Thunder Country (1974)

A sign that something’s rotten in Thunder Country appears during the opening credits. Mickey Rooney has top billing, even though his character only appears onscreen for about 10 minutes. The picture’s second-billed star, former Addams Family giant Ted Cassidy, plays the villain, so he’s onscreen throughout the picture, but he often trades screen time with a group of women. Because, as some of the film’s alternate titles suggest, this is a women-in-prison picture—except when it’s not. Also known as Cell Block Girls, Convict Women, Swamp Fever, and Women’s Prison Escape, this rotten flick cuts back and fourth between a quartet of female inmates and the exploits of a drug dealer, played by Cassidy. Threads converge after the women escape and seek refuge in a shack owned by a sweaty redneck in a Florida swamp, because the redneck has connections to the drug dealer’s operation. Eventually, the drug dealer and the fugitive ladies battle while authorities search the swamp, attempting to capture various crooks and escapees. As for Rooney, he plays a grimy shopkeeper forced by the women to escort them to the aforementioned swamp. Thunder Country is pointless sludge, lacking even the courage of its sleazy convictions; since the picture bears a PG rating, the lurid elements one normally expects from a women-in-prison picture are absent. There’s some fun to be had in watching the Artist Formerly Known as Lurch play a slick modern-day criminal, all stylish shades and tailored suits, but that novelty wears off quickly. Even the kick of watching gators prey upon people gets old. If anything about this movie sounds appealing to you, seek similar pleasures elsewhere and you’ll be glad for the decision.

Thunder Country: LAME

The Manipulator (1971)

          It’s hard to decide which image best encapsulates the weirdness of The Manipulator, a thriller with Mickey Rooney as a psychopathic movie professional holding a woman hostage in a warehouse and pretending she’s the star of a movie he’s directing. One contender is the long sequence of Rooney dressed as Cyrano de Bergerac, complete with plumed hat and prosthetic nose, while he spews reams of faux-poetic dialogue. Another possibility is the shot of Rooney rocking back and forth in a chair, his eyes bulging in madness, as he screams the lyrics of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” Yet perhaps the winner is the scene in which Rooney slathers his face with garish harlot makeup, sweeps his wispy hair into a Caesar style, and minces his way through a verbal affectation so stereotypical it would give Paul Lynde pause. Clearly imagined as a tour de force, The Manipulator instead comes across as a tour de farce.

          It’s not as if Rooney was incapable of good work in the later years of his career, even though his eccentricities often overshadowed the charm that made him one of America’s biggest stars during the 1930s and 1940s; one need only revisit his performance in, say, the TV movie Bill (1981). Yet it seems late-period Rooney needed strong directors to keep him under control, and he’s allowed to run wild in The Manipulator. To be clear, The Manipulator—sometimes known as B.J. Lang Presents—was never destined for greatness. It’s a claustrophobic and far-fetched lark with an inherently repetitive storyline, essentially a one-man show that doesn’t go anywhere.

         Nonetheless, actors live for these kinds of opportunities, since being the primary focus of an entire movie allows for rare levels of multidimensional characterization. Alas, that doesn’t happen here. Rooney’s character is loopy from beginning to end. Plus, to be blunt, playing crazy actually lowers the degree of difficulty for flamboyant performers—any random thing they do is permissible. The challenge in a role like this one is going deep and small, but Rooney does the opposite, despite fleeting moments that convey a peculiar sort of vulnerability.

          In any event, the story is laughably threadbare. We never see B.J. Lang (Rooney) kidnap Carlotta (Luana Anders), and we never learn how he came into possession of a warehouse filled with movie equipment. Myriad scenes comprise tight closeups of Rooney screaming at the camera. Similarly, many scenes feature Fellini-esque dream imagery—naked people dancing, grotesque partygoers participating in orgies, and so on. Unpleasant flourishes juice the images, whether visual (e.g., strobe lights) or aural (e.g., discordant electronic bleeps). Accordingly, the tone is all over the place. Much of The Manipulator is designed to horrify, but some scenes drift into broad comedy, like the where-the-hell-did-that-come-from bit of Rooney doing a Chaplinesque dance within sped-up camerawork. The sum effect is as perplexing as it is wearying. Anders’ nonexistent acting range doesn’t help, and neither does the disappointment of watching the fine actor Kennan Wynn enter and exit the film so briefly and so pointlessly.

