My Old Man’s Place (1971)

          Possibly the first American theatrical feature to explore the impact of PTSD on vets returning from Vietnam, problematic drama/thriller My Old Man’s Place has a plot similar to that of The Visitors, a vastly superior picture released the following year. Both films dramatize the issue of soldiers bringing the war home with them by depicting close-quarters tension in remote areas. Yet while the Eliza Kazan-directed The Visitors has meticulous character work and a propulsive storyline, My Old Man’s Place is dubious and episodic. The personalities in this movie range from nonsensical to shallow to trite, and the narrative proceeds haphazardly—one gets the impression of filmmakers perpetually reaching for but not quite grasping heavy symbolism. Nonetheless, My Old Man’s Place is watchable thanks to its attempt at cultural relevance, and thanks to a couple of fine performances.

          At the beginning of the picture, three soldiers return to California from Southeast Asia. Trubee (Michael Moriarty, in his film debut) and Jimmy (William Devane) are combat buddies glad to be done with their military service, but Sgt. Martin Flood (Mitchell Ryan) thinks he might sign up for another tour of duty after a 30-day leave. Thoughtful Trubee and animalistic Jimmy spend time in San Francisco chasing women, then encounter Martin beating up a cross-dressing hustler. Presumably out of respect for a fellow veteran, Trubee and Jimmy offer Martin refuge on a farm owned by Trubee’s father, WWII vet Walter (Arthur Kennedy). The minute the group arrives at Walter’s farm, things turn sour. Walter has no use for Jimmy, a vulgar idiot, and doesn’t immediately notice that Martin is a tightly wound sadist. The situation worsens once Jimmy brings college student Helen (Topo Swope) to the farm. It’s giving nothing away to say the whole situation moves inexorably toward tragedy.

          Beyond the basic premise of war having different effects on different men, not much in My Old Man’s Place makes sense. It’s hard to imagine Trubee and Jimmy becoming friends, the idea they would glom onto the frightening Martin is bizarre, and Helen makes spectacularly stupid decisions. Thus it’s pointless trying to watch My Old Man’s Place as a proper story. Better to absorb the picture as a clumsy effort to engage with something provocative. To that end, Moriarty’s casting is just right, since he effectively captures anguish. Casting Kennedy, a star from a simpler time in movies, works just as well, because his presence illustrates the generation gap. Ryan is good, too, infusing his restrained characterization with unnerving madness. The performer who misses the mark most widely is the usually reliable Devane, because he’s distractingly cartoonish playing a crass simpleton.

My Old Man’s Place: FUNKY

Shoot It Black, Shoot It Blue (1974)

          The only feature directed by Dennis McGuire, whose sole Hollywood credit outside this project was cowriting the bizarre insane-asylum picture End of the Road (1970), this obscure drama somewhat anticipates the notorious Rodney King incident, because the plot concerns a young man capturing an episode of police brutality on film. Unfortunately, McGuire—who adapted the script from a novel by Paul Tyner—can’t quite figure out where to go from his incendiary jumping-off point. Instead of taking the obvious path by creating a thriller wherein the police officer tries to prevent evidence from surfacing, or even the more challenging path of exploring the societal repercussions after the evidence is released, McGuire opts for a two-pronged character study. Most of the scenes depict the bad cop in his everyday environment, carousing and drinking in between bouts of Catholic guilt and self-loathing. A smaller number of scenes depict the person who shot the incriminating footage, a young, African-American film student. Neither of these characters is put across in a satisfying way, and it doesn’t help that idiosyncratic actor Michael Moriarty plays the leading role—he’s alternately somnambulistic and weird, conveying the surface of the cop without providing much psychological insight.

