1980 Week: In God We Tru$t

          Improving somewhat over his weak directorial debut, The Last Remake of Beau Gueste (1977), actor Marty Feldman does an okay job as a storyteller with this satire of for-profit religion, which he cowrote with Chris Allen. Naturally, Feldman also plays the leading role, employing the same comic dexterity that made him a star in his native England before American audiences embraced his performance as Igor in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974). Featuring supporting turns by Peter Boyle, Andy Kaufman, and Louise Lasser—plus an extended cameo by Richard Pryor—In God We Tru$t never wants for skillful comedians. It also presents appealing themes of piety over profit and intimacy over repression. But In God We Tru$t disappoints more often than it connects. The characterizations are contrived, the satire is shallow, and most of the jokes misfire, especially the borderline distasteful sex gags. Slick work by the aforementioned big names compensates mightily, as do polished production values, so In God We Tru$t is basically watchable. Yet that’s about as far as one can go in terms of praise.

        The picture starts at a financially troubled monastery, where Brother Ambrose (Feldman) gets assigned to raise money. He sets his sights on televangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Kaufman), but the super-wealthy preacher refuses to see the penniless monk. Ambrose then meets a prostitute named Mary (wink-wink) and an insane con-man preacher named Dr. Sebastian Melmoth, who drives a school bus converted into a traveling church, complete with a shingled roof and a steeple. Those roles are played by Lasser and Feldman’s Young Frankenstein costar Boyle, respectively. Most of this movie’s screen time gets chewed up by scenes of Mary giving Ambrose a sexual education and by scenes of Thunderbird, who sports an absurdly gigantic pompadour, fleecing his flock whenever he’s not consulting with a computer program called G.O.D. (voiced and eventually played onscreen by Pryor).

          Typical jokes include a punny monastery sign (“Keep Thy Trappist Shut”) and the bluntly satirical name of a house of worship (“The Worldwide Church of Psychic Self-Humiliation”). Sex gags feature Feldman taking cold showers until Mary sleeps with him, at which point the “Hallelujah” chorus fills the soundtrack. The picture also has slapstick chase scenes and a vignette of Feldman screaming a lustful confession to a deaf priest while the whole congregation listens intently. Alas, no matter how sincerely Feldman wanted to skewer Christians foibles, Monty Python’s outrageous Life of Brian (1979) was a hard act to follow. That said, it’s a shame this mediocre effort was Feldman’s final major project. He died in 1982, leaving behind only supporting roles in the ghastly Jerry Lewis flop Slapstick of Another Kind (1982) and the mediocre UK comedy Yellowbeard (1983).

In God We Tru$t: FUNKY

Tail Gunner Joe (1977)

          While not an outstanding biopic, the made-for-TV Joseph McCarthy saga Tail Gunner Joe has many virtues, not least of which is a fundamental lesson the American people still haven’t learned. After all, McCarthy was a blustery fearmonger who destroyed people’s lives based on nothing but hearsay and innuendo—if not outright falsehoods—and he built his political career not on his own ideals and accomplishments, but by promising to rid America of enemies that, conveniently, only he had the power to identify. Sound familiar? Trade Congressional hearings for televised campaign rallies and Twitter rants, and the parallels between McCarthy and Donald Trump become apparent. They’re very different men following very different trajectories, but they align in the areas of hubris, recklessness, and strategy. Moreover, both McCarthy and Trump fall well below the average in terms of conscience and shame. As McCarthy did, Trump succeeds by aggrandizing himself and victimizing those with less power. All of which is a way of saying that even though Tail Gunner Joe is completely respectable in every important regard, from acting to scripting to technical execution, it’s ordinary except as a cautionary tale with echoes that continue to resound well into the 21st century.

          The movie opens with the Army-McCarthy Hearings of the mid-1950s, which culminated in lawyer Joseph Nye Welch’s famous condemnation, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Between the introduction of the hearings and the delivery of that condemnation, the movie uses the contemporary framing device of a reporter investigating the McCarthy era, thereby connecting flashbacks tracking McCarthy’s rise and fall. The reporter is Logan (Heather Menzies), assigned to the story by an unnamed veteran editor (Charles Cioffi) who covered McCarthy back in the day. Her angle is determining how and why McCarthy aggregated so much power with a witch hunt ostensibly designed to discover communists hiding in American government and private-industry jobs. Peter Boyle plays McCarthy in the flashbacks, which comprise most of the picture’s running time. The portrayal is all bluster and smoke, conveying the idea that McCarthy struck his early supporters as a charming scamp, only to lose favor as he devolved into a hate-spewing demagogue. The implication is that McCarthy got lost in his own rhetoric, gravitating toward his witch hunt because it was the platform that got him the most attention, then dooming himself to political oblivion by pressing the issue past the point of reason. The filmmakers also stress that, like Richard Nixon, McCarthy had a long history of smearing political opponents with bogus accusations.

          The title stems from a colorful sequence depicting McCarthy’s WWII service in the Pacific theater. Frustrated at being grounded, “Tail Gunner Joe” climbed into a plane on the tarmac and wasted nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition blasting coconut trees. His antics won him widespread news coverage, so McCarthy began his first Senate campaign while still in uniform—even though it was illegal to do so.

          Writer Lane Slate and director Jud Taylor do a workmanlike job of presenting their interpretation of McCarthy’s psychological makeup, though the film almost inevitably slips into mechanical rhythms once the endless cycle of scenes depicting legal proceedings begins. Not helping matters is a cast largely comprising B-list actors—Andrew Duggan, John Forsythe, Henry Jones—because the film sparks whenever someone powerful appears, such as Ned Beatty or Burgess Meredith, then lags when they disappear. Boyle’s deliberately repellant performance needs more counterpoint than it gets until the climax, when Meredith, portraying Welch, beautifully delivers the “decency” monologue. In a clumsier moment of speechifying, Logan—the reporter—laments that her peers in the Fourth Estate gave McCarthy his agency by providing free press every time he said something outrageous. “McCarthy calls Truman a traitor,” she says. “That's not news, that’s madness.” Again, in the era of Donald Trump launching one baseless accusation after another at Barack Obama and countless other targets of his unhinged invective, all of this sounds depressingly familiar.

