Red Alert (1977)

          Two years before the big-budget theatrical feature The China Syndrome dramatized the dangers of nuclear power plants, the excellent made-for-TV thriller Red Alert offered an even more sensationalized take on the subject. Based on a novel by Harold King and written for the screen by Sandor Stern, the picture takes place at a facility in Minnesota. An unexplained leak in the reactor’s coolant tank triggers alerts at “Proteus Central” in Colorado, the command center where bigwig Henry Stone (Ralph Waite) uses a massive computer system to monitor the nation’s nuclear plants. Distrusting reports from his subordinates at the Minnesota facility, Stone sends two security officers, Frank Brolen (William Devane) and Carl Wyche (Michael Brandon), to investigate. They learn that a crazed employee has placed small explosives throughout the Minnesota facility with the goal of triggering a fatal chain reaction. The suspense of the picture stems from efforts to locate and defuse all of the bombs, and also to identify the saboteur’s motive in case he’s part of a larger conspiracy. Complicating matters are the effects of the first explosion at the facility: The saboteur is among 14 workers trapped, and presumed dead, inside the plant’s highly contaminated containment facility, so he’s unavailable for interrogation. Adding another layer to the storyline is Carl’s concern for his wife (Adrienne Barbeau) and their children, who live near the facility that’s on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown.

          Although the plotting of Red Alert is a bit contrived, relying on the sort of mad-bomber device one normally expects to encounter in an Airport movie, the dramatic and technical execution of the piece is terrific. Not only did the producers obtain impressive locations and utilize a sufficient degree of technical jargon to make the piece seem credible, but director William Hale’s imaginative camerawork accentuates claustrophobia and juices tension. He’s forever using objects in the foreground to frame faces, underscoring how the film’s characters are caught in a horrible situation. Hale also shoots action well, his camera movements designed with mathematical precision. One can feel the influence of Sidney Lumet, since the storytelling in Red Alert recalls the way Lumet put his not-entirely-dissimilar Fail-Safe (1964) across. The acting is fairly strong, too. Devane is equal parts macho and world-weary as a man tainted by tragedy, Brandon counters him with earnest sensitivity, and Waite plays heavily against type, suppressing his Waltons warmth to incarnate a dangerously cold-blooded autocrat. So even though Red Alert is mostly a well-made potboiler, the actors and filmmakers conjure enough believability to give the piece some teeth as a cautionary tale.

Red Alert: GROOVY

Hot Summer Week (1972)

          Also known as Girls on the Road, this muddled thriller involves hippie spirituality, horny teenaged girls, a lecherous guru, a PTSD-addled Vietnam vet, and young love that culminates in tragedy. Not only do the elements clash with each other so badly that Hot Summer Week is confusing and disjointed to watch, but each individual element is handled poorly. Despite possessing a certain measure of traffic-accident allure, this is misguided low-budget filmmaking on every level. The story, such as it is, starts when spoiled white girls Debbie (Kathleen Cody) and Karen (Dianne Hull) hit the road for a week’s vacation at a beach house. Right from the beginning, director Thomas J. Schmidt tries to portray the girls as carefree and spunky, but he actually reveals them to be inconsiderate, reckless, and stupid. They drive like maniacs because they’re distracted by activities like tossing bras into traffic, they treat hitchhikers terribly (stealing a guitar from a musician, shunning two would-be passengers for the crime of being flamboyantly gay), and they talk about nothing but their desire to get laid during their vacation. On the way to the beach house, the girls pick up hitchhiker Will (Michael Ontkean), who was recently discharged from an Army hospital after treatment for psychological problems.

          Despite the fact that Will’s twitchy and the fact that he carries a gun in his duffel bag, all Debbie can see is that he’s handsome. Turns out Will is an on-again/off-again resident at a progressive institute run by John (Ralph Waite), a touchy-feely therapist who helps his charges explore love. Karen digs the can’t-we-all-get-along vibe at the institute, but Debbie just wants to make out with Will—up to a point, since she’s all talk. The middle of Hot Summer Week is a mess of heavy-petting scenes, mind-expanding “experiences” at the institute, and silly PTSD flashbacks. (All of Will’s imaginary scenes are processed with a blue tint and a wobbly optical effect, while his war flashbacks seem to comprise stock footage from D-Day.) In the end, Hot Summer Week tries to be a little bit of everything, without committing sufficiently to any one genre—there’s not enough sex for the movie to qualify as an exploitation picture, the spiritual stuff is cartoonish and superficial, and the final sequence transforms Hot Summer Week into a full-on horror movie, complete with an axe-wielding psycho. Just as Debbie and Karen should have driven right by Will, the wise viewer should give Hot Summer Week a pass.

