nature has not yet been fully tapped, so my plan is to continue posting at least one or two new reviews every month, with brief flurries of more frequent posting whenever I get the bandwidth to watch and write up newly unearthed obscurities. Meantime, if any of you out there in the wilds of the Weird Wide Web have access to something not yet represented on the blog, don’t be shy about sharing! (Earlier this year I named the elusive titles that are highest on my to-see list.) Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Until next time, thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on!

Mister Deathman (1977)

Among the many criticisms fairly directed at Mister Deathman, a modestly budgeted thriller filmed in South Africa, one cannot fault leading man David Broadnax for timidity: the first-time actor wrote the story for his sole appearance as a 007-esque secret agent. Presumably Broadnax hoped Mister Deathman would initiate a franchise, but instead the movie barely got a release in the ’70s before landing in the cultural graveyard of bottom-shelf ‘80s home video. (A sure sign the folks responsible for marketing Mister Deathman doubted its financial prospects is the outrageous use of Pam Grier’s image on the poster, despite the fact that neither she nor anyone who resembles her appears in the flick.) Mister Deathman is confusing, dumb, pointless, and repetitive, all of which could be said about many of the 007 pictures it emulates—but at least those movies are also fun, sexy, and spectacular. Broadnax plays Geoffrey Graves, an ex-spy hired by aerospace executives who are being blackmailed for $50 million. A mysterious villain (never shown onscreen) kidnapped the scientist who designed the executives’ planned space shuttle and now threatens to sell the scientist’s secrets to competitors. Clues regarding this yawn-inducing scheme lead Graves to South Africa, where he battles various underlings including Liz (Stella Stevens, unsubtly coded as a lesbian for no particular reason). Most of the picture comprises scenes of Graves escaping from ridiculous traps with ease. In one bit, he discovers his car was sabotaged before encountering any danger; in another, he’s chained to a rocky shore at low tide and left alone so he can free himself. Mister Deathman has a few gadgets, ladies, and underground hideaways, but it can’t manage sight gags or verbal zingers. Only the climax, featuring a grounded jet versus an army of trucks, has any kind of wow factor. Given that you’ve never heard of Broadnax (he appeared in only one more movie), it should come as no surprise to learn that even though he’s athletic and self-assured, he’s quite forgettable.

Mister Deathman: LAME

The Kid from Not-So-Big (1978)

          A harmless but unimpressive attempt at mimicking Disney’s family-friendly formula, The Kid from Not-So-Big is somewhat akin to Disney’s silly Apple Dumpling Gang movies—like those pictures, Not-So-Big is a gentle Western comedy involving frontier swindlers, goofy gunslingers, and saintly children. Deepening the Disney alignment, there’s even a tangential connection to theme parks. Six Flags briefly partnered in a production company that generated only two 1978 projects—Barnaby and Me, a koala-themed comedy that was broadcast on Australian television, and Not-So-Big, which probably reached its broadest audience through a Warner Bros. video release in the ‘80s. Given its close adherence to Disney’s style, Not-So-Big would have benefitted from some Mouse House overkill: name actors, posh production values, a zippy mixture of broad farce with cornpone plotting. Although Not-So-Big looks great thanks to the efforts of future A-list cinematographer Dean Cundey, the picture suffers from bland leading performances and script that goes slack in the middle.

          In the whimsically named town of Not-So-Big, precocious preteen Jenny (Jennifer McAllister) does most of the heavy lifting for a tiny newspaper owned by her grandfather, Hank (Don Keefer). When con man Sylvester Quick (Robert Viharo) blows into Not-So-Big with hype about making everyone rich by selling property to big-city investors, Jenny calls BS. First Sylvester torches the newspaper’s office, resulting in Hank’s death. Then Sylvester hires gunman Slowhand (Paul Tulley) to kill Jenny. Per the norm of such stories, Slowhand’s conscience gets in the way, as does his affection for Not-So-Big’s newly installed schoolteacher, Corinne (Veronica Cartwright). If you’ve ever seen a children’s movie, you can figure out how things go from there.

          The first stretch of the movie is fine, setting up a by-the-numbers plot and stock characters in an innocuous manner, and the final act has the requisite mixture of dopey physical comedy and sappy emotional payoffs. Alas, the second act is quite dull and repetitive because the script by Desmond Nakano (who later found a groove writing heavy dramas) grinds through uninteresting subplots. Exacerbating the vanilla storytelling are performances that range from adequate to less so. It’s a kick to see Cartwright playing a girl-next-door type, but McAllister is likeable without actually being charismatic and Viharo is overbearing without actually being menacing. It’s never a good sign when scowling trash-cinema stalwart George “Buck” Flower, playing one of his patented rural schemers, is the liveliest performer onscreen. 
 