Tail Gunner Joe: GROOVY

T.R. Baskin (1971)

          Moderately insightful and sensitive but plagued by a tendency toward superficiality, T.R. Baskin is an intimate character study that puts a fresh spin on the old story of a young person experiencing culture shock by moving from a small town to a big city. Rather than portraying its protagonist as a naif overwhelmed by sophisticates, T.R. Baskin presents a preternaturally wise individual disappointed to learn that sharing her life with metropolitan folks isn’t the revelation she expected. Candice Bergen, delivering one of her best early performances, is almost too well cast in the leading role, since she’s so beautiful and worldly that it’s hard to believe she doesn’t thrive among the cosmopolitan set.

          Written and produced by Peter Hyams, who later enjoyed a long career as a genre-cinema auteur, and directed with characteristic grace by Herbert Ross, the movie begins with traveling salesman Jack (Peter Boyle) arriving in Chicago and running into a college acquaintance, Larry (James Caan). Jack asks if his pal knows any ladies who might keep him company, so Larry suggests T.R. Baskin (Bergen). A phone call later, she shows up at Jack’s hotel-room door. Jack believes he’s hit the jackpot until T.R. challenges him verbally, revealing she’s his intellectual superior by a mile. Performance anxiety ensues, so they talk instead of trysting, and their conversation triggers flashbacks detailing T.R.’s early experiences in Chicago. After leaving home for a new life, T.R. took a mindless data-entry job and tried double-dating with a co-worker who was obsessed with landing a wealthy husband. That got boring fast. Eventually, T.R. met Larry, who seemed intellectual and tender at first blush. How their relationship unfolded, and how that course of events led her to Jack’s hotel room, is the heart of the picture and a small statement about the casual cruelty of modern life.

          T.R. Baskin unfurls like an observational novella, with copious dialogue revealing characters’ personalities as a larger sketch of city life emerges through the accumulation of detail. Easily the most interesting aspect of the storytelling is the quippy dialogue that Hyams provides for the title character. “I want to die young and neat,” she says. “I don’t want to die old and sloppy.” Or, more tellingly, “I just wish everybody else didn’t look like they know exactly what they’re doing.” T.R. Baskin is frustrating because Hyams and Ross ignore so many obvious opportunities to dig deeper, but excellent acting fills in some of the blanks. Boyle infuses his role with surprising warmth, and Caan conveys important nuances that can’t be discussed without spoiling the story. Bergen, of course, carries much of the picture on her shoulders, and she’s terrific, complementing her innate comic timing with the soulfulness that precious few of her early roles allowed her to display.

T.R. Baskin: GROOVY

Crazy Joe (1974)

          Highly watchable but also underdeveloped and unoriginal, Crazy Joe is one of myriad ultraviolent gangster films released in the wake of The Godfather (1971). Starring the powerful actor Peter Boyle as real-life New York City mobster Joey Gallo, the picture was produced by trash titan Dino De Laurentiis, and it boasts not only an eclectic cast of familiar ’70s faces but also a fast-moving storyline filled with betrayals, murders, robbery, and even a spectacular suicide. Furthermore, thanks to the lively script by Lewis John Carlino, the picture has flashes of intellectualism and style. The picture doesn’t go anywhere surprising, but there’s some vivid scenery along the way.

          Viewers first meet Joe (Boyle) leading his gang of thugs through an afternoon of hanging out and an evening of committing a brazen hit in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Together, these two sequences effectively situate Joe as a character for whom death is as normal as grabbing a quick bite. Upon reporting the hit to his boss, Falco (Luther Adler), Joe is incensed to discover he won’t earn a bonus. Joe’s older brother, Richie (Rip Torn), intervenes before the argument escalates, but the seeds of a war have been planted. Thus, over the course of many years, Joe splits from Falco and later has an even bloodier battle with Falco’s successor, Vittorio (Eli Wallach). Joe’s ambition, as well as his appetite for danger, cause friction with Richie and with Joe’s wife, Anne (Paula Prentiss), even as Joe expands his operation by hiring African-American thugs controlled by Willy (Fred Williamson), whom Joe meets during a prison stint.

          Excepting the material with Prentiss’ character, which is so anemic that it should have been jettisoned entirely, most of what happens in Crazy Joe is entertaining and lurid. Joe grandstands in front of powerful men. Joe leads his crew on daring criminal adventures. Joe studies philosophy in prison, thereby arriving at high-minded justifications (“The criminal is really just another existentialist expression”). Joe reveals hidden layers of civic-mindedness and decency by saving kids from a burning building. Boyle sinks his teeth into all of this material, portraying Joe as a being of pure id, relying on bravery and instinct even though restraint and strategy would ensure a longer life.

          Yet Boyle’s performance is strangely one-dimensional, as if he can’t figure out how to decelerate for intimate scenes, and that gives the picture a certain degree of monotony. That’s why it helps to have such capable actors as Torn, Wallach, and Williamson bolstering the storytelling. Additionally, it’s fun to spot players including Charles Cioffi, Michael V. Gazzo, Hervé Villechaize, and Henry Winkler in secondary roles. As for the technical execution of the piece, which was handled by an international crew under the helm of director Carlo Lizzani, Crazy Joe is competently shot and effectively paced, allowing the focus to remain on the lively acting and the turbulent storyline.

