The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971)

          While it’s difficult to understand why this picture earned a theatrical release, seeing as how its small-scale approach to sci-fi/conspiracy thrills resembles that of some routine telefilm, The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler is mildly interesting for deliberate and unintended reasons. On the plus side, the loopy plot involves mad doctors and scheming government officials, with an intrepid reporter endeavoring to discover the truth. On the minus side, the script is way too talky, and it’s always difficult to take Leslie Neilson seriously upon discovering one of his pre-Airplane! dramatic performances. One is especially challenged to stay with The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler during the climax, when Nielsen shares the screen with a blue-faced automaton that stumbles around like some monster in an old Universal Studios shocker. Anyway, the story begins with iconoclastic TV journalist Harry Walsh (Nielsen) rushing to the scene of a car accident. Discovering that one of the victims is Senator Clayton Zachary Wheeler (Bradford Dillman), Walsh follows Wheeler’s ambulance to a nearby hospital. Unbeknownst to Walsh, creepy scientists abscond with the unconscious senator, then instigate a cover-up. Told that Wheeler was never admitted, Walsh endeavors to prove he saw what he saw.
          Meanwhile, Wheeler awakes in a remote facility operated by Dr. Redding (James Daly) and his associate, Dr. Johnson (Angie Dickinson). Redding explains that he performed experimental surgery by making a clone of Wheeler, then harvesting the clone for organs. What ensues is the usual potboiler stuff, with Walsh following clues while Wheeler appeals to Johnson’s humanity for help in escaping the madhouse. Executed with more zing, the story could have made for an entertaining lark, but the pacing is terrible, the production values are cheap, and the endless chitty-chat is interminable. So while The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler isn’t a complete dud, it’s a wimpy version of something that could and should have been provocative. Later films with similar themes, including Coma (1978) and Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979), are much more enjoyable.

The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler: FUNKY

The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977)

          In this serviceable docudrama from Sunn Classic Pictures, the company behind myriad pseudoscience documentaries, a somewhat reasonable case is made that Confederate zealot John Wilkes Booth was asked to participate in a conspiracy that originated in Washington D.C., but then took his own initiative to murder President Abraham Lincoln and thereafter became the perfect patsy for the very people who once tried to use him. The Lincoln Conspiracy even goes so far as to suggest that the man whom authorities claimed they shot dead following a manhunt was not Booth, and that witnesses were paid to give false testimony about Booth’s activities as a means of making the whole affair go away. As with most conspiracy theories, the problem is a lack of conclusive proof. Although various assertions are persuasive, viable counter-arguments abound.

          Comprising dramatic scenes and historical re-enactments, The Lincoln Conspiracy begins at the end of the tale, with the execution of Booth’s historically documented accomplices. Then, with the rich tones of Brad Crandall’s narration leading the way, the film flashes back to vignettes explaining how Booth and his Southern cronies made plans that ran parallel with the scheming of Northern politicians, who wanted Lincoln neutralized for their own reasons. Chief among those reasons was the fear of Southern politicians reclaiming their stature in the U.S. Congress. It all makes a certain kind of sense, and yet at the same time it all seems like malarkey, so The Lincoln Conspiracy fits the Sunn Classic brand of enjoyably irresponsible provocation.

          Bradford Dillman gives a pleasantly campy performance as Booth, while costar John Dehner lends cartoonish gravitas to the role of northern conspirator Col. Lafayette C. Baker. Playing Lincoln in a few inconsequential scenes is avuncular John Anderson. There’s a bit of derring-do every so often, such as a chase scene or a gunfight, but most of the picture comprises people talking in rooms. The filmmakers explain machinations and motivations well, so it’s easy to follow along—perhaps too easy, seeing as how much of the narrative is spoon-fed. Furthermore, it’s peculiar that the filmmakers avoided depicting key moments of the narrative, such as Booth’s infamous leap from Lincoln’s box at the Ford Theatre to the stage. In any event, The Lincoln Conspiracy is fun to watch, whether you consume it as sensationalist silliness or troubling agitprop, because the folks at Sunn Classic were experts at exploiting viewers’ fascination with the unknown. 

