The Hot Box (1972)

More women-in-prison sludge scraped off the floor of the New World Pictures exploitation-flick factory, The Hot Box is mildly notable for a couple of reasons. In terms of content, because the storyline involves freedom fighters in Latin America, the picture anticipates themes that pervaded 1980s cinema. Behind the scenes, the film was an early credit for Jonathan Demme, who cowrote the script, produced the picture, and also directed second-unit scenes. (The film was helmed and cowritten by Joe Viola.) One need not strain to find tropes that recurred throughout Demme’s career, such as political activism and strong women, but in the most important respects, this is typically dumb and sleazy New World fare. Four American nurses are kidnapped by guerillas who need medical services at their hidden compound, and the nurses have varying reactions to their circumstances. Some become sympathetic to their captors, while others simply wish to escape. Action arises in the form of raids the guerillas execute in order to steal medical supplies, as well as showdowns with government forces. Yawn. The characters are mostly interchangeable, and the acting is unimpressive; arguably the biggest name in the cast is Margaret Markov, best known for her subsequent starring roles opposite Pam Grier in Black Mama, White Mama (1973) and The Arena (1974). Per the New World formula, the filmmakers contrive many silly reasons for topless scenes—bathing in grottos, sleeping nude during oppressive heat, etc. It’s also worth noting that, like so many other exploitation flicks of the same era, The Hot Box was shot in the Philippines, rather than South America, so it’s not as if authenticity was the order of the day. A generous viewer might note that The Hot Box is less vile than other women-in-prison movies (there’s less of a focus on rape than usual), but the film is way too clunky and forgettable to recommend.

The Hot Box: LAME

1980 Week: Melvin and Howard

          Director Jonathan Demme finally escaped the genre-movie ghetto with his sixth feature film, Melvin and Howard, an offbeat character study that sprang from a strange real-life episode. As written by Bo Goldman, who won an Oscar for his script, the movie tells the story of Melvin Dummar, a truck driver who claimed that he once gave reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes a ride through the Nevada desert—and that after Hughes’ death, a mystery man discreetly provided Melvin with a handwritten will granting Dummar a chunk of Hughes’ fortune. Yet the most unique (and most frustrating) aspect of Melvin and Howard is that the Hughes connection is largely incidental to the overall story—it’s merely the most colorful episode in Melvin’s pathetic odyssey.

          Melvin and Howard opens with a quick bit of Hughes (Jason Robards) driving a motorcycle across the desert until he has an accident. Then Melvin (Paul Le Mat) drives by and discovers a bedraggled old man with wild hair lying immobile by the side of the road. Melvin offers the disoriented stranger a ride. During the ensuing trek, the passenger identifies himself as Howard Hughes, but Melvin is skeptical. After Melvin drops off his passenger, Melvin returns to his grim life, where he lives in a trailer with his volatile wife, Lynda (Mary Steenburgen). Melvin’s drinking, inability to hold a job, and lack of steady money drives Lynda away, so she eventually leaves him, taking their child along. Melvin rebounds by getting a job driving a milk truck, and he remarries, this time to the more stable Bonnie (Pamela Reed). Eventually, Melvin and Bonnie set up house in a domicile adjoining the rural gas station of which Melvin becomes the manager.

          And that’s where the mystery man (Charles Napier) deposits the handwritten will. A peculiar legal battle ensues, with court officials and lawyers accusing Melvin of fabricating both the will and the story about giving Hughes a ride. Concurrently, Demme and Goldman play narrative games that challenge the audience to guess whether or not Melvin’s version of events is sincere. Although Melvin and Howard deserves ample credit for giving attention to the types of people Hollywood usually ignores—bums and drunks and losers—it’s more than a little bewildering. Melvin isn’t particularly interesting or sympathetic, and neither are the people around him. Furthermore, because the real court case went against Melvin, raising the strong possibility that he made up his story, the movie represents a missed opportunity to tell a yarn about a brazen scam artist.

          In the end, Melvin and Howard feels a bit like a character study of the schmuck next door experiencing his 15 minutes of fame. The problem is that the movie runs a whole lot longer than 15 minutes, and Demme—as has been his wont throughout his career—often seems more interested in peripheral moments than in scenes that actually drive the main story. So, while there’s something fundamentally humane about the overall endeavor, there’s also something mildly exploitive, with the clueless have-nots from America’s heartland presented somewhat like freaks in a sideshow.