          On some level, The Manipulator is fascinating simply because Rooney displays so many wild colors, and there’s a kernel of satirical edge to the premise, which echoes Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950). Mostly, however, The Manipulator is 85 minutes of sadism and screaming and strangeness. 

The Manipulator: FREAKY

Evil Roy Slade (1972)

          Something of a precursor to Mel Brooks’ classic comedy Blazing Saddles (1974), this made-for-TV farce lampoons Wild West clichés by delivering jokes at a blistering pace. Alas, while Evil Roy Slade has strong elements, notably a cheerfully manic leading performance by John Astin of The Addams Family fame, the movie’s lukewarm one-liners, tepid running gags, and weak satirical concepts pale next to the outrageous brilliance (or brilliant outrageousness) of Blazing Saddles. That said, if you adjust your expectations appropriately, then Evil Roy Slade will provide you with 90-something minutes of rootin’-tootin’ silliness. After all, the project was written and produced by Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall, whose other collaborations included transforming Neil Simon’s play The Odd Couple into one of the most memorable sitcoms of the ’70s. Sure, most of the jokes in Evil Roy Slade are goofy (“Somethin’s on my mind and it hurts my head!”), but there’s something to be said for letting stone-cold comedy professionals take the wheel and going along for the ride.

          Astin plays Evil Roy Slade, who was abandoned as an infant and then grew into a hateful criminal whose only friends are vultures. (As in, actual carrion-eating birds.) When Roy meets the lovely but wholesome Betsy Potter (Pamela Austin), he tries to go straight, taking a job at a store until his old compulsions drive him to rob again. Meanwhile, businessman Nelson Stoll (Mickey Rooney), the owner of a Western Union-type telegraph service that has been robbed countless times by Roy’s gang, determines to take Roy out permanently. Nelson hires a vain singing cowboy, Marshal Bing Bell (Dick Shawn), for the job. The gags fly furiously, ranging from the amusing to the groan-worthy. Bing Bell wears little bell earrings. Roy contemplates changing his name, with options including “Evil John Smith” and the like. During a montage sequence, the words “Time Passes” are superimposed on the screen. Much is made of Nelson’s “stumpy index finger,” which he wore out sending telegraph messages. You get the idea.

          Notwithstanding an unfortunate trope of homophobia (such were the times), most of Evil Roy Slade is harmless nonsense. Astin excels at this sort of high-octane craziness, Rooney attacks his cartoonish characterization vigorously, Shawn commits to his ridiculous role, and they’re abetted by comedy stalwarts including Milton Berle, Dom DeLuise, and Henry Gibson. If nothing else, Evil Roy Slade is superior on every level to Astin’s other comic western, the 1973 theatrical feature The Brothers O’Toole.

Evil Roy Slade: FUNKY

Arabian Adventure (1979)

          A towering figure both because of his impressive height and because of his unique screen presence, the British actor Christopher Lee—best known for playing Count Dracula in myriad pictures from Hammer and other companies, and whose massive presence in fantasy and science fiction films spans The Wicker Man to the 007, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars franchises and beyond—has died at the age of 93. His melodious voice and his stately manner of personifying menace rightfully earned Lee generations of fans. RIP.

          Made in the UK by the same folks responsible for At the Earth’s Core (1976) and other such Saturday-matinee silliness, Arabian Adventure is as generic as its title, providing little more than 98 minutes of brainless distraction. The story is a shameless pastiche of elements from myriad sources—The Prince and the Pauper, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Thief of Bagdad, The Wizard of Ox, and the adventures of King Arthur and Sinbad the Sailor, to name but a few—while the casting of American and English actors as Arabs is ridiculous. That said, credibility and originality aren’t generally the qualities that viewers seek in kiddie-cinema escapism, and Arabian Adventure delivers the goods with archetypal characters, elaborate special effects, and robust adventure. Hell, the movie’s got Christopher Lee as a moustache-twirling villain and the climax involves a mid-air dogfight between combatants on magic carpets, so why complain?