The Lincoln Conspiracy: FUNKY

The Amsterdam Kill (1977)

          A soulless thriller directed with palpable indifference by Robert Clouse, The Amsterdam Kill tells the uninteresting story of an ex-DEA agent who sorta-kinda teams up with a Chinese drug lord in order to dismantle a heroin cartel operating in Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Along the way, the duo’s exploits reveal corruption among law enforcement, so by the end of the whole mess, the antihero ex-DEA guy incarnates that hoariest of clichés, the Last Honorable Man in a Dishonorable World. The presence of venerable big-screen bruiser Robert Mitchum in the leading role would seem like reason enough to watch the picture, but the combination of Mitchum’s bored performance and a periodically incoherent storyline drains vitality from The Amsterdam Kill. Only the noisy intrusion of a violent action scene every few minutes keeps The Amsterdam Kill from seeming like an outright waste of film. Perhaps the best one could say is that the picture is agile and brisk but also hopelessly generic and pointless.

          Things get started when aging drug dealer Chung Wei (Keye Luke) decides to retire and sell information about his competitors to the DEA. His exact motivation for doing so is never satisfactorily explained. Rather than dealing directly with the agency, Wei contacts Larry Quinlan (Mitchum), a disgraced former agent. Quinlan selects Hong Kong-based DEA agent Howard Odums (Bradford Dillman) as his middleman. Also part of the mix is Amsterdam-based DEA agent Riley Knight (Leslie Nielsen). Each time Wei gives Quinlan a tip, Quinlan and his associates arrange a sting operation, but early maneuvers go badly, revealing a leak in the DEA’s operation. Eventually, circumstances throw Quinlan’s motivation into question, as well, particularly once he becomes obsessed with plugging the DEA leak. How is that his problem? Very little of what happens in The Amsterdam Kill makes sense, but a lot of it is colorful and manly. Hell, Mitchum even gets to use heavy construction equipment as a murder weapon during the finale.

The Amsterdam Kill: FUNKY

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? (1970)

          Partly an antiwar film reflecting the counterculture perspective and partly a squaresville pro-military picture promulgating Greatest Generation attitudes, the misshapen comedy/drama Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? depicts an explosive conflict between the soldiers occupying a U.S. Army base and the citizens of the hick town neighboring the base. The movie features myriad subplots and several principal characters, so for about the first hour of the film’s running time, it’s hard to tell who or what the story is about. Once things come into focus—or at least as much so as they ever do, which is not a lot—the sum is less than the parts. Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? includes some amusing performances, as well as fine production values and fleeting passages of snappy dialogue, but the script is simultaneously overpopulated and underdeveloped. Interesting ideas fade into the ether, silly tropes rise to the fore, and it all congeals into a kind of cinematic sludge.

          The basic gist is that a career soldier named Officer Michael Nace (Brian Keith) gets tasked with handling community relations between the base and the town. That’s easier said than done, because troublemaking Army personnel including drunken womanizer Sergeant Shannon Gambroni (Tony Curtis) have made enemies of the town’s sadistic top cop, Sheriff Harve (Ernest Borgnine). As the film progresses, tensions between citizens and soldiers grow worse and worse, eventually inspiring Mace to lead an armed assault on the town. The town fights back not just with police but also with a private militia funded and overseen by megalomaniacal idiot Billy Joe Davis (Tom Ewell).

          This short synopsis excludes easily half of the film’s narrative threads, because characters played by Don Ameche, Bradford Dillman, Ivan Dixon, and Suzanne Pleshette—among others—also have significant amounts of screen time. Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? is such a mess that it’s not worth expressing frustration that certain elements almost work. Borgnine adds another scenery-chewing monster to his gallery of screen villains, and Keith is entertainingly grumpy, but their efforts are stymied by the general formlessness. As Borgnine says in his autobiography, “We had a lot of fun doing it and I got a paycheck, even though it turned out terrible.”

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?: FUNKY

Chosen Survivors (1974)

          A gonzo hybrid blending creature-feature elements with the tropes of post-apocalyptic melodrama, Chosen Survivors features a doozy of a plot—several individuals who were unknowingly handpicked by the government to restart the human race get kidnapped, drugged, and stashed inside an underground fallout shelter just before a devastating nuclear attack, only to discover that the shelter is infested with vicious vampire bats. Predictably, the pressure of the horrific situation brings out the best in some people and the worst in others, so Chosen Survivors ends up borrowing narrative DNA from a third major genre, the disaster movie. Given the far-fetched premise, it should come as no surprise to say that Chosen Survivors fails to achieve anything resembling credibility. This thing is outrageous and even a little bit silly from start to finish. Nonetheless, what Chosen Survivors lacks in quality, in makes up for in vibe. The picture is dark, fast, and nasty, so it feels a bit like an early John Carpenter movie, right down to the lean and ominous musical score. Enjoying the movie requires that viewers ignore major lapses in logic, but it’s a fun ride for those willing to follow Chosen Survivors down its bizarre path.

