The Loners (1972)

          If it’s possible for a movie to be completely forgettable and deeply weird, then The Loners is such a movie. On the surface, the picture is yet another downbeat late ’60s/early ’70s melodrama about a longhair in conflict with the Establishment, centering motorcycles and swirling toward a bummer climax—in other words, a typical Easy Rider knockoff. Details, however, bring the aforementioned weirdness into focus. The protagonist is a half-Indian drifter named Stein (you read that right), allowing the film to address then-hip issues of Native American persecution. One of the villains is a comically heavyset cop who shields his eyes behind sunglasses, meaning he looks very much like Jackie Gleason did in Smokey and the Bandit a few years later—and if that allusion feels like a reach, note that many scenes featuring cops are played for broad laughs even though the overall picture aspires to heaviosity. Also featured is faded Oscar winner Gloria Grahame as an alcoholic who claims she works as a nightclub dancer (viewers never see her on the job) despite being well into her fifties. Oh, and here’s the capper—the protagonist’s sidekick is a hulking simpleton prone to accidental violence, meaning the script poaches from Of Mice and Men.

          The actual plot is painfully simple. After Stein (Dean Stockwell) escapes a road-rage incident that leaves a cop dead, Stein and Alan (Todd Susman) decamp to a small town where they meet Annabelle Carter Jr. (Patricia Stich), who wants to get away from her dysfunctional mom (Grahame). Stein nicknames his new girlfriend “Julio,” and the couple embarks on a crime spree with Alan tagging along. Multiple tragedies ensue. A contrived but cogent yarn might have been spun from this material, but The Loners is bogus, episodic, and tonally erratic. Still, certain elements may appeal to viewers with high tolerance for ’70s oddities. Stockwell brings his signature offbeat vibe to the leading role, and it’s fascinating to contemplate whether he’s reacting in character at any given moment or simply marveling at the narrative malpractice happening around him. Meanwhile, director Sutton Roley and cinematographer Irving Lippman, both of whom have long TV resumes, render lively images—for example, part of a scene is shown as a reflection on a VW Beetle’s hubcap. In fact, the disconnect between arty visuals and ultraviolence contributes to the peculiarity of The Loners.

The Loners: FUNKY

Win, Place or Steal (1974)

A comedy without laughs that’s also a heist movie without suspense, Win, Place or Steal contains virtually nothing of merit, except perhaps for a soundtrack filled with jovial country tunes performed by actor/singe Tim McIntire, who does not appear on camera. Pity those who do. The charmless trio of Alex Karras, Dean Stockwell, and Russ Tamblyn play losers who steal a betting machine from a racetrack as part of a scheme to manufacture winning tickets after races have already been run. Unfortunately, all three leading characters are repellant. Karras plays a lumbering dolt, Stockwell incarnates a lazy philanderer, and Tamblyn portrays an angry drunk. (Actors Scatman Crothers and Harry Dean Stanton show up in tiny roles, briefly elevating the piss-poor material.) Stockwell and Tamblyn employ think Noo Yawk accents, so when they share scenes—and they share lots of scenes—their self-centered whining is highly abrasive. It doesn’t help that the script, cowritten by the film’s director, Richard Bailey, is crude and witless. At one point, either Stockwell or Tamblyn makes the following remark about Karras’ character: “That Frank is so horny he’d screw the crack of dawn!” Elsewhere in this painful slog of a movie, onetime M*A*S*H actor McLean Stevenson shows up for a cameo as a queeny insurance-company executive. To cut the filmmakers some slack, it’s possible that the currently available versions of Win, Place or Steal—likely derived from an ’80s VHS release—don’t accurately reproduce the way the picture looked during its original release. Therefore, emphasizing the fact that it’s nearly impossible to parse the visuals during the very long nocturnal heist sequence might be unfair. Nonetheless, the audio in this sequence tells the same damning tale as all of the cinematic information tells elsewhere in Win, Place or Steal. The jokes just aren’t there. On the plus side, fans of the leading actors will undoubtedly find the experience of watching Win, Place or Steal more tolerable than others, and McIntire’s numerous songs have a certain rustic appeal.

Win, Place or Steal: LAME

The Werewolf of Washington (1973)