          Set in some vague mythical version of the Middle East circa the Middle Ages, Arabian Adventure revolves around the evil caliph Alquazar (Lee), who needs a magical object called “The Rose of Ilyl” to consolidate his power. Various clichéd characters orbit the caliph. The virginal Princess Zuleira (Emma Samms) lives in Alquazar’s castle, unaware of his insidious nature. The heroic Prince Hasan (Oliver Tobias) wanders in exile, unable to claim his throne. The innocent street urchin Majeed (Puneet Sira) lives off scraps, waiting to discover his destiny. Eventually, Hasan agrees to find the Rose of Ilyl for Alquazar, in exchange for Zuleira’s hand in marriage, and he begins a quest accompanied by Majeed and by Alquazar’s evil henchman, Khasim (Milo O’Shea). Encounters with genies and monsters and other such things soon follow, with one of the goofiest episodes featuring Mickey Rooney (!) as the keeper of a mechanical dragon’s lair. The whole affair culminates, predictably, with Hasan leading a revolution against Alquazar, hence the aforementioned magic-carpet dogfight.

          Costumes and sets in Arabian Adventure are fairly opulent, the special effects are okay (some of the flying-carpet scenes are quite persuasive), and the pacing is fairly strong. The acting is not as impressive, though it’s a hoot to see Lee’s frequent costar, Peter Cushing, turn up for two quick scenes, and it’s strange to watch future Cheers regular John Ratzenberger play a thug named Achmed. The leads deliver forgettable work, though Lee, as always, strikes a great figure and Samms—well, if nothing else, she has a great figure. Pulling the whole thing together is a characteristically rousing score by the reliable UK composer Ken Thorne.

Arabian Adventure: FUNKY

The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County (1970)

The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County represents a failed attempt to make a movie star out of amiable actor Dan Blocker, the man-mountain who played “Hoss” Cartwright on the classic TV series Bonanza from 1959 to 1972. (The series lasted another year, but Blocker died shortly after this film’s release.) A would-be farcical Western about the residents of a small town snookering their beloved blacksmith into marrying a dancehall girl so he won’t uproot his business, The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County features a raft of B-list actors, so folks like Jim Backus, Jack Cassidy, Jack Elam, Nanette Fabray, and Mickey Rooney populate the cast. Every single actor, Blocker included, is guilty of shameful mugging; the type of broad-as-a-barn acting on display throughout this laugh-deficient “comedy” went out of style with the advent of synchronized sound. Furthermore, the story is so contrived that there’s not a single surprise in the entire picture. Blocker’s character is a naïve galoot who learns to accept the seedier realities of life, Fabray’s character is a cynic who secretly longs to be loved, Elam’s character is an incompetent bounty hunter who’s supposed to add danger to the story but never does, and so on. Some performers make the best of this bargain-basement material, so, for instance, Backus uses double-takes and exasperated line deliveries to make his characterization of a flim-flamming mayor as enjoyable as possible. Meanwhile, others—especially Rooney—deliver work that’s best described as cringe-inducing. (This is the kind of sub-sitcom flick in which Elam, whose character has poor vision, spends several minutes grooming himself while looking at a framed portrait that he mistakes for a mirror.) The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County is harmless inasmuch as the jokes are never offensive, but it’s hard to imagine anyone sitting through the whole lifeless flick without subsequently regretting the loss of 99 minutes.

The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County: LAME

That’s Entertainment! (1974) & That’s Entertainment, Part II (1976)

          Made to commemorate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 50th anniversary, That’s Entertainment! is a documentary in name only, since the picture comprises clips from old movies that are introduced—through new, scripted footage—by a group of movie actors closely associated with the MGM studio. Anyone looking for behind-the-scenes gossip or insight will be disappointed, but, as the film’s title suggests, providing information isn’t the point. Rather, That’s Entertainment! offers a massive array of show-stopping musical numbers, including such classic moments as Fred Astaire’s graceful dance duet with Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon (1953), Judy Garland’s plaintive rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gene Kelly’s exuberant performance of the title song in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), and dozens more. The picture also spotlights rarely scene clips, including Clark Gable performing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in Idiot’s Delight (1939), and features montages celebrating the work of such Golden Age stars as Lena Horne, Ann Miller, and Esther Williams.