Crazy Joe: FUNKY

1980 Week: Where the Buffalo Roam

          Even at the very beginning of his film career, Bill Murray made it clear he intended to be more than just a funnyman. After essentially transposing his wiseass Saturday Night Live persona into the lowbrow Canadian comedy Meatballs (1979), Murray gave himself a proper acting challenge in his next picture, Where the Buffalo Roam, a pseudo-biopic about notorious Rolling Stone political correspondent Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. By all accounts, Murray nailed his characterization, and even the hard-to-please Thomas was enamored of Murray’s performance. Unfortunately, the movie that producer-director Art Linson built around his leading actor is a mess. The first clue, of course, is that Murray gets second billing after Peter Boyle, because Where the Buffalo Roam is about the relationship between Thompson and wild-man attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, whom the film fictionalizes as a character named Carl Lazlo (played by Boyle). While Boyle was a veteran film actor with a small measure of box-office power, Lazlo is subordinate in terms of narrative importance and screen time to Thompson.
          However, this is the least of the movie’s problems.

          Loosely adapting two Thompson articles, screenwriter John Kaye presents a jumbled story about Thompson trying to write a memorial article about Lazlo, who has disappeared in South America and is presumed dead. This occasions flashbacks to the duo’s peculiar experiences over the years. Thompson first meets Lazlo while the lawyer defends a bunch of counterculture kids facing drug charges, and later, Lazlo involves Thompson in a mad scheme to arm and finance South American rebels. Meanwhile, Thompson has unrelated escapades, including a bacchanalian hospital stay, a rambunctious college-lecture tour, and a scandalous tenure riding in the press plane accompanying a Nixon-like presidential candidate. Clearly, Kaye and Linson hoped to cram in every exciting story they’d ever heard about Thompson—a maniac known for his abuse of controlled substances and for his fearless challenges to those in power. Yet in trying to frame the movie around the episodic Lazlo/Thompson relationship, Linson dissipated any hope of narrative cohesion. Where the Buffalo Roam is a collection of sketches, and very few of them are actually funny.

          It’s hard to fault Murray, who commits wholeheartedly to his performance. He’s exactly as dangerous, indulgent, marble-mouthed, and reckless as Thompson was reputed to be in real life. Yet Murray’s performance is almost more dramatic in nature than comedic, partly because Thompson was self-destructive, and partly because Thompson was an unapologetic asshole. There’s a fine line between Murray’s default characterization—the smart aleck who winks at little tin gods—and Thompson’s scorched-earth approach to life. Additionally, Boyle isn’t funny at all as Lazlo, who comes across like a raving maniac instead of a visionary. Some moments in Where the Buffalo Roam work, particularly Thompson’s rabble-rousing lecture before an enthusiastic college crowd, but the overall “story” is shapeless and weird and unsatisfying.

Where the Buffalo Roam: FUNKY

Kid Blue (1973)

          Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, adventurous filmmakers stretched the boundaries of the Western genre in previously unimaginable ways, often using stories set in the American frontier as allegories for contemporary themes. Yet while such provocateurs as Peckinpah and Penn mixed irreverence with ultraviolence, some filmmakers dabbling in the postmodern-Western arena opted for a gentler approach. For example, consider Kid Blue, a ingratiating comedy of sorts starring Dennis Hopper. The picture was written by Bud Shrake and directed by TV veteran James Frawley, who capitalized on his experience with such lighthearted series as The Monkees to earn gigs directing a handful of ’70s diversions, including the silly The Big Bus (1976) and sublime The Muppet Movie (1979). Translation: Don’t dig too deep into Kid Blue for auteurist statement, because Frawley mostly just plays traffic cop for the peculiarity permeating the story.

          Hopper plays Bickford, a second-rate outlaw-turned-drifter who wanders into the small town of Dime Box, looking to quit the criminal life for something more predictable. Alas, Bickford quickly gets on the wrong side of Sheriff “Mean John” Simpson (Ben Johnson)—who, in Bickford’s defense, probably doesn’t have a good side—which means that living righteously turns out to be as much of a hassle as criminality. Still, Bickford finds solace in the friendship of a sensitive factory worker, Reese (Oates), who evinces qualities that suggest a closeted homosexual. (Oates plays the put-upon textures of this character beautifully.) Bickford’s life is further complicated by trouble with women, because Reese’s wife, Molly (Lee Purcell), is a hot-to-trot spitfire who wants more than Reese is able to give, and Bickford’s old girlfriend eventually shows up, as well. Meanwhile, Bickford befriends an eccentric by the name of Preacher Bob (Boyle), who lives on the outskirts of town while he constructs a flying machine that he hopes will take him up in the air and away from the provincial rhythms of Dime Box.

          The filmmakers play heavily into Hopper’s offscreen persona, portraying Bickford as a hippie unfairly constrained by the Establishment’s rules; in one key moment, Bickford undoes his ponytail and shakes out his long tresses like a Woodstock Nation resident letting his freak flag fly after a long shift at a 9-to-5 gig. And if the superimposition of ’70s ideas and themes onto the Western milieu is a bit forced, that’s a small price to pay for the enjoyably strange textures of Kid Blue. Dime Box is unlike the towns in most Westerns, because it’s filled with believably individualistic people—who, with the obvious exception of Preacher John, are defined more by their troubled inner lives than by their peculiar outer behavior. Dime Box has more than its share of shortcomings, including a slow pace, a deficit of big laughs, and an unmemorable ending. Furthermore, Hopper’s performance can be grating at times, so the actor fails to generate much audience empathy despite his character’s sad-sack plight. Nonetheless, while it’s unfolding, Kid Blue takes viewers to novel places, and it does so with charm and compassion.