          The film starts on an interesting note, setting up the possibilities and problems of McGuire’s ambiguous approach. Beat cop Herby (Moriarty) gets caught taking a bribe in exchange for not writing a traffic ticket, so he’s briefly suspended. Meanwhile, young Lamont (Eric Laneuville) spends his time filming a praying mantis for an experimental film project. One day, their lives collide. Back on the beat, Herby casually murders a suspect in an alleyway, and Lamont films the altercation from his apartment window several stories overhead. Then, once Herby is suspended again while the investigation grinds along, the lawyer (Paul Sorvino) representing the dead man’s widow finds Lamont and arranges for him to be a surprise witness at Herby’s trial. Yet much of the picture concerns tangential stuff, like Herby’s debauched exploits with fellow sleazebag Garrity (Earl Hindman). McGuire tracks and resolves the story in an awkward manner, largely ignoring obvious and worthwhile possibilities for expanding the narrative’s sociological impact. Shoot It Black, Shoot It Blue contains intimate and strange details, but it also contains lots of pointless filler. So by the time the picture reaches its fashionably cynical finale, McGuire has lost most of his authorial credibility.

Shoot It Black, Shoot It Blue: FUNKY

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)

          While basically heartfelt and sincere, this downbeat saga of male friendship—set in the world of professional baseball—offers a litany of teachable moments for cinematic storytellers. At the most fundamental level, the film’s inconsequential plot overwhelms what should be a substantial story. But that’s not the only tactical error. Cornball music cheapens quiet moments that could have attained power if left unvarnished. Vincent Gardenia’s highly entertaining supporting performance, which earned the actor an Oscar nomination, is played so comically that it distracts from the film’s overall dramatic intentions. Worst of all, costar Robert De Niro’s presence—upon which the entire story hinges—is strangely minimized, which has the effect of transforming his crucial characterization into an abstraction. So, while it would be overreaching to describe Bang the Drum Slowly as a mess, it’s fair to say the movie has a significant identity crisis.
          Adapted by Mark Harris from his own novel of the same name, Bang the Drum Slowly depicts the exploits of a fictional New York baseball team, the Mammoths. Star pitcher Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) is best friends with second-rate catcher Bruce Pearson (De Niro), who just received a terminal diagnosis. Determined to help Bruce enjoy one last season of baseball without playing the sympathy card, Wiggen threatens not to sign his new contract unless Bruce’s position on the team is secured. This maneuver enrages coach Dutch Schnell (Gardenia), who then expends considerable effort investigating lies that Henry tells in order to obscure the real reason why he’s protecting Bruce. The whole business of Dutch parsing Henry’s stories is so contrived and silly that the amount of screen time given to that subplot is irritating, even though Gardenia’s slow burns and tantrums are great fun to watch. Similarly, Harris and director John Hancock push the mildly eccentric Henry to the foreground of the story—even though the real drama revolves around Bruce—and they fail to persuasively explain why Henry is so attached to Bruce.
          Seeing as how Bang the Drum Slowly hit theaters two years after the far more effective Brian’s Song scored on television, Bang the Drum Slowly pales by comparison. Still, the picture is not without its virtues, mostly related to acting. Beyond the wonderful Gardenia, De Niro overcomes miscasting as a redneck to create a likeably slow-witted persona; Moriarty contributes his signature style of cerebral weirdness; and Barbara Babcock and Selma Diamond, respectively, lend enjoyable flavors of aristocratic haughtiness and scratchy-voiced crudeness. As for the film’s would-be heartbreaker of an ending, it’s a nonevent compared to the climax of Brian’s Song, which has been making grown men cry since 1971.

Bang the Drum Slowly: FUNKY

Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978)

          Provocative themes related to counterculture idealism, illegal drugs, police corruption, and the Vietnam War intersect in Who’ll Stop the Rain, an exceptionally well-made drama/thriller that, somehow, never quite gels. The film is praiseworthy in many important ways, boasting evocative production values, sensitive performances, and suspenseful situations, so the picture’s shortcomings are outweighed by its plentiful virtues. Nonetheless, Who’ll Stop the Rain is frustrating, because judicious editing—or, better still, bolder reimagining during the process of translating the source material into a film script—could have accentuated the most important elements while also providing greater clarity and simplicity. Some background: Robert Stone, the author of the underlying novel and also the co-writer the script, ran with a cool crowd in the ’60s and ’70s, gaining insight into hipster icons ranging from Neil Cassady to Ken Kesey. Stone also amalgamated data about the role dope played in the lives of U.S. soldiers serving in Vietnam. The writer blended these ideas, plus notions from his fertile imagination, into the novel Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award in 1975. Alas, Stone’s story got muddy on the way to the screen.

