Massacre at Central High (1976)

          When the black comedy Heathers was released to considerable acclaim in 1988, some movie fans cried foul because Heathers appeared to cop its plot from Massacre at Central High, only with an ending that felt timid compared to the climax of the earlier picture. That said, Heathers boasts verbal wit and visual style that Massacre at Central High cannot match, since Massacre at Central High suffers from shortcomings including cheap production values and inconsistent acting, so in some ways the latter film improves upon its predecessor, whether the association between the movies was accidental or deliberate. In any event, watching Massacre at Central High today is a very different experience than watching it during the mid-’70s, when Massacre at Central High was originally released, or even the early ’80s, when I first encountered the film on cable. What once seemed like an outrageous revenge fantasy is now, sadly, an everyday reality—so if you or someone you love has felt the impact of a school shooting, chances are you will find Massacre at Central High sensationalistic and unpleasant.

          The movie opens with the arrival of a new student at a generic suburban high school in Southern California. David (Derrel Maury) doesn’t know anyone at his new school except Mark (Andrew Stevens), a classmate from a previous institution. Luckily for David, Mark belongs to a powerful clique of young men who rule the student body through intimidation. Yet David is an iconoclast with no stomach for bullies, so he rebuffs invitations to join the ruling class. This puts David’s old friend Mark in a tough spot, and it prompts the other bullies to make an example of the new guy. The bullies attack David in an auto garage, disengaging a hydraulic lift and dropping a car onto his leg. Once David recovers, he seeks revenge by murdering the bullies, one by one, until Mark realizes what’s happening and forces a confrontation.

          Writer-director Rene Daalder takes a highly stylized approach to the film’s storytelling, so virtually no adults are depicted onscreen; Daalder’s vision of American high school is that of a frontier where the strong make the rules and the weak resist at great peril. Some of the “kills” that Daalder stages are absurd, including an elaborate sequence revolving around hang-gliders, but the head of narrative steam that Daalder develops is potent. Furthermore, Daalder achieves that rare feat of actually changing the movie’s focus from one character to another midstream—David is introduced as the underdog hero, and then he morphs into a psychotic villain while Mark assumes the hero’s mantle. Tricky stuff.
          Make no mistake, Massacre at Central High is a low-budget B-movie, complete with a couple of leering nudie shots and a raft of underwritten supporting characters. (In an amusing bit of cinematic irony, one of the bullies’ victims is played by Robert Carradine, who later starred in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds.) Rendering these criticisms somewhat moot is Daalder’s determination to follow his outlandish premise all the way to its logical conclusion, visiting dark places that most teen movies of the same vintage fear to tread.

Massacre at Central High: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Long Riders

          Offering a sweeping view of the Jesse James story that includes the relationship between brothers Frank and Jesse James and their longtime comrades-in-arms, the Younger brothers, The Long Riders is exquisitely rendered on many levels, with crisp direction by Walter Hill, luminous photography by Ric Waite, and a plaintive score by Ry Cooder. The movie is best known for its cast, featuring four sets of real-life brothers. James and Stacy Keach play Jesse and Frank James; David, Keith, and Robert Carradine play the Youngers; Dennis and Randy Quaid play the Millers, two members of the James-Younger Gang; and Christopher and Nicholas Guest play the Fords, two unsavory wannabes whose association with the gang has tragic consequences. (At various stages in the project’s development, participation by Beau and Jeff Bridges and by Timothy Bottoms and his acting brothers was discussed.)
          Notwithstanding an unnecessarily long action scene featuring David Carradine—the cast’s biggest star at the time of filming—the stunt casting works beautifully, because the actors bring a natural rapport that suits the narrative. Oddly, however, the film rarely lingers on scenes of the gang members interacting as a group, with the obvious exception of elaborate robbery sequences. Rather, the picture mostly spotlights two-character scenes, such as long vignettes dramatizing the doomed romance between swaggering Cole Younger (David Carradine) and tough-as-nails prostitute Belle Starr (Pamela Reed). Wasn’t the point of casting so many famous brothers to create massive, Magnificent Seven-style scenes in which everyone onscreen is famous and interesting?
          In any event, The Long Riders is consistently entertaining, even though the storyline meanders in frustrating ways—lots of important things happen between scenes, and too much screen time gets chewed up by humdrum events. Directing his first Western, Hill shows a remarkable flair for the genre, using long lenses and judiciously selected slow motion to create a poetic sense of place. Whether he’s filming a weathered barn in the middle of a forest or a dusty street running through a grubby frontier town, Hill surrounds his performers with atmosphere. He also films action with his usual consummate skill, so every bullet means something and every horse fall has bone-crunching impact. (The climactic shootout in Northfield, Minnesota, is spectacular, albeit a bit overzealously edited.) Had the script been stronger, The Long Riders could have become a masterpiece instead of a solid attempt at mythmaking. Unfortunately, the screenplay is a hodgepodge setting brilliant flourishes within a shaky structure.
          James Keach, who has enjoyed a long career in front of and behind the camera without ever becoming a marquee name, developed the piece with an eye toward costarring with his more successful sibling, Stacy. (Both Keaches are credited as cowriters and coproducers.) Yet instead of following the obvious path by casting Stacy as Jesse, the brothers installed James in the leading role, presumably to create a star-making moment. This choice hurt the movie, because while Stacy’s charismatic intensity burns like a bright candle in the background, the less expressive James sets a too-reserved tone. David Carradine nearly steals the movie, since he gets most of the best lines and scenes, and some of the film’s excellent players (notably Keith Carradine and Dennis Quaid) are badly underused. Nonetheless, the many fine attributes of The Long Riders make watching the movie a rewarding experience.