          The clips are nearly all dazzling, running the gamut from outrageous Busby Berkeley-directed spectacles to simple vocal performances, and the film’s seven editors did a remarkable job of organizing the material into logical sections while also creating a smooth flow. Writer-producer-director Jack Haley Jr.’s use of MGM stars as hosts works, too, because their participation validates the piece; furthermore, seeing the passage of time through their aging faces and physiques amplifies the nostalgia of recalling a magical era from the past. (Accentuating this effect, many of the hosts are shot walking through decrepit sections of the long-unused MGM backlot.)

          The impressive roster of hosts includes Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and the late Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, who presents a sweet segment about “Mama.” Each host offers a canned anecdote or two, and then narrates a few minutes of clips, so Haley creates the illusion of old friends sharing memories at a reunion. That’s Entertainment! is total fluff, but it lives up to its title and, in a cheerfully superficial sort of way, provides a history lesson simply by cataloguing the best output from one studio.

          Alas, the film’s first sequel, That’s Entertainment, Part II, is not nearly as charming. Kelly took over the directing chores, and he co-hosts the entire film exclusively with fellow song-and-dance legend Astaire. (Songwriter Sammy Cahn makes an ineffectual appearance during one quick bit.) Kelly and his team cast a wider net for different types of clips, since most of MGM’s best musical numbers were used in the previous film. As a result, this picture features random montages about great movie lines, plus such extended comedy bits as the Marx Brothers’ classic “stateroom” scene from A Night at the Opera (1935). Combined with the lack of organization—the movie jumps around between eras and genres—the inclusion of nonmusical scenes makes That’s Entertainment, Part II confusing and unfocused. Worse, Kelly stages all of the hosting bits as musical numbers. While it’s fun to see Astaire and Kelly hoofing together, their age and a general lack of inspiration makes these original production numbers seem second-rate when juxtaposed with classic clips. Nonetheless, the franchise soldiered on with a quasi-official follow-up called That’s Dancing In 1985 and then an official, made-for-TV threequel called That’s Entertainment III in 1994.

That’s Entertainment!: GROOVY

That’s Entertainment, Part II: FUNKY

The Black Stallion (1979)

          Quite possibly the most beautiful-looking family film ever made, The Black Stallion is the jaw-dropping directorial debut of Carroll Ballard, a onetime UCLA classmate of Francis Ford Coppola and a longtime member of the Godfather auteur’s Bay Area filmmaking collective. (Coppola executive-produced this movie.) Ballard, who cut his teeth as a second unit cinematographer for projects including the first Star Wars movie, reveals considerable directorial skill in The Black Stallion, as well as a preternatural gift for creating evocative visuals. In fact, Ballard’s images, captured by the extraordinary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, are so powerful they compensate for the film’s trite narrative.

          Adapted from Walter Farley’s beloved 1941 novel, which launched a twenty-book series that was published over the course of four decades, The Black Stallion depicts the adventures of a World War II-era American youth named Alec Ramsey (Kelly Reno). Traveling the Middle East via ocean liner with his father (Hoyt Axton), Alec discovers that a gorgeous black stallion is stabled aboard the ship for transportation. He bonds with the horse by feeding it sugar cubes.

          When the ship is attacked and sunk, killing passengers including Alec’s father, Alec drifts to shore on a deserted island, the black stallion his only fellow survivor. Alec rescues the horse by freeing it from bonds that have tethered it to the ground, and the horse returns the favor by rescuing Alec from a cobra. The two form a wordless friendship, with Alec riding the magnificent animal across the island’s idyllic beaches. This first half of the movie, which has barely any dialogue, is miraculous. Not only do the film’s trainers move the horse through so many complicated maneuvers that the illusion of an intentional performance is created, but Ballard’s shooting style mimics documentary-style spontaneity. Using natural light for halos and silhouettes, Ballard conveys infectious wonderment at the beauty of the natural world.