Kid Blue: GROOVY

Hardcore (1979)

          There are some deeply flawed movies whose intentions I admire so much that I view the pictures more favorably than I probably should. Paul Schrader’s sophomore directorial effort, Hardcore, is one such film. A tough exploration of horrific subject matter that Schrader approaches with intellectual rigor and moral complexity, Hardcore is frequently sublime. However, Schrader writes himself into several corners, and the second half of the picture meanders on the way toward an unsatisfying final scene. Yet even in its murkiest stretches, the film has instants of tremendous power—so, for instance, the finale is disturbing and exciting until the movie falls apart its final frames. Plus, the overall story is enough to turn even the strongest stomach. After his teenaged daughter disappears from a church trip to California, a Midwestern father hires a private detective, who discovers the young woman has become an actress in grimy underground porno films; once the detective’s efforts flounder, the father goes undercover in the porno world, posing as a producer, in order to find someone who knows his daughter’s whereabouts.

          Schrader pulled many elements of the story from his own life, making the picture feel deeply personal. Like Schrader, the family at the center of the movie is from the Calvinist community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a milieu defined by hard work, stringent religious practice, and the repression of primal urges. Schrader’s protagonist, Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott), runs a successful manufacturing business, so he has the resources to mount an intensive search. Jake is presented as a walking embodiment of rectitude, his properness manifesting in everything from crisp diction to natty clothing. The contrast between Jake and scumbag PI Andy Mast (Peter Boyle) is bracing, but that’s only the start of Jake’s trip down the rabbit hole. Eventually, this devout man finds himself wearing gold chains, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a wig while “auditioning” male porn actors who insist on showing him their equipment.

          The most impressive aspect of Hardcore is Schrader’s depiction of Jake’s skin-trade education; in the course of learning what he needs to pursue his investigation, Jake encounters every ugly thing about humanity from which his religion previously shielded him. Thanks to Scott’s precisely modulated performance, it’s sickening to watch this virtuous man slip into a quagmire of exploitation. Considerably less effective is the relationship Schrader creates between Jake and Niki (Season Hubley), a prostitute who serves as his guide through the porn world. The pointed exchanges these characters have about relative morality slow the movie down—even though, on a thematic level, these scenes represent the core of Schrader’s narrative. Working with cinematographer Michael Chapman, a master at creating eerily atmospheric lighting, and composer Jack Nitzsche, whose powerful score features everything from the ethereal sound of the saw to the thumping grooves of seedy funk, Schrader creates vivid worlds with every frame of Hardcore. Even at this early stage of his directorial career, one could see the tendency of the director to reach beyond his grasp, but it’s hard to criticize an artist for aspiring to greatness.

Hardcore: GROOVY

Joe (1970)

          Capturing the anger and confusion of a historical moment when the “generation gap” was at its widest—the dawn of the 1970s—Joe is an unquestionably powerful film. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good film. The narrative is awkward and contrived, the title character doesn’t make his entrance until the 27-minute mark, and the infamous ending is predicated on a silly plot twist. So to characterize Joe as an incendiary statement would be to overreach considerably. Nonetheless, there are good reasons why the picture enjoyed substantial box-office success during its original release, and why it has retained some degree of notoriety since then. Written by Norman Wexler, Joe is about a middle-aged New York ad executive named Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick), who has become estranged from his twentysomething daughter, Melissa (played by Susan Sarandon in her debut film appearance).

          Living with a drug dealer in a grimy Greenwich Village flat, Melissa is a counterculture idealist who’s gotten dragged into her boyfriend’s dangerous world. When Melissa ends up hospitalized after an overdose, Bill tracks down and kills the boyfriend. Rattled after the crime, Bill stumbles into a dive bar where Joe Curran (Peter Boyle) is giving a drunken monologue blaming all of society’s problems on hippies and minorities (“Forty-two percent of all liberals are queer, that’s a fact!”). In one of the film’s least believable moments, Bill confesses his crime to Joe. Thus begins an unlikely odyssey during which Joe leverages the dirt he’s got on his new “friend” to force his way into Bill’s rarified world. Later, when Melissa flees from the hospital, Bill and Joe search for her in the drug underworld, a quest that culminates in an orgy where compliant hippie chicks service Bill and Joe while the ladies’ longhair boyfriends steal personal items from the “straights.” Revenge follows, as does tragic irony.

          As directed by the capable John G. Avildsen, who found tremendous success a few years later with Rocky (1976), Joe is probably a better-made film than the sketchy storyline deserves. The acting is uniformly good, with Boyle the obvious standout as a lout given license by circumstance to manifest his latent psychosis, and Avildsen does a fine job of defining spaces, from the crisp perfection of Bill’s Central Park apartment to the dirty chaos of hippie flophouses. But the story simply doesn’t work as anything except cheap provocation. It’s never totally clear what Joe wants from Bill, or why Bill tolerates Joe’s threatening proximity, and the idea that these two men eventually form true friendship stretches credibility to the breaking point. Worse, the Melissa character exists merely as a set-up for the ending, which doesn’t resonate anywhere near as strongly as the filmmakers presumably hoped it might have.

Joe: FUNKY

The Candidate (1972)

          “Our lives are more and more determined by forces that overwhelm the individual,” remarks Senatorial candidate Bill McKay (Robert Redford) at one point in The Candidate. The same can be said of McKay’s life, because over the course of this remarkable movie, the idealistic young activist gets swallowed by the machine that sells politicians to the American public. And keep in mind this sobering film was made two decades before the emergence of the Internet as a key factor in campaigns, so the realities to which it speaks have only become more troubling in the ensuing years. The wild part, of course, is that The Candidate isn’t a pure drama—it’s got a strong thread of comedy, because the filmmakers zeroed in on the absurdity of modern American politics. This is mainstream cinema of the highest order, blending lively entertainment and important themes into a unique viewing experience.

