1980 Week: The Final Countdown

        Happy New Year, and welcome to the final 1980 Week of Every ’70s Movie. (Not to fear, we’re back to regular reviews of movies from the 1970s after this special 1980 Week runs its course.) Here's wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous 2018. Enjoy!

          Basically a second-rate Twilight Zone episode stretched out to feature length, sci-fi thriller The Final Countdown unleashes a hell of a lot of firepower to sustain the viewer’s interest, especially considering how little energy was devoted to the storyline. Beyond a kicky premise, The Final Countdown has nothing to offer on a narrative or thematic level, and the movie’s approach to characterization is a joke. Having said all that, the picture has three solid attributes. First is the basic time-travel notion, second is a cast front-loaded with name-brand actors, and third is an eye-popping array of production values and special effects. The movie looks fantastic, and it contains so many stars working in roles suited to their skills that it seems as if it should eventually gel. It doesn’t. By the time that becomes clear, the movie’s over, so The Final Countdown is entertaining by default. It feels, looks, and sounds like a crackerjack popcorn picture despite a hollow center.

          The flick begins in Pearl Harbor as the modern-day crew of the U.S. Navy supercarrier U.S.S. Nimitz prepares for a routine mission. Much to the consternation of skipper Captain Yelland (Kirk Douglas), the ship’s launch was delayed to await the arrival of civilian Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen), an efficiency expert working for the industrialist who designed technology onboard the Nimitz. Once at sea, Warren clashes with the ship’s top pilot, Commander Dick Owens (James Farantino), a part-time history buff working on a book about the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Nimitz encounters a bizarre electrical storm that blasts the ship with strange phenomena, and then the crew discovers they’ve been transported back in time to Dec. 6, 1941, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack. Proof of their circumstances arrives when the Nimitz crew rescues U.S. Senator Sam Chapman (Charles Durning) from his yacht after the boat gets strafed by Japanese Zeroes flying advance reconnaissance for the invasion fleet. What ensues is the usual what-if jazz stemming from the possibility of using modern weaponry to derail a historical tragedy.

          Unfortunately, the filmmakers never take the premise anywhere, so The Final Countdown is all buildup with very title payoff. Adding to the peculiar quality of the movie is the fact that most of the screen time comprises money shots of the Nimitz, because the filmmakers were given almost complete access to the ship. Long stretches of The Final Countdown feel like excerpts from a training film, with vignettes of planes taking off and landing, sailors running drills, and heavy machinery being operated at breakneck speed. The movie is a nautical gearhead’s wet dream. Douglas, Durning, Farantino, Sheen, and nominal leading lady Katharine Ross are left with little to do except convey wonderment and spout exposition. On the plus side, cinematographer Victor J. Kemper has a blast shooting action footage, the dogfight between jets and Zeroes is memorable, and the FX shots of the strange laser/cloud tunnel appearing during the electrical storm are cool.

The Final Countdown: FUNKY

1980 Week: Home Movies

Brian De Palma took a break from his successful career as a Hollywood director to teach filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’d done graduate work in theater, and this project resulted from student exercises. Despite the involvement of marquee names including Kirk Douglas, who has a small recurring role, the smart move would have been to let Home Movies linger in the relative obscurity of academia, because it’s an embarrassment. Not only is Home Movies amateurish and silly, but it’s suffused with crass elements including scenes during which the white leading character wears blackface as a disguise. Credited to seven writers, including De Palma, the narrative follows Denis Byrd (Keith Gordon), a young man who takes a filmmaking course from “The Maestro” (Douglas). Egomaniacal and overbearing, “The Maestro” encourages Denis to use his eccentric family as fodder for a class project, so Denis tracks his philandering father (Vincent Gardenia) and his older brother, James (Gerrit Graham), an insufferable college professor who pummels his fiancée, Kristina (Nancy Allen), with absurd rules about abstinence, diet, and exercise. Somehow this resolves into Denis surreptitiously filming people having sex. The story is coherent, but the events are pointless and random and tacky. James throwing food at Kristina because she broke a rule. Denis rescuing a lingerie-clad Kristina from a rapist. “The Maestro” climbing a tree to shame Denis for doing exactly what “The Maestro” asked, filming real life. Wasted are Allen’s girl-next-door charm, Gardenia’s impeccable comic timing, and Graham’s intense weirdness. Plus, seeing as how De Palma extrapolated many story elements from his own life experiences, the odor of self-indulgence permeates.

