Soldier Blue (1970)

          Nineteen-seventy was a wild year for Hollywood movies about the Native American experience, even if most of the stories Hollywood generated were told through the prism of white people assimilating into Indian culture. The best of the 1970 batch is undoubtedly Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman, although A Man Called Horse, with Richard Harris, has noteworthy virtues, as well. And then there’s Soldier Blue, which is in odd hybrid of bleeding-heart liberalism, culture-clash comedy, gut-wrenching violence, and Vietnam allegory. The movie’s a mess, but it’s strangely compelling and undeniably memorable, if for no other reason than how well it captures the anguished spirit of the historical moment in which it was created. Based on a novel by Theodore V. Olsen (which was originally titled Arrow in the Sun), the movie is set in the American West during the Civil War and revolves around two white characters with opposing views on Indians. Thrown together by circumstance, they bicker until arriving at an understanding, only to stumble into a horrific slaughter by U.S. soldiers of an entire Cheyenne village.

          Although the film’s bloody climax is based on a real historical incident from the time of the Indian Wars—the infamous Sand Creek massacre—the filmmakers’ thematic and visual parallels to the 1968 My Lai atrocity in Vietnam are unmistakable. So, in a weird way, the Native Americans supposedly at the heart of Soldier Blue are doubly marginalized—not only are Caucasians the leading characters, Indians are used as an all-purpose metaphor representing oppressed indigenous people everywhere. Still, iffy politics are the least of Soldier Blue’s problems from a cinematic perspective, because the film wobbles between sitcom-style banter and ugly scenes of murder and rape. Nearly everything in the movie is highly watchable for some reason or another, but Soldier Blue feels like several films cobbled together into one sloppy whole.

          The picture begins when Cheyenne warriors attack a group of civilians and soldiers. Only Cresta (Candice Bergen) and Honus (Peter Strauss) survive. She’s a white woman who has been held captive by Indians for a long period of time and has unexpectedly developed sympathy for their plight, whereas he’s a straight-line military man with ignorantly racist attitudes. The duo travels through a remote wilderness, arguing their way to mutual attraction while surviving near-death experiences as well as encounters with weird frontier characters. (Reliably odd character actor Donald Pleasence plays one of these folks.) Eventually, Cresta and Honus reach a military fort, where Cresta becomes permanently disillusioned with white culture—the soldier to whom she’s engaged reveals his plans to annihilate the village where she was held.
          The heroes try to prevent mass bloodshed, to no avail, so director Ralph Nelson unleashes an incendiary barrage for the movie’s big finish—the raid on the Indian village is filled with graphic violence and intense rape scenes as nature-loving Indians fall victim to monstrous whites. All of this is exactly as heavy-handed as it sounds, even if the underlying message is historically valid. Viewed as a piece of dramatic art, Soldier Blue is a train wreck. But viewed as a window into the concerns of its time, Soldier Blue gains a measure of twisted relevance.

Solider Blue: FREAKY

Embryo (1976)

          The sci-fi thriller Embryo is one of a zillion movies patterned after Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, because it’s a cautionary tale about a scientist who pays a terrible price for attempting to create new life. You know the drill: madman makes monster, monster causes havoc, madman and monster meet in a final confrontation. Yet Embryo imprudently alters the familiar formula by adding a love story, which drains energy from the middle of the story. For a good 40 minutes, viewers are subjected to repetitive sequences of the scientist bonding with his creation—and, as every good dramatist knows, there’s nothing more destructive to narrative momentum than characters getting along. So, while Embryo isn’t awful, it’s not the lean-and-mean shocker it could and should have been.

          Rock Hudson stars as Dr. Paul Holliston, a widower who specializes in the use of chemicals to stimulate fetal development. After successfully experimenting on a dog fetus, which matures to adulthood in the space of a few days, Paul repeats the experiment on a human embryo. Thus he begets Victoria (Barbara Carrera), a beautiful young woman who grows from fetus to twentysomething in the space of a month. Once Paul arrests her rapid growth, he educates her and introduces her to the world, concealing the secret of her birth from everyone except Victoria. Predictably, the two develop feelings for each other, and Paul happily satiates Victoria’s curiosity about sex. (As if you couldn’t have guessed, she’s hot.) Unbeknownst to Paul, however, the dog he created develops violent tendencies—so when Victoria discovers she possesses built-in abnormalities that might prove fatal, it’s no surprise that she goes on a rampage. (Paul’s inability to recognize danger signs is one of the movie’s biggest logical lapses.)

