Stand Up and Be Counted (1972)

          In what should be a standout moment during the feminism-themed comedy Stand Up and Be Counted, ladies meet for a rap session about their encounters with sexism. Participants include Dr. Joyce Brothers (as herself), future Jeffersons star Isabel Sanford, and a nun. Alas, comedic sparks never fly, because like the rest of this flat-footed studio picture written and directed by men, the scene devolves into oversimplifications and slogans. Progressive-minded producer Mike Frankovich and his collaborators, director Jackie Cooper and screenwriter Bernard Slade, seem as if they perceived the women’s-lib movement as a whimsical fad. To a one, the feminists in this movie are portrayed as shrill whiners whose only real accomplishment is alienating the men in their lives. The picture ends on a fairly hip note, so it’s not quite as dunderheaded an affair as the preceding remarks might suggest. Nonetheless, there’s a reason Stand Up and Be Counted is not remembered as a milestone in Equal Rights Amendment-era propaganda.

          Jacqueline Bisset stars as Sheila, a fashion reporter assigned to do a magazine story on the burgeoning women’s movement. To do so, she flies to her hometown of Denver. (The script pathetically explains Bisset’s English accent by saying she spent time in London.) During the flight, Sheila rekindles her romance with an ex, Elliot (Gary Lockwood). In Denver, Sheila discovers that her mother is part of a “Senior Women’s Liberation” organization, and that her ultra-feminist younger sister, Karen (Lee Purcell), wants to hire a man to impregnate her. Torn between new and old ideas about gender roles, Sheila moves in with Elliot, only to discover he’s a patronizing chauvinist. Other threads involve a housewife rebelling against her domineering husband, and a trophy wife demanding respect for the work she does at her husband’s bra factory.

          Stand Up and Be Counted is one of those bad movies that isn’t really a bad movie. In its clumsy way, the film means well, but problems compound problems. Sheila is a hopelessly passive character, thus draining the movie of momentum, and supporting players deliver livelier work than Bisset, causing her presence to seem ornamental. (She’s simultaneously breathtaking and uninteresting.) Lockwood’s performance is lifeless, Purcell is feisty but underused, and minor turns by comic pros including Hector Elizondo, Steve Lawrence, Loretta Swit, and Nancy Walker offer only fleeting relief from the overall mediocrity. FYI, although Helen Reddy’s anthem “I Am Woman” plays during the closing credits, it was not composed for the picture. After releasing the tune a year before, Reddy re-recorded “I Am Woman” for Stand Up and Be Counted, and the second version became a hit.

Stand Up and Be Counted: FUNKY

Chosen Survivors (1974)

          A gonzo hybrid blending creature-feature elements with the tropes of post-apocalyptic melodrama, Chosen Survivors features a doozy of a plot—several individuals who were unknowingly handpicked by the government to restart the human race get kidnapped, drugged, and stashed inside an underground fallout shelter just before a devastating nuclear attack, only to discover that the shelter is infested with vicious vampire bats. Predictably, the pressure of the horrific situation brings out the best in some people and the worst in others, so Chosen Survivors ends up borrowing narrative DNA from a third major genre, the disaster movie. Given the far-fetched premise, it should come as no surprise to say that Chosen Survivors fails to achieve anything resembling credibility. This thing is outrageous and even a little bit silly from start to finish. Nonetheless, what Chosen Survivors lacks in quality, in makes up for in vibe. The picture is dark, fast, and nasty, so it feels a bit like an early John Carpenter movie, right down to the lean and ominous musical score. Enjoying the movie requires that viewers ignore major lapses in logic, but it’s a fun ride for those willing to follow Chosen Survivors down its bizarre path.

          The movie begins enigmatically, with helicopters landing in a remote site and discharging the principal characters, who are then roughly escorted into an elevator shaft by military personal. The drugged states of the characters are depicted with distorted slow-motion images, jarring edits, and weird music, so the long trip the characters take from the surface to their new subterranean home is fairly trippy. Eventually, the caretaker of the fallout shelter, Major Gordon Ellis (Richard Jaeckel), explains that the “chosen survivors” were doped because there wasn’t time to risk the participants refusing to cooperate. According to Ellis, the surface of America has been obliterated by nuclear bombs, so the “chosen survivors” must live underground and procreate until it’s safe to emerge from the shelter. Among the eclectic gang are scientists Lenore Chrisman (Barbara Babcock), Alana Fitzgerald (Diana Muldaur), Peter Macomber (Bradford Dillman), and Steven Mayes (Alex Cord); wealthy businessman Raymond Couzins (Jackie Cooper); and Olympic athlete Woody Russo (Lincoln Kilpatrick).

