The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970)

          An American/French coproduction plainly designed to evoke Hitchcock’s style of intricate mystery/suspense plotting—as well as his affinity for kinky sexual undercurrents—The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun is as labored as its title. Adapted from Sébastien Japrisot’s novel by a cabal of writers including Richard Harris (yes, the movie star), The Lady in the Car spins its web methodically, presenting one bizarre event after another until both the protagonist and the audience have good reason to worry about going mad. This means it’s hard to track the narrative from one scene to the next, and even harder to parse character motivations. That the film concludes with an Agatha Christie-style explanation sequence rightly indicates how far out of control the plot spins before the conclusion. Yet the movie is not without its charms, not least the presence of formidable costar Oliver Reed.

          Ad-agency secretary Danielle “Dany” Lang (Samantha Eggar) works for the stern Michael Caldwell (Reed), who asks her to visit his home for last-minute work on an urgent proposal. Since Dany knows that Michael’s wife, Anita (Stéphane Audran), will be home, she doesn’t expect anything out of sorts to occur, and excepting some catty exchanges with Anita, the visit is strictly professional. That is, until Dany retires to her room for the evening, Michael’s private study—positioned next to the bed is a nude photo of Anita. Awkward! Things get complicated once Dany drives Michael and Anita to the airport for a getaway, accepting the use of Michael’s fancy car for several days as payment for above-and-beyond services. Dany’s long trip to a resort town includes strange run-ins and, at one point, an inexplicable episode during which Dany badly injures her hand without any memory of how the injury happened. And so it goes from there, inevitably spiraling toward suspicion and terror and violence.

          Not much of what happens in The Lady in the Car makes sense, and only some of it is interesting. So even though Eggar provides an alluring presence and channels anxiety effectively, the movie overall is quite opaque, perhaps deliberately so, and frequently pretentious. (Try not to titter when Reed delivers this line: “That, as they say, Dany, is life.”) Happily, the movie gets better as it goes along, and the last half-hour provides not only plentiful scenes of Reed being anguished and/or menacing, but also a welcome dash of Hitchcockian kinkiness. Is The Lady in the Car anything more than a distraction, forgotten the instant it’s over? Probably not. But in its best moments, the movie aspires to a kind of literary elegance, and there’s some merit in the attempt. Incidentally, Japrisot’s novel was remade in 2015 as a French film, again called The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun: FUNKY

Assault on Paradise (1977)

          Some intrepid soul could write an entire treatise on film distribution by analyzing the way this drab thriller was sold to the public. Not only has the picture been issued under several titles—Maniac!, The Ransom, The Town That Cried Terror—but the most prevalent poster art, extrapolated from the opening scene, suggests a serial-killer saga echoing Son of Sam, Zodiac, and other human monsters who prowled the streets of America’s cities during the ’70s. In truth, Assault on Paradise is quite different. The story concerns a deranged Native American who terrorizes the wealthiest residents of a resort community in Arizona, demanding payment as punishment for, presumably, the residents’ mistreatment of tribal land. Although the story includes a number of murders, only one fits the urban-psycho paradigm, because most of the killings involve a bow and arrow. What’s more, Assault on Paradise isn’t some grim character study of a sociopath. The protagonist is a tough-talking mercenary hired by the wealthy residents to kill the sociopath. Accordingly, most of the picture involves a chase across desert lands, with helicopters and Jeeps and motorcycles. Hardly what people were promised by sensationalistic advertising.

          The setting is Paradise, a small town where rich guys including William Whitaker (Stuart Whitman) lord over municipal employees. After an Indian named Victor (Paul Koslo) kills several people, he issues a demand for $1 million and threatens more carnage if he is not paid. Whitaker hires Nick McCormick (Oliver Reed) to find and terminate Victor. Nick then recruits a local tracker (Jim Mitchum) to guide him through rough terrain. The story also involves a TV reporter, Cindy (Deborah Raffin), who becomes romantically involved with Nick.

          Thanks to a genuinely terrible screenplay, long stretches of the movie are deadly boring, and virtually none of the onscreen behavior makes sense. Nick is supposed to be the height of cold-blooded efficiency, but he spends a lot of time drinking, hanging out, and screwing. The tracker is supposed to know the terrain perfectly, but he often throws up his hands and says he doesn’t know where to look next for Victor. And Victor is played by the decidedly Caucasian actor Paul Koslo—who, by the way, is blond. Directed with zero story sense by Richard Compton, who spent most of his career making second-rate television, Assault on Paradise is a slog to get through, despite the colorful cast and violent premise. The picture gets better in its second half, once the action gets going, and props are due to Don Ellis for the energy of his frenetic disco/jazz/rock score, but the number of scenes that simply don’t work is startling. Which begins to explain, perhaps, why desperate methods were employed to hype the picture.

