Wild in the Sky (1972)

          A youth-culture riff on Dr. Strangelove (1964), Wild in the Sky has elements that might have cohered under stronger artistic leadership, but there’s a reason you’ve never heard of director William T. Naud, who also cowrote the picture. His storytelling wobbles between haphazard and inept, so he was not the guy to integrate dark sociopolitical commentary with wannabe-poignant character arcs and goofy physical comedy. It doesn’t help that the movie’s performances are all over the place, from Keenan Wynn’s blustery villainy to Brandon de Wilde’s quiet sensitivity; similarly, it doesn’t help that the picture was made on such a meager budget that all of its shots of airplanes in flight are grainy stock footage. To appreciate the picture’s meager virtues, the charitable viewer must overlook a lot of glaring flaws.
          After three young activists escape a prison-transport vehicle, they flee to an Air Force base and sneak into the belly of a B-52. Once the plane takes flight with a nuclear payload, the activists hijack the aircraft, thus causing havoc among military officials, some of whom are worried the crisis will expose a scheme involving misappropriated defense funds. Among the film’s characters are an uptight pilot hiding the fact that he’s gay, a radio operator who makes dirty phone calls, and a debauched flyer who suggests the hijackers aim the plane toward Hamburg so he can party in that city’s red-light district. Theoretically, any of these characterizations is workable for satirical purposes, but the movie also includes overly cartoonish characterizations, such as the U.S. president who spends his downtime zooming around in a dune buggy.
          The film’s eclectic cast includes many actors familiar to viewers of ’60s/’70s TV: Georg Stanford Brown, Bernie Kopell, Robert Lansing, Tim O’Connor, etc. Yet much of the screen time gets consumed by Wynn (not coincidentally a holdover from Dr. Strangelove), and his shouting gets tiresome. Plus, in a sign of true desperation, the filmmakers enlisted Dub Taylor to unleash his angry-redneck shtick during a few scenes. Arguably, the standout performance is given by Dick Gautier (of Get Smart and many other things) because his rendition of the debauched flyer achieves Lebowski levels of chill. Alas, too much of the picture gets mired in comedy bits that don’t connect. In one scene, characters play hot potato with a grenade; in another, an officer demands that an injured soldier set aside his crutches to salute, causing the injured soldier to pratfall. FYI, Wild in the Sky was re-released as Black Jack, so don’t be fooled by the Blaxploitation-style poster emphasizing Brown after his breakout success on TV show The Rookies.

Wild in the Sky: FUNKY

Thirty Dangerous Seconds (1972)

          In the screenwriting world, it’s commonly understood that most weak scripts falter in the second act, because it’s easy to intrigue with a lively setup and to fabricate satisfactory endings by resolving things, whereas maintaining logic and momentum in between these milestones is the tricky part. Therefore it’s peculiar to encounter a movie along the lines of Thirty Dangerous Seconds, which starts poorly, hits its stride midway through, and stumbles again toward the end—a solid second act without benefit of good first and third acts is a rare thing. Anyway, Thirty Dangerous Seconds is a low-budget crime thriller shot in Oklahoma, with clumsy regional actors supporting imported Hollywood leads.

          Briefly, here’s the laborious setup. A down-on-his-luck geologist (Robert Lansing) robs an armored car, but at the very same moment, a trio of professional criminals attempts the very same crime. When the geologist gets the loot instead of the professionals, the professionals kidnap the geologist’s wife, then threaten her life unless the geologist surrenders the stolen money. Much of the picture depicts intrigue related to meet-ups between the geologist and either the crooks or random folks enlisted by the crooks to function as surrogates. Colorful characters include an actor playing a monk, a fellow dressed as a clown, and a little person on roller skates. In its best moments—very often just fleeting instants within otherwise problematic scenes—Thirty Dangerous Seconds is a sorta-clever, sorta-whimsical riff on crime-flick tropes. Lansing imbues early scenes with self-loathing before shifting to a kind of petty crankiness, yet this entertaining posturing ceases to make sense whenever the viewer remembers that the character’s beloved wife is in mortal danger.

          And that’s the problem with Thirty Dangerous Seconds overall: The elements don’t harmonize. In a better film of this type, such as a good Elmore Leonard adaptation, attitude and logic mesh organically. In Thirty Dangerous Seconds, the lighthearted stuff clashes with the nasty stuff, the criminal scheming defies recognizable human-behavior patterns, and so on. In short, Thirty Dangerous Seconds is an amateur-hour endeavor—but it also happens to feature a few decent throwaway jokes, like the shot of actors dressed as monks while reading Playboy. And, lest this point get overlooked, recall that bit with the little person on roller skates. In the absence of real cinematic quality, flashes of lively eccentricity count for something.

