Hangup (1974)

          Painfully generic blaxploitation melodrama Hangup provides a minor footnote within film history because it was the last picture helmed by Golden Age stalwart Henry Hathaway, once a reliable director of action movies and Westerns. Exactly none of his former ability is on display here—Hangup has all the momentum and style of a bad TV episode. To be fair, the version screened for this blog is an abbreviated cut that was re-released as Super Dude. Still, nothing suggests a few extra moments of character development could possibly elevate Hangup into anything meritorious, especially because the leading performances by William Elliott and Marki Bey are lifeless. He plays a college student training to be a cop (who somehow snags an undercover gig on a narcotics squad) and she plays his high-school dream girl, now lost in a spiral of drug addiction and sex work. The threadbare plot involves Ken (Elliott) pumping Julie (Bey) for information he can use to nail a big-time supplier named Richards (Michael Lerner). Predictably, close proximity causes Ken and Julie to fall in love. Tragedy ensues.

          Shot in grungy pockets of Los Angeles on a minuscule budget, Hangup plods along at a dreary pace exacerbated by Bey’s and Elliott’s wooden acting. In their defense, it would take a special class of thespian to animate lines such as this one: “I’m hooked on her the same way she was hooked on smack!” Yet at least for its first hour, Hangup is moderately watchable because the hackneyed contrivance of a narc falling for a junkie has inherent drama. Alas, that strength leads to Hangup’s biggest weakness. When there are still more than 20 minutes left to go, the movie wraps up the love story, a glitch made worse because the main villain has also been sidelined. These narrative choices slow the pace nearly to the point of inertia. And then there’s the sleaze factor—or, rather, the lack thereof. Notwithstanding a few topless scenes, Hangup feels restrained in comparison to, say, Jack Hill’s gonzo blaxploitation joints. So while an easily offended viewer might find Hangup more palatable than other films from the same genre, serious Blaxploitation fans will be left jonesing for a fix of something rougher.

Hangup: FUNKY

Raid on Rommel (1971)

          One of the last films directed by reliable studio-era veteran Henry Hathaway, Raid on Rommel is a quasi-sequel to the director’s acclaimed 1951 war movie The Desert Fox. Whereas the earlier film was a tight character piece about Field Marshall Erwin Johannes Rommel, the military genius who led Nazi Germany’s tank divisions to a series of impressive victories in North Africa, the latter picture is a simplistic men-on-a-mission picture that only peripherally involves Rommel. And while The Desert Fox featured an intense leading performance by James Mason as Rommel, Raid on Rommel casts the comparatively anonymous Wolfgang Preiss, a veteran German actor who played Nazis in a number of American productions, as the general.

          In Raid on Rommel, Richard Burton plays Captain Alan Foster, a resourceful British commando who treks into the North African desert to meet a group of specially trained soldiers for an attack on a gun installation. Disguising himself as a wounded war victim, Foster moves behind enemy lines and then accidentally intercepts the wrong convoy. As a result, he’s thrown in with a British medical unit that’s being held captive by the Nazis. Seething that he’s got healers under his command instead of a killers, Foster nonetheless decides to not only continue the mission but to target Rommel’s fuel dumps in addition to the gun installation. The story gets awfully convoluted, because there’s also some pointless business involving the mistress (Danielle De Metz) of an Italian general; she’s being transported across the battlefield with the British prisoners, and thus becomes a problem for our heroes.

          Despite the diffuse nature of its overarching story, Raid on Rommel eventually crystallizes into a fun yarn about a few bold men facing an impossible challenge. Furthermore, a handful of enjoyable flourishes keep the picture from being completely generic—for instance, one of the medical men bonds with Rommel hbecause both are stamp collectors. The characters are mostly interchangeable types, played by a colorless band of workaday actors, and Burton has little to do except grit his teeth and look serious whenever things are going badly. The film’s production values are generally pretty good, since it’s hard to screw up tanks in the desert, but way too much stock footage is employed; the otherwise crisp-looking movie periodically cuts to grainy shots of armies amassing in the desert or ships maneuvering in the ocean, which adds to the disjointed feeling of the picture.

Raid on Rommel: FUNKY

Shoot Out (1971)

If the idea of a cuddly revenge picture strikes your fancy, then the middling Western thriller Shoot Out is for you. The picture starts out well enough, with brooding bank robber Clay Lomax (Gregory Peck) getting released from jail and setting out to find his former partner, Sam Foley (James Gregory), a double-crossin’ varmint who’s got a date with the business end of Clay’s six-shooter. Aware that Clay is out for blood, Sam hires a group of thugs to keep tabs on Clay, but misjudges the character of the gang’s leader, Bobby Jay Jones (Robert F. Lyons). Turns out Bobby Jay’s a psycho looking for trouble, so when Bobby Jay starts endangering innocent people, Clay decides to take care of Bobby Jay before his showdown with Sam. So far, so good. But then the real plot kicks in: A former lover of Clay’s saddles him with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, forcing Clay to juggle caregiving and gunplay. Whereas the logical narrative choice would’ve been to portray Clay as a reluctant father figure who can’t fathom how to keep a child amused, the filmmakers instead depict Clay as a natural parent who looks after the girl’s diet and hygiene, and even knows silly games and stories with which to keep her amused. This is the deadly criminal at the center of our story? Illogically softening Clay’s characterization drains nearly all the tension from Shoot Out, transforming the film from a guns-a-blazin’ oater to a softhearted family picture. To confuse matters further, Shoot Out returns to its original dark-and-nasty vibe toward the end of the story, because Bobby Jay goes on a killing spree that sets Clay’s blood a-boilin’. The climax of the picture is actually quite exciting, but the sudden flurry of high-stakes action seems to drift in from another movie. Still, Peck fans might dig the way Shoot Out bridges the actor’s softer side and the tough image he assumed in latter-day films, and the movie is assembled with utmost efficiency by veteran helmer Henry Hathaway. Shoot Out is watchable, but beware the gooey center. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

Shoot Out: FUNKY