The Sporting Club (1971)

          Things get weird fast in The Sporting Club, a wildly undisciplined adaptation of a novel by Thomas McGuane, who later became a screenwriter of offbeat films with Western themes. Here, the theme is actually Midwestern, though The Sporting Club certainly has enough eccentrics and iconoclasts to resonate with other films bearing McGuane’s name. The basic story is relatively simple. Rich white people gather at the Centennial Club, a hunting lodge in the Great Lakes region, for a drunken revel celebrating the club’s hundredth birthday. One of the club’s youngest members, an unhinged trust-fund brat named Vernur Stanton (Robert Fields), has a scheme to destroy the club from within while making a grand statement about class divisions in American society. Vernur fires the club’s longtime groundskeeper and hires a volatile blue-collar thug as a replacement, injecting a dope-smoking X-factor into the uptight culture of the Centennial Club. Yet the plot is only the slender thread holding the movie together. More intriguing and more prominent are myriad subplots, as well as bizarre satirical scenes featuring the aging members of the Centennial Club devolving into savagery.

          If it’s possible to imagine a quintessentially American film that should have been directed by British maniac Ken Russell, The Sporting Club is that movie. Like one of Russell’s perverse freakouts, The Sporting Club puts a funhouse mirror to polite society, revealing all the grotesque aspects that are normally hidden from view. And like many of Russell’s films, The Sporting Club spirals out of control at regular intervals.

          Here’s a relatively innocuous example. Early in the picture, Vernur and his best friend, James Quinn (Nicolas Coster), wander from the Centennial Club to a nearby dam, where the (unidentified) president of the United States makes a public appearance. Vernur and James sneak onto a tour bus left empty by Shriners watching the president, then trash the bus and commandeer it for a presidential drive-by during which Vernur moons the commander-in-chief. The scene raises but does not answer many questions related to character motivation and logistics. And so it goes throughout The Sporting Club. Outrageous things happen, but it’s anybody’s guess what makes the people in this movie tick or even, sometimes, how one event relates to the next. Very often, it seems is if connective tissue is missing. In some scenes, James makes passes at Vernur’s girlfriend, and in other scenes, he’s involved with the local hottie sent to clean his lodge. Huh? And we haven’t even gotten to Vernur’s fetish for vintage dueling pistols, the time capsule containing century-old pornography, or the climactic scene involving a machine gun and an orgy.

          As directed by journeyman Larry Peerce and written by versatile wit Lorenzo Semple Jr., The Sporting Club has several deeply interesting scenes and a few vivid performances. Coster, familiar to ’70s fans as a character actor, does subtle work in the film’s quiet scenes, even though the nature of his overall role is elusive. Conversely, the great Jack Warden is compelling to watch as the replacement groundskeeper, even though he’s spectacularly miscast—more appropriate casting would have been Kris Kristofferson, who plays a similar role in the equally bizarre Vigilante Force (1976). The lively ensemble also includes Richard Dysart, Jo Ann Harris, James Noble, and Ralph Waite.

          There’s a seed of something provocative hidden inside the bewildering action of The Sporting Club, and one imagines the folks behind the movie envisioned a provocative generation-gap farce. What they actually made is a disjointed oddity with lots of drinking, sex, violence, and pretentious speechifying.

The Sporting Club: FREAKY

An Enemy of the People (1978)

          Notwithstanding an uncredited bit part in the 1976 B-movie Dixie Dynamite, Steve McQueen ended a four-year screen hiatus by starring in a film that’s the opposite of the glossy action thrillers that made him famous. An Enemy of the People is an unassuming adaptation of an 1882 Henrik Ibsen play, and McQueen plays an intellectual from behind a mask of glasses, long hair, and a thick beard. It’s hard to tell whether his intention was to destroy his own screen person, to prove he could act, or simply to try something new. Whatever the motivation, the experiment was only partly successful, because An Enemy of the People pushes McQueen far beyond his limited range. Nonetheless, his obvious desire to convey intelligence rather than just coasting on charm is admirable, and the film itself is solid, if a bit antiseptic. So while it’s easy to imagine a “real” actor delivering a scorching performance in the same role, the novelty of seeing McQueen stretch is what keeps An Enemy of the People from feeling like a museum piece.

          As written for the screen by Alexander Jacobs, who employed Arthur Miller’s adaptation of the Ibsen original, the setup is simple. Dr. Thomas Stackman (McQueen) is the doctor in a small town known for a spa that draws water from a nearby spring. The town’s mayor is Thomas’ domineering older brother, Peter (Charles Durning). One day, Thomas receives the results of a chemical analysis that he requested, and the information is damning: The spring water has been poisoned by spiloff from a mill, which means the spa must be closed for public-safety reasons. Thomas tries to spread the bad news, but local residents oppose him, fearful the report will destroy the town’s principal source of revenue. Even Peter betrays Thomas, scheming with the town’s wealthiest citizens to have Thomas branded an “enemy of the people.” All of this is powerful stuff, touching on themes of free speech, greed, and persecution.