Thirty Dangerous Seconds: FUNKY

Bittersweet Love (1976)

           This offbeat melodrama dramatizes the repercussions of accidental incest. Directed by journeyman helmer David Miller, the picture is competent and even rather sensitive, benefiting from sincere leading performances by Meredith Baxter-Birney and Scott Hylands as lovers who discover they’re siblings. (Don’t be fooled by Lana Turner’s top billing, since she has an important but secondary role.) The question, of course, is whether the world needed a story about incest, since it’s not as if the circumstances portrayed in the narrative reflect some recurring social problem. Quite to the contrary, the filmmakers twist themselves in knots to contrive a situation resulting in a brother unknowingly marrying his own sister.

          Anyway, architect Michael (Hylands) has a meet-cute with single girl Patricia (Baxter-Birney). They fall in love quickly, arranging to wed in Canada at the home of Michael’s parents, Howard (Robert Lansing) and Marian (Celeste Holm). All the while, Patricia’s wealthy parents, Ben (Robert Alda) and Claire (Turner), are traveling overseas. Eventually, the newlyweds visit Ben and Claire with photos from their nuptials, and Claire recoils when she sees a photo of Howard. Turns out she had an affair with him while she was courting Ben, and she never told Ben their daughter was fathered by another man. She never informed Howard, either. That is, until she calls him up for a meeting and shares the sordid news. Adding urgency to the whole business is the revelation that Patricia has become pregnant. How can Claire tell Ben of her infidelity? How can both sets of parents break their children’s hearts? What will Patricia do about the baby? You get the idea.

          Even though the premise of the movie is contrived, the rest of Bittersweet Love is reasonable. The way that Claire’s secret is revealed to characters one at a time makes sense, while also creating opportunities to experience different types of shocked reactions. Howard, who hadn’t yet met his wife when he slept with Claire, responds with pragmatism and sadness, his loved ones the victims of Claire’s duplicity. Ben, conversely, reacts with the pain of betrayal. As for Michael and Patricia, their reactions comprise most of the film’s content, and it’s interesting to see how the choices the filmmakers make about who accepts and who rejects the new reality parallel traditional gender roles. One could even go so far as to say that a few grains of truth find their way into the overheated soup of the film’s various emotional confrontations.

Bittersweet Love: FUNKY

Acapulco Gold (1976)

          A lighthearted crime drama about drug smuggling that takes place in Mexico, Hawaii, and the waters in between, Acapulco Gold is contrived, episodic, and silly, with more than a few moments that defy logic. In short, it’s a bad movie, and no subsequent praise should dispel that impression. However, there’s a certain easygoing energy to the piece thanks to spunky performances and to flourishes that, in a different cinematic context, would be referred to as “whimsical.” While viewers seeking a movie that’s credible or substantial should look elsewhere, those up for 105 minutes of bargain-basement escapism will find Acapulco Gold periodically diverting.

          The singularly atrocious Marjoe Gortner stars as Ralph, an insurance salesman who gets into a hassle while vacationing in Mexico. A nun asks him to hold a piñata, and then cops descend on Ralph because the piñata is full of drugs. He’s imprisoned for holding someone else’s stash, and no one believes he’s innocent. While behind bars, Ralph meets a drunken American sailor named Carl (Robert Lansing), and they become friends. Later, when a wealthy criminal named Morgan (John Harkins) hires Carl to sail Morgan’s boat from Mexico to Hawaii, Carl springs Ralph from jail and hires Ralph as his first mate. Concurrently, several federal agents from the mainland converge on Hawaii because of word about a big impending drug deal. Throw in a beautiful young woman named Sally (Randi Oakes), currently enmeshed with Morgan but open to Ralph’s advances, and you’ve got the set-up for an adventure of sorts.

          Part of what makes Acapulco Gold a hoot to watch is that many scenes transpire without anything actually happening. A good one-tenth of the movie comprises aimless vignettes in which Gortner’s and Lansing’s characters simply hang out in bars or on the deck of Morgan’s boat. Lansing is surprisingly engaging in these scenes, all cynicism and sarcasm, whereas Gortner contributes only his signature vapidity. Among the supporting players, Ed Nelson gives a fun turn as a swaggering D.E.A. agent, Harkins lends snobbish corpulence, and Oakes provides sun-kissed eye candy. There’s also a long helicopter flight past scenic locations in Hawaii, an explosion, and a runaway golf cart. It’s all quite random, but every so often, something colorful happens.

Acapulco Gold: FUNKY