Play Misty for Me (1971)

          Clint Eastwood stepped well outside his comfort zone for his first feature film as a director, setting aside the action genre for a psychosexual thriller, and although his casting in the lead was inevitable—trading acting for opportunity is how most stars get their first directing gigs—it’s admirable that he took on the additional challenge of playing a textured role. Instead of incarnating his usual tight-lipped tough guy, Eastwood portrays a man who makes his living by talking (a radio DJ), and instead of battling some formidable male equal, he squares off against little Jessica Walter.

          The story is basically the same as that of Fatal Attraction, which was made more than a decade later—a man has a fling with the wrong woman, and then pays for his misdeed when he tries to dump her and thereby invokes her violent wrath. Eastwood plays Dave, a radio personality based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the quaint Northern California enclave that, incidentally, has been Eastwood’s offscreen home base for decades. One of Dave’s regular callers is a sexy-voiced mystery lady who asks him to play the smoky jazz standard “Misty” every night. The woman, Evelyn (Walter), soon appears in Dave’s real life and offers herself to him. Yet while Dave made it clear all he wanted was a one-night stand, Evelyn has different ideas. She becomes obsessed, intruding into every aspect of Dave’s life, making public scenes that hurt his career, and eventually threatening the real object of Dave’s affection, his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Tobie (Donna Mills).

          Play Misty for Me is a straightforward stalker picture, and the best parts of the movie illustrate how easily Dave falls into Evelyn’s trap and how impossible it is for him to extricate himself. He’s complicit in his own crisis. Screenwriters Jo Heims and Dean Riesner carefully foreshadow Evelyn’s dark side even in the character’s first scenes, and the script emphasizes that the only thing preventing Dave from sensing Evelyn’s danger is his arrogance. Well, that and lust, since Dave is a swinger whose relationship with Tobie is forever being tested by his extracurricular conquests. Like Fatal Attraction, this movie is a warning to men who play the field—as Dave’s fellow DJ, Al (James McEachin), says with a wink, “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”

          The last hour of the picture pays off the premise nicely, with several vivid scenes of suspense and violence, and Walter devours her role, creating a memorable movie monster grounded in believable, if deranged, emotions. Many of Eastwood’s directorial tropes manifested in this first effort, notably dark lighting and languid pacing, and the only major flaw with Play Misty for Me is that it sometimes meanders—for instance, was the indulgently long scene at the jazz festival really necessary? Still, this is well-executed popcorn entertainment, and it’s touching that Eastwood cast his directorial mentor, Don Siegel, in a minor recurring role as Dave’s favorite bartender.

Play Misty for Me: GROOVY

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977) & The Incredible Hulk (1977) & Dr. Strange (1978) & Captain America (1979) & Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979)

