Holocaust 2000 (1977)

          Derivative Eurotrash noteworthy for featuring an American star in the leading role and for venturing into fairly extreme places, Holocaust 2000—sometimes known as The Chosen, Lucifer’s Curse, and Rain of Fire—is among the most enjoyably stupid ripoffs of The Omen (1976). Despite being quite slick on some levels, thanks to lavish production values, Erico Menczer’s vivid cinematography, and Ennio Morricone’s wonderfully gonzo score, the picture suffers from an atrocious screenplay and erratic direction. Things get so bad at one point that the film stops dead so Douglas can stand in place while voiceover of previously spoken expository dialogue repeats several times, lest the audience somehow miss the incredibly obvious implications of the storyline. And yet in the movie’s weirdest scene, pure narrative goes out the window as director Alberto De Martino lets loose with an apocalyptic dream sequence featuring visions of the end times intercut with, believe it or not, scenes of an anguished Douglas running across a desert while fully nude. File under “Things You’ve Never Seen,” cross-referenced with “Things You Never Particularly Wanted to See.”

          The ridiculous plot goes something like this: As American developer Robert Caine (Douglas) struggles to get plans for a Middle Eastern nuclear plant approved by reluctant government officials, prophecies and tragedies reveal that the plant is actually a scheme wrought by the antichrist, who, naturally, happens to be Caine’s adult son, Angel (Simon Ward). Yep. Angel. And Caine, as in “and Abel.” In other words, forget the mechanics of the dopey script. Grooving on the storyline’s broad strokes is more than sufficient, because the perverse fun of watching Holocaust 2000 involves laughing at Douglas’ overwrought performance—while secretly acknowledging that, every so often, his intensity gives real edge to the movie—and marveling at the abuse good taste endures in the name of disposable entertainment.

          One subplot involves assassination attempts on the life of a Middle Eastern prime minister, and this narrative thread culminates with a graphic beheading scene involving an errant helicopter blade. It’s as if the filmmakers studied the famous decapitation bit in The Omen, then asked how they could reconfigure the scene to add a provocative connotation. Never mind that the last thing the world needed was another depiction of political violence in the Middle East. Even more dubious is a long sequence set inside a mental institution—while shockingly gory and unquestionably unnerving, the sequence plays like a grindhouse homage to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). That’s not to say Holocaust 2000 utterly lacks imagination. A scene of Douglas caught on a flood plain while the water line rises with supernatural speed is memorably creepy, and the final act of the film echoes the all-is-lost vibe of The Omen, albeit without the benefit of ingenious storytelling. Holocaust 2000 is shameless crap, no question, but if you like your stories dark and pulpy, you may find yourself going along for the ride.

Holocaust 2000: FUNKY

Bloodline (1979)

          Audrey Hepburn was so selective in the final years of her screen career, often letting years lapse between projects, that it’s disappointing most of her latter-day output is rotten. She returned from a long hiatus to play Maid Marian in Richard Lester’s wonderfully melancholy adventure/romance Robin and Marian (1976), and it was downhill from there, beginning with this overstuffed potboiler adapted from one of Sidney Sheldon’s lowest-common-denominator novels. As always, Hepburn comes across well, her natural elegance and poise allowing her to rise above even the silliest scenes, but Bloodline does nothing to embellish her well-deserved reputation as one of the most magical performers ever to step in front of a movie camera.

          The story’s hackneyed inciting incident is the death of a pharmaceutical tycoon named Sam Roffe, which pits his only child, Elizabeth Roffe (Hepburn), against myriad cousins who want to sell the family’s massive international operation for some quick cash. Naturally, each of the cousins is some gradation of Eurotrash, plagued by adulterous entanglements, crushing debts, impending scandals, or all of the above. Just as naturally, Elizabeth is the only saint in the family, so not only does she block attempts to liquidate the company—the better to honor her beloved father’s wishes—but she becomes an active participant in the investigation of her father’s death. Oh, and during all of this, she falls in love with an executive at the family company, chain-smoking smoothie Rhys Williams (Ben Gazzara at his most intolerably smug). Yet that’s not quite enough material for Sheldon’s voracious narrative appetite, so Bloodline also follows myriad subplots relating to the cousins. Ivo (Omar Sharif) tries to keep his wife and three children separate from his mistress and his other three children. Alec (James Mason) digs himself into a deep hole with gambling losses, even as his beautiful younger wife, Vivian (Michelle Phillips), whores herself out to placate creditors. And so on. All the while, intrepid European cop Max (Gert Fröbe, the Artist Forever Known as Goldfinger) pieces clues together with the help of a supercomputer—as in, during many of his scenes, Max chats with the computer, which responds in a mechanized voice.