The Long Riders: GROOVY

The Pom Pom Girls (1976)

Rather than being the sexy romp its marketing materials promise, The Pom Pom Girls is a boring hodgepodge of clichéd teen-cinema tropes. The picture throws together cheerleading, dating, drinking, driving, football, pranks, rebellion, and sex, but fails to generate interest because the characters are so anonymous and the storyline is so enervated. In fact, one must exercise tremendous generosity to suggest that The Pom Pom Girls even has a storyline, since the movie is really just a series of vignettes about teenagers making mischief. Filmmaker Joseph Ruben, who later scored with big-budget thrillers including Sleeping With the Enemy (1991), co-wrote and directed this drive-in dud for the schlock merchants at Crown International Pictures as one of his first projects. Ruben assembled a cast of attractive young people, some of whom periodically disrobe, but The Pom Pom Girls doesn’t even have the conviction of a proper exploitation movie; in lieu of truly raunchy scenes, the picture offers such tame distractions as a cafeteria food fight, a dirt-bike race, and a “chicken run” climax borrowed, shamelessly, from the adolescent-angst classic Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The main characters are football star Jesse (Michael Mullins) and reckless classmate Johnnie (Robert Carradine), along with their girlfriends, cheerleaders Laurie (Jennifer Ashley) and Sally (Lisa Reeves); these leading actors give performances running the gamut from barely adequate to forgettable. The movie tracks the main quartet’s rivalry with students from a neighboring school, as well as the group’s romantic entanglements. While a smidgen of dramatic conflict emerges during arguments between Jesse and his coach (James Gammon), most of the film’s screen time is wasted on trite situations: patrons at a drive-in restaurant getting impatient because the carhop is humping a customer in a van, teenagers stealing a fire truck in order to hose down a rival school’s football team during a practice, and so on. As for the title’s implication that the movie will focus on cheerleading, Laurie and Sally don’t actually wield pom-poms until the 50-minute mark.

The Pom Pom Girls: LAME

Joyride (1977)

          Featuring a cast of attractive young actors, a somewhat lurid storyline, and the unique atmospherics of Pacific Northwest locations (subbing for Alaska), Joyride should be a distracting romp about ’70s youths seeking adventure in the boonies. Weirdly, however, good intentions derailed the movie’s potential. Instead of being light entertainment with a sprinkling of sex and violence, Joyride sits uncomfortably on the fence between comedy and drama, and the film’s storyline is over-plotted. Lots of things happen, but they aren’t compatible with each other, and they don’t contribute to an overall impact. In trying to do a lot, the filmmakers somehow accomplished very little.

          The picture begins in L.A., where friends Scott (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and John (Robert Carradine), together with John’s girlfriend, Susie (Melanie Griffith), decide to leave the big city for a new life as independent salmon fishers in Alaska. Arriving in the 49th state, the kids are chagrined to discover that work won’t be as easy to come by as they expected. The trio is also riven by romantic tension; not only does Scott lack a female companion, but some degree of threesome activity is implied. The story gets turgid once Scott and John start mixing it up with locals, because Joyride grinds through repetitive scenes of bar fights and such—a thread that culminates with a silly pissing-contest scene—until a fourth member joins the main group. She’s Cindy (Anne Lockhart), a sexy local who’s alternately presented as a prostitute, a tease, and a co-conspirator in a criminal enterprise. After hooking up with Scott, Cindy participates in a strange scheme whereby the Los Angelenos “kidnap” her and seek ransom from her employer, a pipeline company. Whatever.

          Directed and co-written by admirable B-movie helmer Joseph Ruben (who later scored with pictures including the 1991 Julia Roberts thriller Sleeping With the Enemy), this American International Pictures release features a likeably loose vibe and stronger production values than those of the average AIP joint; the abundant location photography of open spaces covered with brooding skies lends credibility. But given the lack of a meaty central storyline, the picture sprawls across 92 logy minutes without any sense of purpose. Even the gimmick of all four leads being second-generation actors doesn’t add anything beyond a marketing hook. (Each of the four actors is okay in his or her undemanding role, with Arnaz the weakest link, but none does anything particularly special.) So, while there’s plenty of diverting stuff in Joyride, from the pop-song score peppered with Electric Light Orchestra hits to the topless scenes featuring Griffith and/or Lockhart, Joyride ends up feeling like a movie caught in an identity crisis. Is it a counterculture story about youths looking for a simpler life away from civilization? Is it a lovers-on-the-run crime saga? Is it a melodrama about romantic entanglements? Actually, it’s all of those things—and less.

