Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

          If you’ve heard of this cult-favorite comedy, chances are you’ve also heard that it’s considered one of the worst movies ever made. And while Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! is indeed quite bad, featuring everything from lifeless acting to ridiculously cheap production values, it’s hard to criticize a picture that was designed to accentuate its own awfulness. After all, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! is a spoof of grade-B creature features, and in lieu of a plot, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! features wall-to-wall infantile jokes. As the title explains, this goofy picture imagines a nationwide rampage by vengeful tomatoes (some of which are gigantic), and the special effects used to illustrate this phenomenon are crude in the extreme. During several scenes, actors stand still while tomatoes are lobbed at them by offscreen crew members, and during one bit, a giant mock-up tomato is rolled toward a victim on a wheeled palette that’s visible in the frame. Most of the film depicts the efforts of government officials to prevent the public from panicking, so the picture follows White House Press Secretary Jim Richardson (George Wilson) as he hires an ad man to make PSAs; civilian authority Mason Dixon (David Miller) as he supervises the response of private and public organizations; and idiotic soldier Lt. Wilbur Finletter (J. Stephen Pace) as he plans a military assault.

          The film’s combination of fourth-wall-breaking jokes and musical numbers owes a lot to Mel Brooks, though Brooks on his worst day could easily top this film’s best gags. (How lame are the jokes? When Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! cuts to a shot of the San Francisco skyline, text reading “New York?” appears onscreen.) Plus, suffice to say that none of the musical sequences in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!—even the robustly sung title number—approach the sublime silliness of, say, the “I’m Tired” number in Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974). That said, a fast pace and an upbeat vibe ensure that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! provides a glimmer of amusement every few minutes. So, even though this tomato is closer to rotten than ripe, it’s still basically edible. (To belabor the analogy, however, expect indigestion afterwards.) Unlikely as it may seem, this humble little movie planted the seed for a mini-franchise, because director/co-writer John De Bello returned to the material for three sequels, beginning with Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (1988), which features a young George Clooney in the cast; additionally, a cartoon series, comic books, a novel, and videogames bearing the Killer Tomatoes brand have been released.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!: FUNKY

Journey Back to Oz (1974)

          The most noteworthy aspect of Journey Back to Oz, a slipshod animated sequel to the classic live-action movie The Wizard of Oz (1939), is the fact that Liza Minnelli provides the voice of intrepid heroine Dorothy Gale. (Minnelli’s mother, legendary entertainer Judy Garland, played the role in The Wizard of Oz.) Minnelli acts the part with passion and sweetness, singing several songs with her signature gusto, but the novelty of her presence isn’t sufficient to make Journey Back to Oz feel special. Setting aside the film’s second-rate visuals—production company Filmation’s crude style falls somewhere between the cheapness of Hanna-Barbera and the elegance of Walt Disney—the main problem is the story, an unimaginative retread of the original film. When Journey Back to Oz begins, Dorothy is once again bored in Kansas, wishing for a return visit with her magical friends. A cyclone conveniently appears, plopping Dorothy on the side of the Yellow Brick Road. She meets several new friends, discovers that the kingdom is once again threatened by a wicked witch, and rallies new and old pals to help restore order.

          Even though the makers of Journey Back to Oz borrowed liberally from the work of L. Frank Baum—the creator of the Oz universe—new characters and contrivances fail to impress. The Signpost (Jack E. Leonard) is a likeable dunderhead patterned after the original story’s Scarecrow; Woodenhead Pinto Stallion III, a wooden horse, serves the same valiant-but-clumsy function as the original story’s Tin Man; and so on. Worse, beloved characters appear in disappointing iterations. For instance, the Cowardly Lion is portrayed as having lost the nerve he gained with Dorothy’s help, and the Scarecrow, though now King of Oz, is a non-presence who spends most of the story in captivity. Furthermore, Filmation’s strategy of frontloading the voice cast with famous actors is distracting, because each of the actors adheres to his or her familiar persona. For instance, Ethel Merman delivers obnoxiously loud vocals as the witch Mombi, while Paul Lynde, portraying the new character Pumpkinhead, sounds like his usual bitchy-queen self.

          Yet another problem is the film’s song score, penned by Hollywood pros Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, because the numbers are hopelessly trite compared to the magical tunes in The Wizard of Oz. The Cahn-Van Heusen numbers range from the saccharine (“Keep a Happy Thought”) to the embarrassingly blunt (“That Feeling for Home”). Ultimately, Journey Back to Os doesn’t trample on fond memories—as did the bizarre live-action 1985 sequel Return to Oz—but the whole thing feels half-assed and unnecessary. No wonder the picture flopped during its initial theatrical release. Nonetheless, Journey Back to Oz found an audience when it was resuscitated for television a short while later, with new live-action bits featuring Bill Cosby created to bracket the original animated feature.