Melvin and Howard: FUNKY

Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

          Judged by the low standards of the cinematic cycle to which it belongs, Black Mama, White Mama is fairly palatable, thanks to attractive starlets, brisk pacing, steady action, and a welcome sense of humor. However, the aforementioned cycle comprises a series of lurid women-in-prison movies that American International Pictures shot in the Philippines during the early ’70s, so Black Mama, White Mama is an inherently crude enterprise. Think incessant nudity, swearing, and violence—as well as the constant use of women as sex objects. None would ever argue that this genre represents a high point in human achievement.

          Black Mama, White Mama begins when new convicts including African-American hooker Lee (Pam Grier) and white revolutionary Karen (Margaret Markov) are delivered to a prison work farm in the wilds of the Filipino jungle. The women quickly catch the eye of a pair of female wardens, sadistic lesbians who are in a relationship but use convicts as playthings. Naturally, this plot development occasions a scene of a horny female prison guard masturbating while she looks through a peephole at showering convicts. Classy! After the usual scenes of catfights and torture, Karen and Lee escape. Unfortunately, they’re handcuffed together, Defiant Ones-style. Intrigue ensues as the women debate whether to rendezvous with Karen’s guerilla pals or Lee’s criminal chums. Meanwhile, pursuers include Ruben (Sid Haig), a flamboyant hoodlum who dresses like a cowboy, and Captain Cruz (Eddie Garcia), an ambitious policeman. The story also includes something about Lee having stolen $40,000 from a Filipino gangster named Vic (Vic Diaz), who sends bloodthirsty lackeys to chase the women.

          Cobbled together by several people (including Jonathan Demme), the story is hackneyed and laborious, but it’s really just a means to an end. As rendered onscreen by prolific Filipino director Eddie Romero, the narrative is merely the gas in the engine of a vehicle traveling at breakneck speed through episodes of bloodshed, nasty interpersonal conflict, and trashy sexualized content. (A typical scene involves Karen slipping off her panties and then placing them around the neck of a dog, thereby throwing pursuers “off her scent.”) Yet when compared to other movies of its sordid type, Black Mama, White Mama is positively restrained—and even periodically entertaining, especially when Haig fills the screen with his gonzo characterization.

Black Mama, White Mama: FUNKY

Angels Hard as They Come (1971)

          Long before he made humanistic dramas and thrillers for major studios, Jonathan Demme paid his dues by generating exploitation films for Roger Corman’s B-movie factory. Demme’s tenure at New World Pictures began with this biker flick, which has some admirable moments but doesn’t make a lasting impression. Scott Glenn, at his most stoic and sullen, stars as Long John, leader of a small gang of drug-dealing cyclists. After escaping cops during an interrupted transaction, Long John and his pals encounter members of another biker gang at a gas station. The second gang has taken up residence in an Old West ghost town, where they’re partying with a group of hippies, so Long John and his buddies are invited to join the fun. Soon after the various factions converge, Long John gets into a heavy rap session with hippie chick Astrid (Gilda Texter). She pushes him to explain why bikers are so violent, and he replies that anyone who flouts society’s rules invites conflict. “Yeah, I dig your problem,” Astrid says, “but I don’t think your solution is right.” “Shit,” Long John says, “What works is what’s right.” In fleeting moments like this one, Angels Hard as They Come almost becomes a thoughtful referendum on the counterculture.

          Alas, Demme (who cowrote and produced the picture) and Joe Viola (who cowrote and directed) can’t linger too long on philosophy. This being a biker flick, the main items on the menu are debauchery and violence. Accordingly, Demme and Viola contrive an iffy plot revolving around the rape and murder of a hippie chick. Eventually, Long John is accused of the killing and subjected to kangaroo-court justice at the hands of General (Charles Dierkop), the demented leader of the opposing biker gang. None of this quite works, since it’s never clear why the bikers are so upset a stranger was killed, or what the General hopes to achieve by incriminating Long John. Plus, the story simply runs out of gas at some point, looping through repetitive scenes of boozing and brawling. That said, Angels Hard as They Come delivers most of the favorite tropes associated with its genre—crazies referring to each other by colorful nicknames (“Axe,” “Juicer,” “Lucifer,” etc.), nasty fight scenes involving broken bottles and other found-object weapons, zonked-out chicks dancing topless on bars, and so on. A young Gary Busey is the mix, too, though he’s rather improbably cast as a pacifist hippie instead of a scary biker.