          The Candidate was written by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign and, incidentally, the author of the book and screenplay for the eccentric 1971 drama Drive, He Said. Larner netted a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The Candidate—although, inexplicably, he’s never written another movie—and his work meshes beautifully with that of his two plugged-in collaborators, director Michael Ritchie and star Robert Redford. Together, the team present the fictional McKay as a keeper of the Kennedy flame, an unapologetic liberal concerned with the troubles of minorities and the underclass. He’s blessed and cursed with unique political gifts, not only because he’s articulate and handsome but also because he’s the son of a legendary Senator, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas).

          When the story begins, Bill is happily involved with community activism and legal aid for the poor. He’s approached by ambitious campaign manger Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), who envisions Bill as an ideal opponent for slick Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). Naïvely (or cunningly) accepting Marvin’s line that a Senatorial campaign can be used to air Bill’s favorite issues, Bill agrees to run, although he’s told there’s little chance of actually winning. Then, as the campaign gains momentum, Bill’s idealism suffers the death of a thousand cuts when he makes compromises and softens his rhetoric into noncommittal generalities. The magnificent tension of the story arises from the question of whether Bill genuinely regrets the changes he’s making. As he succumbs to power and temptation, does Bill retain his inherent goodness, or does he willingly accede to “forces that overwhelm the individual”?

          Director Ritchie, who previously collaborated with Redford on Downhill Racer (1969), delivers some of his career-best work here, orchestrating complex scenes that simultaneously explore multiple dynamics, and his use of montage to simulate the excitement and pageantry of political events is impressive. The filmmakers also benefit from outstanding performances across the board. Yet it’s the subtlety of The Candidate that impresses the most, from the way Larner’s script evokes the fraught relationships between Bill and the people in his life to the way Redford communicates tiny nuances as they pass through his character’s mind.

          The Candidate runs a bit long at 110 minutes, and the picture could have benefited from a few more jokes to arrive at a more consistent tone. The movie is also, to be frank, a bit on the clinical side. However, these quibbles are insignificant in the face of how many things this truly great movie gets right. The Candidate is without question among the handful of truly essential films ever made about American politics, and it’s a career milestone for everyone involved.

The Candidate: RIGHT ON

Steelyard Blues (1973)

Although it enjoys a certain cult-favorite notoriety because of its irreverent characterizations and storyline, Steelyard Blues is a counterculture-era relic that has not aged well. The film’s main characters are ostensibly freethinking rebels who want to throw off the yokes of Establishment society. In theory, these people are admirable—but in practice, they’re lawbreakers who create destructive chaos while pursuing selfish goals. Plus, as was so often the case with “progressive” ’70s movies, the portrayal of women in the picture is demeaning. Steelyard Blues was written by then-newcomer David S. Ward, who won an Oscar for his next script, The Sting (also released in 1973), and while The Sting is as focused and funny, Steelyard Blues is meandering and middling. Steelyard Blues concerns a loose collective of misfits. Peter Boyle is “Eagle” Thornberry, a borderline-insane eccentric who checks into mental institutions whenever he needs a break from everyday problems. He’s obsessed with demolishing cars. Donald Sutherland is Jesse Veldini, a small-time crook determined to refurbish a World War II-era plane so he and his cronies can fly away and start a commune somewhere outside the U.S. Jane Fonda is Iris Caine, a prostitute involved in a quasi-romance with Jesse. As should be apparent, these are ideas, not real characters. The first directing job for Alan Myerson, who went on to a long career in TV, Steelyard Blues is numbingly episodic and start-to-finish unbelievable, comprising a series of “outrageous” vignettes featuring characters who bear no recognizable resemblance to persons found in the real world. Yet what really drags the movie down are narrative incoherence and a lack of laugh-out-loud humor. Worse, the picture tries way too hard to be clever, so it gets exhausting after a while, and not even the considerable talents of the leading players can pull the whole jumbled thing together.

Steelyard Blues: LAME

Swashbuckler (1976)

Two depressing facts emerge when one surveys actor Robert Shaw’s career following his breakout performance in Jaws (1975): Shaw’s days on this earth were numbered, so he only had three years in which to enjoy his newfound fame, and almost every post-Jaws movie in which he starred was terrible. Nonetheless, one gets the impression that Shaw had a blast play-acting in macho leading roles, so, for instance, he exudes contagious joie de vivre in this terrible pirate movie. On some metaphysical level, the possibility that Shaw had fun making Swashbuckler compensates for the lack of enjoyment viewers derive from watching the movie. On the plus side, Swashbuckler is a fairly lavish production about an 18th-century buccaneer battling a crazed tyrant in Jamaica. Additionally, even though director James Goldstone can’t come close to matching the lighthearted approach to swordfighting featured in Richard Lester’s Musketeer movies of the same era, at least Goldstone fills the screen with talented actors. Dressed in a silly costume of red tights and a flowing red blouse, Shaw presents a lusty copy of Errol Flynn’s patented derring-do, and he shares mildly amusing interplay with his cheerful second-in-command, played by James Earl Jones. (The cast also includes Beau Bridges, Geneviève Bujold, Geoffrey Holder, and a young Angelica Huston.) However, the material is so generic that copious screen time is wasted on clichés like peg-legged pirates brandishing their cutlasses and growling. Worse, Peter Boyle’s performance as Lord Durant, the aforementioned tyrant, is atrocious. Woefully miscast, his contemporary American patois seeping through the fruity period jargon he’s forced to spew, Boyle tries to enrich his characterization with perverse qualities, but he seems like he’s in a different movie than everyone else. Unfortunately, the movie he’s in isn’t any better than Swashbuckler.