          Years before Marvel Comics became a Hollywood powerhouse, the venerable publisher licensed its characters for a string of low-budget TV productions, beginning with hokey “limited animation” cartoons in the ’60s and continuing with several live-action TV movies in the ’70s. First came The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Nicholas Hammond (the oldest Von Trapp boy from the classic 1965 movie The Sound of Music) as Peter Parker, a graduate student with twin interests in photography and science. As in the comics, he gains arachnid abilities after getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Various pointless changes from the source material are less glaring than the excruciating background music and the bargain-basement FX that accompany numbingly dull “action” scenes. The main gimmick involves superimposing shots of Spidey crawling onto images of buildings, even though neither the lighting nor the movements match. Scenes of Hammond and/or his stuntman on real sets are no better, because the action choreography is lifeless and the bright colors of the costume look awful in realistic settings.
          In terms of acting, Hammond is so dorky and polite that he seems like a department-store clothing mannequin come to life. Character actors including Thayer David and David White give stock performances, while appealing leading lady Lisa Eilbacher barely gets any screen time. The actual story involves Spidey battling a criminal who uses mind-control on unsuspecting victims, so there's a faint whiff of satire related to ’70s cults, though the filmmakers lack the will or the wit to maximize that element. This tepid take on Spidey also has a certain camp factor, but unlike, say, the ’60s Batman series with Adam West, The Amazing Spider-Man contains only humor of the unintentional variety. A mercifully short-lived series followed the broadcast of this pilot movie, but it's hard to find anyone who feels genuine nostalgia for Hammond’s enervated wall-crawling.
          Far more impressive was The Incredible Hulk, for which writer-producer Kenneth Johnson turned the story of scientist Bruce Banner (renamed “David” Banner for the series) into the saga of a tormented fugitive. In the initial telefilm, Banner (Bill Bixby) obsessively researches why adrenaline gives some people extraordinary strength in times of crisis, because his wife died when he couldn’t extract her from a burning car after an accident. Lighting onto a possibility, Banner recklessly exposes himself to an overdose of gamma radiation, causing him to transform into a big green dude (bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno) whenever he gets stressed. Johnson plays the material straight, and Bixby’s sincerity grounds the goofy premise, so when the storyline turns tragic, it’s possible to buy into the melancholy emotions of the piece, especially with Joe Hammel’s plaintive piano theme “The Lonely Man” reverberating on the soundtrack. 
          Also elevating The Incredible Hulk is the work of costar Susan Sullivan, who plays Banner’s colleague and love interest; she and Bixby generate viable chemistry that suggests as much mutual respect as it does latent passion. Notwithstanding the kicky first transformation scene, which involves lightning and rain plus a great use of camera angles and sound effects to jack up the suspense, the classic moment in The Incredible Hulk involves Banner warning a relentless tabloid reporter (Jack Colvin) to keep his distance: “Don’t make me angry, Mr. McGee. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Five seasons of anguished hulking ensued, as did three reunion movies, so the Bixby/Ferrigno franchise reigned as the only truly successful live-action Marvel adaptation until the late ’90s.
          A year after Hulk and Spidey hit the airwaves, Marvel’s resident mystic appeared in Dr. Strange, a bizarre telefilm notable for eerie synthesizer scoring by Paul Chihara. The plot of Dr. Strange is so thin that the best sequences are the extended dialogue-free montages set to Chihara’s otherworldly grooves. (Some of the huge, fluid cues that Chihara provides anticipate the creepy “blaster beam” effect that Jerry Goldsmith used so powerfully in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) While no match for the mind-bending images that artists including Frank Brunner, Steve Ditko, and Gene Colan created for vintage Dr. Strange comics, at least the aimless montages in the Dr. Strange telefilm come across like trippy music videos. Far out, man!
          Forgettable leading man Peter Hooten plays Stephen Strange, a medical doctor recruited to participate in an interdimensional war against ancient sorceress Morgan le Fay (Jessica Walter, rocking spectacular cleavage). A murky storyline, choppy editing, and unfinished-looking FX give the movie a fever-dream vibe. That’s why Dr. Strange is recommended exclusively for those who savor cinematic weirdness. Not only does this failed pilot have the disjointed feel of a midnight movie, but it also features an unintentionally hilarious line. At one point, an aging mystic (John Mills) dispatches his manservant to collect the title character by issuing the command: “Find Stephen Strange!” In this context, you will find Stephen to be quite strange indeed.
          Marvel’s last (and least) attempt at launching a ’70s live-action series was Captain America, an excitement-free modernization of the World War II-era superhero. Musclebound actor Reb Brown blankly plays Steve Rogers, who through convoluted circumstances becomes a superman fighting crime while he cruises around in a tricked-out van that contains his equally tricked-out motorcycle. Toward the climax of the movie, Brown finally dons an awful-looking costume, his motorcycle helmet ridiculously adorned with painted-on facsimiles of the decorative wings from Cap’s comic-book cowl. (That atrocious ensemble gets replaced in the final scenes by a second version that’s closer in design to the comic-book original.) Rather than a series, Captain America was followed by one additional TV movie, Captain America II: Death Too Soon. Despite that title, death couldn’t come soon enough for this misbegotten take on the beloved character. Suffice to say that the highlights of Captain America II are Christopher Lee's florid bad-guy acting and the debut of Cap’s latest silly gadget, a hang-glider.

The Amazing Spider-Man: LAME

The Incredible Hulk: GROOVY

Dr. Strange: FREAKY

Captain America: SQUARE
Captain America II: Death Too Soon: SQUARE