          Predictably, the movie loses some of its luster in the second half, after Alec and the horse are rescued and returned to the everyday world. Scenes of Alec trying to readjust to normal life with his mother (Teri Garr) are poignant, but Alec’s dynamic with retired jockey Henry (Mickey Rooney) is pat: Henry agrees to stable the black stallion on his farm, recognizes the horse’s incredible racing potential, and trains Alec to become a jockey. Although Reno is consistently appealing and Rooney is uncharacteristically restrained, Ballard fails to make Alec’s quest for racetrack glory as compelling as the island sequence. Nonetheless, the racing scenes have flair, and they probably offer relief to viewers who find earlier scenes too self-consciously artistic. Yet even when the story is at its weakest, the pictorial splendor of this movie never fails to inspire awe.
          An almost completely different creative team generated a sequel, The Black Stallion Returns (1983), with only Garr and young leading man Reno returning from the principal cast of the previous film, but The Black Stallion Returns failed to recapture magic.

The Black Stallion: GROOVY

Pete’s Dragon (1977)

          The last and least attempt by Walt Disney Productions to recapture the magic of Mary Poppins (1964), this bloated bore features many of the previous film’s signature elements. Like Mary Poppins, the picture combines animation with live action, features exuberant musical numbers, and showcases the bonds that form between children and their guardians. Unlike the earlier film, however, Pete’s Dragon is annoying, cutesy, dull, pandering, and unfocused. The story makes very little sense, the main special-effects gimmick is a letdown, the music is terrible, and the less said about the wall-to-wall horrible acting, the better.

          In nearly every way imaginable, this is one of the worst movies Disney released in the ’70s, even though it was among of the studio’s most expensive productions of the era. Had giant sets and legions of dancing extras been enough to compensate for an idiotic storyline, Pete’s Dragon would have been a winner. Alas, story matters, and this narrative is dumb, dumb, dumb. When the movie begins, inexplicably optimistic orphan Pete (Sean Marshall) is being chased by a group of evil rednecks, led by Lena Gogan (Shelley Winters), who “purchased” him into foster care so her family could collect government handouts. Pete evades capture with the help of his traveling companion, a dragon named Elliot (voiced by Charlie Callas). Elliot has the ability to turn invisible, so we often see only the objects he smashes into, but when he becomes visible, he’s a two-dimensional cartoon.

          One can assume (and understand) the thinking behind this aesthetic choice; in Mary Poppins and other movies, Disney put live-action characters into animated backgrounds, so why not try the reverse? In practice, however, the presentation is illogical. Since Elliot is “real,” and not a figment of Pete’s imagination, why doesn’t he have the same level of substance as everything else in the movie? And why does he communicate in grunts and mumbles that only Pete can understand? And why does he accept getting shoved into a dark cave the minute Pete finds a surrogate family in the persons of a drunken lighthouse keeper (Mickey Rooney) and his spirited daughter (Helen Reddy)? Furthermore, why does the movie introduce a con man (Jim Dale) and his assistant (Red Buttons), who want to use Elliot’s body parts for magical potions, when the story already has a villain in the underused Winters character? And why, oh why, are the songs so grating and repetitive, like the cringe-inducing “Boo Bop Bopbop Bop (I Love You, Too)”?
          Good luck solving any of these mysteries, or figuring out why this interminable cinematic leviathan received two Oscar nominations (for the music!), or discerning how Pete’s Dragon earned a respectable $36 million at the box office during 1977 before grossing an additional $4 million when it was re-released (in a shorter version) in 1984. Turning Pete’s Dragon into an Oscar-nominated financial success? Now, that’s Disney magic.

Pete’s Dragon: LAME

The Domino Principle (1977)

          By the late ’70s, the cinematic marketplace was clogged with so many like-minded conspiracy thrillers that filmmakers had to struggle to contrive credible new conspiracies—and in some cases they didn’t even bother with credibility at all. The latter circumstance is true of The Domino Principle, which was inexplicably directed by venerable Hollywood filmmaker Stanley Kramer, a man best known for hand-wringing dramas about Big Issues like injustice and racism. This profoundly stupid movie follows Vietnam vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman), a prison inmate offered clemency by mysterious but high-powered conspirators in exchange for committing an assassination.