Swashbuckler: LAME

F.I.S.T. (1978)

          Jimmy Hoffa, Action Hero. If that sounds unlikely, then you’ve intuited why F.I.S.T. is such a peculiar movie. The team behind the picture clearly ached to tell the (fictionalized) story of Hoffa, the notorious labor leader whose alleged mob ties made him the target of a government investigation before he disappeared, but with Sylvester Stallone involved as leading man and co-screenwriter, a subtle approach to the material was impossible. Stallone, rewriting an original script by another man allergic to restraint, Joe Ezsterhas, imbues Hoffa doppleganger Johnny Kovak (played by Stallone) with qualities ranging from easygoing charm to operatic guilt to rugged idealism to social consciousness; he’s not just an everyman, he’s literally, it seems, every man Stallone could imagine, placing Johnny among the most absurdly overstuffed characterizations in American cinema.

          One suspects the problem was Stallone’s anxiety about potentially alienating viewers who loved him as underdog Rocky Balboa, but whatever the case, the effort to make Johnny heroic and likeable leads to weird tonal shifts. At the beginning of the picture, he’s a factory worker who mouths off to his odious boss about unfair working conditions, only to get fired for his impudence. Hired by an idealistic union boss (Richard Herd) as a recruiter for the Federation of Inter State Truckers (F.I.S.T.), Johnny quickly rises through the ranks because he’s good at motivating blue-collar workers. Seemingly overnight, Johnny evolves from the union’s hired hand to its most passionate advocate—and it simply doesn’t make sense that he cares about F.I.S.T. more than life itself, especially since the movie repeatedly affirms that Johnny isn’t even a trucker.

          Thus, as the movie gets more and more epic in scale, trying to beat The Godfather at its own game with a decades-spanning story of a man corrupted by power, the nonsensical underpinnings of the central character become so illogical that it’s hard to believe anything that happens. That’s a shame, since everything except Stallone’s characterization is solid. As directed by the versatile Norman Jewison, who obviously had a significant budget at his command, the movie has an impressive scope and vibrant energy; scenes of labor unrest, with picketing workers fighting union-busting thugs, are particularly exciting.

          There’s some enjoyable stuff with Peter Boyle as a union boss who talks a good game about serving the men but ends up dipping into union funds for personal luxuries, and Rod Steiger gets to showboat entertainingly as an ambitious Congressman who puts F.I.S.T. in his crosshairs. Supporting player Kevin Conway’s performance as a low-level mobster who gets his hooks into Johnny offers an amusing throwback to old-school cinematic criminality, and Tony Lo Bianco lays on the marinara as the Mafioso who drags Johnny even deeper into the organized-crime muck.

          Unfortunately, this two-and-a-half-hour opus is all about Stallone, and his performance is as unwieldy as his characterization. He speechifies like every scene is the finale of Rocky, complete with wildly inappropriate musical fanfare by Rocky composer Bill Conti, and his romantic scenes with Melinda Dillon feel like rehashes of the wonderful Rocky interactions between Stallone and Talia Shire. It’s true that all of this is quite watchable—the story covers so much ground, moves so fast, and reaches so many manipulative heights that it’s impossible not to be at least somewhat entertained. But does F.I.S.T. deliver a knockout thematic punch? Not so much.

F.I.S.T.: FUNKY

The Brink’s Job (1978)

Since director William Friedkin is mostly known for making intense pictures like The Exorcist (1973), it should come as no surprise to report that his occasional ventures into comedy aren’t among his most impressive achievements. So, even though The Brink’s Job has many of his trademarks (naturalistic acting, realistic locations) it fails in a rather significant regard: It’s not the least bit funny. Telling the real-life story of a group of brazen thieves who broke into a Brink’s building in late ’40s Boston and boosted almost $3 million, the picture is supposed to be a farce about a gang of nincompoops who slipped through cracks in the Brink’s security system, then became folk heroes once FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made catching them a top priority. Instead, it’s a good-looking but flat recitation of events involving people who aren’t admirable or interesting. The ensemble Friedkin assembled couldn’t be more appropriate for this sort of thing, with Peter Falk leading a gang that includes Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield (billed as Allen Goorwitz), Warren Oates, and Paul Sorvino, but they all play dull stereotypes: Falk is a cantankerous mastermind, Boyle is a hot-headed career criminal, Garfield is a simpering idiot, Oates is a shell-shocked war veteran eager to kill people, and Sorvino is a seen-it-all dandy who prefers jobs that don’t require him to get his hands dirty. The performances are fine, but they’re not specific enough to elevate the ho-hum screenplay by Walon Green; although some of Green’s dialogue has street-level authenticity, his narrative is plodding. Plenty of crime films have surmounted turgid narratives, however, so The Brink’s Job might have fared better if audiences hadn’t been told to expect laughs that the movie never delivers. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Brink’s Job: FUNKY

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972)

          Despite having been in movies since the heyday of the studio era, Robert Mitchum delivered several of his most interesting performances in the ’70s, probably because his don’t-give-a-damn acting style meshed comfortably with the naturalistic filmmaking methods that were in vogue at the time. One of the best examples of this synthesis between the right actor and the right moment is The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a soft-spoken crime picture about a sad-sack Boston hoodlum faced with the awful choice of going to prison for an interminable sentence or snitching on his lowlife friends.

          Utilizing the actor’s hangdog face and world-weary carriage to great effect, director Peter Yates employs Mitchum as the visual foundation for a rich portrait of going-nowhere criminality. Character actors Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, and Alex Rocco surround Mitchum with vivid performances laced with ambition, avarice, paranoia, and sociopathic violence; Boyle is particularly good as an operator working several self-serving angles at once. So even though the storyline meanders through beats that are familiar to fans of the crime genre, deeply textured acting gives the piece dimension and humanity.

