Trackdown (1976)

          Tough, nasty, and violent, Trackdown tells the story of a modern-day cowboy who travels to the big city because his little sister has gone missing, then dives headlong into a cesspool of human exploitation and organized crime while looking for his lost sibling. The movie is something of a cousin to Paul Schrader’s provocative Hardcore (1979), although Schrader’s movie deals with pornography instead of prostitution, and there’s a big gulf between the theologically charged Hardcore and the no-frills Trackdown. Still, what both movies share is the rich premise of a man from a simple place wading through the muck of late-’70s Los Angeles, where pretty dreamers looking for new opportunities are easy prey for flesh merchants. In fact, had a stronger actor been cast in the lead of Trackdown, the movie might have found a niche among the era’s memorable exploitation films, since it benefits from a well-constructed plot, interesting supporting characters, and vivid action scenes. Alas, while James Mitchum inherited his father Robert’s hangdog eyes and hulking physique, he didn’t get his dad’s charisma or talent.

          The picture begins with Betsy Calhoun (Karen Lamm) running away from her Montana home and taking a bus to Hollywood. Almost immediately after her arrival, she’s mugged by a group of Latino street toughs, but one of the Latinos takes sympathy on her plight. He’s Chucho (Erik Estrada). Chucho gives Lynn a place to crash and a lead on work, so they become friends—but Chucho’s cronies have designs on the pretty blonde. They kidnap and drug Lynn, delivering her to Johnny Dee (Vince Cannon), a mob-connected pimp. He entrusts Lynn to high-priced call girl Barbara (Anne Archer), who offers to train Lynn as a prostitute. In one of the picture’s most interesting nuances, Lynne accepts the overture after she’s recovered from the influence of drugs—as she explains, there’s a reason she left small-town America for the bright lights and endless promise of the Golden State. Once Lynn’s brother, Jim (Mitchum), shows up to “rescue” her, he quickly learns that he’s looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.

          Lest the preceding give the false impression that Trackdown is a sensitive exploration of human feeling, it should be emphasized that Trackdown is a lowbrow thrill ride. (Note the fact that Cathy Lee Crosby, who plays a social worker and provides a love interest for Mitchum’s character, spends most of the movie wearing skin-tight jeans and revealing tied-off shirts.) Nonetheless, the filmmakers take their time establishing characters and situations in logical ways, so once the shooting starts, there’s a believable emotional context. Furthermore, while one might expect this sort of film to be presented in the grungy style of a Roger Corman-produced quickie, Trackdown instead has the look of a studio picture, and the polished images get juiced by tasty, disco-infused musical scoring. 

Trackdown: FUNKY

The Dark (1979)

A dreadful mishmash of horror and science fiction, The Dark manages to make the quest to capture an extraterrestrial serial killer uninteresting. When the movie begins, a mysterious figure murders several people, including the daughter of author/ex-con Roy Warner (William Devane). Preoccupied with grief—but not so preoccupied that he doesn’t make time to flirt with TV reporter Zoe Owens (Cathy Lee Crosby), who is in turn tries to exploit Roy for a hot story—Roy dogs grumpy police detective Dave Mooney (Richard Jaeckel), the cop assigned to find the killer. Eventually, the various characters gravitate toward a blowsy psychic named De Renzy (Jacqueline Hyde), who has somehow intuited that the killer is an alien, and that the alien is inexplicably tethered to an out-of-work actor and . . . Oh, who cares? The Dark is one of those incompetent movies that can’t figure out how to deliver plot elements effectively, so it compensates by stacking characters and twists atop each other, as if the volume of concepts will compensate for the fact that none of the concepts is interesting. Worse, the story structure of boring filler scenes punctuated by a trite murder sequence every 10 minutes or so is beyond perfunctory. About the only time the movie gets vibrant is during the gonzo climax, when a 10-foot-tall, shambling man-monster squares off with an army of cops, frying the policemen with laser beams shot from the monster’s eyes. However, since the movie’s special effects are mediocre—and since the acting is so lifeless it feels like the performers were handed their lines just before they walked on camera—the film’s only redeeming value is atmospheric widescreen cinematography that lives up to the title. Using a mixture of deep shadows and epic lens flares straight out of the John Carpenter playbook, John Arthur Morrill’s tasty images almost make The Dark worth watching. Almost.

The Dark: LAME

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

          Long on atmosphere but short on coherence, this ultra-American thriller was, oddly, based on a Swedish novel. Despite its foreign origins, The Laughing Policeman is one of the most persuasive police procedurals made for the big screen in the ’70s, putting across a palpable sense of realism as it depicts badge-wielding working stiffs trying to sort out the mess of a complex murder investigation. The story ultimately spirals into confusion—an argument could be made that the filmmakers tried to achieve verisimilitude, leaving the audience as confounded as the characters—but even if the destination isn’t particularly worthwhile, the journey is engrossing.

          Set in San Francisco, the picture begins with a horrific assault, when a mysterious assailant whips out a grease gun on a crowded city bus and annihilates all the passengers, including an off-duty cop. The dead policeman’s partner, taciturn detective Jake Martin (Walter Matthau), takes the lead on the investigation but shares very few of his discoveries with his replacement partner, hotshot Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern), or his irritable commanding officer, Lt. Steiner (Anthony Zerbe). Part of the reason Martin plays his cards so close to the vest is that he learns unsavory facts about his late partner, like the kinky aspects of the dead cop’s romance with a young woman (Cathy Lee Crosby), and part of the reason is because Martin senses a connection between the current crime and an unsolved case from the past.