          Director George Schaefer does little to disguise the material’s theatrical origins, employing soundstages for both exterior and interior scenes. Similarly, the choice to adorn Durning’s face with massive fake eyebrows and an unconvincing beard was imprudent—and indicative of the production’s overall artificiality. Yet bogus trappings are insufficient to suppress Durning’s extraordinary skill, so he elevates all of his scenes, as does costar Richard Dysart, who plays a sly power-monger. (Leading lady Bibi Andersson’s work is earnest but perfunctory.) All told, the pluses of An Enemy of the People outweigh the minuses, though it’s no surprise the film received an indifferent reception; An Enemy of the People delivers none of the things that fans associate with McQueen, and McQueen’s acting is more noble than noteworthy. Still, the movie is an interesting facet of a great screen career, and the inherent quality of the source material makes the experience of watching An Enemy of the People edifying.

An Enemy of the People: GROOVY

The Hospital (1971)

          Speaking as a cineaste, a devotee of ’70s film, and a screenwriter, I’m about to commit an act of heresy by admitting that I don’t dig The Hospital, which netted Paddy Chayefsky one of his three writing Oscars. While I understand the use of dark satire to skewer the foibles of the medical industry—and, on a larger scale, the foibles of bureaucracy and capitalism run amok—I’ve watched The Hospital twice at very different times in my life, and on both occasions I’ve found the movie to be cold, pretentious, and tiresome. Seeing as how Chayefsky’s writing was singled out for praise, it’s possible my reaction stems from a problem of execution. Arthur Hiller’s sloppy camerawork and undisciplined dramaturgy prevents a clear point of view from coalescing, so he seems lost as the story zooms back and forth between tonalities.

          Proving that giving an ambitious Chayevsky script a pleasing shape wasn’t impossible, Sidney Lumet made a masterpiece from Chayefsky’s next opus, Network (1976). Many of the outrageous narrative maneuvers that make Network so wonderful are present in The Hospital, but they don’t work nearly as well. The omniscient narration, the religious allegory, the spectacular monologues—whereas these elements feel germane to the coherent lunacy of Network, they contribute to making The Hospital feel scattershot. The Hospital is not without its virtues, of course, because George C. Scott’s leading performance is impassioned, and the movie’s dialogue vibrates with Chayefsky’s unique blend of indignation and intellectualism (even though all of the characters sound identical). Furthermore, the best jabs at the medical industry land with tremendous impact. Taken as a whole, however, The Hospital is contrived, episodic, long-winded, and underwhelming.

          The picture is set at a fictional Manhattan hospital, which is perpetually surrounded by protestors, some of whom also work at the facility. Chief of Medicine Dr. Herbert Bock (Scott) is a suicidal drunk reeling from a divorce, and therefore emotionally unprepared for a series of crises. One by one, doctors and nurses start dying as a result of absurd mix-ups—injections given to the wrong patients, sick people pushed aside and “forgotten to death,” and so on. Herbert’s life takes a turn when he meets Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), the daughter of an eccentric patient. A hippie involved with Native American mysticism, she tries to remove her father from the hospital, sparking many debates about the efficacy of Herbert’s management. Other subplots include the travails of one Dr. Welbeck (Richard Dysart), a snobbish surgeon who has incorporated himself in order to prioritize money over medicine. All of these things come together in wild ways. A serial killer stalks the hospital’s halls. Herbert confesses self-destructive thoughts to a shrink, nearly injects himself with lethal chemicals, and overcomes impotence by raping Barbara.
          In one of the film’s least pleasing developments, Barbara interprets Herbert’s sexual assault as an act of love. Suffice to say the film is not as sharp on women’s issues as it is on economics and medical ethics.

          While The Hospital is all over the place in terms of mood and themes, Scott is incredible, even if the script requires him to exclaim “Oh, my God!” a few too many times, and the supporting cast is filled with lively players. Beyond Dysart and Rigg, The Hospital features Roberts Blossom, Stockard Channing, Stephen Elliot, Katherine Hellmond, Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand, Frances Sternhagen, and Robert Walden. Moreover, the movie has unquestionable literary quality, and it’s a meticulously researched examination of a worthy topic. Yet it’s also bewildering and strident and ugly. Still, what else could be expected from a self-proclaimed examination of “the whole wounded madness of our times”? Happily, Chayefsky found a perfect vessel for his op-ed rage in his next project.