Home Movies: LAME

Holocaust 2000 (1977)

          Derivative Eurotrash noteworthy for featuring an American star in the leading role and for venturing into fairly extreme places, Holocaust 2000—sometimes known as The Chosen, Lucifer’s Curse, and Rain of Fire—is among the most enjoyably stupid ripoffs of The Omen (1976). Despite being quite slick on some levels, thanks to lavish production values, Erico Menczer’s vivid cinematography, and Ennio Morricone’s wonderfully gonzo score, the picture suffers from an atrocious screenplay and erratic direction. Things get so bad at one point that the film stops dead so Douglas can stand in place while voiceover of previously spoken expository dialogue repeats several times, lest the audience somehow miss the incredibly obvious implications of the storyline. And yet in the movie’s weirdest scene, pure narrative goes out the window as director Alberto De Martino lets loose with an apocalyptic dream sequence featuring visions of the end times intercut with, believe it or not, scenes of an anguished Douglas running across a desert while fully nude. File under “Things You’ve Never Seen,” cross-referenced with “Things You Never Particularly Wanted to See.”

          The ridiculous plot goes something like this: As American developer Robert Caine (Douglas) struggles to get plans for a Middle Eastern nuclear plant approved by reluctant government officials, prophecies and tragedies reveal that the plant is actually a scheme wrought by the antichrist, who, naturally, happens to be Caine’s adult son, Angel (Simon Ward). Yep. Angel. And Caine, as in “and Abel.” In other words, forget the mechanics of the dopey script. Grooving on the storyline’s broad strokes is more than sufficient, because the perverse fun of watching Holocaust 2000 involves laughing at Douglas’ overwrought performance—while secretly acknowledging that, every so often, his intensity gives real edge to the movie—and marveling at the abuse good taste endures in the name of disposable entertainment.

          One subplot involves assassination attempts on the life of a Middle Eastern prime minister, and this narrative thread culminates with a graphic beheading scene involving an errant helicopter blade. It’s as if the filmmakers studied the famous decapitation bit in The Omen, then asked how they could reconfigure the scene to add a provocative connotation. Never mind that the last thing the world needed was another depiction of political violence in the Middle East. Even more dubious is a long sequence set inside a mental institution—while shockingly gory and unquestionably unnerving, the sequence plays like a grindhouse homage to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). That’s not to say Holocaust 2000 utterly lacks imagination. A scene of Douglas caught on a flood plain while the water line rises with supernatural speed is memorably creepy, and the final act of the film echoes the all-is-lost vibe of The Omen, albeit without the benefit of ingenious storytelling. Holocaust 2000 is shameless crap, no question, but if you like your stories dark and pulpy, you may find yourself going along for the ride.

Holocaust 2000: FUNKY

Catch Me a Spy (1971)

Bland, contrived, and almost laughably unhurried, the Cold War-themed romantic comedy Catch Me a Spy—sometimes marketed as Keep Your Fingers Crossed or To Catch a Spy—is the worst sort of international coproduction. The film’s American, English, and French leading actors employ clashing performance styles, and the episodic storyline seems as if it was designed to showcase as many European locations as possible. Especially because the narrative is cobbled together from elements viewers have encountered a million times before, Catch Me a Spy is as much of a hodgepodge as its multinational DNA. A little Kirk Douglas here for the American market, a little Marlène Jobert there to keep the Gallic crowd interested, and some high-speed action skimming across the surfaces of Scottish lakes for atmosphere. So, while Catch Me a Spy technically runs just 94 minutes, it feels much, much longer. The source of the movie’s problems, of course, is a rotten script. Jobert plays a woman whose Englishman husband gets arrested by Russian agents on espionage charges and extradited to the USSR, so she entreats British officials to arrange a prisoner exchange. When that endeavor fails (in the movie’s only truly funny scene), she tries to find another spy whom the Brits can trade for her husband. After encountering him several times under strange circumstances, she believes that Douglas’ character is the guy for the job. What ensues is dull and ridiculous. Even as she negotiates for her husband’s release, Jobert’s character spends endless amounts of time hanging out with Douglas’ character, eventually surrendering to his charms. Beyond questions of logic, where’s the danger, the excitement, the urgency? Douglas grins a lot but otherwise applies a style far too heavy-handed for this sort of piffle, while Jobert’s English is so tentative as to be distracting. To no avail, supporting players Tom Courtenay, Trevor Howard, and Patrick Mower all contribute work more interesting than that of the leads.

