The Passover Plot (1975)

          Although the book upon which it’s based was published a decade earlier, The Passover Plot fits nicely into the mid-’70s zeitgeist by combining a conspiracy theory with pseudoscientific theorizing about the life of Christ. Because, hey, in a time preoccupied by Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Zapruder film, why not make a buck by challenging the belief system that gives meaning to millions of lives? The kicker is that for most of its running time, The Passover Plot offers a fairly reverent depiction of the Gospel, because the wild conspiracy theory that gives the picture its name doesn’t surface until the final scenes. The movie’s first hour is quite dull, a problem exacerbated by leading man Zalman King’s weird performance as Jesus, but once the filmmakers start tweaking Biblical lore, things get interesting. A couple of scenes even have a bit of emotional heft, though of course any remarks about The Passover Plot should be couched with acknowledgements that some viewers may find the entire picture heretical and/or offensive.

          The basis for this movie was a popular book by Hugh J. Schonfield, whose research led him to believe that Christ was not divine. Specifically, Schonfield claimed that while on the cross, Christ was given a drug that simulated death by slowing his heart, allowing apostles to claim his “body” and arrange a sighting of the “resurrected” Christ before he died from his wounds. Rather than a miracle worker, Schonfield suggested that Christ was a heroic revolutionary skilled at manipulating public opinion. Getting to this controversial material faster would’ve improved The Passover Plot greatly.

         That said, some stuff works even in the dull stretches. Donald Pleasence lends surprising poise to his turn as Pontius Pilate, eschewing his normal eccentricity; Scott Wilson gives a poignant performance as Judas; and Dan Hedaya is similarly touching as a conflicted apostle. (The movie employs Jewish names for characters, so Jesus is Yeshua, Judas is Judah, and so on.) Far more problematic is King, who channels palpable intensity but generally stares ahead vacantly in most scenes like he’s a model in a Calvin Klein commercial. Things get worse when he pours on the gas, especially during a ridiculous screaming scene. His acting, which runs the gamut from bland to terrible, greatly diminishes the film.

          On the other hand, the great composer Alex North contributes some majestic music, and cinematographer Adam Greenberg conjures a few beautiful lighting schemes. Like most problematic movies, The Passover Plot is neither entirely a failure nor entirely a success, and each viewer will have a different opinion about whether the good outweighs the bad. For this viewer, the picture was nearly redeemed by a compelling final act, though I confess partiality to Hedaya, Pleasence, and Wilson. If you seek out The Passover Plot, proceed with caution—and skepticism.

The Passover Plot: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Ninth Configuration

          Scary, strange, surreal, and yet also very funny at times, the offbeat drama/thriller The Ninth Configuration marked the directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the Oscar-winning novelist and screenwriter of The Exorcist (1973). Blending themes of madness and militarism with a narrative setup suitable for some old-fashioned haunted-house shocker, Blatty adapted the movie from his 1978 novel of the same name, which was in turn extrapolated from one of his earlier books, the 1966 novel Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! Employing an exceptional group of actors, some of whom reconvened for Blatty’s only other directorial endeavor—the underrated sequel The Exorcist III (1990)—The Ninth Configuration uses humor and terror to weave a bizarre tapestry of existentialism, spirituality, and violence. Superficially, it’s about psychiatry, space travel, and Vietnam, and there’s even room for a bar brawl. The Ninth Configuration doesn’t always work, because some scenes are confusing, and because parsing what the whole thing means once it’s over is challenging. Nonetheless, this is a unique piece of work from a wildly creative individual unafraid to tackle the heaviest of subject matter.

