Santee (1973)

          An adequate Western elevated by the presence of genre vet Glenn Ford, who brings economy and gravitas to the title role despite being forced to play an endless string of clichéd scenes, Santee has an interesting place in the history of Hollywood’s engagement with emerging technologies. It was among the earliest theatrical features shot on video, even though it lacks such telltale traces as motion blurs and weak color reproduction. In fact, nothing about the picture’s handsome widescreen look betrays the format with which the images were captured. If nothing else, Santee serves to remind that at least in the realm of conventional narrative storytelling, the message usually matters more than the medium. In any event, Santee is ultimately no different than the average made-for-TV Western of the same vintage, but for a more luxurious running time and the absence of commercials. It’s comfort food for cowboy-cinema fans, and nothing more.

          The movie opens with wide-eyed young man Jody (Michael Burns) tracking down his father, who rides with a gang of rough men. Turns out they’re criminals. Jody accompanies his dad’s gang into the wilderness until a bounty hunter named Santee (Glenn Ford) kills the father and the rest of the gang, leaving only Jody alive. Jody swears vengeance, but Santee—who is portrayed as a saintly character despite his bloody profession—offers to provide Jody lodging at his ranch until Jody’s ready to get on with his life. Caught off-guard by the bounty hunter’s compassion, Jody accepts the hospitality and soon abandons his revenge mission while becoming a surrogate son to Santee and the bounty hunter’s wife, Valerie (Diana Wynter). The shadow of the gun looms large over these people, however, because eventually Jory and Santee must face an outlaw gang with ties to Santee’s past. All of this plays out like pure American cornpone, complete with Ford barking lines like, “Don’t tell me what my guts say!”

          Directed by the prolific Gary Nelson, who cranked out lots of meat-and-potatoes film and television during his long career, Santee goes down smoothly, despite the mechanical nature of the narrative. Characters change goals abruptly when doing so suits the storyline, exposition and motivations are explained too bluntly, and nothing remotely surprising happens until the suspenseful finale. Yet Ford keeps things interesting with his compelling take on noble stoicism, and it’s a kick to see Jay Silverheels—better known as “Tonto,” from the old Lone Ranger TV show—playing a significant supporting role. As it happens, Silverheels makes more of an impression than poor Burns, who spends most of the movie watching Ford with slack-jawed admiration, similarly to how supporting characters in John Wayne movies expend most of their energy deifying Wayne.

Santee: FUNKY

The Visitor (1979)

          There are so many mind-meltingly weird elements in the sci-fi/horror epic The Visitor that it’s difficult to do the film justice with a brief description. Put simply, the movie is a vague rip-off of The Omen, concerning the efforts of a heroic character to prevent a malevolent child from unleashing something terrible. Accordingly, The Visitor has the requisite scenes of a wholesome-looking young girl using her supernatural powers—or simply her bare hands—to inflict violence. And while the true strangeness of The Visitor stems from the chaotic storytelling, maniacal style, and WTF plot complications, even the central premise gets tarted up in a way that ensures audience bewilderment.

          Because, you see, it’s not just that little Katy Collins (Paige Conner) is some sort of devil child who must be killed in order to protect the universe. No, the problem is that Katy’s innocent mother, pretty Atlanta divorcée Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail), has a womb that breeds superkids, so conspirators led by mysterious surgeon Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer) have positioned Barbara’s boyfriend, Raymond (Lance Henriksen), to push Barbara into marriage and a second pregnancy so she can breed a son, because together with Katy, the son will comprise the demonic equivalent of the Wonder Twins. Got all that? Good, since there’s more!

          Stalking Barbara and Katy is grandfatherly space alien Jerzy Colsowicz (John Huston), who leads a band of bald alien musclemen who spend most of their time doing the equivalent of interpretive dance while standing behind scrims atop an Atlanta rooftop. Interstellar performance-art alert! Jerzy chases Barbara and Katy around downtown Atlanta, even though Katy tries to use her telekinetic abilities to kill him, and Jerzy spends one evening in the Collins home by announcing he’s the babysitter sent by an employment agency because the regular girl is sick. After all, don’t most of us welcome 70-year-old men into our homes to watch over our prepubescent daughters while we’re away? Oh, and we still haven’t mentioned the never-seen aunt who gives Katy a loaded pistol for her birthday, or that Katy accidentally shoots and paralyzes her mother. And then there’s crazed nanny Jane (Shelley Winters), who slaps Katy around because she knows that Katy is evil. Is it even worth noting that the plot also includes an intrepid police detective (Glenn Ford) and a silent longhair who may or may not be Jesus (Franco Nero)?

          The Visitor is gonzo right from the opening scene, a trippy special-effects vignette showing Huston in some otherworldly environment with oddly colored liquid skies. Among the film’s myriad bizarre episodes are the following: Katy uses her telekinesis to sway an NBA game by causing a basketball to explode; Jerzy has some sort of orgasmic interaction with a radioactive space cloud full of birds; a scene of spinal surgery gets intercut with a gymnastics routine; and famed movie director Sam Peckinpah shows up for one scene, in silhouette, to play a medical doctor. Accentuating all of this bizarre content is disjointed editing that makes everything seem hallucinatory, and lots of operatic disco music. You’ve been warned.

The Visitor: FREAKY

Midway (1976)

          This old-fashioned combat flick picks up where the great 1944 war drama Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo left off—Midway dramatizes one of the many retaliatory air strikes the U.S. and Japan exchanged following Japan’s initial 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. When the story begins, the U.S. Navy is struggling to replace ships destroyed at Pearl Harbor. When an intelligence officer (Hal Holbrook) intercepts communications suggesting the Japanese are planning to attack U.S. ships stationed at Midway Island—potentially a devastating repeat of Pearl Harbor—various officers spring into action preparing defensive maneuvers. Like 1970’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, this picture cuts back and forth between American and Japanese strategy sessions. In addition to humanizing the enemy, this technique lets viewers see how luck and tactical errors have as much bearing on military success as heroism and leadership.

          For instance, some of the best scenes take place aboard a Japanese carrier, where Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (James Shigeta) wrangles with doubtful subordinates, resulting in indecisiveness. There’s some great stuff buried in Midway, but, unfortunately, lesser material is given the primary focus—the main storyline involves Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), a strong-willed junior officer whose role in the battle is relatively inconsequential. The filmmakers waste gobs of time, for instance, on the melodramatic romance between Garth’s son and a Japanese-American civilian, which leads to trite discussions about race relations. Plus, once the bludgeoning air/sea battle gets underway, the movie introduces so many characters that text appears onscreen to identify new people.

          Even with these visual aids, however, it’s hard to track which ships are where, whose plane took off from which airstrip, and, for that matter, which side is winning. Still, before things get too hectic, Midway lets a handful of charismatic actors shine in showcase moments. Holbrook is a hoot as the excitable code breaker; Henry Fonda lends authority as the top U.S. admiral; Glenn Ford is effectively stoic as a soft-spoken naval commander; and Robert Mitchum plays an enjoyable cameo as a cranky admiral consigned to bed rest. (Cinema legend Toshiro Mifune essays a small role as Fonda’s Japanese counterpart, but his lines were dubbed into English by actor Paul Frees, the voice of Rocky & Bullwinkle villain Boris Badenov.) While these virtues aren’t enough to lift Midway out of mediocrity, any American war picture that resists the temptation to demonize the opposing side is inherently admirable.

Midway: FUNKY