The Legend of Earl Durand (1974)

          This low-budget rural adventure is based upon a real-life 1930s fugitive named Earl Durand, a mountain man who was arrested for poaching, made a brazen escape from jail, and led authorities on a manhunt lasting nearly two weeks. Before committing suicide, Durand killed four law-enforcement officers. The Legend of Earl Durand portrays the title character as a backwoods Robin Hood who kills government elk to help feed local poor people, so his reason for evading capture is, theoretically, continuing his good deeds. Since the filmmakers never quite figure how to express that concept, The Legend of Earl Durand churns and spins through a painfully overlong 110-minute running time. One wishes for the brisk fable this could and should have been. Still, even with its considerable flaws, not least of which is an ugly visual style—flat lighting and haphazard angles—The Legend of Earl Durand is watchable more often than it isn’t. The presence of Slim Pickens, Albert Salmi, Martin Sheen, and Keenan Wynn in supporting roles helps a lot. As for fair-haired leading man Peter Haskell, he comes across as a shabby substitute for Robert Redford, clearly the sort of image the filmmakers were after.

          Awkwardly framed with cutesy spoken/sung narration, the movie gives Durand a sympathetic origin story by way of a prologue depicting his youth, then cuts to the protagonist in full robbing-from-the-rich mode. His main adversary, manhunter Jack McQueen (Salmi), is portrayed as a sadist with political ambitions, so the thematic deck is unfairly stacked. In early scenes, Durand romances a pretty librarian and occasionally brings her little brother along during adventures; throughout the first half of the picture, Durand is as menacing as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Things get a bit tougher once the manhunt begins—for instance, Wynn plays a retired Army officer who zooms over the Grand Tetons in a biplane, then commands a posse armed with primitive rocket launchers. Wynn blusters well, Pickens reliably essays a likeable idiot, and Sheen supercharges the scenes in which he plays a simple-minded Durand accomplice. So while there’s a lot to dislike here, there’s also a fair amount to appreciate.

The Legend of Earl Durand: FUNKY

The Man Who Would Not Die (1975)

One way to set appropriate expectations for this cheaply made mystery/thriller is to note that leading man Alex Sheafe, who spent much of his career appearing on soaps, comes off as a poor man’s Gil Gerard. Yes, that’s how low the bar is set. Set and filmed in the Caribbean, The Man Who Would Not Die tells the confusing story of Marc Rogers (Sheafe), a seaman who stumbles into intrigue. First he signs on to captain a private ship for a cruise to Miami, only to have his patron die of a heart attack midway through the voyage. Then he becomes the target of a police investigation when, after returning to shore, the first mate from that trip is murdered. Later still, Marc gains unwanted attention from a Mafia enforcer (Kennan Wynn), who believes the patron didn’t actually die and that Marc knows the whereabouts of stolen Mob loot. And just to make things even more complicated, Marc gets entangled with women including the widow of the fellow who died—or didn’t die, or whatever. Because, you see, the gist of The Man Who Would Not Die is that the dude who hired Marc was a fugitive, so he assumed many false identities—and therefore, some of the people who die in the story might or might not be persons whose names the fugitive used. Making a story this twisty work requires both a light touch and a sharp mind, qualities that co-writer/director Robert Arkless does not manifest. Therefore, even though this picture runs only 83 minutes, it’s so episodic and insipid and sluggish that a better title would have been The Movie That Would Not Die.