          The movie begins enigmatically, with helicopters landing in a remote site and discharging the principal characters, who are then roughly escorted into an elevator shaft by military personal. The drugged states of the characters are depicted with distorted slow-motion images, jarring edits, and weird music, so the long trip the characters take from the surface to their new subterranean home is fairly trippy. Eventually, the caretaker of the fallout shelter, Major Gordon Ellis (Richard Jaeckel), explains that the “chosen survivors” were doped because there wasn’t time to risk the participants refusing to cooperate. According to Ellis, the surface of America has been obliterated by nuclear bombs, so the “chosen survivors” must live underground and procreate until it’s safe to emerge from the shelter. Among the eclectic gang are scientists Lenore Chrisman (Barbara Babcock), Alana Fitzgerald (Diana Muldaur), Peter Macomber (Bradford Dillman), and Steven Mayes (Alex Cord); wealthy businessman Raymond Couzins (Jackie Cooper); and Olympic athlete Woody Russo (Lincoln Kilpatrick).

          Friction between these people materializes even before the first bat attack, with Cooper’s unhinged character trying to bribe others into releasing him because he doesn’t believe a nuclear attack occurred. Then, once the bats start biting, people go completely off the deep end. Cooper’s character tries to rape one of the female doctors, Dillman’s character retreats into analytical mode by observing the dissipation of the group instead of helping solve problems, and Cord’s character becomes morbidly philosophical. (In one of the movie’s most quintessentially ’70s moments, Cord purrs hippy-dippy musings about the inherent faults of the human race: ‘”The world’s too big. People don’t have time. People don't even have time for people. That's why I got so hyped on this place. It’s not too big.”)

          Interspersed with the quiet scenes are wild action/horror sequences, some of which gain a surreal quality thanks to the use of cheesy and unconvincing special effects. In fact, whenever Chosen Survivors hits a groove of optically inserted bats chomping victims to the accompaniment of jittery electronic music, the picture becomes cartoonishly nihilistic—think Saturday-matinee action viewed through the prism of a nightmare. Further, the movie is stylishly shot, with lots of claustrophobic compositions and dense color filters and oppressive shadows, while the cast of mostly B-level actors contributes appropriately over-the-top acting. Dillman is enjoyably twitchy, and Kilpatrick has a great moment when his character makes a sweaty climb up the elevator shaft while besieged by bats.

Chosen Survivors: GROOVY

Deliver Us from Evil (1973)

          A taut little adventure saga/morality tale that takes its inspiration from the notorious real-life hijacking committed by D.B. Cooper, this excellent telefilm is something of a Northwestern riff on John Huston’s immortal drama The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Like that film, Deliver Us from Evil depicts the corrosive power of greed and uses a battle against nature as a metaphor representing the extremes to which men will go once the promise of wealth overcomes morality and reason.

          Set in the beautiful but unforgiving mountains of Wyoming, Deliver Us from Evil begins quietly, with five friends hiking through the woods, lead by professional guide Dixie (Jim Davis). The men are Al (Jack Weston), an overweight whiner; Arnold (Charles Aidman), a quiet blue-collar worker in late middle age; Steven (Bradford Dillman), a twitchy CPA; Nick (Jan-Michael Vincent), Arnold’s twentysomething son, reeling from a recent divorce; and Walter (George Kennedy), a macho blowhard who fancies himself an outdoorsman and wears a pistol on his belt. While setting up camp one afternoon, Walter spots a parachutist dropping behind a treeline not far from the group’s location. Soon afterward, the men hear a radio broadcast indicating that a D.B. Cooper-like skyjacker escaped by parachute in the same part of Wyoming where the men are camping. Walter persuades the others to join him in chasing the alleged criminal. Once they find their quarry, a trigger-happy Walter kills the parachutist.