Angels Hard as They Come: FUNKY

Citizens Band (1977)

          While not a particularly interesting movie, the offbeat comedy Citizens Band represents the convergence of two interesting careers. For director Jonathan Demme, the movie was a breakthrough studio job after making three low-budget exploitation flicks for producer Roger Corman. For second-time screenwriter Paul Brickman, the movie provided a transition between working on existing material (Brickman debuted with the script for 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training) and creating brand-new characters; Brickman later blossomed as the writer/director of the extraordinary Risky Business (1983). A further point of interest is that while Citizens Band tangentially belongs to the mid-’70s vogue for trucker movies, it’s much more concerned with the possibilities of a communication format to bridge distances between people. In other words, this is an earnest project from serious people, so it can’t be discounted. Nonetheless, watching all 98 minutes of the loosely plotted and sluggishly paced feature requires abundant patience.

          Since Citizens Band never even remotely approaches outright hilarity, the charms of the picture are found in small character moments and—one of Demme’s specialties—scenes that celebrate human compassion and understanding. One wonders, however, whether a shambling assortment of kind-hearted vignettes was what Brickman had in mind, since certain sequences feel as if they were conceived to become full-on comedy setpieces. While Demme’s preference for intimacy over spectacle gives Citizens Band an amiable sense of reality, this directorial approach results in a decidedly low-energy cinematic experience.

          Anyway, in lieu of a proper storyline, the movie has a number of interconnected subplots. The main character, if only by default since he has the largest number of scenes, is Spider (Paul LeMat), a small-town CB-radio operator who watches out for truckers and vainly tries to keep emergency frequencies free of outside chatter. Spider lives with his ornery father (Roberts Blossom), a former trucker, and Spider’s part of a love triangle involving his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Electra (Candy Clark), and Spider’s brother, Blood (Bruce McGill). The Spider scenes are quite sleepy except when he plays vigilante by destroying radio equipment belonging to rule-breaking CB operators. Another thread of the movie involves a long-haul trucker nicknamed “Chrome Angel” (Charles Napier), who is revealed as a secret bigamist; the first meeting of his two wives plays out with unexpected warmth. There’s also some material involving various eccentric radio enthusiasts, such as Hot Coffee (Alix Elias), a plain-Jane hooker catering to truckers. The movie toggles back and forth between various characters, presenting one inconsequential scene after another. (Don’t be fooled by the exciting opening sequence of a truck derailment; thrills are in short supply thereafter.)

          Citizens Band has a slick look, thanks to inventive cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, though it’s questionable whether his moody style actually suits the material. Yet the presence of artful lighting is just one more random point in Citizens Band’s favor. The movie’s a collection of many things, some of which merit attention; the problem is that these things never coalesce into a worthwhile whole.

Citizens Band: FUNKY

Fighting Mad (1976)

          Filmmaker Jonathan Demme completed his productive tenure in Roger Corman’s B-movie operation with this uneven but watchable action picture about a principled redneck standing up to greedy developers. There’s nothing even slightly original about the plot, but as writer and director, Demme fills the picture with just enough idiosyncratic flourishes to keep things interesting during the beginning and middle of the story. Then, during the climax, Demme unleashes an exciting nighttime showdown replete with not only gunplay but also, for novelty’s sake, death by bow and arrow. Peter Fonda (of course) stars as Tom Hunter, a young man who returns to his family’s home in Arkansas only to discover that every private landowner in the immediate vicinity is under pressure from operatives of real-estate mogul Pierce Crabtree (Philip Carey). Crabtree wants to raze low-income homes to make way for a shopping mall, and he won’t take no for an answer, so his goons use lethal force to frighten citizens into selling. Among those who fall victim to Crabtree’s thugs are Tom’s brother, Charlie (Scott Glenn), and his wife. This pushes Tom into ass-kicking mode. Meanwhile, Tom manages his relationships with his young son, Dylan (Gina Franco); his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Lorene (Lynn Lowry); and his salt-of-the-earth father, Jeff (John Doucette), whose property is in Crabtree’s crosshairs.