Assault on Paradise: FUNKY

The Triple Echo (1972)

          Adapted from a short story by H.E. Bates, offbeat WWII drama The Triple Echo would be easier to swallow had it been extrapolated from real events, because the central premise is as far-fetched as the relationships that drive the storyline. Set in the English countryside, the picture concerns Alice (Glenda Jackson), the lonely wife of a soldier being held prisoner overseas by the Japanese. One day, a young solider named Barton (Brian Deacon) wanders onto her remote farm, so she offers him food and lodging. He’s a deserter. Over the course of several weeks together, they fall in love, but Alice worries that neighbors might discover Barton’s presence and shatter their romantic idyll. She contrives the peculiar idea of disguising Barton as her sister, “Jill,” by way of cross-dressing. This works until yet another soldier wanders onto the farm. Arriving astride a tank, he’s a bearish sergeant played by Oliver Reed. (The character never gets a proper name.) Improbably, the sergeant becomes obsessed with “Jill,” and even more improbably, “Jill” accepts an invitation to a military party even though it’s plain the sergeant expects more from “her” than a dance. All spongy narrative contrivances and inorganic motivations, he story wends its way toward a strange type of romantic tragedy, with the gloomy pastures of the hilly countryside serving as some sort of visual metaphor representing loneliness.

          As directed by Michael Apted, whose work is always competent, The Triple Echo moves along as well as it can, given the episodic and incredible storyline. One feels the strain of screenwriter Robin Chapman stretching Bates’ vignette to feature length, and what might have seemed believable on the page is less so onscreen. Jackson attacks behavior and dialogue with her usual consummate skill, but she’s far too chilly to provide the level of emotion necessary for putting the illusion of The Triple Echo across. Likewise, Deacon is a cipher at best and a simpering twit at worst, because his performance gets more and more unsteady as the stakes of the narrative rise. Reed, as was sometimes his wont, barrels through the picture with more energy than nuance, so while he’s credible as an overbearing monster, he steamrolls past the central problem of making viewers believe the sergeant can’t see that “Jill” is a man. Other shortcomings include pedestrian camerawork and some truly atrocious music during upbeat passages—overwrought and twee was not the way to go for scoring what is essentially a tragic chamber piece.

The Triple Echo: FUNKY

The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978)

          Offering a seriocomic look at troubles plaguing a British school for maladjusted students, The Class of Miss MacMichael touches on issues to which viewers anywhere can relate, such as the challenges of working for autocrats and the difficulty of inserting individualism into inflexible institutions. Glenda Jackson, all fire and idealism, plays Conor MacMichael, one of the school’s teachers. She’s a caring educator who embraces the radical idea that treating young people with respect might compel them to work hard, so her natural enemy is Terence Sutton (Oliver Reed), the school’s unfeeling headmaster. He views students as little more than discipline problems, so he uses intimidation and punishment to quell rebelliousness. There’s never much doubt where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie, and Reed plays his role in such a flamboyant style that the headmaster is too cartoonish to take seriously. Given this imbalance, The Class of Miss MacMichael doesn’t offer many real insights or surprises. It’s a position paper with a few jokes and some melodrama. That said, Jackson, as always, is a commanding screen presence, so she imbues the movie with humor, ferocity, and passion.

         As for the plot, don’t expect much, since The Class of Miss MacMichael has an episodic structure. Conor bonds with her students, counseling a promiscuous girl about sex and trying to keep a mentally challenged boy out of trouble, even as the headmaster imposes strict rules and threatens Conor’s job security. Meanwhile, Conor blends her personal and professional lives by involving her American boyfriend, Martin (Michael Murphy), in activities with her students. Among Conor’s few allies at work is Una (Rosalind Cash), an American teacher with a knack for managing the mentally challenged boy’s periodic meltdowns. Although The Class of Miss MacMichael feels longer than its 94 minutes thanks to the lack of a compelling overarching storyline, most of the film’s vignettes are interesting. Scenes with Jackson overseeing controlled chaos feel credible, and Murphy’s affability adds a pleasant color whenever he’s onscreen. Reed, however, seems as if he’s in a different movie, though he shares blame for his over-the-top performance with director Silvio Narizzano, who should have recognized that Reed’s campy style clashes with the straightforward work of the other actors. In one scene, for instance, Reed’s character literally knocks the heads of two students together.

The Class of Miss MacMichael: FUNKY

The Devils (1971)

          By the mid-’70s, British director Ken Russell’s penchant for shock value took him deep into the realm of self-parody, despite his myriad gifts as a filmmaker and storyteller—it seemed as if he couldn’t stop himself from creating cartoonish excess. Many would say that Russell lost the thread while making two 1975 movies starring rock singer Roger Daltrey, Lisztomania and Tommy, both of which explode with juvenile imagery. Yet an earlier Russell film, The Devils, is likely the most extreme thing he ever made.

          Cruel, perverse, repulsive, sacrilegious, and vulgar, The Devils dramatizes a gruesome historical incident that occurred in the 17th century. On one level, the movie is purposeful and serious, exploring such heavy themes as groupthink, paranoia, political conspiracies, and unrequited love that sours into deadly animus. Washing over this highbrow material is a geyser of effluvium—Russell depicts enemas, orgies, the sexualized defiling of religious artifacts, torture, and even the vile act of sorting through a person’s vomit for clues. In some scenes, The Devils presents intimate drama with far-reaching moralistic implications, and in other scenes, The Devils presents cheap jokes straight out of burlesque. In sum, those seeking a microcosm of the identity crisis at the core of Russell’s artistic output need look no further. Everything bad about his style is here in abundance, and so, to, is everything good.