          Set in the Pacific Northeast, the picture takes place in a castle that the U.S. government has repurposed as an asylum. (If you’re already have trouble buying that outlandish notion, this movie is not for you.) One stormy night, a fierce-looking Marine officer named Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach) arrives to join the psychiatric staff at the facility. He encounters a spectrum of bizarre patients. Major Namimak (Moses Gunn) dresses like Superman and believes he has extraordinary powers. Lieutenant Reno (Jason Miller) fancies himself a theater director as he oversees rehearsals for a production of Hamlet featuring dogs instead of humans. The sensitive Captain Cutshaw (Scott Wilson) trained to be an astronaut until he had a nervous breakdown just before takeoff for his moon shot. And so on.

          In its wildest scenes, The Ninth Configuration features the tightly wound Kane walking through the corridors of the castle with absurd behavior happening all around him, suggesting the idea of an emotionally vulnerable individual grasping for pieces of sanity in a world gone mad. The man responsible for all of the chaos is Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders), the facility’s chief administrator, who believes letting patients act out fantasies helps the healing process. Another nuance? Fell and Kane are tasked with determining which patients are genuinely ill and which are faking to avoid military service. Yet the most explosive X factor in this fraught environment is Kane, whose frightening capacity for rage has surprising connections to an ugly battlefield incident in the past.

          Working with the great British cinematographer Gerry Fisher, whose images mesh intimacy with grandiosity in clever ways, Blatty generates a one-of-a-kind feel. Since anything can happen, owing to the lunatics-running-the-asylum milieu, The Ninth Configuration is consistently surprising even though it’s rarely believable—or, to be more precise, even though it’s rarely believable in terms of logic. On an emotional level, the movie connects big-time, especially because the acting is so robust. Keach’s signature intensity has terrifying power. Wilson reveals heartbreaking vulnerability. Flanders, Gunn, Miller, Neville Brand, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinell, and others populate the hospital with wounded souls distinguished by amusing eccentricities and/or poignant psychological wounds. Does it all spin out of control toward the end? Somewhat. But does Blatty create dozens of unique moments that radiate beauty and pain and wonderment along the way? Absolutely.

          FYI, the picture was released into theaters twice, once as The Ninth Configuration and once as Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane. Although it flopped both times, subsequent exhibition on home video and television has earned the picture well-deserved status as a minor cult classic.

The Ninth Configuration: GROOVY

Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973)

          On the plus side, the dueling-rednecks picture Lolly-Madonna XXX features elegant cinematography, an impressive cast, a plaintive score, and a whopper of a final act filled with bloodshed and tragedy. For fans of melodramatic pulp, there’s a lot to savor in this fictional story that vaguely evokes the Hatfield-McCoy mythos. Nonetheless, the film’s weaknesses are plentiful. The basic premise is awkward and contrived, the middle of the movie is dull and uneventful, and many of the character relationships stretch credibility to the breaking point. One can feel the filmmakers trying to push all the pieces in place for a spectacular finale, but the elements never cohere dramatically or logically. Considering that the movie was co-written by future mystery-fiction queen Sue Grafton, who adapted Lolly-Madonna XXX from her own novel of the same name, it’s fair to say that Grafton was still learning how to construct plots.

          Here’s the iffy set-up. In backwoods Tennessee, two families have been fighting for years because one bought a piece of a land that previously belonged to the other. The Feathers are led by stoic patriarch Laban (Rod Steiger), while the Gutshalls answer to the highly principled Pap (Robert Ryan). One day, the Gutshall boys leave a postcard in the Feather mailbox, indicating that a young woman named Lolly Madonna is scheduled to arrive in the region, with plans to marry one of the Gutshall boys. The Feathers head to the bus station and kidnap a young woman named Roonie Gill (Season Hubley), whom they mistakenly believe is Lolly Madonna. In reality, there is no such woman, and the postcard was a ruse to get the Feathers away from their moonshine operation so the Gutshalls could vandalize the still. Despite Roonie’s vehement objections, the Feathers refuse to believe she’s not the intended bride of a Gutshall, so they try to leverage her as a hostage. Somehow, even though Roonie has no actual relationship with the Gutshalls, this scheme exacerbates the rivalry, triggering arson, rape, theft, and eventually murder. Does any of this hogwash make sense? No.

