My Boys Are Good Boys (1978)

A combination heist thriller and youth drama, My Boys Are Good Boys is awful in that it lacks consistent style, narrative credibility, and a viable theme. Nonetheless, some viewers might find the movie strangely interesting because three actors from another era participate. Their scenes are old-fashioned but slick, whereas vignettes concerning the activities of juvenile delinquents (which comprise the bulk of the running time) are relatively contemporary. These disparate elements clash badly, but that’s what gives My Boys Are Good Boys its minor train-wreck appeal. The nominal protagonist is working stiff Bert Morton (Ralph Meeker). His son, Tommy (Sean Roche), is the ringleader for a group of underage inmates. One day, they immobilize guards at their reformatory and escape so they can rob an armored truck. Bert is the truck’s driver, so the crime is fraught with Oedipal issues. Had this story been executed with any real skill, it could have been provocative. Alas, cowriter-director Bethel Buckalew is borderline incompetent, and Meeker, who also produced the picture, torpedoes the project with a lifeless non-performance. Costarring with Meeker are fellow Hollywood veterans Ida Lupino (as Bert’s wife) and Lloyd Nolan (as a dogged investigator). Despite Meeker’s low energy, these three create a veneer of studio-era professionalism. Separately, scenes with Tommy and his young accomplices recall The Bad News Bears (1976), with a diverse group of crude kids making mischief. Inexplicably, these teenaged thieves gain a bottomless supply of knockout gas and, just for good measure, a smoke grenade. Oh, well. The film’s title connects to a pair of horrid elements, the countrified theme song and a bizarre monologue delivered by reformatory guard Harry Klinger (David Doyle). That this relatively minor character vocalizes the moral of the story is typical of the film’s discombobulated nature.

My Boys Are Good Boys: LAME

Junior Bonner (1972)

          Although it’s a horrible cliché to say that Hollywood success is a double-edged sword, the sentiment is apt when considering Junior Bonner, a lovely dramatic film that probably would have enjoyed broader acceptance had the reputations of the film’s director and star not created inappropriate expectations. The director is Sam Peckinpah, who made this soft-spoken movie as a reprieve from the violent action sagas for which he was famous, and the star is Steve McQueen, whose most popular films involve glossy escapism. As the quiet story of an aging rodeo champ who returns to his hometown with an eye toward resolving longstanding family strife, Junior Bonner is probably the last thing anybody anticipated from Peckinpah or McQueen. Combined with the near-simultaneous release of several other movies about rodeo riders, the disconnect between what audiences wanted from the people behind Junior Bonner and what the picture actually delivers helped ensure a rotten performance at the box office. Happily, critics and fans have elevated the movie to greater notoriety in the years since its original release, because Junior Bonner represents a nearly pitch-perfect collaboration between director and star. (It’s also a damn sight better, in terms of resonance and substance, than the duo’s hit follow-up, 1974’s The Getaway.)

          When the movie begins, Junior (McQueen) trots into Prescott, Arizona, after a grueling and unrewarding rodeo ride. While recuperating in preparation for another shot at the bull that threw him, Junior wades into the fraught relationship of his parents, hard-drinking carouser Ace (Robert Preston) and no-bullshit survivor Elvira (Ida Lupino). As Junior tries to help mend fences, he also must contend with the crass ambitions of his little brother, Curly (Joe Don Baker), who wants to raze old homes (including his parents’ house) in order to build a cookie-cutter development. The contrast between Junior’s old-fashioned independence and his brother’s ultra-modern avarice allows Peckinpah to channel one of his favorite themes—the passing of the West, and the values it represents—through the tidy narrative of Jeb Rosebrook’s screenplay.

          McQueen proves once again that there was more to him than just an impressive macho image, using precision of language and movement to express his character’s inner life as efficiently as possible. McQueen is loose when he needs to be, as during scenes of barroom rowdiness, and tight when he needs to be, as during vignettes illustrating subtle family tensions. Preston channels his charming boisterousness into the character of a loveable rascal, and Lupino is believable as a woman who’s been put through the wringer by a challenging marriage. Baker and costar Ben Johnson contribute two different types of manly energy, with Baker conveying winner-takes-all selfishness and Johnson tight-lipped toughness. For the most part, Peckinpah eschews his signature excesses—the trademark slow-motion shots are used sparingly—so Junior Bonner is a great reminder that before he was a provocateur, Peckinpah was a storyteller. If only by dint of lacking mythic characterizations and over-the-top violence, Junior Bonner is probably the simplest Peckinpah feature, and that’s a good thing.

Junior Bonner: GROOVY

The Devil’s Rain (1975)

          Ernest Borgnine as a bug-eyed Satanist, complete with ram’s horns and a shaggy fright wig. Bit player John Travolta as a victim of supernatural forces, his eyes weeping blood and his face melting away. A shirtless William Shatner crucified, upside-down, in a church defiled by Satan worshippers. All this and more can be yours for the price of admission to The Devil’s Rain, a perpetual contender for the title of Worst Movie Ever Made, and therefore cinematic catnip for masochistic viewers. Directed by cult-fave Brit Robert Fuest, who cleverly blended camp and horror in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and therefore should have known better, The Devil’s Rain makes the fatal mistake of taking itself seriously. So even though Fuest’s innate artistry gives a few scenes visual grandiosity, The Devil’s Rain is dull and sluggish, and only the scenes of shameless scenery-chewer Shatner getting tortured achieve campy bliss.