          After a stomach-churning interlude during which the men fear that Walter killed an innocent man, they discover the hijacker’s stolen loot—$600,000 in cash. At first, the group reacts to the discovery with good citizenship, securing the money for a hike back to civilization so they can return the cash to its rightful owners. Yet it’s not long before the lust for wealth invades the hearts of even the noblest members of this crew, so, as the men make their way across cliffs, mountains, and finally a glacier, they turn on each other.

          The incisive script by Jack B. Sowards sketches each character distinctly and then generates believable conflicts through a steady process of escalation. For instance, immediately after the shooting of the hijacker, highly principled Dixie pushes the men to travel as fast as they can, since he knows it’s only a matter of time before someone hatches the idea to keep the cash. Similarly, the dynamic between kindhearted Arnold and his tormented son shifts from nurturing to tragic in a way that makes perfect sense. The script also captures a highly credible sense of the bone-deep weariness that comes from punching a clock year after a year—rather than seeming like opportunistic crooks, these characters seem like average joes who lose their minds after winning the lottery. Powered by crisp dialogue, panoramic images of wide-open scenery, and strong performances from an eclectic cast, Deliver Us from Evil unfolds like a harrowing fable.

Deliver Us from Evil: GROOVY

Bug (1975)

          The final film produced by B-movie kingpin William Castle, Bug starts out like a standard-issue monster movie, then morphs into a tragic character study about a mad scientist. Later, Bug enters quasi-surrealistic terrain thanks to inexplicable character motivations, jarring lapses in story logic, and a gonzo finale peppered with apocalyptic overtones. Very little of what happens in Bug makes sense, but the film is strangely beguiling nonetheless. Bug opens with an impressive earthquake sequence that’s staged entirely inside a small church. Next, director Jeannot Szwarc’s probing camera reveals that giant, mutated cockroaches have invaded the small California town in which the church is situated. Meanwhile, the story zeroes in on Prof. James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman), a science teacher at the local college. Thanks to clues provided by townie Gerald Metbaum (Richard Gilliand), who witnessed strange phenomena in the desert, Parmiter determines that the cockroaches emerged from deep inside the earth after the quake. Evolved for survival under massive pressure, the bugs have the ability to spark fires. Yet Parmiter’s realization comes too late to prevent tragedies including the death of his own wife (Joanna Miles), so Parmiter seeks revenge against the killer insects.

          That’s when Bug drifts into craziness. Parmiter captures a specimen, holes up in a remote cabin, and performs experiments including crossbreeding the “firebugs” with common cockroaches. A diving bell is involved. Concurrently, characters wander around town as if nothing unusual is happening, even though citizens are dying from spontaneous combustion at a rapid clip. On one level, Bug is so outrageously stupid that it’s almost a comedy. On another level, the movie is fleetingly effective as a horror show, thanks to elaborate scenes of bugs crawling onto people and then bursting into flames. On a third level, Bug is fascinating simply because the storyline is constructed in such an eccentric way—for the last 45 minutes of the movie, nearly all the screen time is devoted to scenes of Parmiter hanging out with bugs in his makeshift lab. Dillman’s twitchy performance is fun to watch, even though his characterization is cartoonish and silly, and director Szwarc—who later returned to the shock-cinema genre with Jaws 2 (1978)—shoots the material for maximum pulpy impact. Not a single frame of Bug can be taken seriously, but insufficient credibility has never been on obstacle for enjoying creature features.

Bug: FUNKY

Moon of the Wolf (1972)

          For about three-quarters of its brief running time, the TV movie Moon of the Wolf unfolds like a bland but professionally made murder mystery, combining smooth performances with a fair amount of Southern-fried atmosphere, befitting the setting of a small island community in Louisiana. During the last quarter of the picture, however, Moon of the Wolf remembers that it’s actually a monster movie, and the quality of the piece drops precipitously, thanks to hackneyed situations and substandard makeup. So, while it’s accurate to say that Moon of the Wolf is a bust as a creature feature, the movie works fine as an undemanding thriller that simply happens to contain a very silly conclusion involving a rampaging lycanthrope. David Janssen, all disdainful crankiness, plays a small-town sheriff investigating a series of brutal killings, which the unsophisticated locals blame on wild dogs. Over the course of his investigation, the sheriff uncovers tawdry secrets about a wealthy landowner (Bradford Dillman) and his beautiful sister (Barbara Rush); the sheriff also digs into the lives of a physician (John Beradino) and a tempestuous redneck (Geoffrey Lewis).