The Kid from Not-So-Big: FUNKY

Milestones (1975)

           A filmmaker deeply committed to expressing his far-left political ideology onscreen, Robert Kramer directed the awkward but impassioned Ice (1970), then codirected this sprawling hybrid of documentary and fiction—although Kramer participated in many other projects, Ice and Milestones are probably his most enduring statements. Codirected by John Douglas, Milestones explores the lives of myriad characters connected to Vietnam War-era counterculture. Most of the people who appear onscreen are hippies who’ve dropped out of mainstream society to live in communes and/or radicals who’ve had legal trouble stemming from activism. The picture also features perspectives from the preceding generation, courtesy of parents vexed by the choices of their adult children. Had a more disciplined filmmaker tackled exactly this material—picture an Altmanesque epic—it could have become the definitive cinematic record of its time. Alas, Milestones is a minor historical artifact that many viewers will find boring and pointless.
           Instead of using narration, onscreen text, or at the very least crisp introductory vignettes, the filmmakers spew a largely formless collage of conversations and moments, forcing viewers to intuit much key information through context. As the picture churns through multiple “storylines,” a term that’s only somewhat applicable here, viewers watch folks hang out, share experiences, and talk (endlessly) about their feelings. All of this stems from the queasy mixture of documentary and fiction. Some elements feel like real life caught on camera—particularly the pieces depicting a woman preparing for natural childbirth. Other elements are obviously staged, including two crime scenes. Viewers can make reasonable assumptions about when characters are presenting scripted (or at least prompted) dialogue, as opposed to speaking extemporaneously, because moments featuring “acting” are painfully amateurish.
           Still, a general theme emerges from the sprawl—what do antiwar radicals do once the focus of their activism disappears? Do they return to their families? Do they get jobs? Or do they try to live their counterculture ideals permanently? As one character suggests, “a revolution [is] not just a series of incidents but a whole life.” Unfortunately for all but the most sympathetic viewers, Milestones buries this worthy concept inside a series of drab scenes that span more than three hours. That’s a lot of time to spend watching grungy 16mm footage of hippies strolling naked through the woods, engaging in low-key rap sessions (plus the occasional argument), and so on.
           Excepting the aforementioned crime scenes (plus the climactic sequence of natural childbirth that unfolds in full view of the camera), the most engaging bits are conversations during which characters either speak directly to the movie’s theme or inadvertently capture their historical moment with Me Decade psychobabble. In a particularly absurd moment, self-involved Jimmy, identified as a onetime zoology professor who ditched academia for activism, expresses what a heavy trip it might be to participate in raising his preadolescent son: “I’m his father, and I have a very special kind of relationship. I mean, I dig other kids too, but I can’t brush away my feelings. I mean, maybe it’s just part of me that I have to get on top of.” As if parental obligations are some old-fashioned hangup.
           Kramer and Douglas had to do their own thing, but in retrospect they might have been wise to ditch the fiction elements and focus on capturing life among left-leaning young adults at a confusing time. Whenever the filmmakers try to get overt, they stumble badly, as with a silly dream sequence or the laughable cut from dialogue about a character with fragile emotions to a shot of that character dropping a piece of pottery that shatters.

Milestones: FUNKY

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

          While I’m a reasonably adventurous cinefile, the reputation and running time of Chantal Ackerman’s acclaimed character study Jeanne Dielman kept it near the bottom of my to-view list for decades—I was challenged to muster enthusiasm for a 3.5-hour picture comprising extraordinarily long takes of mundane activities. Even when Jeanne Dielman was named the greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound in 2022 (more on that later), the movie seemed as if it would be a slog to watch. Now that I can finally report back from the other end of Jeanne Dielman’s 201 minutes, of course I understand that being a slog to watch is part of the picture’s design. It’s open to debate whether the film’s abnormal length was the best way achieve her goals, but clearly Ackerman wanted viewers to feel as numbed by repetition as the leading character does. Accordingly, the key question is whether the movie rewards viewers’ time. I believe the answer is yes, though perhaps not to the degree implied by Jeanne Dielman’s placement on the Sight and Sound list.
          For those unfamiliar with the picture, it depicts three days in the life of fortysomething widow Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig), who lives with her young-adult son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), in a Brussels apartment. Jeanne supports the household with sex work, receiving one client per day as part of a highly regimented routine. Up each morning to prepare breakfast and send Syvlain off to school; cleaning, errands, and meal preparation interspersed with occasional childcare for a neighbor’s infant; then evenings spent serving dinner and helping Sylvain with schoolwork, even though he’s so absorbed in reading that he barely communicates with his mother. (The boy’s age and grade level is never stated, but he’s either a high-schooler or a college student.) Jeanne Dielman is as rigidly structured as the title character’s lifestyle, with chapter breaks identifying transitions between days, and the glacially paced plot only gets cooking about halfway through the movie, when an unexplained change in Jeanne’s mental state causes her to become dislodged from everyday activities, for instance dropping a spoon or forgetting to close one button on her housecoat. All of this is preamble to a single noteworthy event, which won’t be spoiled here but which retroactively imbues Jeanne Dielman with layers of meaning.

          It should be apparent by now that appraising Ackerman’s movie by conventional standards is pointless—even though the narrative has an ordinary shape, the style is borderline experimental. Ackerman deliberately avoids opportunities to take us into her leading character’s mind, forcing viewers to extract Jeanne’s psychology from her behavior. (The director reportedly coached leading lady Seyrig to constrain her facial expressions.) Viewers get enough information to grasp the contours of Jeanne’s life, but then Ackerman adds the element that makes Jeanne Dielman so challenging—outrageously long takes of activities ranging from the cleaning of dishes to the preparation of meals. Throughout Jeanne Dielman, a static camera watches Seyrig do uninteresting things in their full durations. Presumably the film’s advocates zero in on this aspect as one of the picture’s great strengths, a means of forcing viewers to engage with the grinding tedium of domestic work.