          The broad strokes of the narrative are as follows. Charismatic priest Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) gains control over the French city of Loudon during a time of religious conflict. Specifically, the Vatican has persuaded King Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) to demolish walls around cities, including Loudon, in order to quell an incipient Protestant revolution. Meanwhile, Sister Jeanne of the Angels (Vanessa Redgrave), the deformed and disturbed Reverend Mother of a Loudon convent, is sexually fixated on Father Urbain. When Father Urbain marries his lover, Sister Jeanne goes insane, accusing Father Urbain of witchcraft. Hysteria ensues, leading to the spectacle of the nuns in Sister Jeanne’s convent becoming sex fiends. Sadistic witch-hunter Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) arrives in Loudon to exorcise demons from the “bewitched” nuns, but few of the players realize that all of these events have been manipulated to scapegoat Father Urbain.

          Grasping the story’s deeper implications is challenging, and even simply tracking the events depicted onscreen requires close attention. Not only are the politics dense, but Russell drifts in and out of phantasmagorical sequences. Even the “real” stuff is sufficiently bizarre to confound many viewers. In the opening scene, Louis XIII performs a cross-dressing stage show. Later, viewers are shown a skeleton with maggots crawling in its eye sockets; Sister Jeanne giggling like a fool before climaxing from the mere sight of Father Urbain; and a silly bit during which the king shoots a man dressed in a bird costume, then says, “Bye bye, blackbird!” (Russell was fond of comedic anachronisms.)

          The movie crosses so many lines with its religiously themed imagery that it’s like a hand grenade thrown into the middle of a crowded church. In a dream sequence, Reed is envisioned as Jesus stepping off the cross, complete with a crown of thorns, and Redgrave licks his bloody wounds as if the act gives both of them sexual pleasure. During the long mass-hysteria sequence passage, Russell bashes the audience with forced enemas that are staged like anal rapes, armies of half-naked nuns, and money shots of said nuns gyrating atop a figure of Christ. The film’s climax contains horrors all its own.

          Saying there’s a resonant movie buried inside The Devils isn’t exactly correct, because there’s no way to separate the tale from the telling. Any dramatization of the Grandier story would be extreme. Furthermore, Redgrave and Reed give exceptionally committed performances, so much so that they risk becoming comical at times. The Devils is what it is, an assault on the senses and a scabrous sort of social commentary. Weirdly, the film was made in such a way as to repulse the very people who might otherwise have engaged most deeply with the subject matter, since it’s hard to imagine the faithful enduring more than a few minutes of The Devils. Even for nonbelievers, the film is as much of an endurance test as it is an artistic expression.

The Devils: FREAKY

The Brood (1979)

          David Cronenberg’s horror movies are filled with indelibly unpleasant images, but it’s hard to top the surreal variation on childbirth that occurs near the climax of The Brood. Without spoiling the sickening spectacle, suffice to say there’s a lot of licking involved. And, as in the best of Cronenberg’s fright flicks, the image is about so much more than simply provoking revulsion and shock—it speaks to deep and disturbing themes that the Canadian provocateur has explored throughout his many bio-horror phantasmagorias. In this special pocket of Cronenberg’s filmography, the only thing worse than the terrors lurking inside our own bodies is the nettlesome human tendency to alter physiology, risks be damned.

          In this case, the individual playing God is one Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), a therapist who has invented a field called “psychoplasmics.” He teaches patients to push negative emotions out through their skin, resulting in lesions and sores. From Hal’s Machiavellian perspective, this is a messy but necessary path to catharsis. Although Hal has a full complement of acolytes at his handsomely appointed institute just outside Toronto, not everyone is a believer. Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) is upset because his estranged wife, Nora (Samantha Eggar), is under a sort of lockdown for intensive therapy, and because Hal has begun working with the Carveths’ young daughter, Candice (Cindy Hinds). Frank employs various means (some legal, some not) in order to reclaim his daughter, somewhat like a concerned relative trying to free a loved one from a cult compound. Complicating matters is a series of gruesome murders committed by childlike mutants. Eventually, Frank helps authorities connect the murders to Hal’s research, though the task of confronting the good doctor—and whatever sort of weird creatures are hidden at his institute—falls to Frank.

         Although The Brood is a slow burn, with long stretches of screen time elapsing in between violent scenes, the combination of Cronenberg’s artistry and the immersive mood generated by his collaborators helps sustain interest. A serious student of metaphysical, psychological, and scientific subjects, Cronenberg puts across science-fiction stories exceptionally well by creating utterly believable environments and terminology, and by building characters who seem like genuine academics. The Hal Raglan character, for instance, is plainly a maniac because of his willingness to endanger the lives of others in the name of research, but Cronenberg ensures that the therapist never seems like a monster. Similarly, the people (and creatures) who do terrible things in The Brood are victims as much as they are victimizers. Cinematographer Mark Irwin’s naturalistic lighting energizes Cronenberg’s meticulously crafted frames, while composer Howard Shore—providing his first-ever movie score—conjures incredible levels of dread. More than anything, The Brood is a testament to Cronenberg’s unique storytelling style, which blends classical structure and methodical pacing with a natural affinity for the macabre and the perverse.

The Brood: GROOVY

The Big Sleep (1978)

          Three years after playing Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Phillip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), which was set in the 1940s, Robert Mitchum reprised the role in this film, which is set in the 1970s. Making the time-shift between movies even more awkward, The Big Sleep writer-director Michael Winner employs hokey devices straight out of Chandler’s Depression-era fiction, such as femme-fatale types and hardboiled interior monologue presented as voiceover. Yet in other respects, The Big Sleep is quite modern, thanks to ample amounts of gore and nudity. Therefore, it’s an old-fashioned movie filled with things that turn off most fans of old-fashioned movies.