Journey Back to Oz: FUNKY

Wacky Taxi (1972)

Perhaps because the history of screen comedy is filled with hyphenates, from Charlie Chaplin to Jerry Lewis to Ben Stiller, myriad successful comic actors have felt compelled to attempt writing, producing, and/or directing. The results of these experiments are often grisly. For instance, funnyman John Astin (of The Addams Family fame) more than exceeded the limits of his artistry by co-directing, with Alexander Grasshoff, this harmless but poorly made and profoundly unfunny flick about a fed-up factory worker who quits his job to become an independent cab driver. Made on a meager budget and saddled with a no-name supporting cast, the picture gets off to a wobbly start and never recovers. The opening scene introduces Astin, who is not Latino, as Pepper, a Mexican-American patriarch living in San Diego. Before the audience is given any explanation of the character, Pepper walks off the assembly line and buys a car, which he paints with taxi markings, and then starts looking for fares. A good 20 minutes of screen time elapse before Pepper’s brother-in-law, an attorney named Jaimie (Ralph James), explains that Pepper needs a hack license and insurance to operate legally. How are viewers supposed to root for a character who is so oblivious and reckless, especially since he’s the breadwinner for a family that includes a wife and five children? Had any of the scenes featuring Pepper’s cab-driving misadventures been amusing, the story flaws might have been easier to overlook. Unfortunately, each such scene is less imaginative than the preceding—Pepper gets lost driving to an airport, the cab suffers engine failure, a mystery lady uses the cab for some unknown crime that might be prostitution or smuggling. (The editing is so choppy that significant facts get lost in the shuffle.) Although Astin has a few charming moments, mostly when he’s making caustic asides about misfortune, the overall flow of the movie is so drab, erratic, and repetitive that mining for gold in the lead performance becomes a chore.

Wacky Taxi: LAME

Once Upon a Scoundrel (1974)

There’s a half-decent satirical notion buried inside the tiresome comedy Once Upon a Scoundrel, and the movie offers a large serving of star Zero Mostel’s signature overbearing charm. For those two reasons, it’s likely that some viewers will find the picture amusing, albeit forgettable. However, the same qualities that might be interpreted as virtues could just as easily be perceived as shortcomings. After all, the satirical notion—an entire community of people pretends that a living man is an unseen ghost, with the goal of driving him nuts—gets stretched way past the point of believability. As for Mostel, let’s just say that a little goes a long way, and Once Upon a Scoundrel has much more than a little of the actor mugging, preening, and screaming. He’s simultaneously entertaining and exhausting, in equal measure. He’s also absurdly miscast as a Mexican. Mostel plays Don Carlos del Refugio, the tyrannical overlord of a poor Mexican village. Don Carlos has the hots for local peasant girl Alicia (Priscilla Garcia), but she’s in love with wide-eyed laborer Luis (A Martinez). Don Carlos pulls a scheme to get Luis thrown in jail, then says he’ll only release Luis if Alicia contents to marriage. Fed up with Don Carlos’ villainy, the locals drug Don Carlos and perform a funeral, making Don Carlos believe he’s died and come back as a specter. In the hands of some screen-comedy master, perhaps Ernest Lubitsch or Billy Wilder, this premise might have led to broad-as-a-barn hilarity. Alas, the team behind Once Upon a Scoundrel has the clumsy approach one normally associates with bad sitcoms, a problem compounded by the presence of a strictly workaday cast. (Snce Mostel sucks up so much oxygen, formidable actors would have been needed to counter the star’s manic energy.) Thus, Once Upon a Scoundrel ends up feeling dull and flat, particularly during long stretches in which the jokes simply don’t connect. And, wow, is the final sequence awful, seeing as how it lends a morbid quality to an otherwise innocuous movie. Holding the disparate parts of Once Upon a Scoundrel together is a robust score by the great Alex North, whose music is the movie’s sole unassailable element.

Once Upon a Scoundrel: FUNKY

The Gospel Road (1973)

          Ungallant as it may seem to criticize any artist who feels driven to share his religious passions with the world, it would be irresponsible to describe The Gospel Road—alternately and more ponderously titled Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus—as anything other than bizarre. Johnny Cash, the legendary country singer-songwriter known as much for his bad-boy antics as for his indelible tunes, might seem more attitudinally aligned with Christ’s opposite number than with the Lamb of God, and yet here he is onscreen, wearing full “Man in Black” regalia, as he recites passages from the Bible and gives country-preacher sermons about Jesus’ life story. Even though this project seems deeply sincere, it’s also deeply weird to see Cash standing atop a mountain in Israel, where the picture was filmed, and to hear his familiar book-chicka-boom rhythm in a movie that also includes the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.

          Created as a companion piece to Cash’s 1973 double album of the same name, The Gospel Road comprises shots of Cash, re-creations of Bible scenes that are accompanied by Cash-penned ditties, and re-creations that are accompanied by lush orchestral numbers, also culled from Cash’s album. (Snippets of dialogue appear, too.) Cash performs most of the songs, though he recruited pals including Kris Kristofferson and the Statler Brothers to handle certain tunes. Plus, inevitably, Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, makes an appearance—not only does June play Mary Magdalene (thus gifting Mary with an inexplicable Virginia twang), but she performs the sweet pop ballad “Follow Me,” which was written by that icon of theological insight, John Denver. The mind reels, especially when a straight-faced Johnny Cash intones such remarks as, “I think if I was a little-bitty kid, if Jesus had come by, I would have run to him.” (Okay, one more: “Mary Magdalene was the kind of woman that Jesus had a lot of love and compassion for.” You don’t say, Johnny!)

