Smile, Jenny, You're Dead (1974)

 

          Offering a thoughtful spin on the TV-detective genre, Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead is a reboot of sorts, serving as the second pilot attempt for a series starring small-screen veteran David Janssen as sensitive private eye Harry Orwell. (A few months after this telefilm was broadcast, hourlong series Harry O began its two-year run.) What distinguishes Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead from other TV mystery fare of the same era is a focus on emotions and psychology, rather than action and plot twists. The effort to render a serious crime drama for grown-up viewers is bolstered by imaginative cinematography and moody scoring. Alas, the acting is not universally outstanding, and the suspense quotient is low, an unavoidable repercussion of avoiding the standard whodunnit route. Nonetheless, the movie is in many ways refreshingly humane.

          Harry (Janssen) is a cop on disability following an on-the-job shooting, so he picks up extra cash working as a private investigator. Living alone on a Southern California beach, he’s forever toiling on a boat that seems years away from seaworthiness, and his most perverse characteristic—by Los Angeles standards, anyway—is that he doesn’t drive. Another quirk? No gun. When a friend’s adult daughter gets harassed by a stalker, Harry takes the job of protecting her. She’s Jenny (Andrea Marcovicci), a model trying to divorce an overbearing man while taking comfort in the arms of a much older lover; Harry also finds himself attracted to her. Things get dangerous once Jenny’s stalker decides the men in Jenny’s life are better off dead.

          Writer Howard Rodman provides nuanced characterizations and slick dialogue, while director Jerry Thorpe periodically uses offbeat camera positions to give the movie an idiosyncratic quality. Accordingly, there are compensations in place of the thrills one might normally expect to encounter in such a piece. Janssen excels in the lead role, channeling his signature grumpiness into something complicated, so he’s at once appealing and harsh. Marcovicci does not leave a lasting impression, but Clu Gulager and Tim McIntire lend twitchy specificity to supporting roles, and Jodie Foster contributes her impressive poise to a small role as a youth separated from her mother. As for Jenny’s twisted tormentor, he’s portrayed by future softcore producer Zalman King, and his onscreen behavior is weirdly fascinating because he manages to simultaneously overact and underact.

Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead: FUNKY

Company of Killers (1971)

Originally produced for television but then, inexplicably, released to theaters, Company of Killers has a number of interesting plot elements but suffers from such herky-jerky storytelling that, among other problems, it’s almost impossible to determine which character is the protagonist. As a result, the picture ends up feeling like a teaser for a longer version in which the story actually has narrative flow. Plus, did the marketplace truly hunger for a G-rated underworld thriller? Anyway, the picture begins with Dave (John Saxon) reeling from a gunshot wound in a city park. Dave is taken to a hospital, where—woozy from anesthesia—he reveals his identity as a hired killer. Then, once Dave escapes from the hospital, police detective Sam (Van Johnson) must track the killer down before Dave completes his latest contract. Meanwhile, businessman George (Ray Milland) contacts operatives working for a gangster named John (Fritz Weaver) in order to hire a hit man (Dave, naturally) for the elimination of a boardroom enemy. The movie also crams in subplots relating to a nosy reporter (Clu Gulager), a gang moll (Susan Oliver), and other peripheral characters including a stripper and Dave’s intended target. Considering that the picture only runs a brisk 84 minutes, you can imagine how superficially each element is presented. Company of Killers has some quasi-interesting scenes, mostly involving Dave trying to evade capture and/or revealing the compassion that lurks behind his cold-blooded façade, but the filmmakers tend to introduce potentially rich subplots without ever returning to them. What’s the point, for instance, of showing that the detective schedules a meal with his estranged daughter and her boyfriend, since the meal is never depicted? Company of Killers also suffers from ugly camerawork—think harsh lighting and jittery dolly moves—to say nothing of acting that borders on the amateurish. World War II-era heartthrob Johnson seems ridiculous playing a tough cop, and urbane character actor Weaver’s attempt at dese-dem-dose diction is laughable. Milland emerges unscathed, rendering his usual blend of reptilian charm and sweaty anxiety, while Saxon somehow manages to create genuine intrigue. Despite these minor virtues, however, Company of Killers is disjointed and unsatisfying in the extreme.

Company of Killers: LAME

A Force of One (1979)