          Moreover, Winner risked walking on hallowed cinematic ground with this project, since the first movie version of The Big Sleep—starring Humphrey Bogart and released in 1946—is considered a classic of the original film-noir cycle. Given this tricky context, it almost doesn’t even matter that Winner’s version of The Big Sleep is an adequate little mystery/thriller. In order to satisfy all concerned parties, the movie needed to be superlative, which it is not. Furthermore, Winner inexplicably changed the location from Los Angeles (as in the original Chandler novel) to London, and then populated the cast with a random mixture of Brits and Yanks. Since nothing inherently English happens, the jump across the pond is a head-scratcher from a conceptual standpoint.

          In any event, the convoluted story begins when Marlowe is invited to the home of a rich American, retired General Sternwood (James Stewart). Sternwood hires Marlowe to scare off a would-be blackmailer. Meanwhile, Marlowe receives seductive advances from Sternwood’s adult daughters, the cynical Charlotte (Sarah Miles) and the provocative Camilla (Candy Clark). As per the Chandler story, the seemingly simple job opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, eventually placing Marlowe in the midst of betrayals, double-crosses, and murders.

           Winner hits the sleazy elements of the narrative hard, as in scenes of Camilla posing nude for a pornographer and various incidents of people getting shot through the skull. The material is so grim and the story is so bewildering that The Big Sleep isn’t fun to watch, per se, even though it boasts abundant sex appeal thanks to Clark, Miles, and costars Joan Collins and Diana Quick. Concurrently, the men in the supporting cast provide gradations of menace, with Colin Blakely, Richard Boone, Edward Fox, and Oliver Reed playing villainous types. (Offering glimmers of gallantry are the characters portrayed by Harry Andrews and John Mills.) However, none of the film’s performances or technical contributions is extraordinary, so Mitchum dominates in the absence of anything more interesting. As in Farewell, My Lovely, Mitchum’s seen-it-all demeanor suits the Marlowe character perfectly.

The Big Sleep: FUNKY

Sitting Target (1972)

          Intense, minimalistic, and taut, the UK thriller Sitting Target showcases the singular British actor Oliver Reed at his most primal. Playing a man seething with rage and yet ultimately driven by deeper passions that don’t become evident until the very end of the story, Reed maintains an amazing level of ferocity from the first frame to the last. Make no mistake, Sitting Target is a violent revenge saga filled with chase scenes, explosions, and shootouts. Within those parameters, however, it’s credible and effective. Freddie Jones, Ian McShane, and Edward Woodward deliver excellent supporting performances while director Douglas Hickox and cinematographer Edward Scalfe employ consistently imaginative camera angles and film editor John Glen (a frequent participant in 007 movies) creates expert pacing. Best of all, the film seems quite straightforward until the aforementioned ending, which casts everything that came before in a new light. In sum, Sitting Target is more than just adrenalized escapism.

          Reed stars as Harry, a career criminal serving a long term in jail alongside fellow crook Birdy (McShane). The filmmakers introduce Harry perfectly, showing him performing a brutal exercise regimen in his dark cell—he’s perpetually ready for action. One day, Harry’s wife, Pat (Jill St. John), visits him in jail with terrible news. He’s lost his appeal, meaning he’ll be imprisoned for years. Making matters worse, Pat reveals that she’s leaving Harry for another man, whose baby she now carries. Harry responds by smashing his hand through the glass separating him from Pat and nearly strangling her to death. Determined to exact revenge for her betrayal, Harry arranges to break out of jail with Birdy and wealthy crook MacNeil (Jones). The escape sequence is terrific, generating real danger and tension while illustrating fundamental differences between the escapees. Once news of Harry’s jailbreak spreads, policeman Milton (Woodward) assumes responsibility for Pat’s safety. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, because for Harry, it’s not enough to destroy Pat. He wants her to know what’s coming.

          Sitting Target is far from perfect. A subplot of Birdy and Harry harassing a former colleague for money chews up screen time, and one scene hinges on Harry shooting a target from an enormous distance with a pistol, which seems iffy. That said, the pros outweigh the cons, no pun intended. The action scenes are strong, the overall atmosphere is believably grim, and the sheer level of testosterone surging through the movie’s veins is incredible. St. John is the weak link, giving a decorative performance and rendering a questionable British accent, though she doesn’t diminish the overall impact. FYI, UK actor Frank Finlay shares a few scenes with Reed. Not long afterward, the players joined forces for Richard Lester’s superlative adventure films The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974).

Sitting Target: GROOVY

Take a Girl Like You (1970)

          Former child star Hayley Mills continued her transition to grown-up roles with this tedious but watchable sex comedy from Great Britain, adapted quite loosely from a novel by Kingsley Amis. Mills plays Jenny, a young schoolteacher who moves from a small town to a larger city and fends off the advances of various lascivious men. Infused with lots of swinging-’60s attitudes, the picture explores the difficulties that Jenny faces as a virgin in a sexually permissive milieu. Jenny’s celibacy causes special frustration for Patrick (Oliver Reed), an experienced Casanova who takes Jenny on a few chaste dates and then becomes obsessed with her after she draws the line at groping and kissing. Meanwhile, Jenny has fun becoming part of Patrick’s social circle, because he’s friendly with cosmopolitan folks including Julian (Noel Harrison), a member of the upper class who throws fabulous parties at his estate even though he’s on the verge of losing the place for tax reasons.