          And then there’s the climax, which provides a bracing commentary on the toll such domestic work, done in the service of men, has on women.
         I’m certain the film’s champions would argue that it must be watched repeatedly in order to appreciate its profundity. I don’t see that happening anytime soon, though I acknowledge my willingness to watch comparatively dim-witted entertainment films over and over again compares poorly with my reluctance to spend another 201 minutes with Jeanne. Nonetheless, I feel confident that I took much of what the film has to offer from one viewing. Jeanne Dielman is, in its idiosyncratic and unwieldy fashion, both a crisp statement and a potent conversation piece. But could it possibly be the greatest film of all time, as the contributors to Sight and Sound’s list determined? No. It is difficult to perceive that designation as anything other than a rebuttal to decades of male-dominated cinema discourse. However, exalting Jeanne Dielman over enduring films directed by men could also be seen as an amplification of Jeanne Dielman’s message—in a patriarchal society, a woman has to make a hell of a noise to get heard.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles: GROOVY

Gene Hackman, 1930-2025

          Obituaries are not generally a part of this blog, but a rare exception is necessary to mark the passing of Gene Hackman, not only my favorite actor of the ’70s but my favorite actor, full stop. Nothing I could say here is likely to change your appreciation of his gifts—if you’re a reader of this blog, you know what he accomplished in The French Connection (1971), The Conversation (1974), Superman (1978), and so many other films before, during and after the ’70s. He was a master of his craft. He was also, unquestionably, a master who commodified his gifts, often to his detriment. Given the unusual circumstances of his career, namely his lack of conventional leading-man looks and the fact that he didn’t achieve stardom until he was in his 40s, it’s hard to blame the guy for cashing in with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) after winning his first Oscar (for The French Connection). However, it’s also easy to lament that Hackman spent so much of his time acting in junk. The man did a volume business, only periodically focusing on projects truly worthy of his talents.

          As a lifelong fan, it bums me out that his last movie was the disposable comedy Welcome to Mooseport (2004), but I can reasonably assume that Hackman figured if those were the type of projects on offer circa the mid-2000s, retirement was preferable. While those of us who study film history enjoy thinking in terms of bodies of work and legacies, Hollywood professionals often prioritize real-life considerations over how their choices impact filmographies. At a certain point, it’s time to leave the stage. (By the way, no comment is offered on what appear to be the peculiar circumstances of Hackman’s death because lot of questions have yet to be answered.)

          The vexations of his filmography notwithstanding, Hackman rendered a string of indelible performances during a screen career that spanned so many decades different generations likely perceive him in different ways. In the ’60s, he climbed the ranks of supporting actors through work in features and TV, notching a particularly memorable appearance in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). In the ’70s, he was outrageously productive, toplining the aforementioned titles while also sculpting delicate characterizations in I Never Sang for My Father (1970), Cisco Pike (1972), Scarecrow (1973), and Night Moves (1975)—he even found time for a delightful comic turn in Young Frankenstein (1974). Moviegoers in this period knew Hackman as a charismatic, forceful actor capable of transmitting on myriad frequencies. He could bluster (even overact) when that suited the assignment, and he could express fine gradations of human emotion.

          His work in the ’80s was not as consistently distinguished, but every so often he connected with a role that suited him well. I recall with great appreciation his anguished ex-soldier in Uncommon Valor (1983), his earnest basketball coach in Hoosiers (1986), and his sly investigator in Mississippi Burning (1988). Then, of course, came that great victory lap in the ’90s, beginning with Unforgiven (1991) and a second Oscar for that picture. Whether he was squaring off with Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide (1995), scoring laughs in The Birdcage (1996), or paying homage to The Conversation with a similar role in Enemy of the State (1998), Hackman time and again proved there were few limits to his abilities. He essayed his last great film role in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), thus bridging his work from the the glory days of the New Hollywood to the emergence of Gen-X groundbreakers. His retirement denied viewers the chance to see how he might have explored older age through his performances (and his interactions with fresh-thinking younger directors). Flip side, our screen image of Hackman remains forever charged with virility.
          I didn’t know the man, and I’ve heard enough stories to intuit that he could be a thorny character. On more than one occasion, I’ve encountered remarks to the effect that he was ambivalent about acting, largely because he grew up at a time when performing wasn’t considered a manly endeavor. In my imagination, this tension regarding Hackman’s chosen profession is part of what imbues his screen work with such tangible energy—it’s not hard to believe that, on some level, discomfort about being Gene Hackman translated to comfort being other people while cameras rolled. Whatever the reasons behind his greatness, I’ve yet to encounter a Hackman performance I find completely uninteresting.

          There are times when he seemed bored—particularly during the iffy stretch between Mississippi Burning and Unforgiven—and there are times when enervated scripting and lifeless directing undercuts whatever Hackman’s trying to achieve. A bad movie is a bad movie, and Hackman made plenty of them. But, in my estimation, the mark of a fine actor is not how well that performer rises to the challenge of great material, but how well that performer elevates mundane material. Of course Hackman is magnificent in The Conversation—one cannot imagine another player serving that extraordinary film any better. But just watch him in something like Zandy’s Bride (1974) or Bite the Bullet (1975), two offbeat but unquestionably flawed Westerns he made during his early days as an A-lister. In these pictures, Hackman attacks adrenalized scenes with ferocious intensity, and he articulates quieter moments with genuine vulnerability.
          No other actor has commanded my attention, and rewarded my viewing, at the level or scale Hackman has. I felt wistful when he retired from acting, and today I feel wistful again knowing there will never be a final capper to his glorious run. It is ungallant of me to imply that his huge trove of excellent work isn’t sufficient, but every exceptional performer leaves fans wanting more.