Catch Me a Spy: LAME

The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)

          Possibly the grisliest adaptation of a Jules Verne novel ever made, The Light at the Edge of the World depicts the conflict between a gang of pirates and the lone survivor of a lighthouse crew on a remote island. Kirk Douglas plays the survivor with clenched-teeth intensity and nimble physicality, Yul Brynner offers an interesting contrast by portraying the main villain as a sadist with the courtly manners of a European gentleman, and the action unfolds on rocky terrain so barren that it might as well be the surface of the moon. Those seeking the lighthearted escapism one normally associates with Verne’s fiction should look elsewhere, because this is a brutal picture featuring a beheading, gang rape, and a horrific scene of a man being flayed alive. That could be why The Light at the Edge of the World fared poorly during its initial release, because viewers presumably expected something like Douglas’ previous Verne exploit, the family-friendly 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
          It should also be noted that The Light at the Edge of the World has no discernible thematic content, so it’s not as if the producers tried to elevate Verne’s pulpy storytelling. Viewed unfavorably, The Light at the Edge of the World is a Saturday-matinee adventure gone wrong. Viewed favorably, it’s a pirate picture that avoids romanticizing outlaws.

          The movie opens with the arrival of a three-man crew on a remote island. Assistant lightkeeper Will Denton (Douglas) is the crew’s outlier, since his companions are an old man at the end of his career and a young man just starting his. (Clues about Will’s tragic past are sprinkled throughout the movie, though the backstory payoff is underwhelming.) One day, a pirate ship sails into the island’s harbor, and marauders under the command of Jonathan Kongre (Brynner) murder Will’s compatriots. Despite briefly evading capture, Will is apprehended and used for sport by the vicious Jonathan. Only a brazen leap off a high cliff saves Will’s life. Eventually, the pirates dismantle the lighthouse and trick another ship into crashing upon deadly reefs. The pirates kill all the survivors except pretty Arabella (Samantha Eggar), whom Jonathan takes for a plaything, and the ship’s engineer, whom Will rescues. These two men plot revenge against the pirates.

          Despite being overlong at two hours and change, The Light at the Edge of the World is quite consistent. Not only do the filmmakers steer clear of swashbuckling fluff, but they allow the story to grow darker as it progresses—in one demented scene, Jonathan’s sexually ambiguous henchman cross-dresses so he can torment Arabella with a weird dance. Although Douglas has never been the subtlest of actors, he fares well in this milieu, conveying a mixture of brokenhearted angst, righteous anger, and sheer terror. Brynner, conversely, camps it up by grinning and laughing while his character commissions one atrocity after another. Naturally, these two big-screen alpha males have at each other during the requisite action-packed finale.