Joyride: FUNKY

The Cowboys (1972)

          Although John Wayne’s actual cinematic swan song was The Shootist (1976), which depicts an aging gunfighter’s quest for death with dignity, the Duke’s earlier film The Cowboys is in many ways a richer closing statement about the themes Wayne spent decades exploring in Western movies. Instead of merely pondering the question of whether a man who lives by the gun must die by the gun—the poignant central theme of The Shootist—The Cowboys explores all the qualities, bad and good, that defined the Duke’s screen persona. His character, Wil Andersen, combines frontier values, heroic self-sacrifice, macho stoicism, and, of course, that most American of qualities: rugged individualism. The fact that Andersen’s journey inadvertently inspires a group of boys to become young men molded in Andersen’s honorable image perfectly echoes the manner in which Wayne’s characters inspired generations of moviegoers. So, whether you love or hate Wayne’s on- and off-screen politics, it’s easy to appreciate the elegance of this picture’s symbiosis between star and story.

          Based on a novel by William Dale Jennings and adapted for the screen by Jennings and the husband-and-wife duo Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., The Cowboys tells a simple story about noble characters clashing with craven ones. In the beginning of the movie, rancher Andersen preps for a cattle drive until his crew abruptly quits to join the Gold Rush. In short order, Andersen finds himself interviewing an unlikely set of replacements—several schoolboys, some teens and some even younger. When the kids display unexpected determination, he agrees to hire them. However, word of available work also attracts a gaggle of varmints led by Asa Watts (Bruce Dern), whom Andersen quickly identifies as a dangerous type. Andersen refuses to hire Asa’s gang, and then sets off on the drive with the kids as his crew. A series of frontier adventures ensues, during which Andersen gruffly mentors the boys on what it takes to succeed in the cattle biz. Meanwhile, Asa’s nefarious gang trails the cowboys, eventually leading to an infamous showdown between Dern and Wayne—the climax of the duel won’t be spoiled here, but suffice to say one single moment helped cement Dern’s typecasting as a crazed villain.

          Although the storyline of The Cowboys is so schematic as to seem a bit like a fable, the piece works—mightily—because of immaculate craftsmanship and vivacious performances. Director Mark Rydell, himself a thespian, does a gorgeous job of blending different types of acting, so everything from Wayne’s stylization to Dern’s improvisation feels unified; Rydell also draws fine work from young performers including Robert Carradine, who made his screen debut in The Cowboys. (Grown-ups in the fine supporting cast include Roscoe Lee Browne, Colleen Dewhurst, and Slim Pickens.) Cinematographer Robert Surtees captures the rugged beauty of untarnished landscapes, while composer John Williams’ music strikes just the right balance of excitement and wistfulness. And if the movie’s a bit bloated at 131 minutes, so what? Thanks to its careful treatment of resonant themes, The Cowboys is arguably Wayne’s best film of the ’70s.

The Cowboys: RIGHT ON

Blackout (1978)

A queasy hybrid of the crime-thriller and disaster genres, Blackout has, as its title suggests, a solid premise: When the lights go out in New York City, criminal types go on a rampage. Unfortunately, bad acting, a skinflint budget, and a terrible script make Blackout a study in monotony. The plot centers on a group of lunatics who escape from a transport van and terrorize the residents of a high-rise apartment building. Using a narrative gimmick later employed to better effect in Die Hard (1988), the hero is a lone street cop (James Mitchum) who follows the criminals into the building and tries to take them down one by one. There are a few perfunctory scenes outside the building, like drab vignettes in a power station, but the picture mostly comprises unattractively photographed interior scenes of bad people doing bad things. The main crook is Christie (Robert Carradine), an anti-corporate terrorist who inexplicably transforms into a petty thief; he enlists the less-intelligent thugs from the transport van to serve as muscle during a robbery spree, giving them license to rape and kill at their leisure. It’s safe to say that when the loveable geek from the Revenge of the Nerds movies is playing a criminal mastermind, expectations should be kept low; similarly, the presence of a leading man whose only claim to fame is being Robert Mitchum’s son doesn’t promise much elevation of the material. As in most disaster-themed pictures, some supporting actors provide momentary distraction. Dancer/singer June Allyson trudges through pointless scenes as a woman caring for her invalid husband, Belinda J. Montgomery is earnest as a rape victim, and Jean-Pierre Aumont is likeably urbane as a pauper living alone with his dog. The movie’s “big name,” Ray Milland, who had a bad habit of showing up in low-budget crap and looking ashamed for doing so, is characteristically obnoxious as a rich man who cares more about his paintings than his wife. Badly made, consistently boring, and performed with understandable indifference, Blackout represents the total waste of a good idea.

Blackout: SQUARE