Conceived as a comedy-horror hybrid—but not actually successful at delivering laughs or scares—this tongue-in-cheek flick imagines what would happen if a member of a dysfunctional presidential administration contracted a case of lycanthropy. Rest assured, any genuine comedic potential in this random notion was missed by writer-director Milton Moses Ginsburg. Instead, Ginsburg fills the movie with bland scenes of a nebbish freaking out because he’s turning into a wolf during full moons, as well as lifeless vignettes depicting the activities of a dopey president and his inept staffers. The whole piece looks cheap and grimy, especially in the awful public-domain prints that are prevalent in the marketplace, because Ginsburg opts for a super-dark lighting style in many scenes, and because his production values reflect a budget of about $1.50. Add in the ineptitude of Ginsburg’s approach to dialogue, dramatic construction, and shot design, and the stage is set for tedium. The Werewolf of Washington isn’t completely unwatchable, thanks to a few moments of campy goofiness, but it’s bad enough to challenge the attention spans of all but the hardiest viewers. Dean Stockwell, whose gigantic eyebrows give him a somewhat lupine quality even in normal circumstances, stars as Jack Whittier, a reporter who’s sleeping with the president’s daughter. While vacationing in Europe, Jack is bitten by a werewolf. Upon his return to the U.S., he’s given a choice position as Deputy Press Secretary. High jinks, including scenes of Jack trying to persuade White House officials that she should be taken off the job because he’s killing people at night, ensue. It’s all quite dull and stupid. Still, there are glimmers of something akin to amusement. Ginsburg’s best attempt at a joke is a runner about people confusing the words “Pentagon” and “pentagram,” while Stockwell spends his transformation scenes pulling faces that suggest Jerry Lewis in the midst of a seizure. Oh, and the werewolf makeup that Stockwell wears is more The Shaggy D.A. than The Wolf Man. In other words, this dog’s got distemper.

The Werewolf of Washington: LAME

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

If you have a hard time envisioning a supernatural-horror flick starring Sandra Dee, you’re not alone. After all, the pint-sized cutie is so synonymous with wholesome Americana that her image was invoked by “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” a tune from the stage musical (and later film) Grease. Nonetheless, Dee is indeed the top-billed star in this sexually charged phatasmagoria based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, the godhead of 20th-century occult fiction. Dee plays Nancy, an assistant to college professor Dr. Armitage (Ed Begley). The doctor’s prized scholarly possession is a copy of the infamous “occult Bible,” The Necronomicon. One day, a strange young man named Wilbur (Dean Stockwell) shows up at the college and hypnotizes Nancy into letting him handle the book. This upsets Dr. Armitage until Wilbur reveals he’s a member of the Whately family, which has historical associations with black magic. Eventually, Wilbur woos Nancy into returning with him to the (fictional) Massachusetts town of Dunwich, the Whately family’s ancestral home. Psychosexual intrigue laced with Satan worship ensues—can Dr. Amitage save poor Nancy from Wilbur’s clutches? By five minutes into this silly movie, it’s so obvious that Wilbur has nefarious designs on Nancy that her inability to sense danger becomes annoying. Compounding this problem is a confusing storyline that toggles haphazardly between locations—and, for that matter, planes of reality. Especially when the movie starts employing gonzo visual flourishes (flash cuts, solarized images, and such) to simulate a demon’s point of view, The Dunwich Horror drifts into incoherence. At its most laughable, the picture features a Rosemary’s Baby-style rape hallucination featuring body-painted hippie types clawing at and/or licking the camera lens. Predictably, the flick concludes with a ritual rape/sacrifice/whatever that takes place on an outdoors altar during a lightning storm. Begley and Dee both sleepwalk through The Dunwich Horror, and on some level it might have been preferable for Stockwell to do the same, since his over-the-top performance is unintentionally comical from start to finish.

The Dunwich Horror: LAME

Tracks (1977)

          Iconoclastic filmmaker Henry Jaglom’s second feature, the Vietnam-vet drama Tracks, is infinitely more coherent than his previous film, the interminable A Safe Place (1971) but it suffers the same pretentious excesses as all of his films. To Jaglom’s credit, his interest in human behavior is broad and genuine, and he gives actors room to run wild with Method-style flourishes. But unfortunately for viewers, Jaglom’s stories amble from one angst-ridden episode to another while unpleasantly self-involved characters mope, scream, and whine about feelings that somehow remain mysterious even after being explained to death.

          Tracks stars Dennis Hopper, at his most gratingly unhinged, as Sgt. Jack Falen, a traumatized soldier escorting a friend’s corpse home for burial. Most of the picture takes place on a train as Falen heads toward his destination and kills time with a swinger (Dean Stockwell) who wants Falen to play wingman while he woos eligible ladies. Despite being inexpressive and moody, Falen somehow hooks up with an innocent hippie chick (Taryn Power) and a randy liberated woman (Topo Swope), which means that viewers get not one but two scenes of Hopper extending his tongue and flailing it at women’s faces in a soggy simulation of kissing.

          Between sexcapades, Falen engages in psychobabble-filled chats with assorted passengers, and he periodically succumbs to psychotic episodes in which he imagines seeing things like gang rape, which prompts him to whip out his sidearm and threaten people. When this pedestrian PTSD shtick reaches a climax, Hopper strips naked and runs through the train; a bit later, he gets off the train and climbs into a grave that he mistakes for a foxhole, at which point another freakout ensues. None of this has much impact, however, since Hopper is so creepy that it’s impossible to care what becomes of his character. Watching Tracks will make most viewers want to make tracks—away from the movie.

Tracks: LAME