The Light at the Edge of the World: GROOVY

Scalawag (1973)

Choppy, episodic, and saccharine, the family-friendly adventure Scalawag represented an ignominious directorial debut for actor Kirk Douglas. The movie features such maudlin devices as crying children, cutesy musical numbers, sentimental monologues, a talking parrot (voiced by Mel Blanc!), and a weak subplot about a bad man finding redemption by serving as surrogate father to a child. Yet even these offenses would be tolerable if Scalawag was a rip-roaring action picture. It is not. Filmed on an insufficient budget in a singularly unattractive mountain region of Serbia, the movie looks cheap and ugly, a problem exacerbated by Douglas’ dodgy camerawork. Some scenes don’t cut properly, others have such profound screen-direction problems that it’s difficult to parse spatial relationships, and some scenes just look drab. The tone of the piece is just as chaotic. Set around the middle of the 19th century, Scalawag takes place in the deserts of California. Peg (Douglas), a one-legged pirate, leads a rough gang including twins Brimstone and Mudhook (both played by Neville Brand), Fly Speck (Danny DeVito), and Velvet (Don Stroud). Through convoluted circumstances, the pirates join forces with Latin stud Don Aragon (George Eastman), as well as the beautiful Lucy-Ann (Lesley-Anne Down) and her preteen brother, Jamie (Mark Lester). Together, the characters search for gold. Each character is either anonymous or trite, the plotting is amateurish, and the double-crosses and lies that are supposed to generate dramatic conflict instead produce confusion. Douglas is a terrible ham throughout, Stroud is wasted in a nothing role, DeVito plays a cartoonish imbecile, Down is ornamental, and Lester comes across like a lab-generated child-star robot. Plus, why bother to make a pirate picture if nearly all the action takes place on dry land? Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of dumb.

Scalawag: LAME

1980 Week: Saturn 3

          One of the strangest projects to emerge from the post-Star Wars sci-fi boom, this British production featuring American leading actors is part adventure saga, part horror show, part love story, and part mystery thriller. It also features one of the most unlikely combinations of stars in movie history: Aging he-man Kirk Douglas shares the screen with sun-kissed TV beauty Farrah Fawcett and New York-trained Method actor Harvey Keitel. That is, unless one counts the hulking robot who features prominently in the story as a costar. Set in the future, the picture begins when a mystery man kills a fellow space pilot in order to commandeer a shuttle delivering supplies to a scientific outpost on one of Saturn’s moons. The sole occupants of the outpost are Adam (Douglas), who is tasked with growing crops because Earth can no longer manufacture sufficient food, and Adam’s assistant/lover, Alex (Fawcett). Her origins are never made clear, though the implication is that she was provided to Adam as a sexual plaything. When the mystery man arrives, he reveals himself as Benson (Keitel), and says that his mission is to build a robot that can increase productivity at Saturn 3 (the name of the outpost).

          Adam and Alex are rattled by the change to their status quo, since they dig their quiet life—and who can blame them, since they seem to spend more time changing costumes and having sex than they do conducting experiments. Eventually, Adam and Alex realize that Benson is a psycho. Their first clue is when Benson jabs a metallic probe into a slot that he’s installed in the back of his neck, and uses it to psychically control the robot. Benson causes even more trouble when he announces his desire to sleep with Alex. Before long, things devolve into full-on violence once the robot gains a degree of autonomy, so Adam and Alex have to deal with two predators at once.

          Unlikely as it may seem, Saturn 3 was directed by Stanley Donen of Singin’ in the Rain fame, and to say that he’s got no feel for horror and/or sci-fi is to make a great understatement. Although certain individual scenes are handled well enough, including the introduction of Benson’s psychic link with the robot and a lengthy chase sequence, Donen fails to generate credibility or tension. Things in Saturn 3 just sort of happen, and Donen seems far more concerned with showing off the film’s elaborate production design than with telling a proper story. (Incredibly, the script was penned by acclaimed British novelist Martin Amis.) It doesn’t help that the acting is awful or that impatient editing rushes the story along at a distractingly frenetic pace.

          Douglas was well into the self-parody phase of his career, Fawcett seems as if she was lobotomized before filming, and Keitel—whose voice was replaced with that of another actor during postproduction—gives a more robotic performance than the actual robot. Nonetheless, fans of vintage sci-fi will find many things to enjoy, thanks to the colorful visuals and the surprising incidents of extreme violence. Plus, seeing as how the story ultimately becomes completely nonsensical, it’s possible to watch Saturn 3 as an accidental comedy. (There’s a reason why the picture earned three Razzie Award nominations.) Oh, and for those who fall under Saturn 3’s weird spell—or for those who simply crave another chance to ogle the lovely Ms. Fawcett—it’s worth surfing the Web for an infamous deleted scene featuring Douglas and Fawcett simulating a sexy drug trip, because Douglas’ goofy acting is as stunning as Fawcett’s slutty costume.

