The Deserter (1971)

          Part spaghetti Western and part Dirty Dozen ripoff, this Italy/US/Yugoslavia coproduction has a serviceable premise, then loses its way thanks to a forgettable leading performance and an overly mechanical plot. Along the way, several colorful actors are subsumed by the overall mediocrity of the piece, delivering half-hearted interpretations of underdeveloped roles. Even the action highlights are ho-hum. Those who want nothing more from adventure pictures than a steady flow of death-defying bravery and tight-lipped macho posturing will be able to consume the picture like a serving of empty calories, but those who expect anything more will get bored fairly quickly. In the Wild West, U.S. Cavalry soldier Kaleb (Bekim Fehmiu) completes a fortnight-long patrol and discovers that while he was away, Apaches raided the outpost where he lives and killed his wife. Kaleb blames the death on his superior officer, Colonel Brown (Richard Crenna), so Kaleb tries to quit the service and devote his life to killing Apaches. When Brown refuses Kaleb’s resignation, Kaleb shoots the colonel and becomes a fugitive from military justice. Two years later, blustery General Miles (John Huston) arrives on the scene, demanding that Brown illegally cross the Mexican border to slaughter a band of Apache raiders. What’s more, Miles demands that Brown’s men bring Kaleb in from the wilderness, because during the intervening period, Kaleb has made good on his vengeance pledge by slaughtering Apaches heedlessly, thereby becoming the ideal man to lead the mission into Mexico.

          Once all the narrative pieces are in place, Kaleb finds himself supervising a band of soldiers, including Kaleb, who would just as soon kill the notorious deserter as kill Apaches. Among those playing soldiers are Ian Bannen, Chuck Connors, Ricardo Montalban, Slim Pickens, and Woody Strode. (Naturally, Crenna’s character is along for the ride, too.) With this much talent at their disposal, producer Dino De Laurentiis and director Burt Kennedy should have been able to come up with something much more interesting than The Deserter, which is sometimes known as The Devil’s Backbone. Alas, the script is unrelentingly clichéd, predictable, and superficial, and the filmmakers miscalculated, badly, by casting Yugoslavian stud Fehmiu in the leading role. Just one year previous, Paramount tried to make Fehmiu into an international star by toplining him in the epic melodrama The Adventurers (1970), so this picture presumably represented the completion of a two-picture deal. A European equivalent to, say, James Franciscus, Fehmiu is suitably brooding and athletic, but he’s got the depth and range of a statue. With his performance creating a vacuum at the center of The Deserter, the movie is doomed to disappoint from its very first frames.

The Deserter: FUNKY

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

          One of several deeply flawed ’70s films containing an Oscar-worthy performance by Stacy Keach, The Killer Inside Me is the first of two movies, thus far, adapted from the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. (A 2010 version starring Casey Affleck received a more favorable critical response.) The material is strange, tracking the adventures of a small-town cop who secretly harbors homicidal tendencies, so the storyline asks viewers to take an unusual ride from wholesome Americana to deviant ultraviolence. Getting the tone of this one right would have challenged even the subtlest of filmmakers, a group to which rough-and-tumble action guy Burt Kennedy most certainly does not belong. Accordingly, the 1976 version of The Killer Inside Me is a mess from a tonal perspective, because it’s unclear whether the movie is a straight drama, a thriller disguised as a lighthearted character piece, a satire of American values, or some combination of all of those things.

          Keach finds a peculiar sort of true north, both in his onscreen performance and in his wry narration track, so his characterization tells a fatalistic but darkly funny story about a guy trying to make murder a part of his everyday life. Alas, the movie around Keach isn’t nearly as surefooted, even though some of the supporting performances are tasty and even though cinematographer William A. Fraker shrouds the film in evocative shadows. Those excited about exploring weird pockets of Hollywood cinema will be more inclined to cut The Killer Inside Me slack than those looking for straightforward escapism.