           Adding to the overall oddness of the piece is the fact that adult Jesus is played by the film’s director, Robert Elfstrom, who looks more like a Viking than a child of Jerusalem. On the plus side, though, Elfstrom’s bland non-acting is easier to take than June’s overwrought attempts at simulating spiritual ecstasy. Somehow, Johnny Cash manages to get through the movie with his dignity intact, perhaps because never slips into period clothing. Still, this picture is unlikely to qualify as a must-see for any but the devoutly Christian or the devoutly Cashian—which, if it isn’t a word, probably should be.

The Gospel Road: FUNKY

The Greek Tycoon (1978)

          There are at least three ways to watch The Greek Tycoon, a fictionalized take on the marriage of presidential widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. (Well, four ways, if you count the option of skipping the movie altogether.) Firstly, you can watch the film in abject horror at the crass exploitation of human tragedy. Secondly, you can experience the movie as a campy jet-set melodrama. And thirdly, you can cut the filmmakers a whole lot of slack by enjoying the piece as the downbeat character study of a larger-than-life individual whose money bought him everything except lasting happiness and social respectability.
          Released in 1978, just three years after Onassis’ death, The Greek Tycoon is among the most shameless cinematic endeavors ever “ripped from the headlines.” Most of the sensational aspects of the Kennedy-Onassis relationship are replicated here—the assassination of a president, the arrangement of a multimillion-dollar marriage contract, the luxury of life on a giant yacht, the controversial business deals. And for everything the filmmakers subtract from the source material (notably absent are stand-ins for Kennedy’s children), the team behind The Greek Tycoon adds in something just as salacious, because the movie features a conniving brother, a suicidal ex-wife, and a tempestuous mistress. It’s all exactly as glamorously trashy as it sounds, right down to the quasi-lookalike casting of Jacqueline Bisset as Kennedy and Anthony Quinn as Onassis. (Perpetually tanned movie/TV hunk James Franciscus appears, somewhat inconsequentially, as The Greek Tycoon’s version of JFK.)
          In the film’s storyline, Theo Tomassis (Quinn) first meets Liz Cassidy (Bisset) and her husband, James Cassidy (Franciscus), while James is a Congressman prepping a presidential campaign. Later, after Liz suffers a miscarriage while living in the White House, she leaves D.C. for a recuperative vacation with Theo in Greece. Then, a year after an assassin shoots and kills James, Liz accepts Theo’s marriage proposal, but with a slew of conditions—such as agreeing to share Theo’s bed only 10 nights each month.

          The Greek Tycoon is a cartoonish riff on history, but the production values are pleasant—cinematographer Anthony Richmond shoots the hell out of the film’s gorgeous Greek locations—and Quinn overacts with his usual operatic verve. Conversely, Bisset and costars Edward Albert (as Theo’s son), Charles Durning (as a U.S. politician), and Raf Vallone (as Theo’s brother) play the material straight, which is unwise. Versatile helmer J. Lee Thompson, who years earlier directed Quinn in The Guns of Navarone (1961), orchestrates the whole silly/tacky endeavor with his usual impersonal proficiency.

The Greek Tycoon: FUNKY

Paper Moon (1973)

          When movie stars invite their children to act with them, the results usually range from embarrassing to forgettable—but every so often, something like Paper Moon happens. Featuring a spectacular debut performance by preteen Tatum O’Neal and a charmingly gruff star turn by her famous father, Ryan O’Neal, the movie both satisfies and undercuts audience expectations of what might occur when real-life relatives perform together onscreen. The movie has heart, but more importantly, it has edge—since many of the best scenes in Paper Moon feature the O’Neals sparring with each other, it’s impossible to mistake the picture for a softhearted love letter from a father to a daughter. Somehow, producer-director Peter Bogdanovich sensed a vein of natural conflict in the dynamic between the O’Neals, and then the filmmaker channeled that conflict into the fictional relationship of a 1930s con man and a girl who may or may not be his daughter.

          Better still, Bogdanovich ensured that the sparks flying between the O’Neals were only part of the movie’s appeal. In addition to the memorable father-daughter acting, Paper Moon features crisp storytelling, sparkling dialogue, stunning black-and-white cinematography, and vivacious supporting performances. It’s a near-masterpiece that only happens to contain effective stunt casting.

          Masterfully adapted by Alvin Sargent from a novel by Joe David Brown, Paper Moon takes place during the Depression, hence Bogdanovich’s choice to present the story with monochromatic visuals that evoke the photography of the Depression era. Flimflam artist Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) attends the funeral of a former lover, where he meets scrappy nine-year-old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal), whom he realizes might be his daughter. Through delightfully contrived circumstances—the plot comes together with Swiss-watch precision that echoes Moses’ elaborate scams—Addie pressures Moses into taking her along for a lengthy auto journey. A quick study, Addie finds a role for herself in Moses’ principal scheme of selling personalized Bibles to the widows of recently deceased men, so the main characters’ natural instinct for bonding gets sublimated into the formation of a criminal enterprise.