Saturn 3: FUNKY

A Gunfight (1971)

          Mostly squandering a terrific premise and a unique combination of leading actors, the offbeat Western A Gunfight is worth investigating for fans of the genre and the stars, though nearly all who watch the film will end up disappointed. The movie feels like a great episode of some vintage gunslinger-themed TV show, unnecessarily stretched to feature length. Still, where else can viewers see country-music legend Johnny Cash and he-man movie icon Kirk Douglas square off against each other? Directed by the skilled Lamont Johnson, A Gunfight begins with imagery so familiar that it’s a Western cliché—the mysterious stranger rolling into town, arousing the suspicions of everyone he encounters. In this case, the stranger is onetime gunfighter Abe Cross (Cash). Despite presenting himself as a peaceable man who just wants to cash in the meager findings from his failed career as a gold prospector, Abe excites the imagination of townsfolk who are itching for the thrill of gunplay. Meanwhile, fellow ex-gunfighter Will Tenneray (Douglas) enjoys a humble existence as a permanent resident in the very same town, sharing humble lodgings with his wife, Nora (jane Alexander), and their son. Essentially a walking-and-talking tourist attraction, Will spins tale tales of his past exploits in a local bar, encouraging patrons to drink up and incur hefty tabs.
          Captivated by the notion of two famous fighters occupying the same place at the same time, townsfolk pester Abe and Will with questions of when they’ll battle each other. At first, neither man has any interest in a duel, but then Abe jokingly suggests staging a fight and selling tickets. The idea lodges itself in Will’s mind, so, eventually, Abe’s need for cash and Will’s need to reassert his manhood cause the idea to become a real plan. Understandably, this causes friction with Nora and with Abe’s newfound girlfriend, a prostitute named Jenny (Karen Black).

          Writer Harold Jack Bloom adds several unexpected wrinkles to the basic premise, displaying how bloodlust, entrepreneurship, and pathos converge in the spectacle of two men facing each other as a form of public spectacle. Alas, Bloom doesn’t conjure an entire feature’s worth of material, so the script stalls repeatedly, and Bloom’s character development is mediocre at best. The movie also suffers for the inclusion of an obtuse and underwhelming final sequence. That said, a convergence of disparate acting styles produces many vivid scenes along the way. Cash is easy and natural, bringing his signature “Man in Black” persona to the screen smoothly. Douglas does well playing the de facto villain of the piece, since his character is a little too eager to court death, and his macho energy serves the piece well. Alexander is marvelously real as always, elevating her scenes to the level of genuine drama, whereas Black is the weak link, though she’s not onscreen enough to inflict much damage. A Gunfight also benefits from the participation of Keith Carradine (whose billing suggests this movie is his debut, although he had appeared a few months earlier in Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller), Dana Elcar, and Raf Vallone.

A Gunfight: FUNKY

The Master Touch (1972)

          Slick and watchable but badly lacking in narrative tension, this European heist thriller stars a suave Kirk Douglas as Steve, an expert thief who has just been released after a three-year prison term that stemmed from an unsuccessful robbery arranged by a wealthy criminal named Miller (Wolfgang Preiss). Immediately after leaving jail, Steve is seized at gunpoint by Miller’s goons, because Miller has a new job for Steve. Unwilling to trust the man twice, Steve refuses, and subsequently reunites with his beautiful wife, Anna (Florinda Bolkan). Initially, Anna’s thrilled to have Steve home, but then she detects that he’s itching to resume his life of crime—which pushes her over the edge, because the thought of waiting while her husband does another long stretch behind bars is more than she can take.