          In one of the best scenes, Mitchum meets with a cocky gun dealer (Keats) in a coffee shop to discuss an illicit arms deal. Bruised by a lifetime of bad experiences, Mitchum brandishes his deformed mitt and explains that making a deal with the wrong guy in the past led to getting his hand broken, thus explaining his reluctance to accept Keats’ overconfidence at face value. Yates shoots the scene simply, with long lenses angled over the actors’ shoulders, creating a level of docudrama realism that’s emulated throughout the picture. As a testament to Yates’ focus on meticulous dramaturgy, the film’s quiet conversation scenes often have as much punch as its highly charged bank-robbery sequences. The action stuff works just fine, however, like the bits in which hoodlums use their favorite trick—holding a bank manager’s family hostage so he doesn’t get heroic ideas during a robbery.

          The Friends of Eddie Coyle has a subtle power that isn’t immediately evident on first viewing, since the plot isn’t clever and the payoff is more logically inevitable than inexorably tragic, but it’s hard to think of another crime film from the same period with as much artfully rendered nuance.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle: GROOVY

Taxi Driver (1976)

          “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” That snippet of voiceover, an excerpt from the apocalyptic interior monologue of New York City cabbie Travis Bickle, gets to the heart of what makes Taxi Driver so intense: Instead of simply throwing a monster onscreen for lurid spectacle, the psychologically provocative drama takes us deep inside a man who does monstrous things for reasons he considers unassailably virtuous. As brilliantly realized by director Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader’s astonishing script introduces viewers to Vietnam vet Travis (Robert De Niro), an insomniac loner cruising the nighttime streets of the city within the self-imposed prison of a metal coffin on four wheels. His unique vantage point exposes him to the worst the city has to offer, the junkies and pimps and psychos, so his PTSD and whatever else is cooking inside his troubled brain compel him toward a “righteous” mission with a body count. Disturbing but mesmerizing, Travis’ journey is a profound exploration of the ennui chewing at the outer edges of America’s collective unconscious.
          The story elements are simple but audacious. Travis becomes preoccupied with two women, a polished campaign worker named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and an underage prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster). So disassociated that he can’t remember how to relate to people normally, Travis takes Betsy on an excruciatingly awful date to a low-rent porno movie, and presents himself as Iris’ savior even though she doesn’t believe she needs to be saved. Zeroing in on men he perceives as enemies, Travis targets Betsy’s politician boss and Iris’ pimp, leading our “hero” to arm himself for battle with an arsenal of illegal handguns. By the time Travis sits alone in his apartment, practicing his quick-draw with a cannon-sized pistol and a shoulder holster while delivering his infamous “You talkin’ to me?” soliloquy, viewers know they’ve been drawn into a nightmare.
          Scorsese’s camerawork and dramaturgy are extraordinary, infusing scenes with lived-in reality while never departing from the dreamlike stylization that makes Taxi Driver feel like a horrific fable; with the heavy shadows of Michael Chapman’s photography and the pulsing waves of Bernard Hermann’s insidious score, Scorsese achieves something like cinematic alchemy. In front of the camera, De Niro gives a selfless performance that channels Schrader’s vision of a lost soul who can’t differentiate idealism from insanity, becoming a figure of almost otherworldly menace. As the opposite ends of Travis’ imagined romantic spectrum, Foster nails the ephemeral idea of a jaded innocent, while Shepherd’s chilly inaccessibility is perfectly fitting. Comedian Albert Brooks provides helpful levity as Betsy’s coworker, Peter Boyle adds worldliness as one of Travis’ fellow cabbies, Harvey Keitel lends seedy color as Iris’ pimp, and Scorsese appears in a startling cameo that illustrates how deeply he saw into the meaning of this allegorical phantasmagoria.
          A breakthrough for everyone involved, Taxi Driver plays out like the anguished cry of a society in need of deliverance, filtered through the twisted worldview of someone damaged and discarded by that very society.

Taxi Driver: OUTTA SIGHT

The Poseidon Adventure (1971) & Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)

          For some reason, I’ve always remembered a remark that Will Smith made around the time he broke through as a big-screen star with 1994’s Independence Day: When asked how he got so much mileage out of so little screen time, Smith explained that he studied Ernest Borgnine’s performance in The Poseidon Adventure because of how vigorously Borgnine attacked every scene. Smith was onto something, because even though Irwin Allen’s production of The Poseidon Adventure deserves its reputation as one of the cheesiest movies of the ’70s, it’s undeniably compelling for the same reason that Borgnine’s supporting performance is effective—the picture will do anything to get a reaction. Based on a novel by Paul Gallico, the story about a luxury liner turned upside down by a giant rogue wave is silly, because it presumes that the liner can stay afloat long enough for survivors to seek rescue through a hole in the bottom of the hull, but the movie is jam-packed with action, melodrama, romance, schmaltz, and spectacle. What’s not to like about unpretentious hokum that intercuts shots of gussied-up New Year’s Eve revelers singing “Auld Lang Syne” with vignettes of the ship’s stoic captain (Leslie Nielsen!) watching watery doom approach a few decks above their heads? Perfecting the disaster-movie template established by Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure offers a slapdash ensemble of familiar faces romping through one overwrought crisis after another. In sheer paycheck-cashing mode, Gene Hackman plays the hero of the piece, a swaggering priest who rediscovers his purpose in life by leading a band of hearty survivors to possible salvation; his performance is so faux-intense that it’s embarrassing and thrilling at the same time. Lending campy gravitas are Borgnine and other showbiz veterans, including Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, and the flamboyantly buoyant Shelley Winters (“In the water, I’m a very skinny lady!”). Meanwhile, Carol Lynley, Pamela Sue Martin, and Stella Stevens shriek their lungs out in various states of soggy undress.
          The soap-opera storylines are drab, like the one about marital strife between a crass cop (Borgnine) and an ex-hooker (Stevens), but the fun of the picture is watching broadly sketched caricatures clash with each other against a backdrop of death and devastation. Allen spent a bundle on massive sets that could be flipped upside down and flooded, so what’s happening onscreen feels real because the actors actually got soaked, and drowning is such a universal phobia that it’s impossible not to sympathize with the characters’ anxiety. On top of everything, there’s a sky-high kitsch factor, especially when Lynley lip-syncs the movie’s atrocious but Oscar-winning theme song “The Morning After”—so whether you embrace the flick for its legit thrills or its unintentional humor, The Poseidon Adventure is a great ride.
          Allen reprised the story several years later, when his career was faltering; the sleep-inducing Beyond the Poseidon Adventure stars a bored Michael Caine as a sea captain who tries to salvage loot from wreck of the Poseidon shortly after the last moments of the original movie. Peter Boyle, Sally Field, and Jack Warden join the festivities, with Karl Malden playing Caine’s salty sidekick and Telly Savalas portraying the main villain. Unfortunately, the direction and script are so lifeless that even the colorful cast isn’t enough to keep the sequel afloat—Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is a grade-Z heist picture that merely happens to take place on an abandoned boat.