The Man Who Would Not Die: LAME

A Woman for All Men (1975)

A Woman for All Men boasts adequate production values and a few familiar faces, so it’s more palatable than the usual sexploitation trash. Yet the plotting is mindless, and the erotic content comprises topless shots of leading lady Judith Brown. She’s an attractive woman, but not so uniquely beguiling as to energize a plot driven by her character’s ability to drive men wild with desire. These remarks are not meant to denigrate Ms. Brown, but rather to say that it’s hard to figure how the makers of A Woman for All Men envisioned this picture satisfying the target audience for this sort of thing. As a mystery/suspense narrative, this flick doesn’t offer anything beyond the average TV show of the same period, and as a sexual thrill ride, it’s tame. Most of the action takes place at a beach house owned by construction magnate Walter (Keenan Wynn). His adult sons, self-involved jerks Steve (Andrew Robinson) and Paul (Peter Hooten), are rattled when Walter comes home one day with a decades-younger wife, Karen (Brown). What ensues is unsurprising. Sex-crazed Karen gets bored with Walter and seduces Steve. Then circumstances suggest that Walter has died. Karen and Steve conspire to seize as much of Walter’s estate as possible. Obstacles blocking those goals include Walter’s loyal housekeeper, Sarah (Lois Hall), and a cop (Alex Rocco) investigating Walter’s disappearance. There are worse movies of this type, but finding things to praise about A Woman for All Men is challenging. Among other problems, all the performances are forgettable—even watching the colorful Wynn play a blustery old lech only goes so far—so the beach house emerges as the only memorable character.

A Woman for All Men: LAME

High Velocity (1976)

          If you’re willing to overlook a pointless story and sludgy pacing, you might be able to enjoy some of the surface pleasures in High Velocity, an action thriller shot in the Philippines. Leading man Ben Gazzara and costar Paul Winfield strike up decent male-bonding chemistry during their scenes together as mercenaries on a dangerous mission, and Kennan Wynn conjures a passable degree of intensity playing the obnoxious American businessman whom the missionaries strive to rescue from a jungle hideout. Also contributing more than the movie deserves is composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose incredibly prolific output (he scored five other pictures the same year, including Logan’s Run and The Omen) rarely diminished the quality of his work. Among the major players who fail to impress, Britt Ekland adds nothing to a small role as the wife of Wynn’s character, and director Remi Kramer—well, this was his first and last feature film, so that tells you what you need to know about the caliber of the storytelling. Nonetheless, High Velocity contains an adequate number of action scenes, so every so often the movie rises from its stupor to deliver a fleeting thrill.

          Set in some unnamed corner of the Far East, the picture begins by introducing Andersen (Wynn), a blustery executive who treats his local help terribly and isn’t much kinder to his beautiful trophy wife (Ekland). Militia types kidnap Andersen, so the wife hires Vietnam veteran Baumgartner (Gazzara) to plan a rescue operation. He, in turn, solicits the assistance of former comrade-in-arms Watson (Winfield). Various double-crosses ensue, as does a long trek into remote terrain. Sadly, much of the picture comprises dull scenes of the mercenaries staking out the guerilla’s camp. More lively are bits featuring Andersen in captivity, because his kidnappers force the Ugly American to confront the effects of his company’s imperialism. Excepting the friendship between the two mercenaries, nothing in this picture pings emotionally, and the narrative valleys outnumber the peaks. There’s also the little matter of how the plot doesn’t end up making all that much sense once everything is resolved. Yet somehow the combination of skilled actors in three leading roles and a steady stream of zesty cues from Goldsmith keeps High Velocity borderline watchable.

High Velocity: FUNKY

He Is My Brother (1975)

          Hey, remember that wholesome movie starring former teen idol Bobby Sherman as a castaway trapped on a leper-colony island in the Pacific? No? Well, chances are you’re not alone, because He Is My Brother ranks among the most obscure mainstream movies of the ’70s. The picture has a respectable degree of Hollywood gloss, and it benefits from the participation of familiar talents including Keenan Wynn, who plays the priest overseeing the leper colony, and director Edward Dmytryk, who closed out his long career in ignoble fashion by helming this box-office dud. While you might understandably think that He Is My Brother should be avoided like, well, a leper colony, the movie isn’t awful, per se. To be clear, it’s formulaic and padded and predictable, with more than a few shoddy performances, and the overly sincere moralizing of the piece makes He Is My Brother feel like a PSA for overseas missionary work. One should not investigate this movie with expectations of surpassing quality. Nonetheless, some elements of He Is My Brother deserve respect, including Wynn’s performance and the provocative issue of modernism clashing with primitivism.

