McCloud (1970)

          While not a direct continuation of the Clint Eastwood movie Coogan’s Bluff (1968), popular TV detective series McCloud was inspired by that film, hence Herman Miller’s credits as screenwriter of the Eastwood picture and creator of the TV series. Both projects employ the novel image of a cowboy cop transplanted to New York City, solving crimes with frontier toughness, old-fashioned common sense, and a warm charm that drives cosmopolitan women wild. Right from this first episode, which is sometimes known by the titles “Portrait of a Dead Girl” and “Who Killed Miss U.S.A.?,” star Dennis Weaver cuts a striking image, his tall frame swathed in a sheepskin coat and capped by a cowboy hat. Yet Marshal Sam McCloud of Taos, New Mexico, is not portrayed as a bumpkin. Quite to the contrary, he’s a tireless investigator whose courtly manners disguise an agile mind.
          The notion is that because he’s free of big-city hangups and pretentions, he sees things more clearly than his metropolitan counterparts, spotting holes in theories, logic problems in alibis, and omissions from crime reports. It’s worth nothing that he’s also smooth with the ladies, because one of this pilot film’s most enjoyable scenes is an exchange of erotic banter between Weaver and leading lady Diana Muldaur.
          Nonetheless, despite being cowritten by the reliable team of Richard Levinson and William Link, the first McCloud mystery isn’t especially memorable beyond the effective introduction of the protagonist. After capturing a fugitive in New Mexico, McCloud escorts his prisoner to New York, where the man is set to testify in a high-profile murder case. Criminals posing as cops kidnap the prisoner, compelling McCloud  to recapture the man and therefore restore his dignity as a lawman. This leads McCloud to explore the facts of the murder case, in which a Latino busboy stands accused of murdering a white beauty queen. Naturally, McCloud discovers problems with evidence incriminating the busboy and makes his way, slowly but surely, toward the identity of the real killer. Accompanying the marshal through his first New York adventure is Chris Coughlin (Muldaur), writer of a best-selling book about the case. At various times, McCloud encounters an activist priest, a jaded fashion model, a morally ambiguous lawyer, and other big-city types who provide stark contrast to the plain-talking protagonist.

          Even though the story underwhelms, the film is quite watchable. The acting is slick (watch forRaul Julia as the priest and Julie Newmar, of all people, as the model), while director Richard A. Colla gives everything an expensive look with blurry foreground objects and fluid camera moves. As for Weaver, he's in the zone from start to finish, channeling an aw-shucks Gary Cooper vibe without ever seeming artificial or cloying. Although McCloud never became a proper weekly series—like Columbo and McMillan and Wife, it aired as a series of telefilms—the franchise captured the public’s imagination, running from 1970 to 1977. Weaver reprised the role for 1989’s The Return of Sam McCloud.

McCloud: FUNKY

The UFO Incident (1975)

          Bolstered by the presence of fine actors in the leading roles, The UFO Incident is a peculiar take on a real historical incident. In the early 1960s, New Hampshire residents Barney and Betsy Hill claimed they’d been abducted by aliens, taken aboard a flying saucer for medical examinations, and brainwashed to forget what happened. Memories of the event haunted the couple’s dreams, so they submitted to hypnosis and provided details while a psychiatrist probed their unconscious minds. Reports of the Hills’ alleged abduction earned widespread attention, but because the Hills were unable to provide evidence, some people dismissed the story as a delusion or a hoax while others believed the incident really occurred. This made-for-TV movie tries to service the believers and the doubters simultaneously, and the wishy-washy approach doesn’t quite work.

          Scenes of the Hills experiencing traumatic flashbacks and/or providing testimony are played straight, whereas scenes with re-creations of alien contact have the eerie quality of a horror movie. It’s understandable why the producers included money shots of actors dressed like weird-looking aliens, because a purely journalistic presentation of this material would have been talky and underwhelming. Still, The UFO Incident is basically two very different movies squeezed into one package, with the grounded stuff coming across better than the fanciful vignettes.

          James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons play the Hills, a middle-class interracial couple. They bicker and bond like normal married people, and the filmmakers take pains to present the Hills as rational and thoughtful individuals, the better to lend credence to their reports of an extraordinary experience. Barnard Hughes plays the doctor who questions them under hypnosis. The overarching story of takes place in the “present,” with the Hills acceding to hypnosis only because their collective memories are so disturbingly synchronized—they dream the same impossible dreams. Dramatizations of the UFO event appear in suspenseful flashbacks.

          Executive producer/director Richard A. Colla and his collaborators drill down fairly deep into the Hills’ personalities, especially considering the film’s brief running time, so we learn about Barney’s fear of losing control and Betty’s fear of the unknown. Parsons shines in conversational scenes, conveying a woman of compassion and moral strength, while Jones excels in hypnosis scenes, sometimes breaking down from the strain of recalling otherworldly violation. The FX scenes are the least effective, not only because the actors and filmmakers seem less invested in those sequences but also because the alien costumes and spaceship look cheap. Perhaps The UFO Incident is best described as respectful, since the filmmakers avoid many opportunities to sensationalize the material; at its best, the picture is a matter-of-fact recitation enlivened by humane performances.

