Mirrors (1978)

Call them the unwanted children of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973)—various ’70s thrillers, some theatrical releases and some made for TV, about women bedeviled by supernatural forces. Among the least impressive examples is Mirrors, which has a connection to one of the aforementioned blockbusters because Mirrors leading lady Kitty Winn played a supporting role in The Exorcist. Although she’s a capable actress who periodically imbues moments with clarity and sensitivity, there’s a reason why Winn never became an above-the-title name, and that reason is on display throughout Mirrors. She often seems lost, as if she either doesn’t know what the script demands of her at that particular juncture, or knows but isn’t up to the challenge. Part of the blame, of course, must fall on the film’s director, Noel Black, whose career slid into mediocrity after his wonderful debut, Pretty Poison (1968). Black’s direction of Mirrors was unquestionably impeded by a poor script, but no matter the circumstances, his storytelling is borderline inept, and he evinces little flair for rendering jolts and suspense. Anyway, here’s the story. Marianne (Winn) and her husband, Philip (Peter Donat), visit New Orleans. He has asthma. She experiences weird visions, most of which involve mirrors, and she crosses paths with weirdos including an overly solicitous hotel manager. These folks belong to a voodoo cult of some sort. Philip dies, ostensibly of his asthma, but really, Marianne fears, because of her having angered the occult types. Her conspiracy theories land her in an insane asylum. The story never quite starts, instead lugubriously wandering through various suggestive episodes until viewers realize this is as good as it’s going to get, and it never quite ends, instead just sort of stopping, perhaps because Black ran out of ways to photograph mirrors. Actually, scratch that. He exhausts his visual imagination well before the movie sputters to a halt. As goes the direction, so goes this dull and unmemorable movie overall.

Mirrors: LAME

A Man, a Woman, and a Bank (1979)

          Elevated by a charming leading performances but weighed down by a sleepy storyline, the Canadian-made heist comedy A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is pleasant to watch even though it lags frequently and leaves only the faintest impression on the viewer’s memory. Donald Sutherland, all bright smiles and twinkling eyes, plays Reese, an ambitious schemer with an idea for casing a construction site in order to rob the bank that’s being built there as soon as the bank opens to the public. Actor/director Paul Mazursky, participating here only as a performer, plays Reese’s doughy sidekick, Norman, a computer programmer experiencing a midlife crisis. Rounding out the main cast, offbeat beauty Brooke Adams plays Stacey, an ad-agency photographer who stumbles into a romantic relationship with Reese that threatens to complicate the robbery. Orchestrating these inconsequential shenanigans is director Noel Black, whose all-over-the-map career arguably peaked with his first feature, the acidic murder story Pretty Poison (1968). Set to bouncy music by Bill Conti, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank was obviously envisioned as a frothy romantic caper, with the buddy-comedy antics of Norman and Reese providing a counterpoint to the love-struck interplay between Reece and Stacey. Alas, the script by Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon, and Stuart Margolin misses the mark again and again.

          The obstacles related to the robbery are too easily surmounted. The friction between Norman and Reese is too soft, because instead of challenging each other, the characters support each other almost unconditionally. Most problematically, the romance between Reese and Stacey fails to generate suspense—Reese’s lies about his activities endanger the relationship, but Stacey doesn’t learn enough secrets to imperil Reese’s plans, at least not until the very end of the story. Because of these narrative issues, long stretches of A Man, a Woman, and a Bank unfold without any dramatic conflict. Yes, the bit of Norman and Reese hiding from security guards in an elevator shaft has a smidgen of suspense, and yes, it’s possible to become sufficiently invested in the Reese/Stacey relationship to worry about the union’s survival. Overall, however, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is frustratingly bland, and it doesn’t help that Mazurky plays his sad-sack role so credibly he engenders more empathy than amusement. While Black’s slick style ensures that every scene is polished, Adams’ warmth and Sutherland’s charm are the best reasons to overlook the picture’s mediocrity.

A Man, a Woman, and a Bank: FUNKY

Cover Me Babe (1970)

          Released around the same time that real-life graduates from film schools began finding purchase in Hollywood, Cover Me Babe adroitly captures several interesting things—the influence of European aesthetics on young American directors, the insufferable quality of arrogant counterculture dudes, and the tensions running through academia because of clashes between new ideas and old-fashioned attitudes. The movie is ultimately somewhat less than the sum of its parts, because watching leading man Robert Forster play a heartless asshole for 90 minutes isn’t that much fun, and because the story lacks momentum. Nonetheless, Cover Me Babe evokes a specific time thanks to a tasty mixture of angst, art, and erotica. Forster plays Tony Hall, a prize-winning student at a Southern California film school. Best known for an experimental film peppered with nudity and surrealism, Tony is nearing graduation and is considered the frontrunner for another big award, which presumably will open the gates of Hollywood.