          Bogdanovich milks this perverse premise for all it’s worth, opting for the rich drama of betrayals, disappointments, and double-crosses instead of trying for easy sentimentality. Yet woven into nearly every scene of the movie is deftly crafted humor, an element maximized by the impeccable comic timing of Bogdanovich’s actors. In fact, one of the juiciest subplots involves Moses’ relationship with a woman of ill repute named Trixie Delight, played by the magnificent comedienne Madeline Kahn, who made her big-screen debut in Bogdanovich’s hit farce What’s Up Doc? (1972). Demonstrating the skill of the film’s narrative construction, the speed with which Moses throws over Addie in order to court Trixie reveals the limitations of Moses’ integrity and the sad fate awaiting Addie unless Moses grows a conscience.

          While sensitive character work is ultimately what makes Paper Moon meaningful, the style is what makes the movie sing. Working with cinematographer Lászlo Kovács, Bogdanovich creates intimate textures throughout Paper Moon, especially during long takes that the director fills with rat-a-tat dialogue. Like the best of Bogdanovich’s early movies, Paper Moon feels handcrafted, with equal care given to characterization, emotion, mood, pace, and tone.

          As such, if there’s a minor complaint that one could make about Paper Moon, it’s that Bogdanovich seems just as concerned with announcing his incandescent talent as he is in telling the story. But then again, since Paper Moon was made when the very gifted director was at the height of his powers, it’s hard to blame him for showboating. And since the film earned an Academy Award for Tatum O’Neal (making her the youngest-ever winner of a competitive acting Oscar), as well as a nomination for screenwriter Sargent, the director’s grandstanding clearly did not obscure the remarkable contributions of his collaborators.

Paper Moon: RIGHT ON

Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970)

          Most reputable sources peg 1971, the year of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, as the beginning of blaxploitation—yet two 1970 releases, Cotton Comes to Harlem and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, contain many signifiers closely associated with the genre. For instance, both movies include funky soundtracks, primarily black casts, and urban milieus. Yet while the somewhat Afrocentric nature of Tibbs! has an obvious antecedent—it’s a sequel to the 1967 drama In the Heat of the Night, with a black character from the first film taking center stage in the follow-up—Cotton Comes to Harlem seems more like an original invention. Yet unlike the lurid crime films that came to define blaxploitation, Cotton Comes to Harlem isn’t the least bit exploitive. Quite to the contrary, the movie—co-written and directed by African-American actor/playwright/activist Ossie Davis—is a whimsical celebration of modern black life, depicting a wide range of characters occupying a spectrum of social stations.

          For all of these reasons, Cotton Comes to Harlem is interesting and significant as a cultural milestone. As entertainment, however, Cotton Comes to Harlem isn’t quite as noteworthy. Based on a novel by Chester Himes, the movie is absurdly over-plotted and overpopulated, with a story that’s alternately difficult to believe and difficult to follow. The shortest possible summary is this: After a robbery/shootout disturbs a public rally, black NYPD detectives Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) investigate a criminal conspiracy related to flamboyant preacher Duke O’Malley (Calvin Lockhart). A wild chase/investigation involving angry citizens, drugs, drunks, revolutionaries, riots, stolen money, wronged women, and a giant bale of cotton unfolds, with scenes taking place throughout Harlem—culminating in a hellzapoppin finale on the stage of the Apollo Theater.

          Cotton Comes to Harlem is filled with provocative ideas and vivid performances, so it’s never boring. In fact, some parts might be too vivacious, with actors including Lockhart going way over the top at regular intervals. Conversely, Cambridge and St. Jacques are likeably cool and cynical throughout the piece, while iconic comedian Red Foxx—in one of his few movie roles—is surprisingly restrained. So, even though Cotton Comes to Harlem is bit of a mess, there’s something edifying about seeing what conscientious artists did with the same narrative DNA that, just a short while later, produced the dubious universe of blaxploitation. FYI, Cambridge and St. Jacques reprised their Gravedigger and Coffin Ed roles for the 1972 sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue; years later, actors George Wallace and Stack Pierce played the same characters in A Rage in Harlem (1991).

Cotton Comes to Harlem: FUNKY

Save the Tiger (1973)

          As if being one of the best character studies of the ’70s wasn’t enough, Save the Tiger occupies an important place in the career of actor Jack Lemmon, a rare Hollywood star who was equally adept and comedy and drama. Not only did the picture net Lemmon his only Academy Award for a leading role (he’d nabbed a Best Supporting Actor prize for 1955’s Mister Roberts), but Save the Tiger contains a genuine tour de force performance—Lemmon is nearly every scene, cascading through myriad emotions as he meticulously illustrates the psychological dissipation of an everyman whose pursuit of the American Dream has driven him to the brink of financial and moral ruin. Written by Steve Shagan, who adapted his own novel of the same name, Save the Tiger is an unapologetic attempt at a Big Statement about the costs of capitalism. However, because Shagan and director John G. Avildsen keep their focus squarely on the life of one specific man, the filmmakers mostly evade the pitfall of pretension. (A few florid speeches and the obtuse title, which stems from a minor plot element, are among the handful of minor missteps.)

          Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the movie tracks a day in the life of Harry Stoner (Lemmon), a clothing-company executive who has stretched the firm’s finances too thin. As the day progresses, Harry contemplates and executes various schemes for righting the company’s fiscal ship—his attempt at wooing a client with the services of a prostitute proving especially disastrous—while slowly accepting the grim reality that nothing can extricate him from the trap he’s built. Concurrently, Harry wrestles with the existential questions that are brought up by seeing the consequences of his life choices, and he also faces the sobering fact that he’s lost touch with the carefree rhythms of youth.

          Borrowing a page from Arthur Miller, Shagan defines his protagonist as a victim of the quest for the almighty dollar, but unlike Miller’s Death of a Salesman protagonist Willy Loman, who struggles to find dignity while stuck in the grind of a dehumanizing career, Harry Stoner wants it all—excitement, fulfillment, stability, success. In a sense, therefore, Harry’s disease is the mere act of wanting, so the reckless moves he makes to gain position and wealth are symptoms of the disease. Fitting that analogy, Harry’s wildest idea involves a form of surgery to remove the cancer of financial burden: He tries to involve his business partner, Phil Greene (Jack Gilford), in a plan to burn down the company’s building for insurance money. Could there be a more potent spiritual metaphor than the idea of resurrection through self-destruction?

          Because Shagan’s storyline employs such dexterity in dramatizing concepts, occasional sins of theatrical flamboyance are easily forgiven, although it’s harder to overlook the contrived finale. Nonetheless, Save the Tiger is so purposeful and truthful for most of its running time that it’s virtually a paradigm for intimate storytelling. Earning every golden ounce of his Oscar, Lemmon is on fire from the first scene to the last, revealing the tumult boiling inside every Mr. Nice Guy he’s ever played. Led by the wonderful Gilford, the mostly anonymous supporting cast works efficiently in Lemmon’s shadow. Avildsen captures every nuance with a documentarian’s restraint, transforming Save the Tiger into an unvarnished portrait of modern life as a slog through a callous social system.

Save the Tiger: RIGHT ON

Mixed Company (1974)

Despite heavy-handed storytelling and sketchy production values, Mixed Company offers just enough heart and humor to merit a casual viewing by forgiving viewers, because the picture serves an admirable theme of racial tolerance. Although co-writer/director Melville Shavelson’s storyline represents Hollywood white-guilt liberalism in its most primitive form—a bigot overcomes prejudice upon meeting three loveable orphans of various races—Shavelson is such an old pro at one-liners that quips make the bleeding-heart speechifying palatable. Joseph Bologna stars as Pete Morrison, the short-tempered coach of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, and Barbara Harris plays his wife, Kathy. Pete’s preoccupied with his job, thanks to friction with a diva star player and a persistent losing streak, so Kathy does charity work that makes her conscious of problems faced by nonwhite orphans. Thus, Kathy adopts an African-American boy named Freddie (Haywood Nelson), even though she and Pete have three kids of their own. Freddie’s arrival cues all sorts of racial tension in the Morrison household, much of it stemming from Freddie’s expectation of prejudice. Shavelson hits some interesting notes, including a trope of people practicing reverse discrimination by cutting Freddie too much slack academically, but nothing that happens is surprising. Later, when Kathy expands her brood to include a Hopi Indian boy, Joe (Stephen Honanie), and a Vietnamese girl, Quan (Jina Tan), Shavelson slips into the mildly enjoyable group dynamics he employed for such previous films as The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Yours, Mine and Ours (1968). While it’s all a quite old-fashioned, Bologna’s brash Noo Yawk attitude lends much-needed tension, and his character’s frustration about an out-of-control household feel credible. Harris is less effective, coming across as eccentric and spacey even though her character is supposed to be the voice of level-headed humanism. As for the child actors, they’re more cute than talented, though Nelson exhibits spunk. Mixed Company suffers for an insufficient budget, with Shavelson relying on stock footage for scenes of Suns games, and the movie generally looks rushed and ugly. Still, it’s hard to question the fundamental value of any picture that aims to simultaneously edify and entertain.

Mixed Company: FUNKY

Over the Edge (1979)

          While it might be exaggerating to describe Over the Edge as the definitive teen-rebellion movie of the ’70s, the picture certainly captures the angst of suburban kids who feel trapped by the rigid lives their status-obsessed parents have created. Furthermore, because this rich thematic material is combined with a fiery screen debut (by future star Matt Dillon) and an adrenalized soundtrack featuring songs by Cheap Trick and the Ramones, Over the Edge coalesces into a tasty expression of adolescent rage. No surprise, then, that Over the Edge has enjoyed a long life despite never achieving box-office success or significant mainstream awareness; savored by hip viewers who see themselves reflected in the film’s characters, Over the Edge has become a minor cultural touchstone, reportedly inspiring the iconic 1991 music video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

          Loosely based on real events that occurred near San Francisco in the early ’70s, the movie takes place in a fictional suburb where teenagers have no place to hang out except a dull recreation center, where adults monitor the kids’ activities. Predictably, teenagers jacked up on hormones and rock music find outlets for their aggression, congregating around fields and highways while experimenting with drugs and getting into mischief. When one of the kids, Mark (Vincent Spano), takes potshots at a police car with a BB gun, he inadvertently triggers a chain of events that results in a crackdown by authority figures and mass civil disobedience by the local teenagers. Tragedy ensues, as well, because the put-upon adolescents take action after one of their number is martyred.