Johnny Vik (1977)

          Tucked into the deepest crevasses of the ’70s-cinema landscape are a few low-budget obscurities that are interesting because of their aspirations even though the films are amateurish and unsatisfying. Johnny Vik, for example, aligns with familiar tropes by centering an emotionally disturbed Native American who endures PTSD and socialization problems following service in Vietnam. Yet the picture differs in an important way from others that explore similar terrain—Johnny Vik is almost completely devoid of onscreen violence. Instead, the clumsily rendered picture tries to reveal the turbulent inner life of its protagonist, with writer-director Charles Nauman occasionally employing bizarre hallucination scenes to show viewers how the title character sees the world. The fact that you’ve never heard of Johnny Vik, together with the fact that Nauman’s only other credit is a documentary released in 1968, rightly indicates that Johnny Vik doesn’t achieve its goals. The movie is alternately confusing, dull, melodramatic, silly, and weird, without ever committing strongly enough to any of those sensibilities to make a strong impression. Nonetheless, Nauman and his collaborators deserve some credit for inverting the paradigm that yielded so many disposable flicks about crazed vigilantes.
          When we meet him, Johnny (Warren Hammack) comes across as a small-town simpleton who can’t hold down a job. Typical of the muddled first act is a scene of Johnny pointlessly watching two guys vandalize a cop car to the accompaniment of music that sounds like the Benny Hill theme. Eventually, circumstances compel Johnny to become a fugitive/recluse hiding in the forest outside his hometown, and once Nauman reveals the transformed Johnny—long hair, thick beard—the movie finds a bit more focus with scenes of Johnny experiencing visions in the wilderness. (In one vignette, he imagines a faceless figure of death sitting atop a pile of branches.) Meanwhile, Johnny befriends local teen Pola (Kathy Amerman), who takes horseback rides near Johnny’s hiding place. Hence her delivery of ponderous voiceover lines (“The emptiness followed him, haunted him, like a caravan of death”). None of the metaphysical stuff makes much sense, but one can feel Nauman grasping for profundity. Despite performances that range from inept to pedestrian, and notwithstanding his lack of cinematic prowess, Nauman conjures a handful of oddly soulful moments when he’s not distracted by nonsense including gratuitous nudie-cutie scenes.

Johnny Vik: FUNKY

The Player (1971)

Watching this lifeless low-budget drama about the misadventures of a small-time pool hustler will deepen your appreciation for the visual ingenuity of The Hustler (1961) and its sequel The Color of Money (1986) because those films make billiards seem exciting. While one could put forth a feeble argument that the tedium of The Player accurately depicts how time-consuming contests of skill can seem dull to everyone but active participants, it’s doubtful that writer-director Thomas DeMartini’s goal was to bore viewers. Then again, seeing as how The Player had a microscopic release before disappearing for more than 50 years, it’s not as if DeMartini had many viewers to bore. Anyway, thanks to the enterprising folks at YouTube channel FT Depot, a mostly intact version of The Player appeared online in 2024, allowing the curious to appraise its virtues. The film concerns Lou Marchesi (Jerry Como), a slick player mentored by real-life pool star Minnesota Fats (who portrays himself). Yet interactions with Fats are largely peripheral to the story, which follows Lou’s transfer of romantic affection from supportive Linda (Carey Wilmot) to manipulative Sylvia (Rae Phillips). As goes Lou’s love life, so goes his pool career. These characters and their relationship dynamics are deeply uninteresting, a flaw exacerbated by DeMartini’s penchant for aimless montages set to goopy love ballads—and that’s on top of his predilection for numbingly repetitive pool scenes set to interminable loops of generic rock/funk music. Beyond the flimsy plot, The Player suffers from a bloated runtime, flat visuals, and terrible acting. Nonetheless, some cinemaniacs might find the picture of minor note because it evokes the pool-hustler world in a believable (read: unglamorous) way, and there’s always a frisson associated with rediscovering a movie once thought lost.

The Player: LAME

MIA: Rare ’70s Movies

Hey there, groovy people! It’s been a few years since I reached out for help tracking down elusive movies, and longtime readers will recognize a few titles here from previous posts of this nature. Anyway, here’s the drill—in my quest to paint as full a picture of ’70s cinema as possible, I’d love to track down some or all of the following movies, which have eluded my normal pathways for finding films. I prefer to patronize only legit sites, so thanks in advance for not recommending iffy bootleg portals, and of course if anyone can lay their hands on physical media I’d be into making the appropriate arrangements. (Alas, the VHS rig that served me well for many years has transitioned off this mortal plane, so I’m living that DVD/Blu life.) Some of these pictures may be truly lost, but for the obsessive cinema blogger, hope always burns bright. Oh, and I’m especially interested in tracking down Black Chariot, a 1971 drama with Bernie Casey, because a 4K restoration has been making the rounds but, as sometimes happens, I didn’t hear about an LA screening until after the fact. Any tips on future chances to catch this one would be greatly appreciated! Similarly, thanks so much for anyone who can help me lay my retinas on . . .