Hot Summer Week: LAME

The Grissom Gang (1971)

          Few filmographies are quite as confusing as that of Robert Aldrich, a prolific producer-director who made a handful of stone classics, including The Dirty Dozen (1967), but also made the occasional picture that missed the mark so widely it seemed as if it was helmed by a beginner instead of a veteran. The Grissom Gang, for instance, is an absurdly long melodrama about a simplistic story that could have been presented with 40 minutes less screen time, and the movie is utterly bewildering from a tonal perspective. Is it a comedy, a drama, or a thriller? And what’s with the musical numbers?

          One of myriad post-Bonnie and Clyde gangster pictures set during the Depression, the movie concerns a group of Midwestern thugs who kidnap an heiress for ransom. Although slow-witted and violent-tempered Slim Grissom (Scott Wilson) is ostensibly the leader of the group, the real power behind the gang is his monster of a mother, Ma Grissom (Irene Dailey). So when Slim takes a liking to the heiress, Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby), Ma endangers the whole group by agreeing to a change in plans. Instead of killing the girl after collecting ransom, thereby protecting the anonymity of the crooks, Ma “gives” Barbara to Slim as a playmate. Then, once Barbara figures out that Slim is the only person keeping her alive, she feigns affection—only to later develop genuine feelings for her brutal lummox of a captor. Sprinkled in between scenes of infighting among the gang members are vignettes that advance tedious subplots involving Dave Fenner (Robert Lansing), a private detective hired to act on behalf of the heiress’ rich father, and Anne Borg (Connie Stevens), a showgirl who dates one of the gang members.

          In terms of on-set execution, The Grissong Gang isn’t bad. Aldrich generates tension with lots of sweaty close-ups, and the actors give intense performances. (Wilson does the best work in the film, though he frequently lapses into cartoonishness, and Darby seems out of her depth in nearly every scene.) The big problem has to do with the way Aldrich assembled the material that he gathered. In addition to retaining way too much footage—the movie seems to drag on forever—Aldrich commissioned a bouncy score that suggests he envisioned The Grissom Gang as light entertainment. Because, really, what says “light entertainment” more than myriad onscreen killings, an attempted rape or two, and the sweet scene of Slim threatening to murder his mom with a switchblade?

          The Grissom Gang has its fans, who undoubtedly appreciate the overall malevolence of the piece and the tasty work of supporting players including Matt Clark and Ralph Waite, but nearly everything that Aldrich attempts to do with the movie was accomplished more gracefully in some other film by some other director. So, while The Grissom Gang isn’t a disaster, per se, it’s a long way from being compelling, original, or satisfying.

The Grissom Gang: FUNKY

The Stone Killer (1973)

          Actor Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner cranked out so many movies together in the ’70s that it’s inevitable some of their projects were less satisfying than others. In between the high points of The Mechanic (1972) and Death Wish (1974), for instance, the duo collaborated in this convoluted crime thriller, which can’t decide if it’s about a hard-driving cop or a mastermind criminal. The setting awkwardly shuttles back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, and the movie includes about five different scenes that feel like endings. As a result, even though Winner was among the best directors of gritty action in the ’70s (ensuring that The Stone Killer has a handful of exciting scenes), the flick is a washout in terms of narrative.

          The gist of the piece is that after NYPD detective Lou Torrey (Bronson) gets run out of Manhattan for using excessive force, he lands a job with the LAPD and almost immediately discovers a scheme by mobster Al Vescari (Martin Balsam) to wipe out enemies as revenge for a decades-old gangland massacre. All of this feels very unfocused, not least because of the way Torrey somehow instantaneously becomes the most trusted plainclothes cop in the City of Angels; furthermore, most of the screen time is devoted to Torrey’s investigation of intermediaries, which has the effect of diluting Vescari’s prominence as the main villain. In fact, probably a good third of the picture involves the activities of low-level bagmen Jumper (Jack Colvin) and Langley (Paul Koslo), so it periodically seems as if Winner forgot which movie he was making. Exacerbating all of this is the fact that Bronson’s casting as a smooth-talking policeman somewhat marginalizes his strong suit of tight-lipped physical action.