          Jeff (Sherman) and his preteen brother, Randy (Robbie Rist), wake in the leper colony following a shipwreck. Jeff is aghast, fearing that he and his brother will immediately contract leprosy, but Brother Dalton (Wynn) calms them down, explaining that the disease only spreads after long periods of exposure, and further explaining that he’ll put the brothers on the next supply ship when it leaves the island. Trapped among the lepers, Jeff watches Brother Dalton battle to keep his flock intact while an indigenous mystic, The Kahuna (Joaquin Martinez), promises salvation for those who return to ancient ways. Then complications ensue. Jeff and his brother miss their boat, and Jeff becomes romantically involved with an island girl, Luana (Kathy Paulo). None of this is deep or surprising, but it’s all moderately interesting even though Sherman gives a hopelessly vapid performance. The gruffness of Wynn’s portrayal provides helpful balance, the locations are alluring, and the themes are meaningful no matter how clumsily they’re handled.

He Is My Brother: FUNKY

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

          One of several deeply flawed ’70s films containing an Oscar-worthy performance by Stacy Keach, The Killer Inside Me is the first of two movies, thus far, adapted from the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. (A 2010 version starring Casey Affleck received a more favorable critical response.) The material is strange, tracking the adventures of a small-town cop who secretly harbors homicidal tendencies, so the storyline asks viewers to take an unusual ride from wholesome Americana to deviant ultraviolence. Getting the tone of this one right would have challenged even the subtlest of filmmakers, a group to which rough-and-tumble action guy Burt Kennedy most certainly does not belong. Accordingly, the 1976 version of The Killer Inside Me is a mess from a tonal perspective, because it’s unclear whether the movie is a straight drama, a thriller disguised as a lighthearted character piece, a satire of American values, or some combination of all of those things.

          Keach finds a peculiar sort of true north, both in his onscreen performance and in his wry narration track, so his characterization tells a fatalistic but darkly funny story about a guy trying to make murder a part of his everyday life. Alas, the movie around Keach isn’t nearly as surefooted, even though some of the supporting performances are tasty and even though cinematographer William A. Fraker shrouds the film in evocative shadows. Those excited about exploring weird pockets of Hollywood cinema will be more inclined to cut The Killer Inside Me slack than those looking for straightforward escapism.

          Set in a small Montana town, the story follows Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Keach) through a colorful period in his life. To the casual eye, he seems like Mr. Nice Guy, because he romances a local schoolteacher, evinces great skill at de-escalating conflicts, and gets along with people on every rung of the social ladder. Secretly, however, Lou begins an affair with a local floozy, thereby entering into a triangle with his buddy Elmer (Don Stroud), son of rich landowner Chester (Kennan Wynn). All the while, viewers glimpse Lou’s demons thanks to flashes from childhood trauma, so when Lou freaks out and kills two people, we have an inkling why.

          The first half of the picture is all setup, and the second half is all repercussions. Throughout, the filmmakers provide colorful details and grim humor. In one entertaining scene, Lou welcomes a con artist (John Carradine) into his home and proceeds to scare the bejesus out of the guy, seemingly just for sport. In another vivid bit, Lou’s boss, Sheriff Bob Maples (John Dehner), employs unique vernacular to lament his poor marksmanship: “I can’t hit a bull in the ass with a banjo.” Although the movie never coheres, The Killer Inside Me is interesting and odd from moment to moment. Beyond Keach’s beautifully deranged performance, the picture boasts strong work from Carradine, Stroud, Wynn, Tisha Steriling (as the schoolteacher), and—reuniting Keach with a costar from John Huston’s Fat City (1972)—Susan Tyrell (as the floozy).