          Although Take a Girl Like You fails to generate much in the way of laughter, perhaps because time has coarsened the idea of a rake browbeating a kind young woman into surrendering her chastity, the debate about principles that Jenny and Patrick have at various intervals throughout the film is relatively interesting. Jenny takes the stance that she needn’t explain herself, and that peer pressure isn’t reason enough to defy the tenets of her upbringing. Patrick argues the opposite perspective, saying that Jenny’s mired in outdated mores and that holding out for love and marriage inhibits the natural course of romantic relationships.

          Had Take a Girl Like You been executed with more nuance, and perhaps even cast differently, it could become a worthwhile exploration of gender differences during a time of sweeping social change. Alas, the script is intelligent but repetitive, and the contrast between wholesome Mills and hulking Reed is distracting. She’s so innocent and sweet that she seems like an angel, and he’s so dark and intense that he seems like a predator. Mills tries mightily to come across like a full-grown woman, and nearly succeeds, but Reed’s energy is overwhelmingly dangerous and masculine. The chirpy theme song by the Foundations and the peppy underscore contribute further tonal dissonance, as if the whole thing is a lark—when it fact it plays out more like a serious character study, complete with a bleak and deeply unsatisfying climax.

Take a Girl Like You: FUNKY

Z.P.G. (1972)

          Very much a product of the same anxious zeitgeist that generated Silent Running and Soylent Green (both released in 1972), as well as other cautionary tales with environmental themes, this downbeat and sl0w-moving sci-fi saga concerns a dystopian future in which man has so completely overrun the earth that the planet’s governments establish a 30-year ban on childbirth. Concurrently, pollution has become so horrific that entire cities are shrouded 24/7 with suffocating smog, and it’s become impossible to grow organic materials, so neither animals nor plants exist. The story’s protagonists, Carol McNeil (Geraldine Chaplin) and her husband Russ (Oliver Reed), work in a museum, where they perform re-creations of domestic scenes from the 20th century inside living dioramas. While some couples in this ugly future society have purchased the only legal substitutes for children—lifelike robot babies—the McNeils want more, even though the penalty for childbirth is death. At Carol’s desperate urging, Russ agrees to start a family. Once Carol becomes pregnant, Russ fabricates a marital separation as a cover story before hiding Carol in an underground bunker until she delivers her baby.

          The plot twists that follow, depicting the McNeils’ efforts to hide their secret from curious neighbors and prying government operatives, are fairly clever even though a lot of what happens in Z.P.G. (abbreviated from the government policy of Zero Population Growth) is logically dubious. Made in the UK and written by Frank De Felitta and Max Ehrlich (who also wrote the strange 1974 George C. Scott drama The Savage Is Loose), Z.P.G. features imaginative gadgets (such as the clear masks that citizens must wear while walking around smog-choked streets) and unnerving manifestations of totalitarianism (notably a high-tech torture chamber that feels like a precursor for a similar chamber in the 1976 sci-fi classic Logan’s Run). Unfortunately, neither the dramaturgy nor the performances rise to the level of the concepts. Chaplin’s acting is fidgety but icy, and Reed plays so many of his scenes with a stone face that he barely seems present, much less emotionally involved. Combined with long stretches of repetitive scenes, the inert acting makes the first hour of Z.P.G. very slow going. And while things pick up somewhat in the second half, when characters played by Diane Cliento and Don Gordon emerge as unlikely villains, the movie runs off the rails again during the ludicrous climax.

Z.P.G.: FUNKY

The Sell-Out (1976)

          Offering a textbook definition of how much value familiar genre elements and slick location photography can add to a picture, the international-espionage thriller The Sell-Out is fairly watchable despite indifferent leading performances, sluggish pacing, and a turgid storyline. Whenever the movie seems to be running out of gas, director Peter Collinson (The Italian Job) and his collaborators unleash a chase scene, a shootout, or some other intense event. So, even though The Sell-Out isn’t particularly interesting, the filmmakers do their best to make sure that boredom is held at bay. They don’t always succeed, so most viewers will experience fatigue midway through the picture, but The Sell-Out is, more or less, a respectable enterprise. Oliver Reed, sporting a clumsy accent to play an American, stars as Gabriel Lee, a spy who defected from the U.S. to Russia but has now landed in Israel. After operatives from the CIA and the KGB try to kill Gabriel, alerting him that he’s no longer traveling incognito, Gabriel phones his old CIA mentor, Sam Lucas (Richard Widmark), who has retired from the spy game and now lives in Israel. Convenient! Things get emotionally complicated because Sam’s live-in girlfriend, Deborah (Gayle Hunnicut), used to be with Gabriel, and there’s still a weirdly sadomasochistic spark between Deborah and Gabriel. (This makes Sam understandably insecure, she’s he’s old enough to be Deobrah’s father, while Gabriel is roughly Deborah’s age.)