          The reason everything kicks up to such a high level of conflict is that intergenerational tensions in the fictional town run deeper than just grown-up consternation about teen issues—the adults want to raze the recreation center and build a new business zone, permanently marginalizing the town’s youth. In effect, it’s class warfare. Incensed that their needs are being neglected, the movie’s core group of kids—including swaggering tough guy Richie (Dillon)—provoke standoffs with grown-ups, eventually leading to car chases and shootouts. The movie’s memorable finale includes an act of defiance so destructive and flamboyant that it should thrill anyone who ever wanted to lash out at clueless adults, roughly in the same measure that the act might horrify anyone whose sympathies lie with the Establishment.

          And even if Over the Edge ultimately pulls its punches, opting to stay within the realm of reality instead of venturing off into the teen-fantasy zone of Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979) or Heathers (1988), the picture represents a spirited middle finger to squares who suppress kids. As for behind-the-camera significance, obviously Dillon’s presence is the most noteworthy element—but Over the Edge also represents a key step in the career of director Jonathan Kaplan, who cut his teeth making exploitation movies for Roger Corman and other producers. After shooting On the Edge, Kaplan did a brief tenure in TV movies before breaking into studio features with ’80s hits including Project X (1987) and The Accused (1988).

Over the Edge: GROOVY

Caravans (1978)

          Based on a novel by James Michener, whose sprawling stories set in exotic periods of history were better served by TV miniseries, Caravans features interesting cultural observations, resplendent production values, a romantic musical score, and a solid international cast. Undercutting these strong elements, however, is muddy storytelling. Not only is the nature of the relationship between the characters played by stars Jennifer O’Neill and Anthony Quinn maddeningly vague—are they lovers or merely friends?—but the dynamics coloring interactions between the various sociopolitical factions in the movie are hard to track. The root of this problem, of course, is the choice to set Caravans in a fictional Middle East country, necessitating inoffensive vagueness, even though everything about the setting and the story suggests the region in and around Afghanistan. Furthermore, because the main story is very simple, casual viewers can easily tune out the social-studies material, which is a shame—for while Caravans is primarily a story about a proud man clinging to outdated traditions during a moment of global change, the movie also attempts to dramatize the intrusion of America into foreign conflicts, the power struggles between different Muslim tribes, the smuggling of Russian guns, and so on.

          Anyway, the main story goes something like this: Low-level American diplomat Mark Miller (Michael Sarrazin) is sent into the desert to find runaway American woman Ellen Jasper (O’Neill), who married a local military man (Behrouz Vossoughi) but then fled to join the caravan of a nomadic tribe led by Zuffiqar (Quinn). Predictably, the movie tracks Mark’s slow awakening to the beauty and savagery of an ancient culture. Just as predictably, the movie features a half-hearted attempt at romance between Mark and Ellen, a subplot that climaxes in a drab love montage set to the pretty “Caravan Song,” performed by Barbara Dickson.

          Had the filmmakers either gone full-bore in Michener’s epic storytelling style or winnowed the source material down to just the core narrative, Caravans might have been more effective. As is, the movie feels too melodramatic for a depiction of geopolitical strife, and too complicated for a sweeping romance. The indifference of certain performances exacerbates these problems, with the lovely O’Neill—as usual—forming the weak link in the principal cast. Meanwhile, Quinn delivers an amiable retread of his Lawrence of Arabia performance, and Sarrazin struggles to identify what purpose his character serves other than to guide audiences into the narrative and periodically express “Oh, the humanity” shock. Among the Middle Eastern actors in the cast, Vossoughi provides intensity as the main villain, and Khosrow Tabatabai adds edge as a male dancer who plays sexualized mind games with men and women alike, causing considerable havoc.

Caravans: FUNKY

Echoes of a Summer (1976)

          Were it not for the presence in the cast of two extraordinary actors, the pretentious tearjerker Echoes of a Summer would be of less than negligible interest. Adapted by Robert L. Joseph from his play The Isle of Children, this talkfest is filled with fanciful wordplay, whimsical contrivances, and preteens who speak with absurd eloquence. Joseph contrives a universe in which people articulate their feelings “poetically,” so the characters in Echoes of a Summer are as likely to express themselves through esoteric historical references as they are through meticulously crafted metaphors. And while Joseph occasionally hits the bull’s-eye with a line that conveys some simple emotional truth, getting there requires slogging through lots of florid nonsense. As a result, watching Echoes of a Summer quickly grows tiresome—unless one surrenders to the very different pleasures offered by the work of the two stars, Jodie Foster and Richard Harris.

