The Night That Panicked America (1975)

          Clever, exciting, and suspenseful, The Night That Panicked America tells a quasi-fictionalized version of the events surrounding Orson Welles’ notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds. Broadcast when radio was America’s primary form of home entertainment, Welles’ show was so immersive and persuasive that thousands upon thousands of listeners believed invaders from Mars had actually landed on Earth and commenced a hellacious assault. This highly enjoyable made-for-TV movie was adapted from the play Invasion from Mars, which was written by Howard Koch, the author of the script for the Welles broadcast. Yet arguably the most important contributor to this project was the gifted novelist and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer, credited with writing the screen story and cowriting (with Anthony Wilson) the teleplay. A literate fantasist adept at injecting new life into familiar characters (Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, the crew of the starship Enterprise), Meyer was ideally suited for transforming a historical event into old-fashioned pulp fiction.

          The movie cuts deftly between the scene at a CBS radio studio in New York City and various places around the country where people listen to the broadcast. In the studio scenes, Paul Shenar plays Welles like a demonically possessed orchestra conductor, determined to see his complex vision realized no matter the obstacles. One of the best creative choices made by the team behind The Night That Panicked America was eschewing psychoanalysis of Welles—simply presenting his determination implies plenty. The studio scenes are realistic and vivid, celebrating the gifts of voice actors and the resourcefulness of technicians. (The sound-effect subplot involving a bathroom is quite droll.)

          As for the pandemonium scenes, they’re more pedestrian but still quite effective. Borrowing a page from the disaster-movie playbook, the filmmakers present people who are either caught up in personal troubles or stupidly oblivious, with their reactions to impending doom revealing their personalities. The most compelling thread involves Hank Muldoon (Vic Morrow), a beleaguered family man contemplating leaving his wife, Ann (Eileen Brennan), and their children. When the Welles broadcast convinces the Muldoons the end is near, Hank takes extreme measures leading to a harrowing climax. (One can’t help but wonder whether Frank Darabont saw this telefilm, as the conclusion of the Muldoon supblot anticipates a key scene in Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation The Mist.)

          Directed by the reliable Joseph Sargent and featuring solid supporting actors—Tom Bosley, Michael Constantine, Cliff De Young, Will Geer, John Ritter—The Night That Panicked America may include a high quotient of artistic license, but isn’t using every possible means to put on a good show very much in the spirit of the Welles broadcast?

The Night That Panicked America: GROOVY

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)

          “I never guess,” the detective pronounces. “It is an appalling habit, destructive to the logical facility.” The detective is, of course, Sherlock Holmes (as personified, beautifully, by Nicol Williamson), and his unlikely conversational partner is the father of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud (as personified, with equal flair, by Alan Arkin). The meeting of these two great minds, one fictional and one historical, is the crux of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a lavish adaptation of the novel by Nicholas Meyer, who also wrote the screenplay. As directed by dancer-turned-filmmaker Herbert Ross, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution combines an ingenious premise with splendid production values and a remarkable cast. This is 19th-century adventure played across a glorious European canvas of opulent locations and sophisticated manners, a world of skullduggery committed and confounded by aristocrats and their fellows.

          The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is refined on every level, from its elevated language to its meticulous acting, and for viewers of a cerebral bent, it’s a great pleasure to watch because of how deftly it mixes escapist thrills with psychological themes. The movie is far from perfect, and in fact it’s very slow to start, with a first half-hour that meanders turgidly until Freud appears to enliven the story. But when The Seven-Per-Cent Solution cooks, it’s quite something. The story begins in London, where Holmes is caught in the mania of a cocaine binge. His loyal friend/sidekick, Dr. John Watson (Robert Duvall), recognizes that Holmes needs help because Holmes is preoccupied with a conspiracy theory involving his boyhood tutor, Dr. Moriarty (Laurence Olivier). Using clues related to Moriarty as bait, Watson tricks Holmes into traveling to Vienna, where Freud offers his services to cure Holmes of his drug addiction. In the course of Holmes’ treatment, the detective—as well as Freud and Watson—get pulled into a mystery involving a beautiful singer (Vanessa Redgrave) and a monstrous baron (Jeremy Kemp).