The Killer Inside Me: FUNKY

Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)

          A bad movie that somehow manages to command attention for most of its running time, at least for viewers susceptible to the charms of vintage cautionary sci-fi tales, Parts: The Clonus Horror deals with the sensationalistic subject of black-market organ trading, with the concept of cloning thrown in for good measure. In many ways, the story is incredibly silly, and the movie suffers from generic direction, mediocre acting, and rotten dialogue. Yet the film’s basic contrivance, of a hidden colony populated by clones whose overlords harvest the clones for organs, is colorful and loopy. Moreover, the picture has abundant late-’70s flavor, a couple of memorably gruesome scenes, and fleeting appearances by familiar actors. All told, Parts: The Clonus Horror is roughly the equivalent of a tasty made-for-TV sci-fi thriller.

          After a perfunctory bit set in the outside world that introduces U.S. presidential candidate Jeff Knight (Peter Graves), the picture shifts focus to a remote installation called Clonus, where simple-minded young people enjoy a controlled but peaceful existence under the supervision of friendly Dr. Jameson (Dick Sargent). One of the young people, fresh-faced Richard (Tim Donnelly), senses that all is not right in Clonus, so he begins a covert investigation. Echoing the ’70s sci-fi classic Logan’s Run (1976), Parts shows how overlords who create an idyllic lie are asking for trouble. Instead of the “renewal” concept in Logan’s Run, the baddies behind Clonus tell residents that once they complete their educations, they will be sent to “America,” which the villains portray as a magical place where everyone is happy and healthy. In reality, villains sedate and then murder residents who “graduate” from Clonus, harvesting their organs for use by the people from whose DNA the clones were created. Naturally, presidential candidate Knight is one of the visionaries behind Clonus, a megalomaniac with dreams of living forever thanks to a steady supply of replacement “parts.”

          Revealing the story’s twists does not perform a disservice to Parts: The Clonus Horror, since the film has zero suspense, instead generating minor thrills during chase scenes and/or horrific operating-room vignettes. The plotting is weak, with Richard effortlessly discovering important clues, and once Richard reaches the outside world, he immediately stumbles onto people with close connections to the conspiracy. The name actors in the cast do what they can with bargain-basement dialogue, thereby treating viewers to the spectacle of grizzled Kennan Wynn awkwardly issuing hippie-era lingo: “Hey, fella—looks like you’ve been through some really heavy scenes!” Sorry, Keenan—you Wynn some, you lose some. Interestingly, even though Parts seems to borrow liberally from Michael Crichton’s Coma (1978), the makers of Parts cried foul upon the release of the Michael Bay picture The Island (2005), suing for copyright infringement and winning a private settlement.

Parts: The Clonus Horror: FUNKY

Snowball Express (1972)

One of the weaker products to roll off the live-action assembly line at Walt Disney Productions, this plodding and unfunny “comedy” stars Disney regular Dean Jones as Johnny Baxter, a beleaguered office drone who inherits ownership of a hotel in Colorado. Uprooting his family and relocating to Colorado, Johnny discovers that the business is actually defunct, so he contrives a scheme to transform the hotel into a ski resort. Meanwhile, evil local banker Martin Ridgeway (Keenan Wynn) tries to exploit Johnny’s financial vulnerability in order to buy the business, because he wants to harvest and sell lumber from the abundant woods on the hotel’s sprawling property. Since the preceding story is obviously better suited to a drama or even a thriller, it’s no surprise that the makers of Snowball Express must strain to generate jokes. The picture’s two longest sequences are extended ski runs during which Jones and others flail their way down steep hills, but instead of actually integrating impressive stunt footage, the filmmakers rely on flimsy process shots. This methodology is especially frustrating seeing as how much of Snowball Express was shot on location in Colorado; whereas inconsequential scenes feature big skies and wintry atmosphere, key moments feel phony. Adding to the enervated nature of Snowball Express are tiresome running gags about mischievous animals. Even worse is the clichéd material about an ornery old prospector (Harry Morgan) who loiters around the hotel and then—surprise!—becomes a loveable porter once Johnny opens the ski resort. Every single beat in Snowball Express follows the Disney family-values playbook, from the judgmental subplot about a homewrecker (Joanna Phillips) to the trope of the hero’s plucky son (Johnny Whitaker) surprising his father by demonstrating unexpected resourcefulness. By the time Snowball Express climaxes with an interminable snowmobile race (occasioning another volley of anemic FX and idiotic pratfalls), the picture has achieved complete tedium.