          Foster plays a 12-year-old girl facing imminent death because of heart problems, and Harris plays her anguished father, a professional writer who buys a lake house so his daughter’s last summer on earth is peaceful. Foster, who was already a veteran child actor by the time she made this film, delivers confident and sensitive work that embellishes her status as one of the most impressive youth performers ever to work in Hollywood. Even though her character is preternaturally sophisticated, Foster makes the role feel as organic as possible by tapping into her own natural intelligence—and if her acting never tugs at the heartstrings, per se, that’s a compliment to the good taste she exhibits, since Foster never takes cheap emotional shots for schmaltzy effect. Harris, meanwhile, provides the opposite of realism, opting instead for grandiose romanticism. Brooding around the film’s lovely Nova Scotia locations while reciting poetry, singing, and spinning imaginative stories for the amusement of Foster’s character, Harris incarnates a Superdad who devotes his life to filling each of his little girl’s final moments with laughter and wonderment. Whether this characterization comes across as endearing or overbearing is entirely a matter of taste, but none would dispute the assertion that Harris attacks his role with gusto.

          Given the film’s focus on an intense father-daughter connection, it falls to poor costar Lois Nettleton, playing the mother of the story’s central family, to function as the de facto villain, a woman mired in denial and depression. The process of bringing Nettleton’s character around to grace (a word sprinkled liberally through the movie’s dialogue) is highly contrived, culminating in a silly final scene of a play-within-a-play presented for the benefit of the dying girl. Despite its sincere intentions, alas, Echoes of a Summer is ultimately as affected and trite as the awful theme song that plays over the opening and closing credits, written and sung (if that’s the right word) by Harris.

Echoes of a Summer: FUNKY

Halls of Anger (1970)

          Years after Sidney Poitier blazed a path by playing righteously indignant African-American characters whose noble behavior shatters prejudice, the far less impressive actor Calvin Lockhart followed in Poitier’s footsteps by starring in this clunky but entertaining social drama about the forced integration of a primarily black school in Los Angeles. Lockhart, who cuts a handsome figure but twists dialogue in such a peculiar and stilted fashion that he’s unintentionally comical, plays Quincy Davis, a black teacher who escaped the ghetto for a job at a suburban school with white students. When redistricting integrates a tough school, officials recruit Quincy to become the school’s new vice principal—and to be the de facto ambassador between racial factions. Everything springing from this contrived scenario is as predictable as you might expect. Quincy clashes with the white principal, who feels black students should be herded like animals instead of treated like people. The angriest black student, J.T. (James A. Watson Jr.), decides to make an example of a white student, Doug (Jeff Bridges), by dragging Doug into fistfights. Meanwhile, Quincy heroically inspires black and white students alike to take their education seriously, employing such unconventional practices as getting male students excited about reading by introducing them to the sexy passages in D.H. Lawrence’s books.

          Halls of Anger also features such tired tropes as a basketball-game showdown between J.T. and Quincy—because, in the limited imaginations of the filmmakers behind Halls of Anger, all black men settle arguments with games of hoops—and a race riot that Quincy quells with his MLK-style homilies of nonviolence and understanding. Chances are that Halls of Anger already felt behind the times during its original release, and the movie seems positively primitive today. Nonetheless, it’s hard to actively dislike the picture, because it means well in a clumsy sort of way. Plus, for every weak element—including a cornball music score that makes onscreen events feel as frivolous as comic-book panels—there’s a redeeming quality. Chief among those redeeming qualities, of course, is the presence of Bridges, appearing in one of his very first features; although he doesn’t get an enormous amount of screen time, Bridges elevates his scenes with intensity and naturalism. Future TV stars Ed Asner and Rob Reiner appear in small roles, and DeWayne Jessie—best known for fronting the fictional R&B band Otis Day & the Knights in Animal House (1979)—contributes an enjoyable turn as a student whose education Quincy turns around.

Halls of Anger: FUNKY

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

          Very often, a movie star’s persona is a projection of how the star imagines his or her best self—we all know, for instance, about the wide gulf between Henry Fonda’s onscreen aw-shucks decency and the coldness that created distance between the actor and his famous children. For Robert Redford, who spent the early ’70s evolving from a box-office attraction to a legend, perhaps no single film more clearly articulates the person Redford aspires to be than Jeremiah Johnson. A singularly beautiful film with amazing locations, eccentric characterizations, long wordless sequences, and powerful depictions of culture clashes, Jeremiah Johnson aligns perfectly with the vision of Redford as a mountain man who disdains the duplicity of the modern world, preferring the environmentalism and spirituality of Native Americans—even though the title character, like Redford, occupies a complicated space bridging these two worlds.

          Based on two different literary sources and originally written by mad genius John Milius (whose script bore the unwieldy title Liver-Eating Johnson: The Legend of the Crow-Killer), Jeremiah Johnson was heavily rewritten by Edward Anhalt and an uncredited David Rayfiel. Yet the real authors, in a sense, are Redford and his frequent collaborator, director Sydney Pollack, because they shaped the material to suit Redford’s affection for the Utah mountains in which the film was shot, as well as the liberal political bent that both artists shared. (RIP, Sydney.) Despite its torturous birthing process, however, Jeremiah Johnson feels coherent and purposeful. Holding the thing together is the simple contrivance of the story. In the Old West era, Jeremiah Johnson (Redford) withdraws from society to become a mountain man, eventually forming deep bonds with people he meets in the wilderness—until a pivotal occurrence reveals how out of place Johnson actually is among the snow-capped peaks of the frontier.

