1980 Week: The Man With Bogart’s Face

          Nostalgia for the golden era of film noir infused a number of movies in the ’70s and ’80s, from Roman Polanski’s provocative Chinatown (1974) to Carl Reiner’s silly Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) and beyond. Yet perhaps the strangest tip of the cinematic fedora was The Man With Bogart’s Face, a lighthearted mystery flick starring Humphrey Bogart lookalike Robert Saachi. Ostensibly a comedy, the picture has an innately surreal quality not only because of Saachi’s eerie resemblance but also because of the bizarre way that writer/producer Andrew J. Fenaday addresses the resemblance within the storyline. The flick begins with Sam Marlowe (Saachi) in a doctor’s office, having bandages removed from his head. The idea is that Sam, or whatever his real name might be, is so nuts for Bogie that he had his features surgically altered. Sam also starts a private-eye business, drives around in a car from the 1940s, and wears a trenchcoat reminiscent of Bogart’s costume from the final scene of Casablanca (1942). People often ask what’s wrong with his face whenever Sam mimics Bogart’s signature tic of flexing his lips. And so on. But because Fenaday never provides any backstory for the leading character, The Man With Bogart’s Face dodges the big question of whether the title character is a raving lunatic.

          Vexing mysteries about the leading character aren’t the only issues plaguing this film, which is overlong but otherwise pleasant to watch thanks to an eventful storyline and the presence of familiar supporting actors. The biggest problem is the limp nature of the picture’s comedy. Sight gags and verbal jokes fall flat on a regular basis. That said, it’s possible to consume The Man With Bogart’s Face as a goofy mystery and overlook the weak attempts at hilarity. As one might expect from a genre homage, the plot is formulaic—several clients hire Sam for cases that turn out to be interconnected, and everyone’s after a priceless treasure. Sam’s pithy voiceover connects scenes of betrayal, seduction, suspense, and violence, all of which are played for lukewarm laughs. Providing the movie’s eye-candy quotient are Sybil Danning, Olivia Hussey, Michelle Phillips, and Misty Rowe. Lending various shades of villainy are Victor Buono, Herbert Lom, Franco Nero, George Raft, and Jay Robinson. As for Saachi, his mimicry is smooth enough to complete the weird illusion created by his dopplegänger appearance.

The Man With Bogart’s Face: FUNKY

Lost Horizon (1973)

          Despite the commercial failure of its 1937 adaptation, which was directed by Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures took another shot at bringing James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon to the screen. The bloated 1973 version, featuring twee songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, fared just as poorly at the box office as its predecessor. Key among the 1973 movie’s problems is the way the songs clash with everything else onscreen. For instance, the first properly sung-through number doesn’t appear until nearly an hour has elapsed, which has the effect of suddenly changing the picture from a straightforward drama to a ridiculous musical spectacle. The remaining 90 minutes of Lost Horizon boast such attributes as an inherently compelling storyline and some vivid performances, but it’s impossible to take the movie seriously.

          Lost Horizon begins with diplomat Richard Conway (Peter Finch) fleeing a war-torn country in the Far East, accompanied by several other refugees. The group’s getaway plane is hijacked by a mysterious stranger, who crashes the vessel in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Soon afterward, Richard’s party is rescued by the enigmatic Chang (John Gielgud), and then escorted to the glorious realm of Shangri-La. Despite its storm-tossed surroundings, Shangri-La is a tropical utopia where people live in seemingly perfect harmony. Friction divides Richard’s party. Some, including Richard’s swaggering brother, George (Michael York), want to leave Shangri-La in order to resume their old lives. Others, including troubled reporter Sally (Sally Kellerman), embrace the chance to start anew. Meanwhile, Richard is introduced to Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, The High Lama (Charles Boyer), who explains that Richard has the opportunity to fulfill a special role in Shangri-La.

          Narratively and thematically, this is fascinating stuff, even though pundits have spent years parsing political (and even racist) messages from the source material. Ironically, the strength of the storyline is what makes the intrusion of songs so absurd. Had the songs added anything, the result would have been different. Alas, the tunes merely express infantile notions, as when Kellerman and costar Olivia Hussey warble the line “different people look at things from different points of view” during the spirited duet “The Things I Will Not Miss.” As for the movie’s performances, they’re all over the place, an issue compounded by the use of professional singers to lip-sync vocals for many of the actors. Finch is expressive and regal; leading lady Liv Ullmann is luminous, within the constraints of an underwritten role; York is impassioned; and dignified costar James Shigeta is as welcome a presence as ever. Boyer and Gielgud acquit themselves well despite outrageous miscasting. Hussey, Kellerman, and costar George Kennedy, however, play their roles so melodramatically that the actors come across as cartoonish.

          On a technical level, director Charles Jarriot and cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot the movie quite well, providing scope and splendor even if their presentation of singing-and-dancing nonsense feels indifferent. In the end, Lost Horizon is a bizarre mess, though patient viewers can conceivably power through the musical sequences and latch onto the dramatic scenes, which are vastly superior. FYI, the screenplay for Los Horizon is a minor credit for the important writer Larry Kramer, whose activism and creativity coalesced in his iconic play The Normal Heart (1985), which was endured through celebrated revivals and an Emmy-winning 2014 television adaptation.