          Meanwhile, Steve takes on an apprentice, trapeze artist-turned-thief Marco (Giulana Gemma), and Steve hatches a scheme to commit Miller’s crime without Miller’s participation, doubling his potential take but also doubling his risk. Especially with the added element of a dogged policeman (Rene Kolldehoff), who is determined to catch Steve red-handed, the basic architecture of The Master Touch should be sufficient to support a proper thrill ride. Unfortunately, director Michele Lupo and his collaborators are more interested in style than substance. Major plot threads—such as the detective angle and the hint of a romantic triangle comprising Anna, Marco, and Steve—are malnourished, and far too much screen time is consumed by nicely shot but pointless chase scenes, as well as sleek but tedious montages of Steve surveiling potential crime scenes and/or preparing equipment for the big heist. Additionally, Douglas disappears for long stretches,with Lupo padding the running time through the inclusion of solo scenes featuring Gemma.

          As a result of all of this narrative diffusion, the main thrust of the piece gets obscured at regular intervals, even though the whole movie is attractively filmed at various picturesque German locations. (Lupo makes especially good use of Third Man-style Dutch angles.) Still, the movie pays off well with a zippy action finale, and Douglas provides ample low-key charm by relying on his innate charisma instead of falling into his customary ’70s trap of overacting.

The Master Touch: FUNKY

The Villain (1979)

          Revered stuntman Hal Needham made a successful transition to directing by helming a pair of hit comedies starring his buddy Burt Reynolds, Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978), and the team scored once more with The Cannonball Run (1981). Unfortunately, the rest of Needham’s directorial filmography is quite grim, and the downward spiral began with this ghastly Western. Starring Kirk Douglas as an inept outlaw who tries to bushwhack a young woman carrying a strongbox filled with money, The Villain represents a sad attempt to piggyback on the success of Mel Brooks’ outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974). Even in his prime, Douglas wasn’t particularly well suited to comic material, and by the time he made The Villain, Douglas had succumbed to an excessive style of acting that approached self-caricature. Worse, The Villain was clearly conceived as a live-action cartoon in the style of classic Looney Tunes, so the middle of the picture comprises numbingly repetitive vignettes of Douglas falling off cliffs, getting run over by boulders, and receiving the full blasts of dynamite explosions. Think Wile E. Coyote, but without the wiliness.

          The allusions to vintage Warner Bros. cartoons are so overt that Douglas actually spends the last moments of the film bouncing up and down, in wearisome fast-motion photography, while the Looney Tunes theme plays on the soundtrack. It’s all as painful to watch as you might imagine, and yet the juvenile textures of Douglas’ performances aren’t the only eyesores in The Villain. Ann-Margret gives a vapid turn as the imperiled young woman, “Charming Jones,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger costars as Charming’s escort, “Handsome Stranger.” The unfunny running gag with these characters is that Charming is so hot for Handsome that she’s virtually salivating in every scene, but Handsome is too dim to notice. Even Ann-Margret’s beguiling cleavage fails to make her scenes interesting. Campy actors including Foster Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Jack Elam, Paul Lynde (as an Indian named “Nervous Elk”), Robert Tessier, and Mel Tillis populate the periphery of the movie, though none is able to elevate the infantile rhythms of Robert G. Kane’s script. Bill Justis’ godawful score—which punctuates every would-be gag with an over-the-top horn blast—merely adds insult to injury.

The Villain: LAME

The Fury (1978)

          Apparently hopeful that lighting would strike twice in terms of creative inspiration and box-office returns, director Brian De Palma followed up his breakthrough movie, the 1976 supernatural shocker Carrie, with another horror flick about killer psychics. Yet while The Fury has bigger stars and glossier production values than its predecessor, it’s so far-fetched and gruesome that it lacks anything resembling the emotional gut-punch of Carrie. That’s not to say The Fury is devoid of entertainment value—it’s just that De Palma badly overreached in his attempt to blend elements of the conspiracy, horror, and supernatural genres into a sensationalistic new hybrid. Written for the screen by John Farris, who adapted his own novel, the convoluted movie pits former friends Ben (John Cassavetes) and Peter (Kirk Douglas) against each other. They’re both secret-agent types, and Ben is exploring the possible use of psychics as trained killers. One of Ben’s star pupils is Peter’s adult son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), although Ben expects even greater things from Gillian (Amy Irving), a gifted but troubled woman Robin’s age.
          You can probably guess where this goes—the young psychics fall in love even as they realize they’re being manipulated, Peter tries to rescue his son, and corpses hit the floor when the psychics get pushed too far.