          Nearly the only thing that keeps The Stone Killer watchable is the presence of vibrant supporting actors. In addition to Colvin and Koslo, who portray weasels effectively, the grab-bag cast includes Norman Fell, Stuart Margolin, and Ralph Waite. (This is a guy movie from top to bottom, so women don’t figure prominently in the mix.) Winner generates good atmosphere in both Los Angeles and New York, and the movie’s big shootout—which takes place inside the elevator shafts, parking garage, and stairwell of an office building—has a few thrills. Yet by the umpteenth time Winner cuts to a scene of Bronson and his colleagues discussing the plot for the purposes of helping the audience understand what the hell’s going on, it becomes painfully clear that Winner (who also produced) crammed way too much plot into the mix. As a final note, The Stone Killer loses points for a poster that’s a blatant rip-off of the famous one-sheet for The French Connection (1971).

The Stone Killer: FUNKY

Lawman (1971)

          Provocative and savage, Lawman offers an unflinching take on the iconography of the Western vigilante, positing that a killer with a badge can be as destructive to society as the criminals he’s charged with bringing to justice. Arriving around the same time as a slew of movies about modern-day vigilantism, Lawman didn’t capture the public imagination like Dirty Harry or Straw Dogs, both of which were released the same year—or even Death Wish (1974), which was made by Lawman’s director, Michael Winner—but Lawman is an interesting companion to those enduring pictures.

          An ethical rumination set in such a minor key that many viewers will find the storyline unpalatably depressing, Lawman bravely defines its hero as the worst monster in his bloody environment. If violence begets violence, the movie seems to argue, then rampant violence can easily conjure that most grisly of oxymorons, “justifiable homicide.” And yet the most interesting aspect of Lawman is that the murders committed by the story’s antihero are only nominally sanctioned by society; supporting characters spend the entire narrative trying, in vain, to persuade the titular peacekeeper from using lethal force.

          Burt Lancaster, who was always game for playing brutal sons of bitches, puts his florid acting style to good use essaying Jered Maddox, a U.S. Marshal without an iota of mercy. When the story begins, several cowboys from a ranch situated outside of a tiny town called Sabbath—make what you will of the symbolism—accidentally kill a bystander during a drunken binge. Maddox hears of the crime and kills one of the cowboys, then rides into Sabbath and proclaims his intention to eradicate all of the men responsible. This puts him in conflict not only with overbearing rancher Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb), who employs the cowboys, but also with Sabbath’s comparatively weak-willed sheriff, Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan). As the movie progresses, Maddox resists entreaties to his conscience and to his bank account, even endangering his renewed love affair with an old flame (Sheree J. North), all because of his single-minded devotion to eye-for-an-eye absolutism.

          The story stirs up thorny questions about whether a society that kills killers is worth preserving; about how deeply the meting out of deadly justice corrupts the executioner; and about what role compassion plays in the whole mix. Gerry Wilson’s script is probably a bit too literary for its own good, and the pervasive darkness of the story will be a turnoff for those who like their morality plays leavened with escapism. But especially thanks to the presence of a great supporting cast—including Robert Duvall, Richard Jordan, and Ralph Waite—this one goes down smoothly for those with a taste for bitter parables. Best of all, the final scene, in which Cobb’s thunderous performance reaches an ironically pathetic crescendo, resonates on myriad levels.

Lawman: GROOVY

The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972)

Continuity among sequels to The Magnificent Seven (1060) is a dodgy matter, which is probably to be expected seeing as how The Magnificent Seven was an Americanized spin on the Japanese action classic The Seven Samurai (1954)—it’s silly to complain about the lack of artistic integrity when discussing sequels to a remake. Therefore, suffice to say that by the time this fourth entry arrived, changes had been made. None of the original film’s actors is present, and the lead role of honorable gunfighter Chris Adams is occupied by Lee Van Cleef, the third actor in the series to play Adams. (Yul Brynner originated the part.) The storyline for The Magnificent Seven Ride! is, predictably, a retread of the series formula—Adams reluctantly agrees to help the citizens of a border town repel a violent invasion. To achieve this goal, Adams gathers a group of gunmen, and he enlists the citizens of the town, nearly all of whom are women, as helpers. Considering that it’s telling such a trite story, The Magnificent Seven Ride! takes quite a while to get going; the movie is nearly halfway over before preparations for the big battle get underway. Furthermore, the picture has an exceedingly ordinary visual style, looking more like an episode of a TV Western than a proper feature. Yet The Magnificent Seven Ride! is basically watchable, at least for undemanding viewers. Van Cleef’s cruel persona is compelling even in this drab context, and the reliable character actors surrounding him contribute solid work—the cast includes such familiar faces as Luke Askew, Ed Lauter, James B. Sikking, and Ralph Waite. (A young Gary Busey appears in a small role, too.) The women in the movie don’t fare as well, with Mariette Hartley disappearing quickly and Stefanie Powers pouting through her bland turn in the underdeveloped love-interest role. All in all, though, the movie is a fair trade: It promises little and delivers exactly that.