          Right away, the film raises bizarre questions it never answers. Why bother recruiting a convict instead of simply hiring a criminal who’s walking free? Why go through all the trouble of bribing and manipulating prison personnel to engineer Tucker’s “escape”? Why go through an extended negotiation with Tucker about his desired terms, when the simpler thing to do is simply threaten his beloved wife (Candice Bergen) in order to pressure Tucker? Why send Tucker to an expensive hideaway in Mexico after the assassination is over, instead of just cutting him loose or gunning him down? And why does the supposedly savvy Tucker think all this will end well?

          Instead of raising intriguing questions about why the bad guys are scheming, the film stacks idiotic plot contrivances upon each other until the viewer’s brain is numbed. It’s even unclear what sort of reaction The Domino Principle is supposed to generate. Tucker is a callous son of a bitch, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to care that he’s in trouble. The stakes of the assassination are never made clear, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to worry about the world order getting overthrown. Worst of all, the movie is so confusing, talky, and tedious that it’s not as if viewers can simply cast logic aside and groove on the thrills.

         Hackman seems peevish throughout the entire movie, as if he’s upbraiding himself for agreeing to yet another pointless paycheck gig; Bergen is upstaged by the horrific perm she wears throughout the picture; and villains Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach sneer happily even though they probably can’t make any damn sense of the inane dialogue they’re spouting. (Plus, the less said about the pointless supporting character portrayed by an out-of-place Mickey Rooney, the better.) By the time the movie sputters to an overheated conclusion that’s as nonsensical as it is merciless, The Domino Principle has bludgeoned viewers so badly that only one mystery remains: Were the conspirators behind this cinematic atrocity ever brought to justice?

The Domino Principle: LAME

Pulp (1972)

          After scoring critically and commercially with the vicious crime thriller Get Carter (1971), star Michael Caine and writer-director Mike Hodges reteamed for a more playful look at the crime genre with Pulp, a darkly comedic romp that pokes fun at hard-boiled detective fiction and old gangster movies. Unfortunately, tonal problems prevent the duo from achieving their goals as effectively as they did in their previous collaboration: Whereas Get Carter starts slowly and builds steam but always relentlessly pursues the goal of generating violent intensity, Pulp never finds its footing in terms of mood or pacing. Yet even though Pulp drags during many flatly informative sequences and suffers from a remoteness that makes it difficult to get emotionally involved with the characters, the picture boasts swaggering style and mordant wit.

          Caine stars as Mickey King, a English author of déclassé detective fiction living in Italy. He’s hired by a mysterious benefactor to travel to Malta, where he’s expected to ghostwrite his employer’s autobiography. Intrigue and murders that happen along the way to Malta show King that he’s in over his head, and his suspicions are confirmed when he meets his bizarre boss: faded movie star Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a onetime leading man in gangster flicks. Turns out Preston plans to use his memoir to reveal a scandalous secret involving several powerful muckety-mucks, which makes him a target and puts his ghostwriter, King, squarely in the crossfire.

          Especially when viewers discover Gilbert’s unpleasant secret, it’s difficult to find much humor in Pulp’s storyline, which is nearly as nihilistic as that of Get Carter. So the fact that Hodges and Caine play the piece like a comedy, right down to Caine’s trenchantly funny noir-style voiceover, creates a jarring dissonance. In fact, watching Pulp is rather like listening to a sadist roar with laughter while describing an atrocity: The storytellers clearly find this stuff terribly droll, but their laughter isn’t contagious.

          Still, the Malta locations have a vivid, sun-baked authenticity, Caine is his usual watchable self, and some of the dialogue exchanges and voiceover remarks are memorably tart. (“It was a ghost town,” Caine narrates at one point. “Two crossed coffins in the Michelin guide.”) Rooney, however, is insufferable, so amped-up and overbearing that he’s exhausting to watch, and among the supporting players, only gravel-voiced Lionel Stander is quasi-memorable as Preston’s hair-triggered manservant. As a result, Caine’s star power is the most consistently pleasurable element of this strange movie.

Pulp: FUNKY