          The makers of The Sell-Out can’t quite decide whether they’re after a character-driven story in the mode of John Le Carre or a lusty adventure in the style of Ian Fleming, so they toggle back and forth between these extremes. Generally speaking, the cartoonish Fleming-style stuff works better, thanks to extensive use of Israeli locations (including the Wailing Wall) and thanks to a fun supporting performance by Vladek Sheybal as a cold-blooded mercenary nicknamed “The Dutchman.” Whenever the movie shifts into overdrive, with Reed grimacing in between automotive bang-ups and near-miss gunshots, The Sell-Out has a decent pulpy vibe. Furthermore, some of the mano-a-mano scenes between Reed and Widmark are tasty, with Reed overplaying per his norm and Widmark seething in comparative restraint. (Hunnicut does what she can with her poorly written role, since her character occasionally lapses into inexplicable histrionics.) Adding an odd flavor to the picture is the score by Colin Frechter and Mike Green, since they mix jazz-fusion jams with proto-disco grooves. Meanwhile, cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson uses sleek moves and wide-angle lenses to fully exploit the craggy textures of Israel’s cities and countryside—as well as the craggy textures of his weathered leading men.

The Sell-Out: FUNKY

Burnt Offerings (1976)

          Note: When I posted my original review of Burnt Offerings two years ago, a handful of readers complained that I hadn’t given the movie a fair appraisal, so I made a mental note to revisit the film after some time had passed. Now, I’m happy to report that I enjoyed Burnt Offerings a lot more on second viewing—hence the following.

          Despite scoring on the small screen as the creator of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971) and as the director of a number of creepy TV movies, filmmaker Dan Curtis wasn’t able to achieve big-screen success. In fact, he directed only one significant theatrical feature, the haunted-house thriller Burnt Offerings, which is long on atmosphere and short on gore. The movie’s biggest “special effects” are the quietly creepy score by Bud Cobert and the twitchy leading performances by Karen Black and Oliver Reed. One could easily pick apart the logic of the storyline, which Curtis and co-screenwriter William F. Nolan adapted from a novel by Robert Morasco, but horror shares with the comedy genre a simple litmus test—whatever works, works. And since Burt Offerings builds nicely from a disquieting opening sequence to a nasty finale, the movie basically works, in the sense of giving viewers a solid case of the heebie-jeebies.

          When the story begins, psychologically scarred academic Ben Rolf (Oliver Reed) and his kindhearted wife, Marian (Karen Black), move into a California vacation home accompanied by their young son (Lee Montgomery) and their dotty old aunt (Bette Davis). The house’s owners, eccentric siblings Arnold Allardyce (Burgess Meredith) and Roz Allardyce (Eileen Heckart), instruct the Rolfs to deliver meals on a daily basis to the Allardyces’ elderly mother, who lives in an upstairs room but never sets foot anywhere else. Foolishly accepting an offer that’s too good to be true (the rental price of the house is outrageously low), the Rolfs soon get caught in the building’s otherworldly spell. While Marian becomes obsessed with looking after the house and the never-seen Mother Allardyce, Ben starts to experience inexplicable homicidal compulsions, as well as eerie flashbacks to his mother’s funeral.

          Although Curtis and his cohorts eventually provide a tidy explanation for the supernatural nature of the house’s power over its occupants, many aspects of the story are left intentionally mysterious, and that might be the film’s strongest element. For instance, recurring images of an enigmatic chauffeur (Anthony James) linger not only because the cadaverous and perpetually grinning chauffeur is so creepy-looking, but because the chauffeur represents an entire secret realm of unknowable malevolence.
          The biggest challenge when watching Burnt Offerings is accepting how quickly the house gets its hooks into the Rolfs—the usual “why don’t they just leave?” syndrome. (See: The Amityville Horror, etc.) That’s where Curtis’ long record of setting a spooky mood comes into play, because for those willing to join Curtis’ leisurely trek into the shadows, Burnt Offerings has a seductive quality. Black is aptly cast, thanks to the way her close-set eyes make her seem a little bit off right from the beginning, and Reed essays his underwritten role with gravitas and menace. Davis expresses suffering well, and the tag team of Eckhart and Meredith provide a wealth of weirdness in their single scene. Ultimately, Burnt Offerings may be too predictable and slow-moving to qualify as one of the decade’s best fright flicks, but it’s a fun exercise in style—and it comes close to doing for outdoor swimming pools what Jaws did for the Atlantic Ocean.

Burnt Offerings: GROOVY

Tommy (1975)

          Interesting as case study in what happens when two artists from different mediums bring their equally strong visions to bear on the same project, Tommy is eccentric British filmmaker Ken Russell’s visualization of the Who’s famous “rock opera” LP, which is arguably the crowning achievement of Who songwriter Pete Townshend’s career. Townshend’s ambitious musical cycle uses rock songs to tell a complete narrative, and the strain of this massive storytelling effort shows in the record’s inconsistency; for every incisive moment like “The Acid Queen,” sung from the perspective of a drug-peddling prostitute, there are clumsily literal tunes along the lines of the paired set “Go to the Mirror!” and “Smash the Mirror.” It’s commendable that Townshend maintained his aesthetic focus, but not every song is a winner. Furthermore, the narrative is ludicrous: After a young man is rendered blind, deaf, and dumb through melodramatic circumstances, he becomes a pinball champion and then a messiah for young followers who are inspired by his surmounting of physical challenges and his eventual recovery of his senses.
          Predictably, the storyline is even sillier in filmic form, because Russell illustrates many of Townshend’s overwrought images literally—and when Russell takes liberties, he adds childish flourishes like the scene in which Tommy’s mother (Ann-Margaret) gets hosed down with geysers of baked beans while writhing in sexual delight. Plus, the less said about Russell’s infatuation with oversized props and phallic symbols, the better. In fact, Russell’s apparent desire to live up to his reputation for outrageousness is Tommy’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness—adapted by a less whimsical director, Tommy might have become unrelentingly grim, but at the same time, Russell’s excess makes it impossible to take the movie seriously, because it’s all way too camp.