Snowball Express: LAME

The Lucifer Complex (1978)

Film history is rife with stories about producers who had to cut corners because they ran out of money midway through filming, and we tend to remember the enterprising film professionals who responded to hardship with creativity. Understandably lost in the shuffle are embarrassments along the lines of The Lucifer Complex, which likely represents an unsuccessful attempt at stretching footage from an incomplete movie to feature length. Ostensibly, the picture is about a government agent (Robert Vaughn) investigating and trying to defeat a group of Florida-based neo-Nazis who want to build a Fourth Reich around a clone of Adolf Hitler. (Yes, the plot is shamelessly stolen from Ira Levin’s novel The Boys from Brazil, which was adapted into a big-budget feature released around the same time as The Lucifer Complex.) However, the far-fetched thriller featuring Vaughn is really just part of The Lucifer Complex. The movie actually begins on a tropical island, where a mystery man wanders into a cave filled with computers and then watches video recordings of human history until settling into his seat and watching the “historical record” of the storyline featuring Vaughn’s character. The drab business of the mystery man watching videos takes nearly 20 minutes of screen time, meaning that almost a third of the movie is over before the story begins. There’s no point searching for redeeming values in The Lucifer Complex, because the flick is so cheap, disjointed, nonsensical, and tiresome that the producers would have been better off selling their material as stock footage than actually assembling it into a feature. Except that option wouldn’t have been available to them, since most of those interminable first 20 minutes are already composed of stock footage. As for Vaughn, his obvious disinterest makes sense. Same goes for costars Aldo Ray and Keenan Wynn, each of whom sleepwalks through a minor supporting role.

The Lucifer Complex: SQUARE

Nashville (1975)

          At the risk of losing my bona fides as an aficionado of ’70s cinema, I’m going to commit an act of heresy by saying that Nashville leaves me cold. I’ve sat through all 159 endless minutes of Robert Altman’s most celebrated movie twice, and both times Nashville has struck me as an overstuffed misfire that unsuccessfully tries to blend gentle observations about the country-music industry with bluntly satirical political content. Altman has said he was originally approached to make a straightforward film about country music, and that he said yes only on the condition he could spice up the storyline, but I can’t help feeling like the movie would have been better served by someone with a deeper interest in the principal subject matter.

          Obviously, the fact that Nashville is one of the most acclaimed films of its era indicates that I hold a minority opinion, and it must be said that even the film’s greatest champions single out its idiosyncrasy as a virtue. Furthermore, there’s no question that the way that Altman takes his previous experiments with roaming cameras and thickly layered soundtracks into a new realm by presenting Nashville as a mosaic of loosely connected narratives represents a cinematic breakthrough of sorts. Taken solely as a filmic experiment, the picture is bold and memorable. But for me, Nashville simply doesn’t work as a viewing experience, and I have to believe that Altman wanted his film to captivate as well as fascinate.

          I have no problem with the fact that many of Altman’s principal characters are freaks whom he presents somewhat condescendingly, including disturbed country singer Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely); egotistical Grand Ole Opry star Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson); heartless womanizer Tom Frank (Keith Carradine); irritating British journalist Opal (Geraldine Chaplin); pathetic would-be songstress Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles); and so on. Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury balance the extreme characters with rational ones, such as cynical singer/adulteress Mary (Cristina Raines); long-suffering senior Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn); and sensitive singer/mom Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin). Furthermore, Nashville is mostly a story about showbiz, a milieu to which odd people gravitate and in which odd people thrive.