The UFO Incident: FUNKY

The Great Balloon Adventure (1978)

          Originally titled Olly, Olly, Oxen Free, this attractively produced children’s film features a prominent supporting performance by Katharine Hepburn and a few passages of visual spectacle, but these elements are not sufficient to overcome the movie’s myriad shortcomings. Chief among the problems plaguing The Great Balloon Adventure is an anemic storyline, because the film’s three protagonists never confront anything resembling dramatic conflict, and they evade dangerous situations without much effort or risk. In lieu of genuinely exciting scenes, director/producer/co-writer Richard A. Colla fills the screen with vignettes that feel like placeholders. For instance, a lengthy scene of characters accidentally lighting fabric on fire is the closest equivalent the movie has to mortal danger, and the interminable soliloquy that Hepburn delivers late in the second act is the closest equivalent the movie has to something personally revelatory.
          In its broadest outlines, the premise of the movie seems like it should have generated colorful escapism bursting with themes of friendship and imagination. After all, the story concerns a young boy who decides to honor his late grandfather by rebuilding the hot-air balloon in which the grandfather once performed stunt shows. The Great Balloon Adventure opens in San Francisco, where preteen Alby (Kevin McKenzie) is obsessed by the memory of his grandfather, who performed under the name “The Great Sandusky.” Together with his pal, Chris (Dennis Dimster), Alby gathers money and tools for rebuilding his grandfather’s balloon. The boys trek to a nearby junk shop and encounter the shop’s eccentric proprietor, Miss Pudd (Hepburn). After briefly rebuffing the boys, she commits wholeheartedly to participating in their plan, providing free labor and material.

          The motivations of the characters are never explained in satisfactory ways, which contributes to the general air of artificiality and lifelessness pervading the project. (Bob Alcivar’s needlessly downbeat musical score doesn’t help.) While Colla’s actual filmmaking is quite slick, with passable special effects, vivid production design, and well-chosen camera angles, the storytelling is as enervated as the story itself. Nothing much happens, the movie unspools as a meditative pace, and the audience is left waiting in vain for the thrilling highlights that should appear but never do. The Great Balloon Adventure runs its course quickly, since the picture is only 92 minutes long, and the climax is visually interesting. Still, it’s hard to imagine young viewers sustaining attention during the talky bits, and it’s hard to imagine even the most devoted Hepburn fans enjoying the drably frivolous scenes involving the children.

The Great Balloon Adventure: FUNKY

Zig Zag (1970)

          This twisty thriller kicks off with a terrific premise before faltering due to sloppy execution. George Kennedy stars as Paul Cameron, a claims investigator at an insurance company who learns he’s got only a few months to live. Desperate to provide for his wife and daughter, Paul digs through his company’s records and discovers that a $250,000 reward is still outstanding for the capture of an unknown criminal who kidnapped and murdered a millionaire. (Paul’s company paid a substantial death benefit to the victim’s family.) Using his wife’s maiden name as an alias, Paul sends a letter to the millionaire’s company claiming that he, Paul Cameron, was the murderer. Paul’s complex scheme is to get himself indicted and jailed for the crime so his wife, her identity hidden behind a web of bank accounts and P.O. boxes, can claim the reward. As this description indicates, the plot of Zig Zag ties itself in knots, stacking implausible developments until the storyline is impossibly muddled. Furthermore, the filmmakers present the story in a jagged style that justifies the title, jumping back and forth between the “present” (which begins with Paul’s arrest) and the “past” (which depicts his methodical planning).

          That said, a number of interesting things happen, like the casual revelation that Paul used to be a jazz drummer and therefore has connections in the hepcat underworld of drug dealers and musicians. Additionally, the relationship between Paul and his exasperated lawyer (Eli Wallach) is entertaining. On a stylistic level, director Richard A. Colla, a TV veteran who directed a handful of middling features, executes Zig Zag with visual panache, building many scenes around trick shots that open by peering deep into some partially obstructed background, then pull back to reveal previously hidden details. In fact, the gimmicky camerawork makes some sequences feel more interesting than they actually are, though the sleight of hand loses efficacy once the shortcomings of the script become impossible to ignore. Kennedy barrels through scenes with watchable intensity, employing vigor in place of nuance, while Anne Jackson (costar Wallach’s real-life spouse) delivers credible anguish as Paul’s worried wife, and Blacula star William Marshall lends his sonorous voice to key role as a nightclub owner who helps Paul out of a jam. These appealing performers and Colla’s kicky visuals make Zig Zag a pleasant distraction—until the confusing mess of a finale, that is. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Zig Zag: FUNKY