          Still, Russell creates a handful of memorable scenes, and the combination of lively music, offbeat casting, and speedy pacing keeps Tommy moving along. Who singer Roger Daltrey plays Tommy as an adult, relying on commitment and intensity instead of dramatic skill, and the other members of the Who lurk on the movie’s periphery, with the exception of madman drummer Keith Moon, who plays Tommy’s pedophile uncle. Ann-Margret is quite terrible as Tommy’s mother, overacting ridiculously and warbling her songs, though Oliver Reed gives an effectively seedy performance a Tommy’s scumbag stepfather. Jack Nicholson’s brief appearance as a doctor seeking to treat Tommy’s afflictions represents pointless stunt casting, but fellow guest stars Elton John and Tina Turner make important contributions in their supporting roles.

          John, of course, sings Tommy’s most famous song, “Pinball Wizard,” so effectively that John’s cover of the tune became a chart hit; similarly, his onscreen appearance in a cartoonish costume echoes the performer’s over-the-top ’70s stage persona. Turner, despite being photographed grotesquely with fisheye lenses and such, rips the screen apart with her wailing, wild number as the Acid Queen, providing a go-for-broke energy the rest of the movie fails to match.

Tommy: FUNKY

Royal Flash (1975)

          Fresh from his success with the two-part swashbuckling epic The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), mischievous director Richard Lester turned his attention to an original character created by his Musketeers screenwriter, George MacDonald Fraser. An Englishman whose work often combined history and high adventure, Fraser introduced the character of Sir Harry Paget Flashman in his 1969 novel Flashman. The first in a lengthy series of novels about the character, Flashman presented a 19th-century coward who by ironic circumstance stumbles into a reputation as a hero. A self-serving schemer who berates those beneath his station and swindles everyone above him, Flashman is a uniquely British contrivance whose identity is defined by the English class system. Given Lester’s penchant for insouciance, he was perfectly suited to putting the irreverent character onscreen.

          Unfortunately, miscasting proved the movie’s undoing: Lester gambled by hiring Malcolm McDowell, the gifted actor best known for his disturbing turn in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), but McDowell made Flashman’s unbecoming qualities far too believable. As he connives women into his bed, flees danger, tricks others into fighting his battles, and whimpers at the slightest injury, the movie version of Flashman comes across not as a clever survivor but rather as a feckless weasel. Accordingly, it’s difficult to care whether he survives, just like it’s difficult to believe he’ll end up accomplishing anything worthwhile. Had Lester gone whole-hog with the comedic aspects of the picture, casting a funnyman like Peter Sellers, Royal Flash might have worked as a farce, but since the picture includes scenes of genuine danger, the sum effect is middling.

          It doesn’t help that the episodic plot, borrowed from Fraser’s second book in the series, Royal Flash (1970), is a tired riff on Anthony Hope’s classic novel The Prisoner of Zenda. As happens to the hero of Hope’s book, Flashman gets recruited to impersonate an endangered monarch in order to flush out assassins, so Flashman spends half the story trying to slip away from his dangerous assignment, and the other half reluctantly joining rebel forces fighting the people who enlisted Flashman in the first place. It’s all way too familiar, and the complicated story causes Royal Flash to sprawl over 102 minutes that feel like three hours.

          Still, costar Oliver Reed has a blast playing the German aristocrat who makes Flashman’s life hell, while Alan Bates savors a rare lighthearted role as a European who may or may not be Flashman’s ally. The production design is beautiful, with lots of desolate wintry fields and ornate European castles, and Lester stages action with his signature mix of slapstick and swordplay, an inimitable style no one has ever been able to replicate. Plus, in McDowell’s defense, he’s very funny playing a guttersnipe, and it’s not his fault Lester perversely elected to build the movie around a detestable characterization.

Royal Flash: FUNKY

The Hunting Party (1971)

          One of the most vicious movies I’ve ever seen—which is saying a lot, believe me—this grisly British flick opens by introducing Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman), a wealthy rancher who gets off on beating his wife, Melissa (Candice Bergen), during sex. When this charmer and his sleazy buddies take off on a luxurious hunting trip, Melissa wanders over to a small schoolhouse to keep herself occupied. Along comes rough-ridin' outlaw Frank Calder (British madman Oliver Reed) and his gang, who kidnap Melissa and head off toward the frontier. Frank keeps his cronies from raping Melissa because he wants her to teach him to read. Meanwhile, Brandt hears what happened and enlists his hunting buddies to help track down the scoundrels. Thing is, Brandt figures Melissa's been tarnished, so he decides to take her out with one of the fancy rifles he uses to bag prey from a safe distance. As Hackman’s character devolves from meanie to monster, Frank evolves from scummy to sensitive. Sort of. Because, see, he wins Melissa's heart by raping her, which she secretly enjoys because it's the first time she’s ever been with a real man.