          Anyway, let’s see, what are we forgetting from this recitation of the film’s major elements? Oh, right—the subplot about the bald psycho killing women in snuff films.

          Yeah, Bloodline is that sort of picture, a semi-serious but simple-minded piece of escapism that periodically and ventures into the realm of exploitation cinema, resulting in dissonance. Picture a Ross Hunter movie suddenly morphing into a William Castle production, and you get the idea. To be clear, director Terence Young does his usual slick work within scenes, but the task of reconciling all of Bloodline’s incompatible elements would have defeated any filmmaker. Still, it’s impossible to completely dismiss Bloodline for a number of reasons, Hepburn’s presence being the most important of those. Furthermore, the cast is rich with talent, and Ennio Morricone’s score is characteristically adventurous, at one point going full-bore into a Giorgio Moroder-type disco groove. There’s always something colorful happening in Bloodline, good taste and logic be damned.

Bloodline: FUNKY

Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

          A sleek thriller from the bloodier end of the giallo spectrum, Black Belly of the Tarantula is very similar in style and tone to the many Hitchcock-inspired thrillers that Brian De Palma made—it’s a highly sexualized and nearly operatic melodrama about a psycho who mutilates and kills beautiful women. Accordingly, the same question that one can ask about De Palma’s ugliest movies can be asked about this Italian production. Does Black Belly of the Tarantula justify its own existence? Not really. Although noteworthy for certain elements, including a parade of gorgeous starlets and a truly eerie score by the great Ennio Morricone, Black Belly of the Tarantula is vile for the way it eroticizes the degradation of women. Some psycho-killer movies are worthwhile because they provide insights into the human condition, and it’s true that the people behind Black Belly of the Tarantula follow a fairly true moral compass. Nonetheless, how many images of lovely ladies being sliced open does the world really need?

          Set in Rome, the picture tracks an investigation by Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) into a series of strange murders. As depicted in loving detail, each murder involves an unknown assailant stabbing a woman in the back of the neck with an acupuncture needle, thereby paralyzing the women so the murderer can disembowel her while she’s still conscious. Tellini learns that this method of killing is inspired by the way a black wasp kills its natural enemy, the tarantula. In between murder vignettes and scenes of Tellini examining grisly crime scenes, the picture shows Tellini interrogating suspects and also shows Tellini’s home life. The most interesting thread in the movie is a subplot about Tellini questioning whether he’s cut out to be a homicide investigator, not only because seeing savagery wounds his soul, but also because the killer makes sport of Tellini by surreptitiously filming a sexual encounter between the inspector and his wife.

          Despite its formulaic story and sadistic extremes, Black Belly of the Tarantula is interesting to watch for the way it stimulates the senses. Director Paolo Cavara contrives many dynamic images and even a few somewhat erotic ones (for example, the shots of a nude woman viewed through jellied glass while she receives a massage). And even though Cavara’s chase scenes are perfunctory, he exhibits real glee when filming murders, contriving dramatic camera angles and translating peril into something like choreography. European beauties passing before Cavara’s camera include three women associated with the James Bond franchise—Claudine Auger, Barbara Bach, and Barbara Bouchet—while Morricone’s inventive melodies are like aural candy with bitter undertones. Furthermore, Giannini gives a strong performance in the leading role, blending desperation, ennui, fear, and rage into a sympathetic characterization.