          I also freely acknowledge that Nashville has many vivid scenes: the humiliating sequence in which Sueleen is forced to strip before a room of cat-calling men whom she thought wanted to hear her sing; the incisive vignette of Carradine performing his Oscar-nominated song “I’m Easy” to an audience including several of his lovers, each of whom believes the tune is about her; and so on. Plus, the acting is almost across-the-board great, with nearly every performer thriving in Altman’s liberating, naturalistic workflow. And, of course, the sheer ambition of Nashville is impressive, because it features nearly 30 major roles and a complicated, patchwork storytelling style held together by recurring tropes like a political-campaign van that rolls through Nasvhille broadcasting straight-talk stump speeches.

          My issue with the movie has less to do with the execution, which is skillful, than the intention, which seems willful. It’s as if Altman dares viewers to follow him down the rabbit hole of meandering narrative, and then flips off those same viewers by confounding them with elements that don’t belong. The ending, in particular, has always struck me as contrived and unsatisfying. Anyway, I’m just a lone voice in the wilderness, and I’m happy to accept the possibility that Nashville is simply one of those interesting films I’m doomed never to appreciate. Because, believe me, watching it a third time in order to penetrate its mysteries is not on my agenda. (Readers, feel free to tell me why you dig Nasvhille, if indeed you do, since I’d love to know what I’m apparently missing.)

Nashville: FUNKY

The Animals (1970)

Soul-sucking dreck expunged from the bowels of the American film industry, The Animals is a crude Western about a woman seeking revenge against men who violated her. (A year after this movie was loosed upon an unsuspecting world, the moderately superior Raquel Welch vehicle Hannie Caulder took the same basic story into the mainstream.) Michele Carey stars as Alice McAndrew, a schoolteacher traveling by wagon across the sun-baked American wilderness. Unfortunately, one of her fellow passengers is heartless criminal Pudge Elliot (Keenan Wynn), who is being transferred between prisons. Pudge’s henchmen attack the wagon and kill everyone aboard except Alice. The criminals then strip her, tie her to stakes on the ground, and rape her. Inexplicably, a soulful Apache named Chatto (Henry Silva) watches all this happen from a nearby hiding place. Then, after the thugs leave Alice for dead, Chatto transports her to a cave and nurses her back to health, eventually teaching her to shoot and helping her track down the rapists so she can murder them. Obviously, none of this has any credibility. Carey looks glamorous throughout the movie, New York native Silva’s casting as an Indian is ridiculous, and the idea that Alice falls in love with her caretaker is absurd. How warmly can she feel toward a man who watched her assault instead of intervening? Excepting Wynn’s reliable villainy, the acting in The Animals is as bad as the storytelling, and the score—by Rupert Holmes, later the purveyor of ’70s soft-rock staple “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”—is an atrocity dominated by screeching acid-rock guitars. Making matters worse, The Animals is widely available in a choppy UK cut bearing the alternate title Five Savage Men, and the UK cut suffers from distracting fade-out transitions and prudish optical adjustments during the nastiest scenes. Still, anything that hides even part of this terrible movie from human view should be considered merciful.

The Animals: SQUARE

Herbie Rides Again (1974) & Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)

          It doesn’t speak well of American culture that the biggest domestic box-office hit of 1969 wasn’t Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Midnight Cowboy or Romeo and Juliet. No, the top grosser was Disney’s The Love Bug, a ridiculous special-effects comedy about an anthropomorphized Volkswagen Beetle that plays matchmaker for two unsuspecting humans. Starring the amiable Dean Jones and the grating Buddy Hackett, The Love Bug makes almost every other live-action Disney flick seem sophisticated by comparison. Given this success, it’s odd the Love Bug back didn’t hit the road again until 1974, when Herbie Rides Again was released.