          The big problems are the unnecessarily convoluted story and the lackluster production design. The backstory of the picture has something to do with a cult of Satanists who populate a ghost town in the American Southwest, performing human sacrifices in order to gain immortality or power or whatever; the current story depicts a family rebelling against the Satanists’ oppression, which leads Mark Preston (Shatner) to confront the bad guys. Not the smartest move. For reasons that strain credibility, Mark’s mom (Ida Lupino) owns a book that’s mystically connected to the Satanists’ power, so head villain Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) tries to exchange Mark’s life for the book. However Mark’s brother, Tom (Tom Skerritt), will have none of this, so he storms into town with a shotgun hoping to rescue his sibling. Also drawn into the overcooked mix are a local doctor (Sam Richards) and a local sheriff (Kennan Wynn).

          One might assume that The Devil’s Rain zips along with this much plot crammed into 86 minutes, but that’s not the case. Instead, the movie lumbers slowly because the filmmakers favor lengthy setpieces like people melting to death in what appears to be real time. Furthermore, the picture’s ghost-town sets are cheap and sparse, the shocker moments are so clumsy and obvious that tension never builds, and stiff acting by nearly the entire cast gives every scene a leaden quality.

          Through normally an energetic asset to any picture, Borgnine is a weak link, because he’s miscast as an aristocratic character in the classical mold—he looks ridiculous spouting verbose curses in monster drag. Even solid actors Lupino and Skerritt are hamstrung by the goofy goings-on. Only Shatner gets into the spirit of the thing, dropping to his knees and flailing and shouting like he’s playing grand opera—or at least Grand Guignol. Accordingly, the fact that he’s only in the movie for a total of about twenty minutes is a shortcoming.

          Still, there’s no denying that The Devil’s Rain comprises 86 of the weirdest minutes in ’70s cinema, even though it’s more of a slow-moving unnatural disaster than a high-speed train wreck. And as for the poster's claim that the flick features “absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever”? Let’s just say you can’t blame the hypesters who sold The Devil’s Rain for trying.

The Devil’s Rain: FREAKY

The Food of the Gods (1976)

Writer/director Bert I. Gordon, an inexplicably durable special-effects guru whose big claim to fame is having made campy Cold War-era junk along the lines of The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), hit a strange sort of career high with The Food of the Gods, a wretched riff on an H.G. Wells novel bearing the more florid title The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth. Mostly dispatching with tricky stuff like the whole “how it came to Earth” part, Gordon focuses on the idea of mysterious grub that causes creatures to grow to monstrous proportions. You know the flick’s in trouble when the first overgrown critters Gordon puts onscreen are giant chickens. Making things even weirder, in some shots the feathered fiends are portrayed by actors wearing oversized chicken masks. And while you’d think the bit with the giant rats would at least be creepy, by that point Gordon has sunk to using shots of real-life rats interacting with scaled-down props like a tiny VW Beetle. So if viewers can’t even relish the grotesquery of giant rats eating people without getting distracted by shoddy FX, then what’s the point of sitting through this abomination? Some fleeting distraction from the ridiculousness is offered by the verdant British Columbia locations, but it’s as depressing to watch studio-era great Ida Lupino slum her way through this tripe as it is to that realize leading man Marjoe Gortner is starring in exactly the level of movie his talent merits. If you’re the sort of viewer who enjoys watching awful movies and discovering unintentional laughs, feel free to take a bite of The Food of the Gods, but if doing so triggers your gag reflex instead of tickling your funny bone, don’t say you weren’t warned.

The Food of the Gods: SQUARE

Deadhead Miles (1971)

More a series of vignettes than a story, the first original feature written by enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick follows an eccentric crook named Cooper as he drives a stolen big rig across the heartland, with a sardonic hitchhiker his sole companion during several peculiar misadventures. Alan Arkin, indulging his most flamboyant impulses, plays Cooper, while gangly Jeffersons costar Paul Benedict plays the hitchhiker, so the picture is infused with strange behavior, even by the permissive standards of ’70s cinema. Malick’s dialogue is equally bizarre. Consider this exchange between Cooper, popping Benzedrine to stay awake, and the hitchhiker. Cooper: “Sometimes I sit back, roll down the windows, and let Benny do the driving.” Hitchhiker: “Don’t they affect your brain?” Cooper: “I wish they would.” None of the individual episodes is especially memorable, except perhaps the random bit of Cooper trying to make time with a redneck woman until he realizes she’s chained to the furnace of her dilapidated shack, but the dialogue is flavorful throughout. “I got a good look at that feller—I see him again, I’m gonna stick ’im in the head with a fork.” Or, “I listen to the radio, and that’s how I learn about current events, most of which aren’t in the almanac.” Cooper is an inept sort of maniac, sparking loopy conversations with strangers and committing petty larceny everywhere he goes, but never accomplishing much of anything. The hitchhiker is a willing accomplice during most of the aimless journey, even though he never really gets the hang of tossing soda bottles at street signs the truck passes; Cooper’s a stone-cold pro at that. Interesting people float through the movie (watch for Charles Durning, Hector Elizondo, Loretta Swit, and cameo players Ida Lupino and George Raft), and director Vernon Zimmerman is an interesting Hollywood footnote because he made the amiable cult flick Fade to Black (1980). But the strongest appeal of this cheerfully pointless movie—which has never been released theatrically or on video—is spending 90 minutes inside a funhouse-mirror world of Malick’s creation.

Deadhead Miles: FUNKY