          Yet Tony resents everything connected with authority and convention, so over the course of the film, he burns every bridge that he had previously built. Tony destroys his relationship with a professor he sarcastically calls “Uncle Will” (Robert Fields), because the professor has the temerity to demand that Tony submit a script for his thesis project. Tony humiliates his sensitive girlfriend, Melissa (Sondra Locke), by commencing an affair with busty coed Sybil (Susanne Benton), and then Tony does a number on Sybil by asking her to have sex, on-camera, with their mutual friend Ronnie (Floyd Mutrux), who is ashamed of being gay and wants to make a go at heterosexual relations. While all this is happening, Tony wanders through Los Angeles with his trusty 16mm camera, stealing footage of strangers: a mother wailing in grief after her young son drowns at the beach, a depressed man jumping off a building, and so on. Tony also stages several shocking scenes, at one point hiring a female prostitute to masturbate on-camera. Eventually, Tony assembles the footage into an abrasive but pointtless montage that, he claims, illustrates the despair of life. (For punctuation, Tony inserts stock footage of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot by Jack Ruby.)

          Headstrong boundary-pushers of Tony’s ilk are staples of film school, and many of them become interesting directors, so there’s a measure of authenticity in George Wells’ script. Additionally, director Noel Black (who peaked early with the fantastic 1968 teen noir Pretty Poison), approaches the material with artistry and craftsmanship, applying lyrical touches to sex scenes, and two songs by soft-rock band Bread give the picture unmistakable early-’70s atmosphere. In the end, however, Cover Me Babe is strangely uninvolving, which is partially attributable to Foster’s chilly performance and partially attributable to the off-putting nature of the lead character’s journey. Believable as the notion of a self-destructive diva may be, it’s a challenge to stay engaged while Tony inflicts pointless psychological wounds and recklessly squanders opportunities.

Cover Me Babe: FUNKY

Jennifer on My Mind (1971)

          Here’s the premise of this would-be comedy for the druggie generation: After a with-it dude’s far-out girlfriend dies of a heroin overdose, he spends several days hiding her body in his apartment (and then his car) because he thinks he was responsible for her death and doesn’t want to get in trouble. Are you laughing yet? No? Well, guess what, you won’t be laughing when you watch the actual movie, either. Instead of being irreverent, which was undoubtedly the goal, Jennifer on My Mind is distasteful and unfunny. It’s also very boring, which is quite an accomplishment given the lurid storyline. Seeing as how the movie was directed by Noel Black, who made the masterful black comedy Pretty Poison (1968), and seeing as how the film was based on a book by the respectable Roger L. Simon, it’s tempting to point the finger of blame at screenwriter Erich Segal. Yes, that Erich Segal, Mr. Love Story himself. Once again, Segal demonstrates his unique gift for generating slick tedium. In fairness, though, nothing works in Jennifer on My Mind, so the script may simply be the most glaring of myriad unsatisfactory elements.

          The storyline unfolds on two levels. In the present-day narrative, rich twentysomehting Marcus (Michael Brandon) avoids family members and friends who visit his pad because he’s concealing a corpse. In flashbacks, we see Marcus’ courtship with the girl who ended up rotting in his bathtub. She’s Jennifer (Tippy Walker), a dimwitted hippie whom Marcus meets in Europe. Over the course of their hot-and-cold relationship, Jennifer got involved with hard drugs. To say that the narcotics angle feels incompatible with the film’s various gooey, music-driven love montages is an understatement, but as we all know from Love Story, Segal’s got a thing for gooey, music-driven love montages. Leading players Brandon and Walker are forgettable, but several semi-famous players show up in incidental and/or supporting roles, namely Peter Bonerz, Barry Bostwick, Jeff Conaway, Renée Taylor, and Chuck McCann. The picture also features an early performance by a future superstar. Robert De Niro shows up for one scene piloting a gypsy cab—yep, it’s De Niro playing a taxi driver five years before Taxi Driver. The actor brings his usual early-career intensity to a silly bit part as a hack wired on speed, but his brief appearance isn’t sufficient reason to trudge through Jennifer on My Mind. 

Jennifer on My Mind: LAME