          As directed by Daniel Petrie, a reliable professional with an enormous résumé that includes such respected projects as the award-winning telefilm Sybil (1976), Moon of the Wolf is crafted with more care than the forgettable material deserves (although the monster stuff at the end seems half-hearted). Petrie gets especially good work out of Rush, an elegant beauty who has primarily worked in B-movies and small-screen fare; playing the wayward daughter of a moneyed clan, she invests her part with dignity and poignancy. (Never underestimate an actor who refuses to accept the limitations of the movie in which she’s been cast.) Dillman has some fine small moments as well, playing an aristocrat who’s mortified to have his privacy invaded by circumstance, and nobody does bug-eyed rural rage quite like the versatile Lewis. If all of this praise seems excessive for an obscure TV movie about werewolves, rest assured the goal here is not to suggest that Moon of the Wolf is by any measure a good movie; it’s not. But in the realm of schlocky ’70s horror, thoughtful storytelling is a rarity to be praised when found, even if that’s not the element one actually wants from schlocky ’70s horror. Still, better some decent performances than a bunch of mindless gore, right? Right? On second thought, don’t answer that one.

Moon of the Wolf: FUNKY

99 and 44/100% Dead (1974)

          On paper, this action thriller about a hit man drawn into a web of underworld intrigue is completely pedestrian—the story features standard tropes like an antihero rescuing his innocent girlfriend from a fellow hit man in the employ of a mobster whom the antihero has alienated. However, simply describing the plot of 99 and 44/100% Dead doesn’t account for the batshit-crazy storytelling style that director John Frankenheimer uses from start to finish, or the surreal nature of the picture’s awkward attempts at black comedy. On some level, this movie aspires to blend elements of comic books, film noir, and satire into a singular approach—but since the elements clash with each other, and since the movie compounds this problem with dissonant flavors like amateurish supporting players and goofy music, the end result is an odyssey into inexplicable weirdness.

          Richard Harris, adorned with a strange Prince Valiant haircut and gigantic eyeglasses, plays Harry Crown, a hit man hired by gangster Uncle Frank Kelly (Edmund O’Brien) to settle a turf war in some unnamed American city. Uncle Frank wants Harry to rub out goons in the employ of Uncle Frank’s rival, Big Eddie (Bradford Dillman). Meanwhile, Harry is trying to build a life with saintly schoolteacher Buffy (played by vapid model-turned-actress Ann Turkel, Harris’ real-life companion at the time). Also mixed into the storyline are Tony (David Hall), a junior-level crook whom Harry adopts as a sort of apprentice, and Baby (Kathy Baumann), Tony’s voluptuous young girlfriend.

          Frankenheimer treats the whole movie like a comic strip, so gangsters wear stylized outfits—think pinstriped suits and wide-brimmed hats—while Harry brandishes a pair of matching pistols with pearl handles. The setting is a city seemingly populated only by warring gangsters, so gunfights and murders take place in plain sight, and violent scenes are “ironically” scored with upbeat music and cheerful whistling. Everything in 99 and 44/100% Dead is overwrought in the clumsiest way, so the tone of the picture is captured by a scene in which Harry’s arch-enemy torments Baby.

          The villain of the piece is hit man Marvin “Claw” Zuckerman (Chuck Connors), who is missing a hand and therefore carries around a briefcase filled with bizarre prosthetic attachments. Arriving in town and demanding a sexual plaything, Marvin is furnished with Baby, who wears a barely-there yellow dress so sheer her nipples seem as if they’re trying to achieve liftoff. While Baby watches, Marvin affixes whips and other prosthetics to his stump, scowling and threatening Baby with cartoonish dialogue. And so it goes from there—take the standard elements of a crime film, jack them up on crank, and you’ve got this very strange moment in the career of one of action cinema’s greatest directors. 99 and 44/100% Dead isn’t Frankenheimer’s oddest film—that honor belongs to 1996’s insane The Island of Dr. Moreau—but it’s close.

99 and 44/100% Dead: FREAKY

Brother John (1971)

          Because Sidney Poitier had been playing saintly characters since the 1950s, it was only a matter of time before he portrayed an actual messiah, as he does in the compelling allegorical drama Brother John. Imaginatively written by veteran TV scribe Ernest Kinoy, the movie takes place in the small Alabama town to which long-gone native son John Kane (Poitier) returns on the occasion of his sister’s funeral. The town is mired in racially charged turmoil, so John’s appearance raises eyebrows among conservative whites like Lloyd Thomas (Bradford Dillman), who suspect John of being an outside agitator. Lloyd pressures the local sheriff (Ramon Bieri) to investigate John, which reveals the mystery man has traveled all around the world; this leads to allegations that John is some sort of communist operative.