          The image of gleaming god Redford disappearing behind a thick beard and head-to-toe furs functions as a recurring visual metaphor. Similarly, Redford’s matchless ability to express himself through physical action and subtle facial expressions reinforces the idea of a character who’s more comfortable with animals than other people. Plus, since Redford insisted the picture be photographed in the same area where he built a home once he became a superstar, the actor’s deep love for Utah’s glorious topography permeates every frame. Therefore, in many regards, Jeremiah Johnson wasn’t a character whom Redford needed to “play,” since the line separating performer and role was so fine. As Redford told biographer Michael Feeney Callan: “It was grueling and I was changed by it, no question. We re-created a way of life that real people lived in these real mountains.”

          Pollack’s predilection toward romantic sweep is held in check by the macho textures of the story, though the filmmaker achieves poetic effects once Johnson takes an Indian woman for a bride. Similarly, Pollack’s gift for articulating bittersweet nuances elevates sequences in which Johnson falls out of sync with his adopted terrain. Among the supporting cast, Will Geer stands out as Bear Claw—a flamboyant mountain man whom Johnson befriends—and Jack Colvin lends memorable wickedness as a U.S. military officer whose disdain for Indian beliefs has tragic consequences. Equally enjoyable as a mood piece, a narrative, or a hymn to wide open spaces, Jeremiah Johnson ranks with the finest accomplishments of every person involved in its making.

Jeremiah Johnson: RIGHT ON

Solaris (1972)

          Appreciating the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky is something of a badge of courage among film snobs, not only because his movies are so unfamiliar to mainstream audiences but also because his style is deeply challenging. Tarkovsky movies are generally cerebral, quiet, slow, and very long, with Andrei Rublev (1966) clocking in at nearly four hours and this sci-fi drama running nearly three. In fact, Solaris all but dares the viewer to pay sustained attention, because the film features myriad seemingly aimless shots of empty rooms. There’s a heavy element of art-school theory in Tarkovsky’s approach, so those uninterested in wrestling with such concepts as negative space and parallelism need not apply. For the adventurous, however, Solaris offers interesting rewards—the movie’s deepest ideas have a way of worming themselves into the viewer’s brain. After all, there’s a reason why two of Hollywood’s smartest professionals, actor George Clooney and director Steven Soderbergh, mounted an American quasi-remake in 2002, although Soderbergh described his film as a fresh and separate adaptation of the underlying material that Tarkovsky employed.

           That underlying material is a novel by sci-fi scribe Stanislaw Lem, which takes place almost entirely on a space station orbiting the ocean planet Solaris. Tarkovsky’s movie begins on Earth, where protagonist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) mourns the death of his wife, Kari, as he prepares for a mission to Solaris. It seems one of the three astronauts occupying the space station has committed suicide, so Kris—a psychologist—has been assigned to determine why the astronauts are experiencing mental problems. The first 45 minutes of the picture are slow going, with lots of ruminative dialogue and symbolic imagery, but once Kris reaches the space station, things get weird very quickly. The surviving occupants of the station are deranged and paranoid, hiding in their cabins while the station degrades into the outer-space equivalent of a haunted house. Meanwhile, Kris succumbs to the same malady as the others, seeing lifelike hallucinations of his dead wife (Natalya Bondarchuk).

          Eventually, the strange Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) diagnoses the phenomenon. The planet Solaris, which is sentient, has caused the hallucinations by probing the minds of the earthmen in order to replicate beloved images. The problem is that because the earthmen cannot respond in kind, they have no means of stopping the planet’s unintentionally destructive endeavors. Tarkovsky and co-screenwriter Fridrikh Gorenshteyn fully engage the myriad themes raised by this scenario, which means that Solaris is a philosophical gabfest in the Bergman tradition. And while taking that narrative approach results in many static scenes of excessive length, the prize is a series of provocative assertions—for instance, Dr. Snaut cynically questions the very nature of pursuing knowledge in a universe that contains unknowable things.

          Compensating for the inert nature of extended dialogue exchanges, Tarkovsky conjures a number of disturbing scenes that are purely visual. The hallways of the space station have an ominous quality, presumably influencing the style that English director Ridley Scott employed a few years later in Alien (1979), and scenes of Kris’ dead wife repeatedly “resurrecting” contain a visceral charge. Underlying any discussion of Solaris, of course, is the question of whether Tarkovsky could have achieved similar or even greater effects with less bloat. Advocates might argue that the film needs its 167-minute runtime to cast a hypnotic spell, while critics can make a convincing case that less would have been more. Whether the movie is the “right” size or not, Solaris unquestionably occupies the highest strata of science-fiction cinema in that the film’s spectacle exists only to serve mind-expanding concepts.

Solaris: GROOVY