          But wait—there’s more! The movie was shot in Spain, which allows the picture to inexplicably shift from palm-tree-dotted plains to high desert, and in true spaghetti-Western style, The Hunting Party features a faux-Morricone score that’s beyond overbearing. During this bizarre picture’s goofiest sequence, Frank taunts a starving Bergen by eating peaches obscenely in front of her, all to the strains of cringe-worthy "comical" music. Plus, as was the cinematic fashion of the time, Brandt turns totally psychotic about halfway through the picture, leading to endless slow-mo bloodbaths. The Hunting Party is unconscionably mean-spirited, but it’s not boring. Quite to the contrary, it’s arresting in a nauseating sort of way, offering prime evidence of Hackman’s disturbing ability to incarnate unstable sons of bitches, and equally telling images of Reed portraying animalistic charisma. So if sadism is your bag, then The Hunting Party is your movie.

The Hunting Party: LAME

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976)

An idiotic farce set in the Old West, this embarrassing misfire stars two of cinema’s great offscreen drunkards, Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed. Yet while Marvin’s role as a frontier schemer is in the vicinity of his Oscar-winning Cat Ballou wheelhouse, Englishman Reed is embarrassingly miscast as an inebriated Indian, mugging his way through a cringe-inducing performance complete with grotesque body makeup. The overstuffed storyline involves con men Sam (Marvin), Joe (Reed), and Billy (Strother Martin) trying to strong-arm money out of their former partner in crime, Jack (Robert Culp), who hid his criminal past to begin a career in politics, but of course Sam, Joe, and Billy are too stupid to properly manipulate their slick confrere. Hardy-har. For no particular reason, Joe kidnaps a bevy of whores from the titular cathouse, including one he names Thursday (Kay Lenz), and for no particular reason, she falls for the decades-older Sam. The lecherous nonsense eventually leads to a protracted chase scene, with the heroes driving a jalopy across the desert while—oh, who cares? This is one of those “madcap” comedies in the vein of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), with incessant slapstick noise thrown at the audience instead of actual jokes; virtually everyone gets punched in the face at least once, even Elizabeth Ashley, who plays Culp’s wife. So rather than being amusing, The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday provides the painful experience of watching actors who deserve better marking time in drivel. One hopes Marvin and Reed at least had fun imbibing their paychecks. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday: LAME

The Three Musketeers (1973) & The Four Musketeers (1974)

          Though previously known for the irreverence of, among other things, the invigorating movies he made with the Beatles, Richard Lester revealed great gifts as a director of adventure films with this epic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ deathless novel The Three Musketeers, which producer Ilya Salkind cleverly divided into two movies (more on that in a moment). Telling the enduring tale of how enthusiastic bumpkin D’Artagnan (Michael York) finds his place amid a group of elite 17th-century swordsmen, then inadvertently helps uncover a conspiracy within the French ruling class, Lester’s sprawling project mixes lowbrow comedy and sophisticated intrigue to great effect.
          The silly stuff includes lots of slapstick and Benny Hill-ish bedroom farce, and the derring-do features everything from preposterous stunts to genuinely frightening swordfights. The tonal variety is unusual, nimbly replicating the breadth of Dumas’ narrative by toggling between the ridiculous and the sublime. Lester’s effervescent approach to film editing—which accentuates his loose, observational shooting style—is as consistently dazzling as the project’s sumptuous production design and costuming. The Musketeers movies are never shy of energy, and the pictures overflow with entertaining performances.
          York is appropriately eager and awkward, while Oliver Reed’s haunted gravitas lends macho meaning to the bond between the trio of older Musketeers whom D’Artagnan joins; few filmmakers captured Reed’s offscreen combination of poetry and savagery better than Lester does here. Raquel Welch gives her best-ever performance in a mostly comic role (her epic cleavage is a character unto itself); Faye Dunaway and Christopher Lee provide elegant villainy; and Charlton Heston’s presence adds to the international flavor of the piece, though his casting as Cardinal Richelieu is laughable. And while some viewers may have justifiable quibbles with Lester’s whiplash tonal shifts, the herky-jerky alternation between campy schtick and intense melodrama keeps things lively.
          Originally shot as one lengthy film, the Musketeers saga was bifurcated by Salkind, much to the chagrin of the actors, who had been paid for just one movie. Legal shenanigans followed, though most audiences were none the wiser when the Lester movies unspooled to general delight. Salkind refined his methodology by shooting 1978’s Superman and 1981’s Superman II simultaneously with director Richard Donner, this time revealing to everyone beforehand that two movies were being made, but that didn’t work out perfectly, either; production of the second picture was halted partway through and then restarted, at a later date, with a replacement helmer—none other than Musketeers survivor Richard Lester.
          FYI, although the 1977 flop The 5th Musketeer is completely unrelated to the Salkind/Lester pictures, much of the original Salkind/Lester cast regrouped for 1989’s misbegotten official sequel Return of the Musketeers. The death during production of series comic foil Roy Kinnear cast a pall over the piece, and, sadly, helped expedite the conclusion of Lester’s illustrious career.

The Three Musketeers: GROOVY

The Four Musketeers: GROOVY