Lost Horizon: FUNKY

The Cat and the Canary (1978)

          John Willard’s 1922 play The Cat and the Canary, which blends comedic and horrific elements while telling the story of would-be heirs trying to survive an evening in a spooky house, has enjoyed a long cinematic afterlife. The first screen adaptation was a 1929 silent picture, and two additional versions were filmed in between the silent movie and a successful 1939 remake starring Bob Hope. (The 1939 movie did so well that costars Hope and Paulette Godard reteamed for another funny/scary romp, 1940’s The Ghost Breakers, which, incidentally, was among the inspirations for the 1984 blockbuster Ghostbusters.) By the time this 1978 version of the story was produced, social mores had changed considerably. As helmed by Radley Metzger—who spent most of the ’70s directing hardcore porn flicks—the 1978 Cat and the Canary is rougher than its predecessors, and, not coincidentally, a lot less charming.

          Whereas the Hope Cat and the Canary blends gentle suspense with lighthearted laughs, the 1978 Cat and the Canary tries to spruce up old material by adding gore, sex, and torture. Yet the underlying material is so fundamentally old-fashioned that it doesn’t gel with Hammer Films-style extremes. Instead of seeming bold and shocking, the 1978 Cat and the Canary comes across as desperate, disjointed, and even a bit vulgar. The movie is watchable, thanks to the fun storyline and a parade of familiar actors, but it does not improve upon its predecessors.

          Set in a grand English mansion, the story concerns a group of relatives who gather for the reading of a will. The deceased party is a rich eccentric named Cyrus West (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who attaches weird conditions to his bequests. After naming a sole beneficiary, the will states that if the beneficiary is ruled insane within 30 days, the fortune will pass to a successor. These conditions, naturally, prompt everyone but the initial beneficiary to attempt mischief. Adding to the macabre mix is a visit from a psychiatrist who says that a maniac recently escaped from a nearby mental hospital.

          When this storyline works, as in the Hope classic, the narrative is a ghoulish lark. In the hands of Metzger and his collaborators, the narrative is artificial and stilted. Worse, nearly all the humor is drained from the material by flat performances; only Hyde-White and pithy costar Wendy Hiller lock into the right jovial groove. Leading lady Carol Lynley is amateurish, leading man Michael Callan is forgettable, and costars Honor Blackman and Olivia Hussey are merely ornamental. The X factor is Edward Fox, who camps it up after a plot twist reveals a new side of his character. Speaking of camp, this version of The Cat and the Canary has overt gay content (including a pair of lesbian characters), which adds a certain novelty.

The Cat and the Canary: FUNKY

Black Christmas (1974)

          Somewhat interesting as a footnote in the history of horror films because it bridges the suspenseful storytelling of Hitchcock thrillers and the gruesome excesses of slasher flicks, Black Christmas is a low-budget Canadian flick about a psychopath stalking the residents of a sorority house. Oddly, however, the film isn’t as lurid as the premise might suggest, because there’s very little gore and almost zero sexual content; instead, director Bob Clark focuses on colorful character details. Clark, whose strange career included everything from the juvenile T&A of Porky’s (1982) to the nostalgic sweetness of A Christmas Story (1983), demonstrates his ability to let actors form distinctive characters, but also displays his inability to maintain consistent tone. The movie begins with a POV shot of a heavy-breathing nutjob slipping into the attic of the sorority house, then trudges through lengthy soap-opera scenes involving the residents, interspersed with gruesome murder vignettes in which the killer exits the attic to kill the girls one at a time. The killer also places obscene phone calls to the house, most of which are answered by supposedly sophisticated coed Jess (Olivia Hussey).
          The story is predicated on everyone overlooking the obvious, so while the idea of a killer hiding several floors above his victims is creepy, the conceit strains credibility to a ridiculous degree. Furthermore, the premise strangles suspense: Since the “big secret” is revealed in the first scene, all viewers can do is wait for characters to stop being stupid, which they never do. Still, interesting things happen along the way. Hussey, the classically pretty female lead of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), is stiff and unconvincing, so Margot Kidder steals the show as a drunk, foul-mouthed coed named Barb, displaying the sexy vivacity that later won her the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978). B-movie stalwart John Saxon lends solid comic and dramatic support as a cop investigating the strange goings-on at the sorority house, and Marian Waldman scores cheap laughs with a Shelley Winters-type performance as the sorority’s lush housemother.
          Black Christmas isn’t scary, but it goes to unexpected places and it conjures genuine menace whenever Clark employs long traveling shots exploring spaces where horrible things are about to happen. As for the Christmas angle, that’s a minor element of the story hyped for marketing purposes; other than carolers, decorations, and snow, the holiday setting doesn’t have any significance.

Black Christmas: FUNKY