          Set in a small Montana town, the story follows Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Keach) through a colorful period in his life. To the casual eye, he seems like Mr. Nice Guy, because he romances a local schoolteacher, evinces great skill at de-escalating conflicts, and gets along with people on every rung of the social ladder. Secretly, however, Lou begins an affair with a local floozy, thereby entering into a triangle with his buddy Elmer (Don Stroud), son of rich landowner Chester (Kennan Wynn). All the while, viewers glimpse Lou’s demons thanks to flashes from childhood trauma, so when Lou freaks out and kills two people, we have an inkling why.

          The first half of the picture is all setup, and the second half is all repercussions. Throughout, the filmmakers provide colorful details and grim humor. In one entertaining scene, Lou welcomes a con artist (John Carradine) into his home and proceeds to scare the bejesus out of the guy, seemingly just for sport. In another vivid bit, Lou’s boss, Sheriff Bob Maples (John Dehner), employs unique vernacular to lament his poor marksmanship: “I can’t hit a bull in the ass with a banjo.” Although the movie never coheres, The Killer Inside Me is interesting and odd from moment to moment. Beyond Keach’s beautifully deranged performance, the picture boasts strong work from Carradine, Stroud, Wynn, Tisha Steriling (as the schoolteacher), and—reuniting Keach with a costar from John Huston’s Fat City (1972)—Susan Tyrrell (as the floozy).

The Killer Inside Me: FUNKY

Wolf Lake (1979)

          Shamelessly borrowing elements from Deliverance (1972), Joe (1970), and Straw Dogs (1971), this violent melodrama pits a Vietnam-era deserter against an unhinged Gold Star parent, with various innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. As written and directed by Burt Kennedy, a solid helmer of midgrade action pictures, Wolf Lake unspools smoothly, with every scene focused, purposeful, and tight. Plus, with Rod Steiger giving a relatively contained performance as the deranged dad, the movie’s intensity level never falters, even during the many, many passages when logic falls victim to narrative expediency. The plotting of Wolf Lake is similar to that of a typical horror movie, and like many films in that genre, the whole premise hinges on someone remaining in a dangerous place despite being fully aware of the danger. Which brings up interesting questions regarding what sort of thrill Wolf Lake is meant to provide viewers. The story is too far-fetched to work as social commentary, and it’s too nasty to qualify as escapism, so watching Wolf Lake requires the viewer to revel in the suffering of others. The picture is made with enough skill that it cannot be dismissed, but at the same time, it’s creepy to imagine that Kennedy and his collaborators envisioned 90 minutes of rape and murder as a fun night at the movies.

          Set in Canada circa 1976, the story opens with Charlie (Steiger) and his WWII buddies arriving at a hunting lodge for a getaway. The regular caretaker is away, so shaggy-haired twentysomething David (David Huffman) and his girlfriend, Linda (Robin Mattson), are looking after the place. Once it comes out that David deserted his Army unit, Charlie becomes enraged, because his own son died in Vietnam. Charlie tells David that he plans to kill him, but Charlie inexplicably remains until the inevitable violence explodes. First Charlie goads his men into gang-raping Linda, and then David fights back, leading to a war of attrition that leaves bodies everywhere. Kennedy’s strangest storytelling choice involves peppering the first half of the movie with flash-forwards of bloody finale. While presumably meant to juice tension, these flashes have the opposite effect, removing any mystery about what happens next. On the plus side, Kennedy manages other storytelling tasks well. In addition to staging action expertly, Kennedy keeps Steiger on a tight leash until it’s time to let the chronic overactor loose. Among the so-so supporting cast, Jerry Hardin stands out as the story’s requisite spineless toady.