 
Black Cream a/k/a Together for Days (1972) directed by Michael Shultz
The Black Pearl (1977)
Challenge (1974) & The Brass Ring (1975) with Earl Owensby
Country Music (1972) with Marty Robbins
Death Play (1976) with James Keach
Dirty Movie (1973) with Tom Skerritt
Distance (1975) with James Woods
Dreams of Glass (1970)
Events (1970) feat. Robert Altman
Extreme Close-Up (1973) written by Michael Crichton
A Fable (1971) with Al Freeman Jr.
The Gentle People and the Quiet Land (1972)
Goodnight Jackie a/ka/ Games Guys Play (1973)
The Great Balloon Race (1977)
Hanging on a Star (1978)
Irish Whiskey Rebellion (1972) with William Devane
Last Foxtrot in Burbank (1973)
Legacy (1975) directed by Karen Arthur
Life Study (1973) with Tommy Lee Jones
The Limit (1972) with Yaphet Kotto
No Longer Alone (1978) feat. Billy Graham
Okay Bill (1971) directed by John G. Avildsen
The Only Way Home (1972) with G.D. Spradlin
Prisoners (1975) with Howard Hesseman
Richard (1972) with Mickey Rooney
Sammy Somebody (1976) with Susan Strasberg
Scream, Evelyn, Scream! (1970)
Shhh (1975) with Rita Moreno
Silence (1974) with Will Geer
Spirit of the Wind (1979) with Chief Dan George
Walk the Walk (1970) with Bernie Hamilton
Welcome to the Club (1971) with Jack Warden
Who Says I Can’t Ride a Rainbow? (1971)
Willy & Scratch (1975) with Claudia Jennings
You’ve Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You’ll Lose That Beat (1971)

Inside Amy (1974)

The basic premise of low-budget exploitation flick Inside Amy is solid enough that if the picture had been written and directed with a modicum of skill, it could have become a memorably sleazy thriller. Charlie (James R. Sweeney, billed as Eastman Price), a successful lawyer hurtling toward middle age, has grown bored with marriage to alluring but straight-laced Amy (Jan Mitchell), so when he learns about a local nightclub catering to swingers, he pressures Amy into visiting the club with him. This inevitably leads the couple to a wife-swapping party. At the moment of truth, Charlie can’t perform with a stranger, but Amy gets it on with several partners, even though she says afterward she still loves her husband. Driven mad by jealousy, Charlie systematically hunts and kills Amy’s playmates. In an alternate universe, some imaginative striver made this picture with Charlie and Amy as fully rendered characters, thus yielding a morality tale about the tension between sexual fantasies and marital reality. In this universe, director Ronald Victor Garcia—later to build a respectable career as a cinematographer and occasional director, mostly for television—executed Helene Arthur’s lifeless script clumsily. The kills are bland, the sex is tame, the film has virtually zero tension, the acting is mostly terrible, and the finale is thoroughly anticlimactic. Inside Amy doesn’t even rate highly in terms of kitsch, except perhaps for the scolding title song (“Amy, you better straighten out or be prepared to meet your fate”). As if Inside Amy wasn’t sufficiently lurid, the picture was later released as both Super Swinging Playmates and Swingers Massacre.

Inside Amy: LAME

The Great Masquerade (1974)

           Drag comedies have a long history in Hollywood, so it’s not as if low-budget farce The Great Masquerade was daring for its time—even though it eschews the homophobia that plagues most vintage movies about men dressing as women. Instead of getting doomed to cinematic oblivion by controversy, The Great Masquerade likely failed to get attention because of cheap production values, inconsistent acting, and sloppy direction. The script’s quality is roughly equivalent to that of some random sketch on a ’70s variety show, so if the material had found its way to producers with better resources and a director with a stronger feel for comedy, the picture could have been an amiable trifle. As is, The Great Masquerade—also known as The AC/DC Caper and Murder on the Emerald Seas—is a gentle comedy buried inside an exploitation flick.

          The silly premise is that for three years running, contestants in a Florida beauty pageant have become victims of unsolved murders, so the police recruit a male officer to pose as a contestant in the latest event, set to happen on a cruise ship. The main suspects are the pageant’s lascivious promoter and a pair of stereotypical Italian gangsters. The setup is mostly just a springboard for gags, the majority of which are duds. Concurrently, the wrongheaded impulse to feature salacious content leads to vignettes that resemble softcore porn. In the most egregious sequence, a little person persuades a pretty blonde to model for body art, but when the model falls asleep while the little person is painting her breasts, he starts licking. That sends her screaming into a hallway while still naked, at which point she’s chased by a psycho dressed as a clown. This kind of stuff doesn’t sit comfortably with scenes of lighthearted banter between the main characters.

          Robert Perault’s work in the lead role helps make The Great Masquerade palatable. He’s amateurish, handsome, likeable, and he strives for a frothy tone. Meanwhile, supporting players including John DeSanti, Frank Logan, and Lee Sandman try for broad-comedy caricatures—they’re as clumsy as Perault, but they put in the effort. Regarding more familiar players, it’s novel to see Roberts Blossom play a verbose sophisticate instead of his usual creeps and crooks, but good luck figuring out why The Great Masquerade has cameos from Johnny Weissmuller and Henny Youngman. Behind the camera, the most noteworthy figure is director and cowriter Alan Ormsby, who wrote and directed the seedy horror flick Deranged (1974), which stars Blossom as an Ed Gein type; wrote My Bodyguard (1980); and cowrote Cat People (1982) and The Substitute (1996).
 
The Great Masquerade: FUNKY

The Gamblers (1970)

          The public’s zeal for smooth-criminal movies was on the wane by the time The Gamblers passed through cinemas in early 1970. Yet diminishing enthusiasm for a genre is hardly the only reason the movie failed to make an impression. Although respectably made from a technical point of view, the cast is underwhelming and the script is underdeveloped. Don Gordon, a fine character actor who presumably got this gig after being featured prominently in Bullitt (1968), plays a card shark who learns that con men are planning to fleece a European investor during a river cruise through the area then known as Yugoslavia. Setting aside the usual crime-movie challenge of getting audiences to care about craven people who prey on innocents, The Gamblers suffers because its central scheme is simultaneously too opaque (how did the card shark learn about the con men?) and too obvious (the ending requires viewers to accept that our intrepid protagonist can’t detect duplicity and that the real villains are masterminds).