Black Belly of the Tarantula: FUNKY

Hitch-Hike (1977)

          The beautiful French actress Corinne Cléry endured an unusual amount of onscreen punishment in her early roles. Throughout the softcore epic The Story of O (1975), she’s beaten, psychologically tormented, and used as a sexual plaything. And throughout the lurid Italian road movie Hitch-Hike, she suffers much of the same treatment. Although the latter picture has strong cinematic merits, including a deep wellspring of plot twists and a wickedly fast pace, it’s difficult not to view Hitch-Hike through the prism of Cléry’s characterization. Hitch-Hike is a twisted sort of male fantasy, so the presence of a comely woman who gets off on being abused feeds into the picture’s overall themes of masculine energy run amok. Partisans of the picture, including the actors, perceive Hitch-Hike as a serious examination of troubling concepts, and that interpretation has some validity. Yet at the same time, the movie is shamelessly exploitive and sensationalistic. Unlike other ’70s movies that mixed notions of gender and violence in provocative ways, however, Hitch-Hike doesn’t shield itself against criticism through the use of believable characters and immaculate plotting. After all, Cléry’s character ignores several opportunities to escape captivity, and the main villain ludicrously survives many near-death encounters. In other words, Hitch-Hike is a thrill ride first, and a movie of ideas second. The difference matters.

          Shot in Italy but designed to look like it was photographed in the California/Nevada desert, Hitch-Hike begins by introducing Walter Mancini (Franco Nero) and his wife, Eve (Cléry), two vacationing Europeans. Walter, a journalist of dubious credibility, is a self-loathing drunk who physically, sexually, and verbally abuses Eve. Theirs is a marriage of convenience, since Eve’s father is Watler’s boss, but they’re bonded by a vivacious sex life. One afternoon, the couple picks up a hitchhiker, Adam Konitz (David Hess), who turns out to be an escaped bank robber. Before long, Adam makes sport of tying up Walter and then raping Eve in front of her helpless husband—even though, per the deviant spirit of the movie, Eve enjoys being raped as much as she enjoys her usual rough sex with Walter. Violent plot twists pile atop each other as the movie speeds toward a nihilistic climax.

          Cowritten and directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile, from a novel by Peter Kane, Hitch-Hike has energy to burn. The cinematography by Franco Di Giacomo and Giuseppe Ruzzolini is vibrant, the editing by Antonio Siciliano is almost savagely fast at times, and the music by Italian-cinema mainstay Ennio Morricone is suitably bizarre. (Even the dubbing, de rigeur for Italian movies of the period, is better than usual, so lip movements and voices match fairly well.) Htich-Hike is executed with above-average skill on every level except perhaps the most important ones. The story prioritizes excitement over logic and taste, Cléry and Nero give enthusiastic but unpersusive performances, and Campanile plays a tricky game of simultaneously celebrating and satirizing the male animal; after all, Campanile’s camera spends as much time lingering on the contours of Cléry’s nude body as do the eyes of the predators who bedevil her character. There’s a conversation piece buried in this gruesome movie, but the conversation it invites is not a pleasant one.

Hitch-Hike: FUNKY

Violent City (1970)

          Made in Italy and known by many titles—including The Family, the moniker slapped on the film for a 1973 American re-release that was designed to piggyback on the success of the Godfather movies—this nasty Charles Bronson thriller boasts opulent production values and a pair of genuinely terrific action sequences, conveniently located at the beginning and end of the feature. And if the material wedged in between these impressive vignettes is occasionally dull and murky, at least director Sergio Sollima finds a solid groove whenever he focuses on the grim spectacle of a hit man annihilating targets. The plot is bit convoluted, but it goes something like this. In the tropics, goons pursue tough-guy crook Jeff (Bronson) and his glamorous girlfriend, Vanessa (Jill Ireland). This sparks a whiz-bang car chase that culminates in a bloody shootout. Jeff nearly dies, and insult gets added to injury when Vanessa leaves him for his main assailant, a gangster named Coogan. Compounding the indignities, Jeff is framed for murder and jailed. After his release, Jeff tracks down Coogan and Vanessa, killing Coogan and reclaiming Vanessa’s affections. However, while Jeff was in prison, Vanessa married crime boss Al (Telly Savalas), so a series of double-crosses and schemes ensues while Jeff tries to identify his true enemies.

          Following the turgid storyline isn’t worth the effort, but Sollima stages a number of cool scenes. The opening car chase, through tight city streets and winding country roads, gets the blood pumping nicely. A long sequence of Jeff methodically arranging and performing the murder of a racecar driver—during the middle of a race—is similarly tense. And the finale, which involves a glass elevator, is wonderfully stylish. It helps a great deal that legendary composer Ennio Morricone contributes a propulsive score, the main theme of which seems like a precursor of the thrilling music Morricone later created for 1987’s The Untouchables. So, even though Ireland is terrible and Savalas plays his clichéd role with a smattering of humor but not much imagination, there’s a lot of watchable stuff buried in Violent City. (In fact, there’s even a dash of sex, thanks to plentiful nude shots of Ireland’s shapely body double.) And, of course, Bronson is in his natural element, since he looks utterly believable whenever he kills people onscreen.