          The Seven-Per-Cent Solution tries to do too much, presenting several intrigues simultaneously—as well as building a love story between Holmes and the singer and, of course, dramatizing Holmes’ horrific withdrawal from cocaine. Yet buried in the narrative sprawl is a wondrous buddy movie: Arkin’s dryly funny Freud and Williamson’s caustically insightful Holmes are terrifically entertaining partners. (Duvall, stretching way beyond his comfort zone to play a stiff-upper-lip Englishman, is very good as well, forming the glue between the wildly different tonalities of Arkin’s and Williamson’s performances.) In the movie’s best scenes, Freud and Holmes don’t so much match wits as merge wits, because Meyer’s amusing contrivance is that Freud’s inquiries into the subconscious are cousins to Holmes’ deductive-reasoning techniques. Thanks to Meyer’s elegant wordplay and the across-the-board great acting, moments in this movie soar so high that it’s easy to overlook sequences of lesser power. Ross’ contributions should not be underestimated, however, because the painterly frames and nimble camera moves that he conjures with veteran cinematographer Oswald Morris give the picture a graceful flow and ground the gleefully preposterous narrative in Old World splendor. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: GROOVY

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

“I never did manage to see Invasion of the Bee Girls,” the film’s screenwriter, Nicholas Meyer, notes in his autobiography, The View from the Bridge. “Maybe one day. People who see it on my résumé keep telling me it is a camp classic, but I never know what this means or if it’s a good thing.” Rest assured, Mr. Meyer, it’s not a good thing. According to Meyer’s account, producers hired him to flesh out their basic notion of a horror movie in which women prey on men. He provided a fanciful story about an experiment that gives women insect-like appetites; these women then suck life energy from male victims during sex. While it’s rather difficult to imagine a worthwhile movie emanating from that storyline, Meyer’s subsequent sci-fi credits (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Time After Time, and so on) justify giving him the benefit of the doubt. In any event, Meyer describes being aghast when he was shown a rewritten version of his original screenplay, and if the finished film is any indication, his reaction made sense. Invasion of the Bee Girls is a cheap-looking, lurid, silly thriller with barely any trace of character development or narrative momentum. In place of these qualities, the movie has naked chicks screwing men to death, to the accompaniment of the kind of funked-out music one might hear in a low-rent strip club. Wandering through this sensationalistic sludge is reliable B-movie actor William Smith, who plays a detective investigating mysterious murders until he’s captured by Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford), the psycho who transformed a bevy of babes into a coven of killers. Invasion of the Bee Girls offers a few kitschy distractions for fans of grimy drive-in cinema, including an endless array of breasts and some bizarre sci-fi imagery once the film decamps to Harris’ trippy lair, but unless that sounds like enough to keep you interested, take Meyer’s lead and avoid this bargain-basement clunker.

Invasion of the Bee Girls: LAME

Time After Time (1979)

          Boasting an outlandish premise culled form the worlds of history and literature, Time After Time marked the auspicious directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer, who mined similar territory as the novelist and screenwriter of The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1976). Whereas the earlier film imagined a relationship between Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes, Time After Time imagines one between legendary science-fiction author H.G. Wells and notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper.

          The movie begins in Victorian England, when H.G. (Malcolm McDowell) discovers that one of his society friends is actually the Ripper. Eager to evade capture, Jack (David Warner) steals the time machine that wells built the basement of his London flat—in Time After Time, H.G. isn’t just a fantasist but also an inventor. Honor-bound to bring his onetime friend to justice, H.G. chases Jack through time to 1979 San Francisco. Once there, the 19th-century gentleman tries to navigate 20th-century culture, with sweetly overwhelmed bank clerk Amy (Mary Steenburgen) serving as his guide and eventual love interest.

          Working from an imaginative story by Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes, Meyer demonstrates all of his storytelling strengths: clever literary references, pithy light comedy, and pure escapist fun. Despite its preposterous storyline, Time After Time is thoroughly engrossing, an old-fashioned yarn with the classic formula of drama, romance, and thrills. The love story between Amy and H.G. is charming, because he’s a relic unprepared for the concept of women’s lib, and she’s a modern woman who swoons at his traditional manners. We believe they were meant for each other, just like we believe that Jack represents an even greater menace in modern times than he did in his own era: As he says in one of the picture’s best lines, “Ninety years ago I was a freak—today I’m an amateur.”

          Warner is elegantly menacing, creating several moments of genuine suspense because we believe him capable of horrific acts, and McDowell thrives in one of his few romantic leading roles. Plus, if his rapport with Steenburgen seems particularly convincing, there’s a reason: The costars married after completing the movie and were together for a decade. In another interesting footnote, Meyer recycled some unused bits of culture-clash comedy when he wrote the present-day scenes of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), which placed the crew of the Enterprise in, you guessed it, modern-day San Francisco.

Time After Time: GROOVY