          Rooney (Gordon), accompanied by goofy henchman Goldy (Stuart Margolin), works his way into the orbit of Broadfoot (Kenneth Griffith) and Cozzier (Pierre Olaf), who have their own goofy henchman, Koboyashi (Richard Ng). Upon discovering that Rooney is a slick card player, Broadfoot and Cozzier enlist him to help rip off Del Isolla (Massimo Serato), who is in possession of a bank note for $250,000. During the cruise, Rooney also meets attractive blonde Candance (Suzy Kendall), so he uses her as a lure to get Del’s attention. None of this is particularly interesting to watch, but the filmmakers try at various times to emulate the styles of similar movies. Add in some jaunty theme music, a few scenes of Kendall in barely-there swimsuits, plus weak attempts at comedic banter, and the result is a simulacrum of light entertainment. 
          Even devoted fans of the smooth-criminal genre will have difficulty getting excited about The Gamblers. It’s not a chase picture or a heist movie, so the adrenaline level is low. Meaning no disrespect to the former Yugoslavia, the locations don’t have the flair of England, France, or the Mediterranean, the customary settings for ’60s flicks of this ilk. And the star power just isn’t there. Kendall provides the requisite sun-kissed loveliness, but Gordon has such a menacing quality that he can’t muster the charm required to put something like this over. Margolin is both miscast and saddled with demeaning moments including a ridiculous dance scene, and—no surprise, given the cultural climate of the time—Ng’s characterization is problematic. 

The Gamblers: FUNKY

Honky Tonk Nights (1978)

Apparently Honky Tonk Nights represents an attempt by a group of pornographers to make a legit flick for the drive-in circuit, which goes a long way toward explaining the abysmal acting, ghastly filmmaking, and plentiful female nudity. There’s a plot of sorts buried amid the smut and the aimless filler scenes, but coherence and purpose are not the watchwords here. Honky Tonk Nights follows several threads connected to a country-music bar, and the festivities begin when singer Dolly Pop (Serena) gets cranky after being shorted one too many times on her performance fees at the establishment, which is operated by Georgia (Georgina Spelvin). Soon Dolly’s bandmates recruit a replacement singer, absurdly buxom Belle Barnette (Carol Doda), but Belle gets heckled during her fist gig by drunks who expect her to strip onstage. Meanwhile, another young woman vaguely connected to the main plot endures romantic travails with an unfaithful boyfriend trying to make a living as a daredevil auto racer, and country star Bill Garvey (played by real-life musical luminary Ramblin’ Jack Elliott) appears just in time to provide career opportunities for busty striver Belle. All of the events just described comprise perhaps one-third of the movie’s scant 70 minutes—the remainder of the deeply boring flick showcases brawls, hang-out scenes, and, of course, needlessly prolonged sex scenes. As for the country tunes that fill nearly every moment of the soundtrack, it should come as no surprise that they’re wholly unimpressive, arguably notwithstanding Elliott’s sloppy live rendition of the enduring religious song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

Honky Tonk Nights: LAME

8 Million Views!

Hey there, groovy people! Once again, it’s my privilege to say thanks for your continued interest and loyalty because Every ’70s Movie has crossed yet another readership milestone that would have seemed unimaginable to me when I started this project fourteen (!!!) years ago. As I’ve stated in several previous messages, the difficulty of tracking down as-yet-unseen titles has slowed the pace of posting, but I’ve got a line on a tranche of interesting obscurities that I hope to check out over the holidays, and sometime in the new year I may post another of my periodic lists of titles I can’t track down, in the hopes that some intrepid readers have access to them. Meantime, here’s wishing everyone in the Every ’70s Movie universe a groovy holiday season and a far-out new year. Until next time, thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on!

The Sheriff (1971)

          After opening with a moderately exciting bank robbery and chase, which introduces audiences to the title character of even-tempered Southern California lawman James Lucas (Ossie Davis), The Sheriff gets down to business with a creepy scene of White traveling salesman Larry Walters (Ross Martin) menacing young Black woman Janet Wilder (Brenda Sykes). The ensuing (offscreen) sexual assault triggers a crisis in the mixed-race town that Lucas polices, which in turn spirals Lucas toward a crisis of his own—not just because the rape victim’s boyfriend is the sheriff’s son, but also because Lucas’s deputy, Harve (Kaz Garas), is married to a racist. All of this is fairly lurid stuff, and The Sheriff has shortcomings common to ’70s telefilms. The standard 74-minute runtime necessitates obvious storytelling, the aesthetics are cheap (what’s with backyard scenes shot on a soundstage?), and the horn-driven score lends a distractingly upbeat quality to an otherwise a downbeat narrative. Nonetheless, a couple of elements make The Sheriff respectable. Arnold Perl’s sturdy script is humane and reasonably thoughtful, while leading man Davis imbues the whole piece with dignity, purpose, and restraint.

          Presumably designed as a pilot for a series starring Davis—who at the time enjoyed prominence as an activist, director, performer, and theater artist—The Sheriff announces its intentions fairly early. When Lucas identifies the rape suspect as Caucasian, he asks his deputy to join him for the suspect interview because Lucas knows his word won’t be enough to indict a White man. Similarly, the choice to center Lucas’s son pulls the story into predictable but useful thematic terrain; impassioned Vance Lucas (Kyle Johnson) is impatient for social progress, whereas his father has reconciled himself to achieving incremental gains whenever possible. Adding an X factor to this dialectic is the attitude of Cliff Wilder (Moses Gunn), the father of the rape victim—as the sheriff’s chronological peer, Cliff recalls the bad old days when White men abused Black women with impunity, leading Cliff to consider frontier justice.