          The second time around, the hero is not Jones’ racecar-driver character, but instead Willoughby Whitfield (Ken Berry), the nebbishy nephew of cutthroat real-estate developer Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn). Hawk wants to demolish an old firehouse occupied by widow Mrs. Steinmetz (Helen Hayes), so he sends Willoughby to sweet-talk the old lady. This puts Willoughby at odds with the widow’s spunky granddaughter, Nicole (Stefanie Powers), and the widow’s even spunkier VW, Herbie. (Mrs. Steinmetz is the mother of Hackett’s character from the original movie.) Herbie Rides Again is laborious and tiresome, with idiotic scenes like Herbie driving up the rails of the Golden Gate Bridge while an oblivious Mrs. Steinmetz sits behind the wheel, focused on her grocery list. The only memorable sequence is Hawk’s trippy nightmare vision of armies of Herbies attacking him, some flashing gaping “mouths” lined with sharp teeth, others dressed like Indians and tossing Tomahawks that scalp poor Alonzo. Berry, Hayes, and Powers are likeable, and Wynn is appropriately cartoonish, but the stupidity factor is almost unbearable.

          Things don’t get much better in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, for which Jones resumes leading-man duties. The filmmakers overlook the fact that Jones got married at the end of the first picture, since he’s inexplicably single, and they never explain why he’s got a new best friend/mechanic, Wheely Applegate (Don Knotts). Nonetheless, he heads to Europe for a racetrack comeback in the cute little VW with the “53” on the side. The plot thickens when jewel thieves hide a stolen diamond inside Herbie’s gas tank and when Herbie falls in love with a sexy Italian sportscar. Veteran British thesps Bernard Fox and Roy Kinnear try valiantly to make their slapstick scenes as the bumbling crooks work, but the lifeless script renders their efforts futile. Worse, the long scenes of Herbie courting the sportscar seem creepy after a while, since the vehicles do everything short of consummating their attraction. The moronic plot also calls far too much attention to the imponderables of just how self-aware Herbie really is; since the car drives itself for most of the movie, what purpose, exactly, does Jones’ character serve during the big race?

          Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo did well enough to justify a final sequel in the franchise’s original run, 1980’s Herbie Goes Bananas (without Jones), plus a short-lived TV series in 1982 (with Jones). The spirited VW returned yet again in 2005, when Lindsay Lohan starred in Herbie: Fully Loaded.

Herbie Rides Again: LAME

Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo: LAME

The Shaggy D.A. (1976)

In a word: woof. This live-action Disney comedy is a sequel to the studio’s minor 1959 hit The Shaggy Dog, about a young boy who turns into a sheepdog thanks to a magic spell. In the sequel, the boy has grown up to become reputable attorney Wilby Daniels (Dean Jones). When his house is robbed in broad daylight, Wilby decides to run for district attorney because the current D.A. is soft on crime. Unfortunately, that old magic spell gets reactivated, so Wilby starts turning into a sheepdog at inopportune moments, like when he’s preparing to get interviewed on television. Meanwhile (there’s always a meanwhile), current D.A. John Slade (Keenan Wynn) conspires to eliminate our hero before the lycanthropic litigator  can discover that Slade is in bed with the Mob. Disney regular Jones is amiable and diligent, investing considerable energy to give insipid scenes bounce and spunk, but not even the most gifted comedian could make Don Tait’s hackneyed screenplay sing. Very small children might be amused by vignettes of Jones growing hair on his face and by scenes of the sheepdog galumphing about while speaking with Jones’ voice, but grown-up viewers will have a hard time sitting through this barrage of cartoonish slapstick, clunky effects, and labored plotting. Matters are not improved by Tim Conway’s supporting performance as a dim-witted ice cream man, because his bumbling-idiot routine gets tired very quickly. And for dog lovers, presumably one of the movie’s target audiences, it’s a drag to watch the scene of the hirsute hero getting herded into an animal shelter’s gas chamber before he stages a four-legged jailbreak, since puppy euthanasia ain’t exactly comedy gold. Twenty years after this sequel was released, Tim Allen starred in a CGI-heavy remake of the original film.