The Poseidon Adventure: GROOVY

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure: LAME

Young Frankenstein (1974)

          Astonishingly, comedy giant Mel Brooks managed to crank out his masterpiece, Young Frankenstein, less than a year after completing another outrageously funny spoof, Blazing Saddles. Yet while Blazing Saddles is an anything-goes romp that throws out narrative continuity whenever the opportunity for a gag arises, Young Frankenstein trumps its predecessor because in addition to featuring some of the funniest moments in cinema history, the picture also works as the bittersweet tale of a man, a monster, and the women who love them.

          Conceived by leading man Gene Wilder, who eventually had a falling-out with Brooks after he perceived Brooks as taking too much credit for this project, Young Frankenstein is a pseudo-continuation of the classic Universal Studios Frankenstein series that begin in the early ’30s. The picture is shot in glorious black-and-white to evoke a studio-era vibe, and the filmmakers even tracked down the original Kenneth Strickfaden-created props that appeared in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory during the earlier films.

          The screenplay, by Wilder and Brooks, picks up a generation after the events of the older pictures, when Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) inherits the castle where his crazed grandfather, Victor, once conducted unholy experiments. Discovering his ancestor’s records, Frederick casts aside his nature as a rational modern scientist in order to stitch together body parts and make a monster all his own. Aided by a trusty hunchbacked accomplice, Igor (Marty Feldman), and a fetching local girl, Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick creates a lumbering Monster (Peter Boyle).

          Wilder and Brooks borrow and spoof famous bits from the Universal Pictures, leading to uproarious scenes like the Monster’s encounter with a blind man (Gene Hackman) whose desire to share a cigar turns disastrous, and Frederick’s hilarious run-ins with an officious policeman (Kenneth Mars), who lost a limb to the monster that Victor Frankenstein created long ago. There’s also room for Frederick’s uptight fiancée, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), and the mysterious Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachman), who knew Victor better than anyone suspects.

          Virtually every scene in Young Frankenstein is a comedy classic, from the opening bit of Fredrick experimenting on an elderly patient during a medical class to the climactic musical number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which Wilder actually had to fight to keep in the movie because Brooks didn’t originally see the value of the scene. In addition to being riotously funny, Young Frankenstein is virtually note-perfect from beginning to end in terms of character and storyline. The acting is also consistently wonderful, with Boyle delivering a heartbreaker of a performance as the monster; his scene with Hackman is a perfect blend of pathos and whimsy.

          A career high point for everyone involved, Young Frankenstein showcases everything Brooks does well and features none of his often tiresome excesses, and it’s a triumph for Wilder as an actor and as a writer.

Young Frankenstein: OUTTA SIGHT

Slither (1973)

So offbeat that I’m surprised Wes Anderson hasn’t bought the remake rights, this amiable comedy stars James Caan as an ex-con (ex-caan?) who inadvertently gathers a surrogate family of weirdos as he pursues a fortune in stolen loot. The eccentricity is front and center right from the first scene, in which Dick (Caan) visits his crooked pal Harry (Richard B. Schull) in a ratty old country house. As they chat, gunsels close in from all directions and riddle Harry with bullets, so a dying Harry secrets Dick into an underground bomb shelter and blows up the house, obliterating the gunsels in the process. Dick exits the rubble, dusts himself off, and shuffles away to his next adventure. He soon crosses paths with ditzy drifter Kittty (Sally Kellerman), who has a nasty habit of holding up roadside establishments at gunpoint. And eventually Dick partners with low-rent bandleader Barry (Peter Boyle), who claims to know the location of the stashed cash. So once the movie’s up to speed, Dick, Harry, and Kitty are roaming through trailer parks and other kitschy locations in Harry’s Winnebago, while mysterious villains in color-coordinated vans chase after them. It’s all very zippy and absurd, sort of like a novelistic character study with a crime element thrown in to keep things moving. Caan seems unsure how to play his character, but Boyle and Kellerman go full-out in every scene; Boyle’s a smooth-talking loser eager to latch onto something big, and Kellerman’s a motor-mouthed space case eager to latch onto anything. The imaginative screenplay by first-timer W.D. Richter (of Buckaroo Banzai fame) eventually runs out of gas, but it travels to quite a few interesting places before that happens, wringing affectionate chuckles from the spectacle of hapless characters trapped in pathetic situations; a playful scene set during a trailer-park bingo game is a standout in terms of sheer eccentric fun. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Slither: FUNKY