          Although nothing in The Sheriff would have been groundbreaking in 1971, the way the movie blends multiple race-related provocations gives the piece a measure of validity. So, too, does the overall quality of the acting. Martin, best known as the comic-relief sidekick on ’60s series The Wild, Wild West, essays one of several odious villains he portrayed in ’70s TV movies, and it’s to his credit that he neither injects vulnerability into his character nor comes across as a cartoon—Martin’s performance captures the most infuriating type of morally bankrupt entitlement. Others appearing in the movie include Davis’s real-life partner, Ruby Dee; reliable character players Edward Binns and John Marley; and ’60s/’70s starlet Lynda Day George. Everyone delivers solidly professional work, even when Perl’s dialogue tips into melodramatic extremes, so it’s tempting to believe the cast perceived The Sheriff as a worthy endeavor instead of just another small-screen paycheck gig.

The Sheriff: GROOVY

The Trackers (1971)

          Apparently Sammy Davis Jr. spent some time looking for a project in which he could costar with John Wayne, leading to development of The Trackers. Somewhere along the way, the project lost Wayne, director Burt Kennedy, and the potential for a theatrical release, instead becoming an inexpensive telefilm directed by small-screen workhorse Earl Bellamy and costarring Ernest Borgnine. It’s probably for the best a glossier version of this project never materialized for two reasons: 1) Davis seems way out of his element playing a formidable lawman, and 2) the plot follows the familiar formula of Black and White characters who overcome racial animus when thrown together by circumstance. As a brisk TV movie with household-name actors, The Trackers makes for a pleasant 74 minutes of disposable entertainment—but stretching this content out to feature length would have brought its shortcomings into sharp focus.
          Sam Paxton (Borgnine) is an amiable rancher with a wife and two adult children until one day when raiders attack his property, kill his son, and kidnap his daughter. Initial efforts to find the evildoers prove fruitless, so Sam writes to a lawman friend who specializes in tracking. Unable to help because of an injury, the friend sends Ezekiel Smith (Davis), which aggravates Sam’s racism. (He fought for the South.) Nonetheless, once Ezekiel demonstrates his prowess, Sam agrees to ride with the Black lawman even as the trail leads closer and closer to the Mexican border. Since there have been roughly a zillion movies about men from different worlds forced to work together, you know how things go from there—Sam and Ezekiel vacillate between bonding and squabbling. In reflective moments, they share stories and find common cause. In combustible moments, they physically assault each other. A few beats are played for mild comic relief, but for the most part The Trackers aims for a serious tone.
          It’s tricky to buy Davis in his role, not just because he seems so modern but also because he’s so physically slight—in one particularly eye-rolling moment, Davis’s character holds his own in an extended brawl with Borgnine’s character even though Borgnine looks as if he could snap Davis’s spine like a twig. Related, Davis’s performance feels artificial and bland compared to the believable intensity Borgnine brings to nearly every scene. As always, Borgnine’s performance style is more about blunt force than nuance, but his animalistic approach suits the role and the storyline. He’s actually quite engaging here, so it’s moderately satisfying to watch his character describe an emotional arc, however predictable and trite.

The Trackers: FUNKY

Hardcase (1972)

          In the great 1966 Western The Professionals, mercenaries enter Mexico to rescue an American’s wife, who was supposedly kidnapped by a revolutionary, only to discover the wife has become romantically involved with the revolutionary. A twist on that premise drives the agreeable made-for-TV Western Hardcase, starring former Cheyenne star Clint Walker and Stefanie Powers. Ex-soldier Jack (Walker) returns from POW incarceration to discover that his wife, Roz (Powers), not only ran off with revolutionary Simon (Pedro Aremendáriz Jr.) but, thinking Jack dead, sold his ranch to buy supplies for Simon’s rebel band. Hardcase, titled for a nickname someone hangs on the stoic protagonist, dramatizes how Jack responds to this conundrum. This telefilm is so light on plot that it resembles an episode of some generic Western anthology; similarly, the piece has the over-lit aesthetic and unimaginative camerawork of vintage episodic television. Yet Hardcase boasts a reasonably intelligent script, by Hollywood veterans Harold Jack Bloom and Sam Rolfe, and the narrative successfully ensnares its protagonist in a fraught moral dilemma. As a result, the movie is simple without being wholly simplistic.
          Anyone who has encountered a Walker performance knows better than to expect nuance from his acting—his towering physicality and granite features lend so much visual impact that he if he aims in the general direction of a dramatic texture and doesn’t exert himself, he’s able to put across something adequate. Powers is similarly limited in her abilities. Perhaps that’s why they make a compatible duo in Hardcase—the boundaries of his skills suit a character who has difficulty expressing emotion, just as the boundaries of hers fit the character of a woman torn between conflicting loyalties. Meanwhile, Aremendáriz Jr. capably offers a frontier riff on the Paul Henreid role from Casablanca (1942) and former NFL player Alex Karras, in his first proper movie performance, lends a mix of amiability and grit. The dramatic beats these actors perform get plenty of screen time because the movie doesn’t have much action—or, for that matter, much tension. It’s tempting to guess that Hardcase is so gentle because it was the first live-action movie from kiddie-animation specialists Hanna-Barbera Productions. 

Hardcase: FUNKY

New Podcast Interview!