          The picture follows three interconnected characters. During a prologue set in Vietnam, burned-out journalist John Converse (Michael Moriarty) hatches a get-rich scheme: He buys a stash of heroin, and then recruits his friend, soldier Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte), to smuggle the smack inside a military transport when Hicks returns to America. Right away, this set-up illuminates the textured character dynamics at work in Who’ll Stop the Rain; there’s a great moment when Hicks expresses surprise Converse is willing to use him so brazenly, thus revealing how deeply Converse’s idealism has been eroded by the ugliness of war. Hicks mules the package successfully, but unloading the drugs stateside proves troublesome. Converse’s wife, Marge (Tuesday Weld), has become a prescription-drug addict and therefore can’t arrange Hicks’ payoff as instructed. Worse, a corrupt DEA agent (Anthony Zerbe) pounces on the Converse home—while Hicks is there with the drugs—in order to steal the narcotics and wipe out anyone who gets in his way. Hicks escapes with Marge, but this sets in motion a long chase leading from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Converse returns to the U.S. and gets captured by the DEA agent, who tortures the would-be drug mogul and uses him for bait to lure Hicks (and Marge) from hiding. All of this culminates with a wild shootout at Hicks’ hippie hideaway in the Southern California desert.

          Listing all the ways this story doesn’t work cinematically would take a while—for instance, Converse departs the narrative for long stretches, and the quasi-romance between Hicks and Marge feels both contrived and needlessly downbeat. But none of these problems diminish the texture of Who’ll Stop the Rain. The movie’s acting is amazing, with Nolte at his animalistic best, Weld capturing a queasy sort of bewilderment, and Moriarty sweating his way through a vivid turn as a pathetic striver. Zerbe is memorably insidious, while the actors playing his low-rent henchmen—Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey—add surprising elements of humor and terror. Director Karel Reisz, always stronger with atmosphere and character than with story, generates tremendous realism even in the most outrageous scenes (e.g., the final shootout), and his filmmaking soars at periodic intervals. Ultimately, the power of Who’ll Stop the Rain stems from the cumulative mood of despair that the filmmakers generate—if nothing else, Who’ll Stop the Rain captures something profound about how it felt to sort through the mess of Vietnam while history was still unfolding.

Who’ll Stop the Rain: GROOVY

The Winds of Kitty Hawk (1978)

          One doesn’t generally reach for the word lyrical when describing a ’70s TV movie, but the adjective suits The Winds of Kitty Hawk, which dramatizes the adventures of flight innovators the Wright Brothers with a touch of poetry thanks to evocative locations, a lilting musical score, and a quietly insistent leading performance by Michael Moriarty. How much artistic license was taken with facts about the Wrights and their competitors is a discussion for another space, but whether or not The Winds of Kitty Hawk is wholly accurate, it’s a gently compelling drama. Set at the dawn of the 20th century, the story sprawls across several summers during which the driven Wilbur Wright (Moriarty) and his indefatigable brother, Orville (David Huffman), visited the titular location in the Carolinas to refine their groundbreaking flying machines.

          The scenes taking place in Kitty Hawk are the film’s most engrossing, because the otherworldly location of endless sand dunes buttressing an ocean accentuates the magic involved with advancing the human species. As the picture makes clear, the Wrights didn’t invent flying machines, but rather perfected them in important ways; this nuance powers the plot, because the Wrights are in a race with other inventors to register the crucial first patent on a fully realized airplane. For example, just when the Wrights seem close to a breakthrough, they fall into competition with fellow aviation innovator Glenn Curtiss (Scott Hylands), whom the film portrays as stealing his best ideas from the Wrights and thereby snowing millionaire Alexander Graham Bell (John Randolph) into backing a Curtiss vehicle instead of a Wright Brothers vehicle.