The Hospital: FUNKY

Being There (1979)

          After spending much of the ’70s starring in schlocky comedies, British funnyman Peter Sellers doggedly pursued the lead role in this adaptation of Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, recognizing a chance to deliver a subtle performance that would contrast his usual over-the-top silliness. The involvement of director Hal Ashby was an added incentive, since Ashby had scored with the offbeat comedies Harold and Maude (1971) and Shampoo (1975). Together, Ashby and Sellers present Kosinski’s social satire as a media-age fairy tale, to winning effect.
          When the story begins, Chance (Sellers) is the live-in gardener for a wealthy senior. Chance has never left his employer’s estate, and his main companion is television—Chance’s IQ is so low that he’s incapable of anything beyond bland remarks and mundane tasks. After his employer dies, lawyers inform a confused Chance that he must leave the estate, so he’s forced to explore the outside world for the first time in his life. Walking the streets of Washington, D.C., in a hand-be-down suit, Chance looks like a man of wealth and power though he’s actually a homeless simpleton.
           By the time night falls, Chance is bewildered and hungry, so he walks right into the path of a town car belonging to Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of an elderly but super-wealthy tycoon named Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas). Accepting an invitation to receive care from the Rand family physician (Richard Dysart), Chance becomes an unexpected but welcome houseguest.
           The comic premise of Being There is that modern Americans are so narcissistic they only hear what they want to hear. Thus, whenever Chance makes childlike comments about the only thing he knows, gardening, the Rands perceive him as a guru delivering wisdom through cryptic metaphors. Taking the contrivance to a wonderfully farcical extreme, the story reveals that Rand has the ear of the U.S. president (Jack Warden), and shows the president falling under Chance’s spell. The strange and surprising paths the narrative follows thereafter are better discovered than discussed, but suffice to say the filmmakers gracefully advance from an outlandish premise to a poetic ending.

          Being There is not without its flaws, since the movie is paced quite slowly and the tone is precious (lots of tasteful classical music played over painterly shots of the lavish Rand estate). The movie also walks a fine line by asking viewers to accept the absurd concept of Chance becoming an important national figure, and also asking viewers to empathize with Chance’s plight as a lost little boy. Is he a metaphor or a character?

          Notwithstanding these issues, Ashby creates a wonderful framework for the film’s rich performances. Dysart and David Clennon (as a litigator who suspects the truth about Chance) leaven oiliness with sincerity, while Warden energizes his scenes with amiable bluster. MacLaine is charming and funny as the woman who transposes her fantasies onto Chance, and Douglas earned an Academy Award for his sly turn as an aging tycoon with an eye on his legacy. As for Sellers, the impressive thing about his performance is how little he actually does onscreen; given the frenetic nature of his usual comedy acting, it’s wild to see him pull back completely.

Being There: RIGHT ON

The Hindenburg (1975)

          A generation before James Cameron put Kate and Leo aboard the Titanic, transforming a historical tragedy into the colorful backdrop for a silly fictional story, the makers of The Hindenburg used a similar gimmick for their movie about history’s most famous airship disaster. Based on a speculative book by Michael M. Mooney, the picture presents one of the sexiest theories for why the famous zeppelin crashed while docking in New Jersey after a 1937 transatlantic voyage from Nazi Germany, where the ship was considered a powerful symbol of Third Reich accomplishment. According to the movie, anti-Nazi conspirators planned to destroy the ship after the passengers were safely away, but then a perfect storm of circumstance led to the deaths of 36 people.

          Completely missing every opportunity presented by this edgy storyline, The Hindenburg is a slow-moving bore filled with drab subplots, trite characterizations, and woefully little action. Using a tired Agatha Christie-type structure, the movie introduces Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott), a German pilot sent by the Nazi high command to spy on crew and passengers because of a bomb threat that was issued prior to the ship’s departure from Germany. (In typical disaster-movie fashion, every sensible person in the story recommends delaying the trip, but the expeditious high command insists on a timely liftoff.)

          Once the Hindenburg is airborne, Ritter pokes around the lives of various people, looking for clues of bad intent, so the picture quickly falls into a clichéd cycle of melodramatic vignettes that are supposed to make the audience wonder (and care) who’s going to live and who’s going to die. Unfortunately, none of the characters is interesting—not the German countess who shares romantic history with Ritter; not the songwriter and clown performing anti-Hitler routines; not the twitchy crewman whom the audience can identify as the saboteur the first time he appears onscreen. It doesn’t help that the supporting cast almost exclusively comprises character actors: William Atherton, Robert Clary, Charles Durning, Richard Dysart, Burgess Meredith, Roy Thinnes, and Gig Young are all solid performers, but they’re not exactly the mid-’70s A-list. (Lending a pinch more marquee value is Anne Bancroft.)