          Director Stuart Rosenberg, a TV-trained helmer whose eclectic résumé includes the macho melodrama Cool Hand Luke (1967), shoots the hell out of scenes featuring Martin and his fellow cops pounding the San Fran pavement to shake underworld sources for clues. Rosenberg and cinematographer David M. Walsh use long lenses to surround characters with evocative details, and they drape nighttime sequences in a soft haze that suggests salty air drifting off the Bay. Every scene feels like it’s happening in a genuine place, and Rosenberg lets his actors perform in a loose style that feels improvisational; this method generates fantastic moments between motor-mouthed Dern and tight-lipped Matthau, like a vivid throwaway scene in which they rest after ascending an epic flight of stairs.

          Matthau is memorably belligerent and terse, while Dern, seizing the opportunity of his first above-the-title role in a studio picture, loads every line with energy and meaning. In addition to the colorful actors playing the cops (Louis Gossett Jr. rounds out the principal cast with an intense performance as a hot-headed detective), The Laughing Policeman showcases a cavalcade of eclectic bit players, essaying the various gamblers and informants and pimps who permeate the underworld the cops must troll for leads.

The Laughing Policeman: GROOVY

Wonder Woman (1974) & The New Original Wonder Woman (1975)

          Plans to put DC Comics’ iconic heroine onto the small screen began in the mid-’60s, when the campy Batman show was peaking in popularity. All that remains of the 1967 Wonder Woman is an excruciatingly awful five-minute presentation reel titled “Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince?” and featuring a mousy woman who imagines she’s a voluptuous goddess. (YouTube it if you’re feeling masochistic.) Seven years later, a full-length pilot movie took a deadly serious approach and delivered deadly dull results.
          Starring athlete-turned-actress Cathy Lee Crosby (above left), Wonder Woman is only interesting for how many things it gets wrong. Rather than presenting Wonder Woman as a superhero, the movie shows her as a secret agent in a star-spangled track suit, working at a leisurely pace to foil the plans of an international criminal (Ricardo Montalban) who is ransoming the identities of undercover operatives. Thanks to Crosby’s lifeless performance and sluggish action sequences, the 1974 Wonder Woman movie is drab in every respect. The highlight, such as it is, features Wonder Woman trapped in a tiny room as geysers of rainbow-colored sludge ooze from the walls, threatening to trap her until she improbably kicks open the room’s Plexiglas door. In the end, a defeated Montalban coos, “Wonder Woman, I love you”—but at least as far as this version of the character is concerned, he’s alone in that opinion.

          A year and a half after the Crosby misfire, ABC broadcast the awkwardly titled The New Original Wonder Woman, which introduced viewers to the impressive spectacle of Lynda Carter (above right) crammed into a skimpy costume—although the 1975 movie introduces many kitschy flourishes, including the series’ memorably disco-flavored theme song and a colorful World War II milieu taken straight from the first Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s, Carter’s sex appeal is the main attraction.

          Developed and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, a veteran of the ’60s Batman series, The New Original Wonder Woman tries to recapture the previous series’ tongue-in-cheek quality, but instead comes across as insipid because the script isn’t witty enough to trigger an ironic response. Even with comedy pros Henry Gibson, Cloris Leachman, and Kenneth Mars in the cast, The New Original Wonder Woman is tedious, with flaws like cheap-looking sets and schlocky special effects exacerbating the stiff lead performances by Carter and costar Lyle Waggoner. The only time the pilot reaches the desired level of camp is the finale, during which Carter has a catfight with guest star Stella Stevens.

          Nonetheless, Wonder Woman the series finally was off and running, though only one season was set in World War II. After the first run of episodes, the series migrated to CBS and became The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, with stories set in the present day; that version ran for two seasons. In the years since, Wonder Woman has thrived in animation, various attempts at a feature film have stalled, and super-producer David E. Kelley’s 2011 pilot for a new Wonder Woman series didn’t even get on the air. So, for the time being, in addition to being remembered as one of the sexiest pinup queens of the ’70s, Carter remains the world’s live-action Wonder Woman of choice.

Wonder Woman: LAME

The New Original Wonder Woman: FUNKY

Coach (1978)

The concept of a sexy woman becoming the coach of an all-male basketball team could have led to satire or smut, but the movie featuring this concept is a milquetoast nothing: Coach is sufficiently well-made that it’s coherent and professional-looking, but the story is so uneventful that Coach feels like a set-up for jolts that just aren’t there. Every possible opportunity for sharp jokes about the gulf between the sexes is ignored or wasted; the sports scenes are drab and trite; and the leading lady tries to retain both her clothing and her dignity, which is admirable but not exactly the best way to deliver on audience expectations given that the narrative focuses on a sexual relationship between the coach and one of her players. The plot, which matters even less than you might imagine, involves onetime Olympic champion Randy Rawlings (Cathy Lee Crosby) getting a coaching job because a school functionary mistakes the name on her résumé for a man’s name. The school’s biggest backer, Granger (Keenan Wynn), tries to fire her immediately, but Randy threatens a discrimination lawsuit, so Granger endeavors to sabotage her job performance. In this context, it makes no sense that the supposedly intelligent Randy risks her employment by hopping into the sack with eager hoops player Jack (Michael Biehn), but there you go. Offering brief respites from the main storyline are idiotic scenes like the bit in which a white student is hypnotized into thinking he’s a black hoops star. (Yes, Coach is supposed to be a comedy.) Crosby, all cheekbones and teeth, is believably athletic (she was a tennis champ before becoming an actor), but there’s a reason her career mostly comprises guest shots on grade-Z television. Yawn.

Coach: LAME