          The best parts of Fighting Mad feature Tom sticking it to the man, because the tension between Fonda’s laconic persona and his character’s righteous passion is consistently interesting. The star is fun to watch whether he’s commandeering a tractor, planting explosives at a Crabtree work site, or shooting arrows into henchmen. Whenever the action hits a lull, however, so does the movie. Demme’s storytelling is choppy—every time it seems Fighting Mad has kicked into gear, Fonda’s character stops for a beer or a tumble with his girlfriend. Demme also lingers on pointless bits like musical performances, continuing his endearing/irritating career-long habit of losing the forest for the trees. Production values in Fighting Mad are fairly strong for a Corman production, since Demme focuses on real locations with loads of texture, and the performances get the job done; Doucette and Glenn in particular lend humanity to their small roles. However, the music score, by folk musician and frequent Fonda collaborator Bruce Langhorne, is all over the place—the old-timey bits with lots of banjo suit the milieu, while the electronic suspense stings hit their target but seem pulled from another movie.

Fighting Mad: FUNKY

Caged Heat (1974)

          Retrospect can be dangerous when writing about cinema, because critics and scholars occasionally color readings of vintage films with considerations that weren’t relevant at the time the pictures were released, thus arriving at a skewed sense of significance. To see how the process works, consider Caged Heat, a grimy women-in-prison picture issued by Roger Corman’s B-movie outfit in 1974. The flick is just as sleazy as any other entry in the genre, but because Caged Heat’s writer-director, Jonathan Demme, subsequently became respectable, there’s a temptation to scrutinize the picture for signs of artistic merit. And, indeed, one could offer an extraordinarily generous reading in which Caged Heat becomes a quasi-feminist statement about oppressed women breaking the bonds of patriarchal society. What that reading sidesteps, of course, is the actual content of the movie—the endless shower scenes of attractive women soaping their erogenous zones, the unpleasant sequences of half-dressed and/or naked women getting tortured, and so on.

          Therefore, in order to accept the categorization of Caged Heat as an important early work by Demme—whose later films are generally quite sensitive to gender issues—one must pretend the picture was made entirely with good intentions. And while I have no doubt that Demme was as humanistic an individual in the mid-’70s as he is today, it’s inarguable that Caged Heat was, at the time its release, simply the latest in a cycle of revolting grindhouse offerings about chicks doing lurid things behind bars. Furthermore, Caged Heat has even less of a narrative than many other entries in the genre, because the movie gets mired in such pointless sequences as a talent show put on by the distaff inmates.

          Anyway, here’s the story, such as it is. After Jacqueline (Erica Gavin) gets bushed on drug charges, she falls prey—along with her cellblock sisters—to the perverse machinations of Superintendent McQueen (Barbara Steele), the prison’s butch, wheelchair-bound warden. Breakout attempts and loss of life ensue. Along the way, Jacqueline fades into the background while fellow inmate Belle (Roberta Collins) emerges as the picture’s dominant character. Even though it’s only 83 minutes long, Caged Heat is boring as hell thanks to Demme’s meandering script and the weird tension between his professional obligation to deliver the T&A goods and his apparent desire to imbue the picture with redeeming qualities. In the end, Caged Heat isn’t lighthearted enough to qualify as escapism, and it isn’t substantial enough to quality as anything else—except, perhaps, a distasteful footnote to the career of an acclaimed filmmaker.