Wolf Lake: FUNKY

The Train Robbers (1973)

Quite possibly John Wayne’s least distinguished ’70s Western, The Train Robbers is so enervated that easily one-quarter of the film’s brisk running time is consumed by aimless montages of posses riding across rough terrain. These sequences of horses and riders plodding across deserts or pounding through rivers are pleasant enough, with composer Dominic Frontiere’s lively music complementing lyrical imagery, but after a while it becomes apparent that writer-director Burt Kennedy failed to generate enough plot to sustain a feature film. The overall narrative of the picture is okay, a standard-issue quest involving rough men hired by a lady to recover stolen gold, and there are enough flashes of action and character interplay to more or less justify the movie’s existence. Yet it’s a measure of The Train Robbers’ shortcomings that the closest thing the picture has to a villain is poor Ricardo Montalban, who shows up every 20 minutes or so to glower at Wayne’s gang from a distance, puff on a cigar, and stand still while the image dissolves to another scene; Montalban doesn’t even speak until the very end of the movie. Equally malnourished is the flick’s love-story component, and not just because the gigantic, aging Wayne looks ridiculous when sharing the frame with tiny, young Ann-Margret. The flirtation between the leads comprises the Duke admiring Ann-Margret’s figure and spitfire personality (which is discussed but never really demonstrated) and Ann-Margret, in turn, batting her eyelashes during cringe-inducing interludes such as an unconvincing drunk scene. But, as with so many latter-day Wayne movies, The Train Robbers is really about mythologizing the Wayne persona. In one laughable moment, ornery sidekick Calhoun (Christopher George) is asked what’s wrong with Wayne’s character: Calhoun’s response, delivered with vaguely homoerotic glee? “Not a damn thing!” Alas, such a kind appraisal cannot be made of The Train Robbers, which, it should be noted, never actually features a train robbery. Even the presence of reliable cowboy-movie player Ben Johnson in a supporting role isn’t sufficient to make this one memorable.

The Train Robbers: FUNKY

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)

Grating and unfunny, this spoof of movie Westerns pales beside the inspired lunacy of Blazing Saddles (1974) and even the lighthearted silliness of Cat Ballou (1965). Worse, the movie overcompensates for its shortcomings by smothering nearly every scene in cloying music straight out of a Disney cartoon, and by relying on vulgar stereotypes like ignorant Native Americans, moronic Cavalry soldiers, and sex-crazed frontier women. In other words, rather than actually satirizing the clichés of the Western genre, Dirty Dingus Magee merely recites the clichés and adds the cinematic equivalent of lounge-comic rim shots. A bored-looking Frank Sinatra stars as small-time outlaw Dingus Magee. After robbing a bankroll from his dim-bulb pal Hoke (George Kennedy), Dingus retreats into the wilderness, where he becomes lovers with a horny squaw, Anna Hot Water (Michele Carey). Hoke seeks assistance from the mayor of a frontier town, who is also the local madam, Belle (Anne Jackson). She appoints Hoke sheriff so he can chase Dingus. However, the U.S. Army is threatening to close a nearby military base, so Belle asks Hoke to stir up an Indian uprising as a means of persuading the Army to stay. Using these plot elements, plus a few other stupid contrivances, producer-director Burt Kennedy constructs an hour and a half of noisy farce. Typical high jinks include a running gag of Hoke getting bopped on the head to the accompaniment of cartoonish sound effects, and Anna Hot Water repeatedly asking whether it’s time for her and “Din-goose” to “make bim-bam.” Sinatra wears a floppy black wig that makes him look like a middle-aged reject from Beatlemania, and Kennedy pulls so many bug-eyed faces that it’s surprising he got through production without an aneurysm. Both should have been embarrassed by their participation in this misfire. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Dirty Dingus Magee: LAME

All the Kind Strangers (1974)

          Stories about malevolent rednecks were all the rage in the post-Deliverance era, but this made-for-TV thriller takes the redneck genre in an odd new direction. Furthermore, the picture features a slew of actors more frequently seen in big-screen features, plus smooth work by veteran director Burt Kennedy, who was just starting his drift back to the small screen after a solid run of theatrical features. Stacy Keach stars as Jimmy, a New York photojournalist trolling the backwoods of the U.S. for interesting stories. One afternoon, he spots an innocent-looking young boy, Gilbert (Tim Parkinson), walking down a rural byway with an armload of groceries. Jimmy offers to give the kid a lift home, which becomes a miles-long odyssey down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Jimmy is alarmed to meet Gilbert’s impoverished, sullen family, which is led by Gilbert’s twentysomething older brother, Peter (John Savage).

