The Adulteress (1973)

The Adulteress is basically a Harlequin romance viewed through the fashionably downbeat prism of early-’70s cinema. The setup is a compendium of erotic-fiction clichés, and the payoff represents a laughable attempt at tragic heaviosity. What’s more, the acting is wildly uneven, no small problem seeing as how The Adulteress is an intimate character piece with only three major roles. One evening, middle-aged Carl Steiner (Gregory Morton) drunkenly stumbles out of a bar, so studly young drifter Hank Baron (Eric Braeden) drives Carl home. Carl’s decades-younger wife, Inez (Tyne Daly), insists that Hank crash on the couch as repayment. The next day, sobered-up Carl offers Hank a handyman job, and Hank learns that Carl and Inez lost a young son a while back in a car accident, hence Carl’s self-destructive drinking. Seeing shirtless Hank working hard gets Inez hot and bothered, so Carl, who is impotent, asks Hank to impregnate his wife. Predictably, lovemaking leads to feelings, and the resulting three-way relationship gets dangerously messy. Everything about The Adulteress is contrived and false. Braeden’s far too wooden an actor to portray a hip Vietnam vet, and Daly is too grounded and tough to play a woman who lets her life spin out of control. There’s also zero heat between the actors, no matter how many signifiers for virility co-writer/director Norbert Meisel throws onscreen. (At various times, Braden rides a horse and a motorcycle, because, you now, power between his legs and all that.) The film moves at a deadly pace, with innumerable scenes of pointless conversation, and the wannabe passionate high point—Daly straddling Braeden while he’s astride a horse—is like one of those Fabio book-cover paintings come to life.

The Adulteress: LAME

The Ultimate Thrill (1974)

          There’s a great pulp idea at the heart of The Ultimate Thrill, although the potential of the idea is almost completely neutralized by bad writing, one-dimensional acting, and tedious skiing scenes. Patient B-movie fans might enjoy trudging through the boring bits in order to reach the sensationalistic high points, but even those viewers are sure to be underwhelmed. Suffice to say, the title of this picture promises much more than the movie actually delivers, even though the title refers to the kick that the story’s villain gets out of killing people. And that’s where the great pulp idea comes into play—the villain, a super-wealthy businessman, uses his beautiful wife to lure unsuspecting young men to his ski chalet, and then he hunts them down and murders them, using the pretense of being an aggrieved husband as his justification. Chances are the story would have worked in an erotic-thriller sort of way had the filmmakers added in one more element—the bad guy getting a psychosexual charge by actually watching young men sleep with his wife. However, The Ultimate Thrill is so ineptly written and directed that expecting the film to provide a fully rendered narrative concept is unreasonable. At most, this picture offers a kinky premise, some attractive shots of snow-covered mountains, and a few surprisingly nasty instances of violence.

          Set in the posh resort town of Vale, Colorado, The Ultimate Thrill concerns Roland (Eric Braeden), a powerful and wealthy stud with a porn moustache and a private helicopter. Roland’s long-suffering wife is blonde hottie Michele (Britt Ekland). In the first act of the movie, Roland abandons Michele long enough for wannabe seducer Tom (Michael Blodgett) to make the scene. Then Roland returns and boots Tom from his house, telling the young man to flee on skis. Roland follows in his helicopter, leading to the gory but silly scene of Tom skiing off a cliff—and smashing face-first into the passenger-side window of the helicopter, leaving a mess of blood and viscera in his wake. Roland finishes Tom off in somewhat spectacular fashion. The remainder of the movie concerns Michele’s entanglement with a writer, Joe (Barry Brown), and the inevitable showdown between Joe and Roland. At one point, a hang-glider becomes involved. Directed by the prolific Emmy winner Robert Butler, who spent most of his journeyman career in episodic TV, The Ultimate Thrill is competent in terms of visuals, but anemic from the perspective of character and story. The dialogue is trite, many scenes feel padded, and the performances are robotic. Worse, the picture includes the ugly cliché of a female character submitting to rape because she interprets the assault as an act of misguided passion. Yuck.

The Ultimate Thrill: FUNKY

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

          Offering an imaginative sci-fi companion to Fail Safe (1964)—the chilling “what if?” drama in which a technological glitch triggers nuclear conflict—this brisk but overly talky thriller imagines what might happen if America relinquished control of its nuclear arsenal to a supercomputer. Setting aside the kitsch factor of now-dated movie imagery featuring a computer so massive it occupies the entirety of a hollowed-out mountain, Colossus has, well, colossal logic problems. The movie assumes that none of the geniuses who built the computer anticipated its likely evolution; that nobody imagined what might happen if similar systems were built by other countries; and that the entire U.S. government okayed a system lacking an “off” switch. (The script provides an explanation for that last item, but the explanation is a dodgy storytelling workaround.) Even with its flaws, however, Colossus is a noteworthy entry in the continuum of stories about the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, a topic that gains more importance with each passing year.

          In the opening scenes, Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden) celebrates the launch of Colossus, a supercomputer authorized by the U.S. government to automate decisions related to the country’s nukes. As explained by Forbin, the idea is that Colossus can cycle through countless potential scenarios in seconds and then take immediate action without the impediment of emotions. Soon after Colossus goes live, America learns the Soviets have a similar system called Guardian, and Colossus demands the ability to communicate directly with Guardian. Unwisely, the American and Russian governments okay the interface, which starts a chain of events that may or may not lead to Armageddon. Meanwhile, Forbin struggles to reclaim control over Colossus, even though he designed the system to resist human intervention. And that’s basically the totality of the narrative, excepting a quasi-romantic subplot involving scientist Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark)—characterization is not a priority here.

          Scripted by deft James Bridges (later to make The China Syndrome) and helmed by reliable journeyman Joseph Sargent, Colossus zips along with respectable momentum, notwithstanding the occasional lull. It also boasts consistently intelligent dialogue and a handful of clever maneuvers—for example, the sly means by which Forbin slips information out of the Colossus facility without the pesky computer noticing. The movie also benefits from an exciting and suitably futuristic score by Michael Colombier. Yet the aforementioned logic problems are mightily distracting, and it’s easy to imagine another actor doing more with the leading role than Braeden does. He’s fine whenever scenes require mild derision or smooth charm, but too often his limited range of expression flattens moments that should have radiated tension. Luckily, he’s supported by a deep bench of proficient players, including Georg Sanford Brown, William Schallert, Dolph Sweet, and—in one of those tiny roles that contributes to the epic scope of his filmography—James Hong.

Colossus: The Forbin Project: FUNKY