The Deserter (1971)

          Part spaghetti Western and part Dirty Dozen ripoff, this Italy/US/Yugoslavia coproduction has a serviceable premise, then loses its way thanks to a forgettable leading performance and an overly mechanical plot. Along the way, several colorful actors are subsumed by the overall mediocrity of the piece, delivering half-hearted interpretations of underdeveloped roles. Even the action highlights are ho-hum. Those who want nothing more from adventure pictures than a steady flow of death-defying bravery and tight-lipped macho posturing will be able to consume the picture like a serving of empty calories, but those who expect anything more will get bored fairly quickly. In the Wild West, U.S. Cavalry soldier Kaleb (Bekim Fehmiu) completes a fortnight-long patrol and discovers that while he was away, Apaches raided the outpost where he lives and killed his wife. Kaleb blames the death on his superior officer, Colonel Brown (Richard Crenna), so Kaleb tries to quit the service and devote his life to killing Apaches. When Brown refuses Kaleb’s resignation, Kaleb shoots the colonel and becomes a fugitive from military justice. Two years later, blustery General Miles (John Huston) arrives on the scene, demanding that Brown illegally cross the Mexican border to slaughter a band of Apache raiders. What’s more, Miles demands that Brown’s men bring Kaleb in from the wilderness, because during the intervening period, Kaleb has made good on his vengeance pledge by slaughtering Apaches heedlessly, thereby becoming the ideal man to lead the mission into Mexico.

          Once all the narrative pieces are in place, Kaleb finds himself supervising a band of soldiers, including Kaleb, who would just as soon kill the notorious deserter as kill Apaches. Among those playing soldiers are Ian Bannen, Chuck Connors, Ricardo Montalban, Slim Pickens, and Woody Strode. (Naturally, Crenna’s character is along for the ride, too.) With this much talent at their disposal, producer Dino De Laurentiis and director Burt Kennedy should have been able to come up with something much more interesting than The Deserter, which is sometimes known as The Devil’s Backbone. Alas, the script is unrelentingly clichéd, predictable, and superficial, and the filmmakers miscalculated, badly, by casting Yugoslavian stud Fehmiu in the leading role. Just one year previous, Paramount tried to make Fehmiu into an international star by toplining him in the epic melodrama The Adventurers (1970), so this picture presumably represented the completion of a two-picture deal. A European equivalent to, say, James Franciscus, Fehmiu is suitably brooding and athletic, but he’s got the depth and range of a statue. With his performance creating a vacuum at the center of The Deserter, the movie is doomed to disappoint from its very first frames.

The Deserter: FUNKY

The Voyage (1974)

          The final feature directed by venerable Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica, The Voyage is little more than a maudlin soap opera with the trappings of an art movie. Starring Richard Burton at his most disinterested and Sophia Loren at her most earnest, the movie is brisk and watchable but almost laughably trite. Why so many talented people combined their efforts to generate something this fundamentally mediocre is a mystery. Still, as romantic tearjerkers go, one could do worse than spending 102 minutes enjoying Burton’s mellifluous baritone and Loren’s legendary physical gifts. Set in turn-of-the-century Sicily, the movie begins with the reading of a will. After their father dies, brothers Cesare Braggi (Burton) and Antonio Braggi (Ian Bannen) are bequeathed control over the family’s considerable fortune. As the older brother, somber Cesare is charged with looking after business—including the arrangement of marriage between Antonio and Adriana de Mauro (Loren), the daughter of a working-class family with social ties to the Braggi clan. The complication is that Adriana and Cesare have been in love with each other for years, though they’ve never made their feelings known. (The reason why the would-be lovers kept their affection secret remains unclear throughout the film, creating a significant plot hole.) Adhering to his father’s wishes, Cesare oversees the marriage, and then suffers in silence—until circumstances introduce tragedy, happiness, and still more tragedy into the lives of the characters.

          Considering De Sica’s reputation for sophisticated social realism, it’s shocking how little material of substance makes its way into The Voyage. There’s some lip service given to class differences, but mostly the picture is preoccupied with Cesare’s operatic martyrdom, Antonio’s simple-minded innocence, and Adriana’s difficulty reconciling cultural expectations with romantic desire. Working in the film’s favor are lush production values and a quick pace, though the film’s brevity is partially enabled by the use of bluntly expositional dialogue. (Full disclosure: I committed the ultimate foreign-film travesty by watching the dubbed English-language version of The Voyage, so the use of language in the original version may be more graceful.) Burton, as always, is interesting to watch even when it’s clear he doesn’t give a shit about his work—his command of language and his natural intensity shine through. As for Loren, perpetually more noteworthy as a screen presence than as an actor, she’s beautiful and endearing, though the apex of her performance borders on camp. Yes, dear readers, Ms. Loren gets to play that old movie-queen song of a noble heroine suffering a disease without unattractive symptoms.

The Voyage: FUNKY

The Offence (1972)

          Throughout the ’70s, Sean Connery seemed determined to undercut the dashing-hero image into which he’d been typecast following his ’60s success in the James Bond franchise. For example, consider this dark drama based on a British stage play by John Hopkins, who also penned the movie’s script. Instead of playing a righteous peacekeeper, Connery plays a monster with a badge—after his character, Detective-Sergeant Johnson, murders a suspect during a ferocious interrogation, the movie uses detailed flashbacks to explain what drove Johnson to violence. Despite this potentially explosive premise, The Offence is underwhelming. Obviously, an actor whose screen persona encompasses a broader emotional palette than Connery’s could have played the story’s textures with more precision—though it’s just as easy to imagine someone like, say, Richard Harris taking the characterization way over the top. So the problem isn’t necessarily rooted in Connery’s limitations. Surprisingly, the faulty X-factor might be director Sidney Lumet, who normally soared with this sort of narrative.