Former karate champ Chuck Norris continued his ascendance to B-movie stardom with this lifeless martial-arts saga, which tries to compensate for its myriad shortcomings by showcasing long scenes of Norris in action. Karate aficionados may find this picture more satisfying than the actor’s previous flick, Good Guys Wear Black (1978), but, as always, catering to a niche audience is the easiest way to alienate everyone else. Accordingly, viewers hoping for things like believable acting, intriguing drama, and passable writing should direct their attention elsewhere. Model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill stars as Mandy Rust, the lone female on a San Diego police unit tasked with investigating narcotics activity in the city. When two cops from the unit are murdered via karate, Mandy persuades her boss (Clu Gulager) that everyone on the unit needs martial-arts training. Then she recruits title contender Matt Logan (Norris), who runs a local dojo, for the job. Predictably, Matt gets drawn into the investigation, suffers a horrific personal loss that makes him vengeful, and helps the police take down the drug kingpin who ordered the hits on the cops. There’s also a twist involving a corrupt detective, a quasi-romance between Mandy and Matt, and a touchy-feely subplot concerning Matt’s guardianship of a plucky teenager. It’s all very rote, with nary an original idea in evidence, and the storytelling is turgid in the extreme. Scenes plod along aimlessly, and the only thing flatter than the writing is the acting. Norris is awful, since he had not yet learned to emulate Clint Eastwood’s less-is-more approach, so his line deliveries sound awkward and his “emoting” is pathetic. O’Neill is almost as bad, a delicate beauty preening her way through the absurd role of a tough street cop. Gulager borders on camp with his twitchy take on the clichéd role of a put-upon top cop, and Ron O’Neal (of Superfly fame), who plays one of the officers on the drug unit, waffles between distracted indifference and silly swagger. In short, if you want to see an in-his-prime Norris deliver lightning-fast punches and walloping roundhouse kicks, A Force of One will satisfy for needs. Beyond that? Not so much.

A Force of One: LAME

Footsteps (1972)

          Nominated for a Golden Globe as the best TV movie of its year, Footsteps is a hard-driving character drama set in the competitive world of college football. Yet instead of focusing on the tribulations of athletes, as is the norm for the genre, Footsteps explores the psychology of a ruthless coach whose belligerence, drinking, and shady ethics have made him a pariah among top schools. Richard Crenna, putting his customary intensity to great use, stars as Paddy O’Connor, a cocky ex-player with a good record of guiding teams toward victory, but a bad record of holding onto jobs.
          When the movie begins, he arrives in a small Southwestern town to start work as a defensive coordinator at a regional college. Since the school’s head coach, Jonas Kane (Clu Gulager), once played for O’Connor, O’Connor bristles at taking orders from a former subordinate. O’Connor also angles for Kane’s job, sleeps with Kane’s secretary to get inside information, cozies up to a deep-pocketed sponsor (Forrest Tucker) in order to have a star player moved to defense, and makes passes at Kane’s girlfriend, beautiful drama teacher Sarah Allison (Joanna Pettet). For a while, O’Connor gets away with his behavior by delivering a winning season, but things come to a head when moral crises reveal how conscience sometimes inhibits ambition.

          Although it suffers from brevity, running the standard 74 minutes for a ’70s TV movie, Footsteps is quite solid. Featuring a script co-written by future Oscar winner Alvin Sargent, the movie has several compelling confrontations. Moreover, the O’Connor character is such a force of nature that it’s fascinating to parse how much of his act is bluster and how much is justifiable confidence. Though generally not the deepest actor, Crenna slips into this role comfortably and delivers a virile performance. The supporting cast is fine as well, with Bill Overton doing strong work as O’Connor’s star player. (Ned Beatty is wasted in a tiny role.) Veteran TV director Paul Wendkos accentuates the story’s inherent tension with tight compositions placing actors in close proximity, and the filmmakers employ trippy effects like solarization and split-screens to enliven big-game montages that were obviously cobbled together from stock footage.

Footsteps: GROOVY

The Glass House (1972)

          For an early-’70s social-issue telefilm, The Glass House has an impressive pedigree: Truman Capote co-wrote the story, and ace scribe Tracy Keenan Wynn (The Longest Yard) wrote the teleplay. Alan Alda stars as Jonathan Paige, a college professor convicted of manslaughter for inadvertently killing the man who injured Paige’s wife in a car accident. He’s sent to prison on the same day that an idealistic guard, Brian Courtland (Clu Gulager), starts work at the institution, and as these unsuspecting men fall into the web of corruption and violence spun by prison overlord Hugo Slocum (Vic Morrow), a brutal killer incarcerated for life, the heroes come to realize the hopelessness of escaping, much less changing, the merciless status quo inside the big house.

          Paige’s descent is tied to the abuse visited upon a sweet-faced young man (Kristoffer Tabori) whom Paige fails to protect, and Courtland’s disillusionment stems from his realization that the aged warden (Dean Jagger) is content to let inmates kill each other. Unobtrusively directed by journeyman helmer Tom Gries, the picture moves at a strong pace from the bleak opening sequence to the horrific finale, making a simple statement about the seeming impossibility of retaining humanity inside a maximum-security lockup.

          Abetted tremendously by Alda’s characteristically sensitive performance, the script does a strong job of depicting Paige as a man who can’t win: Keeping to himself doesn’t steer the professor clear of danger, and neither does taking a principled stand. What’s more, the script expertly weaves together various strong personalities, with Morrow commanding the screen as a predatory monster, and Tabori giving a poignant turn as innocent doomed by circumstance. Billy Dee Williams shows up in an important featured role, and the film slyly employs his super-cool swagger to present a complex character who’s part peacenik, part revolutionary, and part straight-up badass. Depressing but focused and purposeful, The Glass House is solid stuff.

The Glass House: GROOVY