The Shaggy D.A.: LAME

Coach (1978)

The concept of a sexy woman becoming the coach of an all-male basketball team could have led to satire or smut, but the movie featuring this concept is a milquetoast nothing: Coach is sufficiently well-made that it’s coherent and professional-looking, but the story is so uneventful that Coach feels like a set-up for jolts that just aren’t there. Every possible opportunity for sharp jokes about the gulf between the sexes is ignored or wasted; the sports scenes are drab and trite; and the leading lady tries to retain both her clothing and her dignity, which is admirable but not exactly the best way to deliver on audience expectations given that the narrative focuses on a sexual relationship between the coach and one of her players. The plot, which matters even less than you might imagine, involves onetime Olympic champion Randy Rawlings (Cathy Lee Crosby) getting a coaching job because a school functionary mistakes the name on her résumé for a man’s name. The school’s biggest backer, Granger (Keenan Wynn), tries to fire her immediately, but Randy threatens a discrimination lawsuit, so Granger endeavors to sabotage her job performance. In this context, it makes no sense that the supposedly intelligent Randy risks her employment by hopping into the sack with eager hoops player Jack (Michael Biehn), but there you go. Offering brief respites from the main storyline are idiotic scenes like the bit in which a white student is hypnotized into thinking he’s a black hoops star. (Yes, Coach is supposed to be a comedy.) Crosby, all cheekbones and teeth, is believably athletic (she was a tennis champ before becoming an actor), but there’s a reason her career mostly comprises guest shots on grade-Z television. Yawn.

Coach: LAME

Pretty Maids all in a Row (1971)

          A quick description of Pretty Maids all in a Row explains not only why the movie’s disparate elements couldn’t possibly have merged into a coherent whole, but also why the picture is a genuine cinematic oddity. Gene Roddenberry, the idealistic ex-cop who created Star Trek, wrote and produced the story, from a novel by Francis Pollini, about a high-school guidance counselor/football coach (Rock Hudson) who’s sleeping with half the girls in his school. Demonstrating a shocking lack of creative vision, Roddenberry’s script is an all-over-the-map mélange of murder mystery, psychodrama, romantic comedy, and sex farce. Directing this enterprise is Roger Vadim, the leering Frenchman best known for the exploitative ’60s movies he made starring two of his wives, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. With these men pulling the story in a hundred directions at once, Pretty Maids seems like a different film in each scene.

          When it begins, it’s the tacky story of horny teenager Ponce (John David Carson), who’s flummoxed by his constant erections, though it should be noted that in Vadim’s lurid fantasy world, Ponce’s high school is populated by gorgeous college-age women who walk around in body-hugging sweaters and micro-miniskirts; it’s difficult to imagine any straight boy keeping his wits about him in this sexualized environment. Ponce loses his mind when he literally gets an eyeful of his hot substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), because she leans over and presses her breasts into his face. He excuses himself to the restroom (presumably to take matters in hand), and discovers a seemingly unconscious girl in the next stall. When he reaches over to cop a feel, however, he discovers she’s actually dead. Classy!

          Once it becomes clear the girl was murdered, the school’s prissy principal (Roddy McDowall) and the local-yokel sheriff (Keenan Wynn) prove useless, so suave state cop Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) takes the case. Then, when the bodies of young women keep piling up around the school, Ponce’s mentor, Michael “Tiger” McDrew (Hudson), emerges as a suspect. Somewhere in this mess of a story, Tiger finds time to push Ponce and Miss Smith together, apparently eager to get his young apprentice laid; this leads to cringe-worthy seduction scenes between Carson and Dickinson. Adding to the almost surreal quality of the storyline, most of the characters in the movie seem more concerned with whether Tiger’s team will win the big upcoming game than with finding the serial killer in their midst.

          One fears that satire might have been the intention.

          Pretty Maids all in a Row is a narrative disaster from any rational viewpoint, but the movie delivers a lot of vivid texture. Vadim fills the screen with beautiful women, often in some state of undress, and the leading players are entertaining even if they don’t have real roles to play. Hudson’s mildly creepy as a power-hungry nut who transitions from sexual conquests to getting away with murder; Dickinson is cartoonishly sexy in a performance that borders on camp; and Savalas is so bitchy and urbane that he’s one evening gown away from coming across like a drag queen. Strange stuff. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Pretty Maids all in a Row: FUNKY

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