          This being a De Palma picture, one is unwise to expect restraint on the part of the filmmaker, and, indeed, the movie’s finale involves a human body exploding. Moreover, despite the sophisticated contributions of cinematographer Richard H. Kline and composer John Williams, nearly every scene in The Fury ends with the cinematic equivalent of an exclamation point. Hell, the picture even features two performances (provided by Douglas and Stevens) distinguished by actors indicating intensity by flaring their nostrils. Regarding the other leads, Cassavetes sleepwalks through a paycheck gig as per the norm, and Irving elevates her scenes with the delicate sensitivity that distinguishes most of her work. None of the major performances is particularly good, per se, but each is lively in a different way, so at least De Palma achieves a certain overcaffeinated tonal consistency. Considering its assertive direction, colorful cast, and outlandish storyline, The Fury should be memorable in a comic-book sort of way, but ultimately, the picture is as anonymous as the silhouetted models featured on the poster—instead of delivering unique jolts, it’s Carrie Lite.

The Fury: FUNKY

Posse (1975)

Even though he’d been producing many of his own movies since the late ’50s, the venerable star Kirk Douglas didn’t try directing until the early ’70s, and it’s surprising how little skill he brought to the task. Both movies that Douglas directed—this one and the pirate flick Scalawag (1973)—suffer from middling storylines and tonal chaos. Posse is the better of the two, but it’s a messy endeavor in which Douglas’ admirable ambition far exceeds his directorial abilities. A failed attempt at a postmodern Western in the Sam Peckinpah mode, Posse revolves around U.S. Marshal Howard Nightingale (Douglas), who tries to curry political favor with frontier types by tracking down ruthless bank robber Jack Strawhorn (Bruce Dern). Nightingale organizes the mob of the film’s title, only to get captured by his quarry. Then, in what was undoubtedly meant to be an ironic twist, Nightingale’s posse must turn criminal in order to raise money with which to pay Strawhorn for Nightingale’s release. It all ends with lots of preaching and violence, so viewers are supposed to walk away from the movie contemplating issues of justice and mob rule and so forth. Had the movie been written with more clarity—and, quite frankly, had Douglas’ lead performance been more subtle—Posse might have become the hard-hitting statement Douglas surely envisioned. But while previous Douglas productions about the murky intersections between morality and violence had shattering power (consider his remarkable Stanley Kubrick collaboration from 1957, Paths of Glory), Posse is simultaneously overwrought and underdeveloped. The biggest moments are delivered with bludgeoning obviousness, an issue exacerbated by Douglas’ over-the-top acting, and the heaviest thematic elements are subverted by mixed narrative messages. In the end, the film says so many things, so loudly, that it’s a muddle. Still, the intentions are good, the production values are fine, and supporting player Dern’s performance crackles with his unique energy—few people play villains with anywhere near the level of humanity and nuance that Dern brings to the task.

Posse: FUNKY

“There Was a Crooked Man…” (1970)

          The prospect of venerable studio-era director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) collaborating with brash New Hollywood screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman (Bonnie and Clyde) raises curiosity about “There Was a Crooked Man…”, a Western comedy-drama centered around a brutal prison from which convicts conspire to break out so they can recover a cache of hidden loot. Unfortunately, the movie’s narrative is as fussy as its excessively punctuated title—the picture is a sloppy hodgepodge aspiring to run the stylistic gamut from adrenalized drama to insouciant comedy.