Violent City: FUNKY

Duck, You Sucker (1971)

          Unless you’ve got a weakness for spaghetti Westerns and/or the florid style of Italian director Sergio Leone, the man who more or less invented the genre, you might need NoDoz to make it through all 157 minutes of Duck, You Sucker, the last spaghetti Western that Leone directed. (More specifically, this is the last such picture he completely directed; Leone helmed parts of two subsequent entries in the genre without taking onscreen credit.) Alternately titled A Fistful of Dynamite and available in several different versions, some with running times as short as two hours, Duck, You Sucker features the filmmaker’s signature tropes of an intense friendship/rivalry between violent men; big-canvas battle scenes involving explosions and hordes of bullet-ridden extras; pretentious allusions to political ideals; and a kooky musical score by the great Ennio Morricone.

          There’s no question that many of these elements produced timeless cinema in the ’60s, notably The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), and there’s no question that generations of fans consider Leone’s operatic approach to frontier morality intoxicating. For me, alas, Duck, You Sucker is dull and excessive. Beyond the interminable running time, the film is built around a ridiculous performance by Rod Steiger, who is not only absurdly miscast as a Mexican revolutionary/robber but also can’t seem to decide whether he’s in a campy comedy or a dour drama. Flailing his hands like he’s spoofing Latinos, barking dialogue as if he’s playing to the cheap seats, and swaggering like he’s the biggest stud south of the border, Steiger is a cartoon from start to finish. Even though he has a few incisive moments, pantomiming in scenes when his character can’t (or won’t) find the right words, he’s exhausting to watch.

          Steiger’s costar, James Coburn, fares somewhat better in the movie’s other leading role. Playing an Irish saboteur hiding out in Mexico, Coburn is smoothly sociopathic, wearing a duster lined with sticks of dynamite as well as a canteen filled with nitro. Since Coburn plays a man haunted by a betrayal that happened back in his homeland (the details of which are revealed in flashbacks), the actor gets to portray a character instead of a caricature. He’s not exactly dimensional, per se, but he’s a hell of a lot easier to take than Steiger.

          And what about the story, you might ask? Well, if you’ve been down the spaghetti-Western road before, you already know the story is irrelevant—true to the genre’s norms, the narrative of Duck, You Sucker is alternately bewildering and idiotic. The gist is that after Steiger’s character cajoles Coburn’s character into helping with a robbery, they get enmeshed in a revolution—the familiar reluctant-antiheroes routine. However, the narrative is secondary to the style of the piece, since Leone unleashes all of his razzle-dazzle gimmicks—outlandish plot twists, sweaty close-ups, tricky tracking shots, visual jokes, and so on. Therefore, how much you enjoy this picture depends entirely on your appetite for Leone’s comic-book silliness.

Duck, You Sucker: FUNKY

Days of Heaven (1978)

          Much of the mythology surrounding enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick stems from the making and aftermath of his sophomore feature, Days of Heaven. Following idiosyncratic artistic instincts rather than Hollywood convention, Malick took nearly three years to craft this moodily poetic work, which treats its simplistic storyline like an afterthought. During that time, rumors spread about the director’s offbeat methods: For instance, he dictated that large sections of the film be shot at dusk, thereby abbreviating many of his shooting days to short bursts of activity. Then, after the film received a mixed critical reception, Malick disappeared from the Hollywood scene for 20 years. His mysterious withdrawal cast Malick as an artist too pure for the crass ways of Hollywood, triggering years of reappraisal and rediscovery.

          By the time Malick resumed directing with The Thin Red Line in 1998, Days of Heaven was firmly entrenched alongside the director’s debut feature, Badlands (1973), as one of the most respected films of the ’70s. Does it deserve such rarified status? Yes and no. Visually, Days of Heaven is unparalleled. Malick and cinematographers Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler mimicked turn-of-the-century paintings and photographs to evoke the supple textures of a Texas wheat farm circa 1916, the movie’s central location. Malick presents several astoundingly beautiful scenes of workers wading through fields, their bodies silhouetted against pastel-colored sunsets, while composer Ennio Morricone’s lilting music evokes a time when life moved at a more contemplative pace.