          Friction between these people materializes even before the first bat attack, with Cooper’s unhinged character trying to bribe others into releasing him because he doesn’t believe a nuclear attack occurred. Then, once the bats start biting, people go completely off the deep end. Cooper’s character tries to rape one of the female doctors, Dillman’s character retreats into analytical mode by observing the dissipation of the group instead of helping solve problems, and Cord’s character becomes morbidly philosophical. (In one of the movie’s most quintessentially ’70s moments, Cord purrs hippy-dippy musings about the inherent faults of the human race: ‘”The world’s too big. People don’t have time. People don't even have time for people. That's why I got so hyped on this place. It’s not too big.”)

          Interspersed with the quiet scenes are wild action/horror sequences, some of which gain a surreal quality thanks to the use of cheesy and unconvincing special effects. In fact, whenever Chosen Survivors hits a groove of optically inserted bats chomping victims to the accompaniment of jittery electronic music, the picture becomes cartoonishly nihilistic—think Saturday-matinee action viewed through the prism of a nightmare. Further, the movie is stylishly shot, with lots of claustrophobic compositions and dense color filters and oppressive shadows, while the cast of mostly B-level actors contributes appropriately over-the-top acting. Dillman is enjoyably twitchy, and Kilpatrick has a great moment when his character makes a sweaty climb up the elevator shaft while besieged by bats.

Chosen Survivors: GROOVY

Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring (1971)

          Seeing as how she first gained mainstream attention by starring in the silly TV series Gidget (1965-1966) and The Flying Nun (1967-1970), Sally Field seemed destined for a career in light comedy. Yet as early as 1971, when she starred in this TV movie about the Generation Gap, Field made it clear she was both interested in exploring dramatic material and proficient at playing serious roles. So, even though Field didn’t truly burst free of typecasting until starring in the acclaimed telefilm Sybil (1976), this earlier endeavor represents an important step along her path. In Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring, Field stars as Denise Miller, the oldest daughter of upper-middle-class parents who are preoccupied with reputation and social position.

          When the story begins, Denise returns home after a year she spent on the road with hippies. Her arrival stirs up old tensions. Denise’s superficial father, Ed (Jackie Cooper), gets bent out of shape whenever rules of propriety aren’t followed, and Denise’s smothering mom, Claire (Eleanor Parker), ranges from passive-aggressive nastiness to outright judgmental cruelty. Meanwhile, Denise’s little sister, sexy teenybopper Susie (Lane Bradbury), has started a spiral even more destructive than Denise’s, maintaining a drug habit and quarrelling with her parents at every opportunity.

          As written with great sensitivity by Bruce Feldman, Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring creates tension by asking whether Denise can suppress her freespirited identity sufficiently to integrate into a repressive household. Concurrently, Susie repeats troublesome behaviors that she learned from Denise. At its most incisive, Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring features moments like the elaborate party scene during which Denise’s oblivious parents mistake Denise’s concern for Susie’s welfare as a signal that Denise is drugged or overwrought; the sequence provides an effective dramatization of people seeing only what they want to see.

          Produced and directed by the reliable Joseph Sargent, Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring has uniformly good acting and a steady pace, even if Sargent’s integration of flashbacks to Denise’s life among the longhairs isn’t especially graceful. Similarly, the ticking-clock device of Denise’s lover, Flack (David Carradine), making his way across the country to “rescue” Denise is a bit contrived, though it adds a sense of urgency. The film’s most interesting stylistic element is probably the inclusion of a song score performed by the great Linda Ronstadt, since her soulful vocals capture the angst of the storyline. Holding the whole thing together, of course, are the key performances. Field does an excellent job of complicating her good-girl image, often venturing to places of deep emotion, and Bradbury is terrific as a confused young woman who perceives herself as a victim even though she’s really a spoiled brat. Carradine, Cooper, and Parker inhabit their subordinate roles skillfully.

Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring: GROOVY