          The only adult in the ramshackle house is Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar), whom the kids call “Ma” but who clearly isn’t old enough to be the matriarch of the clan. It turns out the family’s parents died some time ago, so Peter invented a scheme of kidnapping adults to play the role of mother and father; as Jimmy soon discovers, those not suited to the role have been killed and disposed of in a nearby creek. Jimmy tries to escape several times with Carol Ann, but Peter and his faithful pack of dogs keep bringing the couple back to their weird prison. Since All the Kind Strangers was made for TV, some of the kinkier implications of the storyline go unexplored, and the movie wraps up somewhat abruptly in 74 minutes, making the whole thing feel like a bit of a cheat.

          Still, the caliber of acting is unusually high for this sort of thing, with Keach channeling rage and Eggar personifying terror while Savage provides compelling derangement and Robby Benson, playing his second-in-command sibling, lends an offbeat vibe of perverse masochism. (Benson also sings the movie’s twee theme song.) Even better, this creepy little movie is enlivened by vibrant location photography. In fact, had the story been given a bit more room to breathe in terms of edgier content and a longer running time, All the Kind Strangers would have made an interesting theatrical feature.

All the Kind Strangers: FUNKY

Hannie Caulder (1971)

          After achieving stardom in roles that accentuated her figure—she did a lot of bikini scenes—Raquel Welch began striving for credibility with parts that required acting as well as posing. To that end, Welch and her husband at the time, Patrick Curtis, used their production company to develop vehicles for the actress, though Curtwel Productions only issued three Welch projects: the 1970 television special Raquel, the lurid melodrama Sin (aka The Beloved and Restless), and Hannie Caulder. A nasty little Western shot in Spain as a collaboration with Tigon British Film Productions, Hannie Caulder puts a feminine spin on the familiar archetype of the frontier vigilante. While the movie has an inherently sleazy aspect, a raft of interesting supporting actors and solid production values compensate somewhat for the weak script and (despite her best efforts) Welch’s lackluster performance.
          After a trio of slovenly brothers (played by the character-actor dream team of Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin) botch a bank robbery and escape into a desert, they stumble onto a small ranch owned by the title character and her husband. The brothers kill the husband, gang-rape Hannie, and leave her for dead. (This setup aligns Hannie Caulder with other 1971 revenge pictures featuring sexual-assault themes, from Billy Jack to Straw Dogs.) In one of the movie’s many overly convenient plot contrivances, conscientious bounty hunter Thomas Price (Robert Culp) happens upon the ranch soon after the siege, then agrees to teach Hannie about guns so she can track down and murder her assailants. Predictably, they fall in love while she trains, and just as predictably, circumstances ensure that Hannie must confront the brothers without Thomas by her side. Excepting an interlude during which Hannie and Thomas hang out with a philosophical gunsmith played by Christopher Lee, of all people, that’s more or less the extent of the story.
          Thanks to the considerable skills of director/co-writer Burt Kennedy, the picture moves along at a good clip, frequently exploding with bursts of brutality, and Hannie Caulder looks terrific. Yet the story is trite and even periodically nonsensical; virtually no explanation is provided for a shootout at the gunsmith’s home or for the presence of a mysterious gunfighter played, silently, by Stephen Boyd. This narrative opacity makes the movie seem more and more haphazard as it speeds toward an insipid climax. Yet the picture’s biggest shortcoming is also its biggest attraction, and that’s Welch—unable to believably simulate emotions, she’s never more than a beautiful physical presence. That said, Borgnine, Elam, and Martin are enjoyably repulsive as they bicker and whine their way across the frontier, and Culp is terrific as the bounty hunter. Calm, prickly, and wise, his characterization commands the screen, so Hannie Caulder rises when he’s present and wanes when he’s not.

Hannie Caulder: FUNKY