          Working with frequent collaborator Jack Fisk (credited here as art director), Malick oversaw the creation of a remarkable focal point, the elegant mansion that sits atop a wheat-covered hill, and Malick uses this structure as an effective metaphor for man’s tumultuous relationship with nature: Not only is the house a shelter during weather, it’s a place where relationships that had previously been allowed to roam freely get trapped within the conventions of propriety.

          The main plot, which never quite gels because Malick leaves many details unexplained and/or unexplored, begins in Chicago. Traveling workman Bill (Richard Gere), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) flee Chicago after Bill kills a supervisor during an argument. Upon reaching Texas, the trio accepts work on the wheat farm, which is owned by a sickly man identified only as The Farmer (Sam Shepard). For murky narrative reasons, Bill and Abby pretend to be brother and sister instead of a couple. So, when The Farmer becomes interested in Abby, Bill encourages the romance—believing The Farmer is terminally ill, Bill hopes to seize The Farmer’s wealth through marriage and build a new life for his family. Unfortunately, complications ensue, leading to heartbreak and tragedy.

          Despite the gifts for incisive storytelling he displayed in Badlands, Malcik badly fumbles basic narrative elements in Days of Heaven. His characters are ciphers, his pacing is erratic, and he relies far too heavily on the narration spoken, in character, by Manz. (A similar device was magical in Badlands, but here the narration just seems like a desperate attempt to add coherence.) Thanks to these flaws, the whole movie ends up having the hodgepodge feel of a student film, albeit one with awe-inspiring cinematography. Nonetheless, Days of Heaven casts a spell, which is a rare accomplishment.

Days of Heaven: GROOVY

My Name Is Nobody (1973)

          One of the best spaghetti Westerns to emerge in the latter part of the genre’s short life cycle, this strangely compelling dramedy was conceived and partially directed by the genre’s grand master, Sergio Leone. The bizarre story begins with the introduction of Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda), an aging outlaw who wants to live out his retirement in peace and quiet. Unfortunately, Beauregard’s reputation precedes him, and young gunslingers regularly challenge him to shoot-outs. One day, Beauregard meets a mysterious young man who calls himself “Nobody” (Terence Hill).

          A lightning-fast shot and a mischievous prankster, Nobody regards Beauregard as a living legend. They share adventures together, and then Nobody says it’s his dream to see Beauregard die in a blaze of glory. (Hey, what are friends for?) Accepting that a violent death is probably his fate, Beauregard agrees to confront “The Wild Bunch,” a giant horde of 150 robbers who ride the West looking for trouble. In the movie’s outrageous finale, Beauregard and Nobody both find the destinies they seek.

          As with the best Leone movies, what makes My Name Is Nobody work is the style, not the story. Through a combination of elaborate editing, histrionic music, and mythic characterization, Leone and the picture’s credited director, Tonio Valerii, create a sense of gods walking the earth, men with gifts and problems mere mortals cannot comprehend. In Leone’s expansive worldview, the people Beauregard and Nobody kill should be grateful to enrich the outlaws’ legacies, and the West is the scroll on which the characters’ inspiring stories are being written. When this kind of hokum connects, as it does many times in this movie, the effect is intoxicating, a larger-than-life opera of bullets and testosterone.

          It helps, a lot, that regular Leone collaborator Ennio Morricone contributes one of his most demented musical scores, employing everything from cavalry charges to elegiac melodies to shrill flute solos and weird vocal shrieks. The sequences that approach surrealism—like a scene of a stilt-walker having his “legs” shot out from under him—are incredibly vivid, even though scenes like Nobody’s painstaking attempt to capture a drowning fly are merely peculiar. (With Leone, you take the bad to get the good.)

          Fonda is strong, investing his performance with a likeable flavor of world-weary bitchiness, and the vivacious Hill blends physical comedy with tough-guy heroics. Reliable supporting players including R.G. Armstrong and Geoffrey Lewis add flavor, as do a slew of Italian character actors, though the real star of the movie is actually Leone. Whether he or Valerii directed the bulk of the film is ultimately irrelevant, since this picture is unquestionably infused with Leone’s unique sensibility. More importantly, the heartfelt ending is deepened by the knowledge that My Name Is Nobody was Leone’s last major statement in a wild subgenre he dominated.

My Name Is Nobody: GROOVY