          The whites’ paranoia is exacerbated when John starts keeping company with a local woman (Louisa MacGill), because if he’s just home for the funeral, they ask, why is he setting down roots? Adding another layer of intrigue, John reveals lethal martial-arts skills when assaulted by local thugs and, later, a redneck cop; though he doesn’t kill anyone, he makes it clear that doing so is well within his bare-handed power.

          Yet not everyone sees John as a threat. Lloyd’s freethinking father, small-town physician Doc Thomas (Will Geer), is nearing the end of his life and feeling spiritual, so he starts to wonder if John is part of a larger design. Eventually, Doc becomes convinced that John is a harbinger come to test the mettle of mortal man—and that man is failing the test miserably. The most riveting scenes of this unusual picture are one-on-one exchanges in which Doc asks for perspective from the celestial realm and John cagily avoids verifying whether Doc has guessed his true identity.

          As directed by workmanlike helmer James Goldstone, Brother John has sensitivity but lacks the visual poetry the material demands, and the story takes a while to get cooking. Furthermore, some viewers will find the cryptic ending highly unsatisfying. However, the concept is alluring and the acting is great. Poitier is effectively restrained, yet he ensures that the soul-deep disappointment behind his eyes is plainly visible. As for Geer, he brings the same avuncular sensitivity that later distinguished his work on the long-running TV show The Waltons. So, even though it’s far from perfect, Brother John presents such an unusual story with such care in front of and behind the camera that its best passages are hypnotic.

Brother John: GROOVY

Gold (1974)

          After becoming James Bond in 1973, suave British star Roger Moore was cast in a slew of leading roles outside the franchise, yet was singularly unlucky in picking projects; none of his non-007 pictures became a significant hit, and many were outright disasters. Thus, it’s a great surprise to discover that Gold, which did very little business during its initial release and subsequently fell into the public domain after legal squabbles between Moore and the producers, is quite watchable.
          Depicting the adventures of a mine supervisor who discovers he’s merely the pawn in an outrageous scheme, the movie takes place in the colorful milieu of the South African gold business. The main villain is Manfred Steyner (Bradford Dillman), an ambitious executive conspiring to destroy his own mine in order to drive up worldwide gold prices. He’s keeping his plans secret from his wife, Terry (Susannah York), and her imperious father (Ray Milland), who owns the mine. When the supervisor who was rigging the scheme for Manfred dies in a mining accident, Manfred recruits hot-tempered Rod Slater (Moore) to take the supervisor’s place; Rod is told that a new vein is being tapped, when in fact he’s being coaxed into opening an underground quarry that will flood the mine.

          Although Gold is far too long, getting lost for a while in the romantic subplot of Rod’s illicit affair with Terry, there’s a lot to enjoy in the film. Several veterans of the Bond franchise participated, giving the movie energy and scale: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service helmer Peter Hunt directed the film with gusto; Maurice Binder contributed a lively title sequence; and frequent Bond director/editor John Glen supervised the mining scenes, which are claustrophobic and intense. (There’s even a corny title song performed by Jimmy Helms in a Tom Jones-lite mode that evokes brassy Bond themes like “Thunderball.”)

          Moore doesn’t leave his comfort zone, laying on the charm with tools like his arched eyebrow and seductive speaking voice, but it’s a pleasure to see him being manipulated, rather than strutting like the master of all he surveys, since vulnerability becomes him. York is fine in a thankless role (even though she’s swathed in godawful ’70s fashions), and Dillman is fun as an unscrupulous climber who goes to pieces when Rod starts mucking up his grand scheme. Milland scowls and shouts in his usual style, which is always entertaining, and supporting player Simon Sabela is compelling as the most prominent native miner, Big King.

          The film’s exciting conclusion, which has everything from an emergency plane landing to a vehicular assault to workers getting obliterated by explosions and floods, isn’t edited as tightly as it should have been, but Gold is nonetheless quite satisfying, offering an agreeable mixture of escapist adventure and simplistic social commentary.

Gold: GROOVY