          One suspects that protagonist Paris Pitman Jr. (Kirk Douglas) was envisioned as a charming rogue, and Douglas certainly tries to sell the idea that his character is a heartless criminal whom we’ll find interesting because he does everything with a wink and a smile. But unlike the crooks in other Benton-Newman scripts, who evince believable complexity and vulnerability, Pitman comes across as a Hollywood contrivance, partially because Douglas brings so much movie-star baggage, and partially because Mankiewicz can’t decide from scene to scene whether the movie is dark, light, or some nebulous thing in between. The picture is shot in a blown-out, garish style that makes every image seem artificial; the cast is loaded with familiar character actors (Hume Cronyn, Burgess Meredith, Warren Oates, John Randolph), all of whom play silly caricatures; and the cringe-worthy music by Charles Strouse, complete with an awful title song performed by Trini Lopez, brings the movie close to camp.
          Worst of all, the story itself is convoluted and dull. It begins when Pitman robs a rich man for half a million dollars in cash, then buries the money in a desert rattlesnake pit. After Pitman is captured and imprisoned, assorted characters try to find out where the money is hidden, and Pitman builds a team of eccentric convicts so he can stage an elaborate breakout. Meanwhile, a relentless lawman (played by a bored-looking Henry Fonda) chases after Pitman for personal reasons.

          The narrative is such an anything-goes jumble that at one point, Cronyn literally does a slapstick routine by backing toward a hot stove before jumping up and down while shouting, “My heinie is on fire!” Veering completely to the other extreme, a studly inmate played by Michael Blodgett (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) gets strapped to a pole, shirtless, and whipped for rebuffing the homosexual advances of a guard. Given the presence of that sort of material, it’s possible there was some sort of satirical purpose to the original Benton-Newman script, but as cluelessly directed by Mankiewicz (who couldn’t be further outside his comfort zone of tense verbal jousting), “There Was a Crooked Man…” has no discernible purpose except befuddling viewers.

“There Was a Crooked Man…”: LAME

Once Is Not Enough (1975)

          New cinematic freedoms in the ’60s and ’70s emboldened pandering producers to adapt trashy bestselling novels for the screen, resulting in a series of godawful epics based on pulpy books by the likes of Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, and Jacqueline Susann. A typical example of the breed is the Susann adaptation Once Is Not Enough, an overwrought melodrama about a beautiful young woman tormented by a daddy complex.

          Deborah Raffin stars as January, the teenaged daughter of a macho movie producer named Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas). When the story opens, January is completing her lengthy recovery from a bad motorcycle accident, so when she finally returns home from the hospital, she discovers that Mike’s career has hit the skids, and that he recently married the super-rich Deidre Granger (Alexis Smith) in order to provide for January.

          This discovery sends January into an emotional tailspin—and eventually into the arms of Tom Colt (David Janssen), an alcoholic novelist who becomes a sexual surrogate for dear old Daddy. The sleazy storyline also includes Deidre’s lothario cousin (George Hamilton); Diedre’s secret lesbian lover (Melina Mercouri); and January’s promiscuous best friend (Brenda Vaccaro). These self-involved and/or self-loathing characters fight, scheme, and screw in an endless cycle until enough of them are either dead or neutralized to arrive at an arbitrary conclusion.

          Once Is Not Enough lacks any tangible relation to the real world, just like it lacks any sense of higher purpose, so the movie’s supposed entertainment value involves reveling in sleaze. The storyline of he-man Douglas emasculating himself by marrying for money offers some amusement, but it’s difficult to enjoy the principal narrative about January, which careers between her pseudo-incestuous preoccupation with her father and her odious sexual involvement with Tom, who’s forty years her senior.

          The screenplay, by Casablanca co-writer Julius J. Epstein, has a few zippy dialogue exchanges, but relies too much on Susann’s patois of contrived world-weariness. Similarly, the performances are erratic: Raffin is terrible (flat line readings, unconvincing emotional shifts), Douglas is okay (hammy but intense), and Vaccaro is great (bitchy, fragile, funny). A handful of worthwhile elements, however, are insufficient to justify the picture’s deadly 121-minute running time, so a more appropriate title would be Once Is More Than Enough.

Once Is Not Enough: LAME