          The film’s production values are impressive-ish, including vivid re-creations of the Hindenburg’s interiors, and some of the flying shots feature handsome old-school effects, but director Robert Wise’s dramaturgy is so turgid that even these quasi-spectacular elements are for naught. Viewers who soldier through the whole movie are rewarded with a 20-minute climax featuring a detailed re-enactment of the Hindenburg disaster, which Wise presents in black-and-white so he can intercut his footage with newsreel shots of the real Hindenburg. This laborious denouement offers thrills, but it’s all too little, too late.

          If nothing else, the filmmakers get points for the sheer nerve of ending this bloated whale of a movie with vintage audio from the famous “Oh, the humanity!” radio broadcast: The last thing viewers hear before the credits is a voice announcing, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Cinematic self-awareness?

The Hindenburg: LAME

The Terminal Man (1974)

          The innate cinematic potential of the late Michael Crichton’s novels, from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park and beyond, stemmed from the author’s style of blending provocative scientific concepts with potboiler storytelling, essentially delivering highbrow content in lowbrow wrapping. That being the case, it’s interesting to check out The Terminal Man, one of the few Crichton adaptations more suited to the art-house than the cineplex; writer-director Mike Hodges’ movie is a cerebral meditation rather than a visceral thriller. Though admirable, the approach simply doesn’t work, because while The Terminal Man has all of the requisite ethics-and-morality philosophizing that distinguishes the best Crichton stories, it lacks any excitement whatsoever, dragging along at a sluggish pace before transitioning to a violent but pretentiously orchestrated finale.

          It certainly doesn’t help that the central narrative hook is obscure. Harry Benson (George Segal) has a cerebral abnormality that causes him to periodically lapse into violent seizures, so medical geniuses including Dr. Ellis (Richard Dysart) and Dr. McPherson (Donald Moffat) invent a risky solution: With Harry’s consent, they implant electrodes in his brain, powered by an atomic battery in his chest, to override the seizures when they manifest. Crichton’s fanciful subject matter is that of high-tech alternatives to lobotomies, and there’s undoubtedly a bracing suspense story to be made from this source material. Unfortunately, Hodges bypasses thrills in favor of chilly Kubrickian observation, resulting in a flat wash of antiseptic surfaces and soft-spoken interactions.

          The movie goes wrong immediately, because Harry is already preparing for surgery when the story begins; we neither see him suffer the brain injury that led to his condition nor see him experience one of his murderous rages. As a result, we have no real sense of the hardship he’s trying to overcome. Then, just before the surgery, Harry’s girlfriend (Jill Clayburgh) brings him a disguise with which he plans to escape postoperative police custody. This murky plot ploint makes the whole story confusing: Does Harry plan to embrace the cure, or not? And if not, why is he going through with the surgery? Harry’s flirtations with sympathetic Dr. Janet Ross (Joan Hackett) further muddy the waters, because we can’t tell if his affections like with the doctor or his girlfriend.

          Worst of all, the first hour of the movie unfolds like a medical documentary, with barely any dramatic conflict in evidence. And then, once Harry escapes and (predictably) experiences rages because the surgery didn’t work, the movie becomes a trite killer-on-the-loose story delivered in ridiculously genteel style, via touches like a slow-mo stabbing montage set to melancholy Bach music. The Terminal Man has interesting ideas and thoughtful performances, but Hodges doesn’t even come close to approximating Crichton’s usual balance of intellectualism and escapism. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Terminal Man: FUNKY

Prophecy (1979)

Creature-feature stinker Prophecy is hilarious because no one involved seems to realize they’re making an awful movie. Set in northern Maine, the story concerns a clash between pollution-generating white folks and tree-hugging Native Americans, with a big-city physician (Robert Foxworth) and his knocked-up missus (Talia Shire) caught in between. So far, so good. But then the Natives start talking about a legendary nature spirit that’s angry with the way the local woods are being defiled, and the titular prophecy comes true when a pollution-spewed monster arrives to take out the reckless palefaces and anybody else who gets in the way of its goo-covered talons. Aside from a generally histrionic tone, the first clue the movie has gone off the rails is the appearance of Irish-Italian actor Armand Assante as a Native American; not only is he preposterously miscast, he overacts like someone put crank in his morning coffee each day. Foxworth is beardy and serious, offering a typical sane-in-a-world-gone-mad routine, while Shire tries to retain her dignity playing an underdeveloped character who’s mostly around to get endangered. Only the terrific Richard Dysart, playing an employee of the polluting mill, hits the right campy tone. John Frankenheimer, the venerable Manchurian Candidate director who spent much of the ’70s and ’80s making trash beneath his station, ensures unintentional humor by playing everything in Prophecy straight, like the scene of a giant mutated salmon leaping from the depths of a lake to chomp on a duck, or the absurd climax in which a mutated bear-thing tromps around while covered in glistening muck. Steadily building from silliness to outright stupidity, Prophecy is a must-see for fans of genre-movie train wrecks.

Prophecy: FUNKY