          Here, Lumet skews too heavily toward the clinical side of his filmmaking approach, organizing actors and events so meticulously that the piece ends up feeling antiseptic. And, of course, one could easily question the source material itself, because Hopkins’ script is painfully talky. Although Hopkins was an experienced screenwriter with dozens of teleplays to his credit by the time he wrote The Offence—he’d also worked on a few features, including the dreary 007 epic Thunderball (1965)—Hopkins failed in the basic task of adaptation, which is converting strengths from one medium into qualities that suit another. As a text, The Offence is quite strong, with logically defined progressions and scientifically precise character details, but as a viewing experience, it’s dry and repetitive. Another shortcoming, of sorts, is the casting of Ian Bannen as the suspect. While a perfectly capable actor with a gift for playing twitchy nutters (see the 1971 thriller Fright), he’s not charismatic enough to counter Connery’s star power. As a result, neither lead performance explodes off the screen. This is an admirable movie on many levels, but it could and should have been more powerful. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Offence: FUNKY

Fright (1971)

          Proving that John Carpenter and his collaborators on Halloween (1971) weren’t the first people to juxtapose babysitters and psychopaths, the passable British thriller Fright stars Susan George as Amanda, a sexy teen tasked with watching a young boy on the night a killer lays siege to the boy’s home. Eventually, it becomes clear that the invader is actually the boy’s father, Brian (Ian Bannen), a nutter who just escaped from the loony bin. He’s been incarcerated ever since he tried to kill the boy and his mother, Brian’s now-ex-wife, Helen (Honor Blackman). On the night during which the movie takes place, Helen and her new husband try to enjoy their first evening out since the original Brian episode, so, of course, their departure coincides with Brian’s return. Director Peter Collinson, an eclectic storyteller who made a handful of tense thrillers in addition to action movies and dramas, helms Fright competently, layering on exactly the elements one might expect to find in a picture of this sort. The camera angles are low and shadowy, the jolts are cheap and sudden, and the atmosphere is laden with sex.

          George spends the entire movie in a purple minidress, her tan legs on constant display, and for a good portion of the picture, the front of her dress is torn open, making her white brassiere a de facto costar. And while George’s performance is merely adequate—she’s best when expressing a mixture of disgust and fear while being violated—her sexiness compensates somewhat for her dramatic shortcomings. Bannen’s performance is florid but imbued with sympathetic tonalities, so even though he’s playing a cartoonish madman, it’s possible to feel for his anguished plight. And the elegant Ms. Blackman, best known for playing Pussy Galore in the 007 classic Goldfinger (1964), acquits herself well in a one-note role. However, Fright isn’t particularly frightening, though it’s certainly creepy; in particular, the transgressive moment when Brian assaults Amanda while thinking she’s actually Helen is enough to make any viewer uncomfortable. Plus, the complicated implications of the ending retroactively add a bit of substance to the rest of the picture.

Fright: FUNKY

From Beyond the Grave (1974)

          Amicus Productions’ long series of horror-anthology flicks ended anticlimactically with From Beyond the Grave, which comprises a quartet of uninspired stories connected by visits to a mysterious shop selling haunted antiques. Rightfully regarded as a second-rate competitor to Hammer Films, Amicus pulled from the same talent pool as Hammer—that’s Peter Cushing playing the ghoulish proprietor of the antique shop—but Amicus’ pictures rarely achieved the same level of gonzo energy as the best Hammer flicks. From Beyond the Grave seems particularly enervated, even by Amicus’ low standards; the script is dull, the performances are stiff, and the shocks are trite.

          Each story begins when a character buys a curio from Cushing’s musty shop, and the customers who try to swindle Cushing seal their fates. In the first story, “The Gatecrasher,” a collector (David Warner) purchases a mirror haunted by a spirit who needs flesh for sustenance, so the collector kills women as a means of bringing the spirit back to life. The usually lively Warner gives a numbingly sober performance in this by-the-numbers morality tale. The most laborious story, “An Act of Kindness,” features a repressed businessman (Ian Bannen) lying to impress a friendly street peddler (Donald Pleasence), then savoring the way the peddler treats him like royalty. The businessman eventually seduces the peddler’s strange daughter (Angela Pleasence), leading to a bloody turn of events. “An Act of Kindness” is confusing and contrived, though it’s a kick to see eccentric character actor Pleasence playing scenes with his real-life lookalike daughter.

          The mood of From Beyond the Grave lightens for “The Elemental,” which concerns a husband and wife hiring a dotty psychic (Margaret Leighton) to dispatch a mischievous spirit, but after a mildly amusing climax filled with flying objects and Leighton’s comic flamboyance, the tale turns needlessly dark. In the final story, “The Door,” a writer (Ian Ogilvy) buys a door that provides a gateway to the realm of an undead murderer; although this story features some interesting images, like that of the door bleeding when it’s struck by an axe, “The Door” feels redundant after “The Gatecrasher.”

          Hardcore Brit-horror fans will undoubtedly find enjoyable distractions in the ironic plot twists and (mild) gore; furthermore, director Kevin Connor presents the picture with a palatable sort of workmanlike competence, and the cast, which also includes Lesley-Anne Down in a decorative role, is solid. Still, From Beyond the Grave is more stultifying than horrifying. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

From Beyond the Grave: FUNKY