Thank you to North Carolina-based critic and podcaster Adam Long for inviting me to his corner of the Internet for a conversation about Every '70s Movie. If you have 40 minutes to spare, tune in for a chat about Earl Owensby, the 1976 version of King Kong, romantic melodrama The Other Side of the Mountain, and various other topics. Click here to listen to my episode of the Adam's Corner podcast.

Elmer (1976)

Calling Elmer a substandard example of the intrepid-dog genre requires giving the movie too much credit. Amateurish and dull, this early credit for director Christopher Cain—later to achieve minor success with Young Guns (1988)—is the least interesting sort of regional production, a vapid recitation of Hollywood clichés without the compensation of Hollywood gloss. At the beginning of the picture, aging hound Elmer lives with young Dean (played by Dean Cain, the director’s stepson and also destined for future success). Elmer has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so Dean’s father arranges for the dog to live on a ranch with relatives. Alas, Elmer escapes on the way there. Meanwhile, young Jerry (Phillip Swanson) takes a ride on his uncle’s small plane, which crashes in the wilderness. Struck blind during the accident, Jerry struggles to find his way back to civilization until he encounters Elmer, who serves as a sort of guide and protector. The dramatic question, such as it is, concerns what Dean will do if and when he finds Elmer, who has bonded with Jerry. At best, this slim narrative could have sustained a half-hour episode of some children’s show, so even though it runs just 82 minutes, Elmer feels long and padded. Exacerbating the vapidity of the story are the film’s lifeless performances, moronic comic relief (think bumbling rural idiots), and treacly music. Still, all of this would have been more or less tolerable if Elmer (played, apparently, by a dog of the same name) was irresistibly adorable or trained to perform complicated tricks. No such luck. Elmer may have been a fun hang in real life, but onscreen he just sits there—as in, during many scenes, he literally just sits there. His lack of excitement is contagious.

Elmer: LAME 

Catch the Black Sunshine (1972)

The first of three schlocky movies directed by minor Hollywood actor Chris Robinson, this swampy adventure has such a problematic central element that it’s doomed from the start. Robinson, a White actor, plays an albino Black slave in 1859 Florida who finds a treasure map and flees a plantation to seek his fortune. Robinson’s casting is so offensive that it barely matters whether Catch the Black Sunshine is any good, which it is not. Nonetheless, attempting a complete survey of ’70s cinema requires giving Catch the Black Sunshine a view, so here goes. Sunshine (Robinson) searches for treasure with another runaway slave (Anthony Scott) while an overseer (Ted Cassidy) pursues them. The overseer joins forces with a group of backwoods thugs, and the runaways find companionship with a pretty widow (Phyllis Robinson) who, of course, falls in love with Sunshine. Robinson evinces little skill in multiple behind-the-camera jobs (writer, director, producer, and executive producer), so the first hour of the movie is thoroughly boring. Things perk up when the widow is introduced because she gets a smidge of characterization, and that’s also when tension between the overseer and his thugs nearly coalesces into drama. But then, inevitably, more dull scenes kill momentum—for example, Sunshine and the widow gaze at each other for several minutes while a gooey ballad plays on the soundtrack. Then the picture limps through a pointless climax. Robinson subsequently tested the world’s patience with two more features, first the atrocious Thunder Country (1974) and then The Intruder, which was made in 1975 but not released until 2017. Speaking of delays, Catch the Black Sunshine was shot in 1972 but didn’t reach theaters until 1974. At various times, the film has been retitled Black Rage and Charcoal Black—but by any name, it’s junk.

Catch the Black Sunshine: LAME

Cactus in the Snow (1971)

          It’s unsurprising this low-budget dramedy failed to make noise during its original release because even though the core of the piece is a tender exploration of friendship, the premise is so lurid that it promises viewers something quite different. Moreover, there’s a reason why A. Martin Zweiback only directed one movie despite enjoying a moderately successful screenwriting career—beyond his inability to conjure evocative visuals, he frequently loses control of tone. It’s also worth mentioning that the narrative of Cactus in the Snow is deliberately anticlimactic, so it would have been a tough sell even in the anything-goes ’70s. Viewed with the perspective of time, Cactus in the Snow is no lost classic, but it’s a gentle little picture with a brain and a heart.

          Richard Thomas, appearing a year before his breakout role in TV’s The Waltons, plays Harley, a young Army soldier on the verge of his first deployment. Hoping to lose his virginity before that happens, Harley gets drunk and propositions teenager Cissy (Mary Layne), who takes pity on Harley and brings him home while her parents are away. What ensues is best discovered by watching the picture, but the gist is that Cissy and Harley fall into what might be described as deep liking for each other—she’s as mature beyond her years as he is naïve, but they synchronize in unexpected ways. Interactions with supporting characters are fairly minimal since the focus is on dramatizing Cissy’s desire for new experiences and on revealing Harley’s lonely backstory.

          Despite Thomas being the more familiar actor, Layne’s performance drives Cactus in the Snow—her complex role allows Layne to convey empathy, toughness, vulnerability, and wit. (That said, Zweiback hit plenty of false notes while crafting the Cissy character, but false notes come with the territory here.) Thomas effectively blends wounded angst and youthful eagerness, in other words working very much in his comfort zone, though the stilted quality that impacts a lot of his early performances is quite evident here. As for the picture overall, Cactus in the Snow achieves a certain degree of poignance despite a handful of scenes that simply don’t work and a garish musical score that often strives, intrusively, to lighten the mood. Cactus in the Snow is also the sort of picture that hums along in one direction before pivoting hard at the end—depending on your sensibilities, the final scene will either edge the experience into a more substantial realm or tip the experience into melodrama.

Cactus in the Snow: FUNKY