The Magnificent Seven Ride!: FUNKY

Trouble Man (1972)

Whereas most blaxploitation flicks take place in the dingy milieu of dealers, junkies, pimps, and streetwalkers—making exposed flesh, outrageous fashions, and tough slang important elements of their sleazy appeal—Trouble Man belongs to a more restrained crime-picture tradition. Excepting the color of the lead character’s skin, the presence of a soul-music score, and the use of terms like “honky” and “motherfucker,” Trouble Man is basically an old-fashioned potboiler in the Bogart tradition. The lead character, Mr. T. (Robert Hooks), is a take-no-guff private eye who gets framed for murder by ambitious gangsters, so he calls upon his ample resources of a clever mind, a fast gun hand, and plentiful contacts within the police force and the underworld to extricate himself from a sticky situation. Along the way, he clashes with a mixed-race pair of hoodlums (played by an overacting Ralph Waite and a hard-working but underused Paul Winfield), and he enjoys a few moderately interesting arguments with policeman Joe Marx (William Smithers). Mr. T also shares a few pointless scenes with his girlfriend, Cleo (Paula Kelly), and he hangs out in his groovy lair—a back office in a pool hall. Presenting an African-American environment free from blaxploitation’s usual clichés makes Trouble Man mildly refreshing, but the movie’s storyline is disappointing. The deadly first hour comprises lots of convoluted exposition, so, ironically, the sensationalistic extremes found in other blaxploitation flicks are missed. Things pick up a bit in the end, but not quite enough. This is a shame, not only because the picture avoids reducing African-Americans to cartoonish stereotypes, but also because director Ivan Dixon employs solid camerawork and lighting, giving the piece a polished look. Plus, Hooks is a formidable leading man who seems as if he could’ve done something with better material. Yet even the silky score, by Motown legend Marvin Gaye, lacks sufficient energy; only the main theme has a lingering groove.

Trouble Man: FUNKY

Chato’s Land (1972)

          British filmmaker Michael Winner made a slew of gruesome movies in the ’70s and ’80s, often starring Charles Bronson as tight-lipped avengers who let their bloody actions speak for them. At their best, the duo created provocative work like Death Wish (1974). At their worst, they made ugly trash like Chato’s Land, which can best be described as a two-hour murder symphony. It’s hard to tell which element of the picture is most confusing and distasteful: The casting of Lithuanian-descended Bronson as a half-breed Apache, or the weird plot that presents Bronson’s character, Chato, as a vigilante seeking revenge even though he’s the perpetrator of a crime instead of the victim.

          At the beginning of the story, Chato struts into a white town, lets a racist marshal talk him into an argument, and kills the lawman instead of walking away. After Chato heads for the Indian country outside town, he’s pursued by ex-Confederate solider Capt. Whitmore (Jack Palance) and a posse of bloodthirsty townies. Once the pursuers slip into “Chato’s land,” the half-breed uses clever guerilla tactics to demoralize the posse. Then, when the pursuers rape and murder Chato’s relatives, he declares war. The problem is one of motivation: The attack that justifies Chato’s vigilantism doesn’t happen until after he’s already started picking off his enemies. Since Chato’s Land is merely a quick-and-dirty action picture, it’s unlikely the filmmakers were trying to make a nuanced statement about violence begetting violence—therefore, the storytelling just seems sloppy. It doesn’t help that most of the posse members are depicted as cartoonish rednecks, notably vile Elias (Ralph Waite) and his sex-crazed little brother, Earl (Richard Jordan). There’s some lip service given to the subject of morality, with characters including grizzled frontiersman Joshua (James Whitmore) questioning the virtue of violence, but the talk rings hollow as Winner stages one elaborate kill scene after another.

          Beyond its dubious content, Chato’s Land also suffers from erratic acting: Whereas Jordan, Waite, and Whitmore chew up the scenery, Palance wanders around in a daze, whispering elegiac monologues that don’t make much sense, and Bronson just glares a lot. Furthermore, since Bronson spends most of the movie flitting about in a loincloth, his taut musculature ends up giving a more expressive performance than his famously squinty face.

Chato’s Land: LAME