          As directed by the prolific TV helmer E.W. Swackhamer—who obviously benefited from better material than he usually got—the picture does a fine job of balancing character study with procedural minutia. So, just as the picture contrasts the superhuman determination of Wilbur with the more grounded pragmatism of Orville, the picture toggles comfortably between small scenes of the Wright Brothers working out mechanical specifics with larger scenes of, say, Curtiss and Wilbur squaring off in high-stakes flying contests. The film’s re-creations of early planes merit special mention, because whether these vehicles are shown in long shots via miniatures, in close-ups via partial mockups, or in medium shots via full-size replicas, the illusions The Winds of Kitty Hawk creates are just good enough to give viewers a sense of what it must have been like to rise from the sand dunes and cruise along air currents. Designed as a loving tribute to the Wright Brothers, rather than a probing examination, The Winds of Kitty Hawk is more inspirational than educational—but it’s hard to see how that’s a bad thing. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Winds of Kitty Hawk: GROOVY

Report to the Commissioner (1975)

          Back in my college days, when I lived in Manhattan, I was friendly with an NYPD homicide detective who was also a movie buff, and he hipped me to this little-seen drama, praising it as one of the most accurate depictions he’d ever seen about how ugly the gamesmanship within a police force can get. And, indeed, even though Report to the Commissioner is fictional—it’s based on a novel by James Mills—the picture radiates authenticity. Extensive location photography captures the dirty heat of summertime New York City; intense performances burst with streetwise attitude; and the vicious storyline is driven by cynicism, duplicity, and politics. Told in flashback following some sort of terrible clusterfuck of a shootout at Saks Fifth Avenue, the picture reveals how an ambitious undercover detective and a rookie investigator cross paths, with tragic results.

          Michael Moriarty, appearing near the beginning of his long career, stars as hapless Detective Bo Lockley, a newcomer to the NYPD investigative squad who gets paired with a seen-it-all partner, African-American Richard “Crunch” Blackstone (Yaphet Kott0). In a telling early sequence, Lockley watches Blackstone lean on black suspects, even going so far as to spew racial epithets, which clues Lockley into the level of moral compromise required of NYPD lifers. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lockley, undercover narcotics cop Patty Butler (Susan Blakley), a pretty blonde WASP who uses her looks to undercut suspicions that she’s a police officer, gets a lead on a well-connected dealer named Thomas “Stick” Henderson (Tony King). Smelling an opportunity for a high-profile bust that will help his career, Butler’s commanding officer, Captain D’Angelo (Hector Elizondo), approves a dangerous plan for spying on Stick. Soon afterward, Lockley gets pulled into the situation—without being given crucial information—and things go to hell. The movie climaxes with a tense hostage situation inside Saks, during which high-ranking cops put more energy into covering their asses than saving innocent victims.

          This is dark stuff, making Report to the Commissioner a fine companion piece to Sidney Lumet’s various ’70s pictures about cops and criminals in New York City. And while Report to the Commissioner is far from perfect—the script meanders into subplots and some of the characters could have been consolidated for the purpose of clarity—the movie has myriad virtues. The atmosphere sizzles, with cinematographer Mario Tosi using haze filters and wide lenses to depict grungy exteriors and sweaty interiors. Director Milton Katselas, best known as an acting teacher, demonstrates a real gift for integrating actors into spaces and thereby creating verisimilitude. Best of all, though, are the film’s potent performances. Blakely’s sharp in a smallish role, King is physically and verbally impressive, and Moriarty’s weirdly twitchy energy is compelling. Furthermore, it’s hard to beat the roster of eclectic supporting players—beyond Elizondo and Kotto, the picture features Bob Balaban, William Devane, Dana Elcar, Richard Gere (in his first film role), and Vic Tayback. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Report to the Commissioner: RIGHT ON