          As directed by skillful journeyman Ralph Nelson, Embryo is okay on a scene-by-scene basis; among other things, Nelson does a fine job of turning Paul’s lab into a forbidding place simply by using shadows. But on a macro level, Embryo falls apart. Subplots are handled poorly, with plot twists overly telegraphed and rich veins left unexplored. Leading lady Carrera’s performance is another weakness—appearing in one of her first movies, she’s pretty but unconvincing. (Hudson is merely okay, hitting his marks with crisp professionalism.) It’s tempting to say that Embryo is ripe fodder for a remake, since a more exciting version of the story is easily envisioned, but it’s also possible that this middling interpretation is as strong a treatment as the hokey premise deserves.

Embryo: FUNKY

The Wrath of God (1972)

          Not to be confused with the amazing German film Aguirre: The Wrath of God, which was also released in 1972, this American production is a routine action picture starring the venerable Robert Mitchum as a gun-toting con man wreaking havoc in South America during the 1920s. Notwithstanding Mitchum’s top billing, the lead character is actually portrayed by workaday Scottish actor Ken Hutchison. He plays Emmet, a ne’er-do-well European stranded in a dingy Latin American nation. Emmet reluctantly accepts a job from corpulent gringo crook Jennings (Victor Buono) to drive a truck filled with illegal liquor to the U.S. Along the way, Emmet meets an amiable priest named Father Van Horne (Mitchum). Next, Emmet gets into a hassle while preventing banditos from raping a native woman, Chela (Paula Pritchett). Unexpectedly, Van Horne comes to his new friend’s aid—by unleashing the machine gun hidden in his luggage. Yet somehow, the storyline gets even more random after that turn of events.

          A powerful military official, Colonel Santila (John Colicos), recruits Emmet, Jennings, and Van Horne for a suicide mission to depose Thomas De La Plata (Frank Langella), the crazed aristocrat controlling a small town, so the movie’s climax involves a violent showdown between the “heroes” and De La Plata’s ruthless gang. Featuring all of these disparate elements plus other incidental flourishes, like Rita Hayworth’s tiny role as De La Plata’s mother, The Wrath of God is diffuse in the extreme. Produced and directed by the proficient Ralph Nelson, the movie can’t decide on a consistent tone or a main character: The picture vacillates between black comedy and bloody action while the Emmet and Van Horne characters compete for prominence. Nonetheless, some of what happens is mildly exciting, and some of the actors deliver enjoyably florid performances. Buono’s sardonic volatility complements Langella’s over-the-top intensity, for instance, although Mitchum is Mitchum, to the degree that he sometimes seems as if he wandered in from another movie. Poor Hutchison gets lost in the shuffle, particularly since his character’s motivation seems to change with every scene. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Wrath of God: FUNKY

The Wilby Conspiracy (1975)

          If you, dear reader, want an example of the sort of film whose limited charms can win me over, then I present to you The Wilby Conspiracy, a contrived thriller unique only in the most inconsequential of ways. Set in apartheid-era South Africa, this potboiler concerns a black-power activist (Sidney Poitier), recently released from a brutal incarceration as a political prisoner. Thanks to a series of convenient plot twists, he ends up on the run with a snarky Brit played by Michael Caine, and the two pursue a hidden treasure (literally) that can save them both. In other words, never mind the story. The fun, at least for me, is in the moment-to-moment details. Poitier finds an effective channel for his signature intensity; Caine is entertainingly bitchy; Nicol Williamson slays as the heartless, quick-witted Afrikaner cop hot on the duo’s trail; and composer Stanley Myers contributes a muscular score performed on assorted ethnic instruments.

          Under the smooth guidance of TV-trained director Ralph Nelson, Caine and Poitier make a dynamic combination, because each plays for the cheap seats in a way that’s compatible with the other’s exclamation-point style. Defiant Ones-style bickering enlivens this macho, sweaty, and vaguely homoerotic adventure while the larky plot zooms from one vibrant location to another. Highlights include a tense encounter at a dentist’s office (really!) and a grim showdown at a digging site. Featuring many passages of sharp dialogue—often in the form of Williamson’s withering sarcasm—The Wilby Conspiracy is an exciting ride even if the destination is of no particular interest.

          Oh, and for extra-special ’70s flava, watch for Persis Khambatta, later to achieve sci-fi stardom as chrome-domed Lt. Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Wearing a full head of hair, she plays a medical professional sympathetic to Poitier’s cause, and they hook up in a weirdly overwrought sex scene. (Another future notable appearing early in his career is Rutger Hauer.) The Wilby Conspiracy is the kind of zesty escapism for which Saturday afternoons are made, and it’s just adult and smart enough to savor without feeling too guilty afterward.

The Wilby Conspiracy: FUNKY