Caged Heat: LAME

Last Embrace (1979)

          Director Jonathan Demme continued his steady climb from the quagmire of exploitation flicks to the rarified realm of mainstream movies with this intelligent but underwhelming homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Just as Brian De Palma did in his various tributes to the “Master of Suspense,” Demme emulates myriad tropes associated with Hitchcock—convoluted plotting through which the discovery of a simple object eventually leads to the revelation of a perverse conspiracy; elaborate action scenes involving iconic locations; the presence of a woman who’s either an angel or a devil, or both; and so on. Last Embrace even features music by veteran composer Miklós Rózsa, who scored the Hitchcock classic Spellbound (1945) and whose music for Last Embrace echoes the style of Hitchock’s most revered composer, Bernard Hermann. About the only thing Last Embrace doesn’t have that one normally associates with Hitchcock’s work is a crackerjack story. Instead, the turgid narrative—adapted by David Shaber from a book by Murray Teigh Bloom—stirs up danger and mystery without generating much in the way of emotional involvement.

          Roy Scheider stars as an American spy named Harry Hannan. In a prologue, Harry’s wife is killed during a bizarre standoff with an underworld figure. The story then cuts forward several months and dramatizes Harry’s attempt to reenter his professional life, despite having spent the intervening time receiving psychiatric care. The reason for all this backstory is to put viewers on edge once Harry starts to suspect that he’s been targeted for murder—is he a marked man, we are meant to wonder, or is he just nuts? The story then adds another layer of mystery, which is related to doctoral student Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin), who rented Harry’s New York apartment during his hospitalization. Eventually, Last Embrace‘s scope broadens to encompass such random elements as academic rivalries, Old Testament lore, and prostitution. Things get a bit difficult to follow after a while, and a lot of the story strands feel underdeveloped.

          Nonetheless, Scheider’s a great fit for this sort of material, with his slow-burn line deliveries and wiry build making him quite convincing as a man of action on the verge of snapping. Alas, the script never lets him soar. Meanwhile, Margolin is likeable and pretty but hampered by a confused characterization and limited dramatic skills. Worse, there’s zero chemistry between the two, which renders the narrative’s romantic angle inert. Last Embrace features some highly enjoyable sequences, such as a bell-tower shootout between Scheider and a fellow spy (Charles Napier). Further, the film’s finale (which is set at Niagara Falls) has atmosphere to burn, and it’s interesting to watch Last Embrace in order to spot early attempts at cinematic devices that Demme revisited, to much stronger effect, in the 1991 masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs; for instance, the way he probes Last Embrace locations with a Steadicam represents a dry run of sorts for the way he used the same camera rig in The Silence of the Lambs.

Last Embrace: FUNKY

Crazy Mama (1975)

One of several dysfunctional-family-on-a-rampage flicks that producer Roger Corman cranked out in the wake of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), this amiably sloppy feature stars Cloris Leachman as Melba, a middle-aged widow circa the mid-’50s who gets kicked out of her home in Long Beach, California, after falling behind on bills. Together with her sexy teenaged daughter, Cheryl (Linda Purl), and her brassy mother, Sheba (Ann Sothern), Melba departs California for her hometown of Jerusalem, Arkansas. Almost by accident, the family becomes a criminal gang, beginning when they steal a car from their skinflint landlord (Jim Backus), and continuing with robberies at diners, gas stations, and so on. The gang soon expands to include Cheryl’s two boyfriends (one of whom is played by Happy Days redhead Don Most), plus Melba’s new lover, Jim Bob (Stuart Whitman), who just happens to be a (married) runaway sheriff. Like so many Corman pictures, Crazy Mama is a contrived jumble mixing together concepts from other movies, because the story is merely a loose framework for car chases, explosions, and the like. Therefore, notwithstanding Leachman’s participation—since her performance is an all-over-the-map mess—the sole reason Crazy Mama enjoys notoriety is that it’s an early work by director Jonathan Demme. Although Demme had not yet found his groove as a storyteller, his ability to get performers comfortable is plainly evident. Many scenes feel loose and unrehearsed, so even though the movie’s intentional jokes aren’t funny (“What’s the good of bein’ an outlaw if you look like an in-law?”), there’s an infectious party vibe from start to finish. Plus, by Corman standards, Crazy Mama is downright restrained: Purl manages to stay clothed except for a quick peekaboo shot, and Leachman, rocking a sexier body than you might imagine if you only know her from Mel Brooks comedies, reveals even less. So, if you want rednecks-on-the-run thrills without the usual corresponding seediness, Crazy Mama is the drive-in quickie for you.

Crazy Mama: FUNKY