          But consider the vivacious actors populating the cast. Jeff Bridges. Gary Busey. Ed Lauter. Randy Quaid. Scott Wilson. Not too shabby. Moreover, director Richard C. Sarafian does his usual frustrating job, rendering richly textured images and staging individual scenes well even as he fails to convey a persuasive overarching story. At least the movie’s final half-hour is memorably grim, and it’s hard to shake the weird vignettes with Lauter—not only does the tough-guy actor pretend to give a rockabilly concert performance while standing alone in a hog pen, but he also plays a rape scene while wearing lingerie and makeup. You don’t see that sort of thing every day. Oh, and for what it’s worth, Bridges is terrific, as usual, giving a better performance than the movie probably deserves, even as Ryan underplays and Steiger thunders for the entertainment of those in the cheap seats.

Lolly-Madonna XXX: FUNKY

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 New Centurions (1972)

          This erratic but nervy film was released at a time when popular portrayals of policemen were mostly limited to extremes—the sanitized, such as the 1968-1975 TV series Adam-12, and the scandalous, such as the 1971 feature Dirty Harry. Based on the first novel by real-life former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh, The New Centurions occupies an unsettling place between these approaches. Characterizing policemen as victims of physical and psychological violence who are lucky to reach retirement alive—and sane—the movie is melodramatic and occasionally overwrought. Yet, when viewed as either an intense character drama or as a historical corrective to one-sided narratives about law enforcement, The New Centurions gains a certain degree of validity. It’s also quite well made, with excellent long-lens photography by Ralph Woolsey capturing the soulless textures of Los Angeles in a way that accentuates the desensitizing grind of police patrols.

          Furthermore, the movie contains a handful of vivid performances, from the showy leading turns by Stacy Keach and George C. Scott to colorful bit parts played by an eclectic roster of actors including William Atherton, Erik Estrada, Clifton James, Ed Lauter, Roger E. Mosley, Pepe Serna, James B. Sikking, and Dolph Sweet. And then there are the actors whose significant supporting turns complement the rhythms of Keach’s and Scott’s work—Jane Alexander, Rosalind Cash, and Scott Wilson, all three of whom deliver performances filled with palpable emotion. So even if screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and director Richard Fleischer let the story run amok at times, The New Centurions contains dozens of moments that connect.

          Although it’s essentially an ensemble piece, the movie focuses on Roy Fehler (Keach), a rookie cop who hits the streets right after the opening credits and is partnered with veteran Sergeant Kilvinski (Scott). At first, Fehler is a soft-spoken married man working his way through law school. As the movie progresses, he becomes a cynical adrenaline junkie who tanks his marriage with a combination of alcoholism and recklessness. Meanwhile, Kilvinski ages out of the force and confronts the depressing truth that he’s lost without a badge. This psychoanalytic approach to police drama is commonplace today, but it was innovative in 1972, which is why it’s easy forgive the filmmakers—and Wambaugh—for the excesses of the story, all of which serve useful metaphorical purposes. Every death in The New Centurions adds to the overall theme of the price that brave, crazy, and/or naïve men pay for doing a dangerous job.

          After all, who could be expected to keep their wits when faced with an endless cycle of new crooks and recidivists? “There’s always another asshole on the street,” Kilvinski says at one point. “You can’t stop ’em all.” And, as Fehler remarks in another scene, it’s not as if the public’s support for cops is overwhelming, because the film is set in a time when street justice was complicated by the rise of the suspect-rights movement: “Last year, everybody was screaming about the lack of freedom—this year, everybody’s screaming about the lack of control.” In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The New Centurions: GROOVY

The Great Gatsby (1974)

          While this much-maligned adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age novel is highly problematic, it’s not the disaster its reputation might suggest. And while the movie’s biggest shortcomings are indecisive direction and poorly conceived leading roles, it must be acknowledged that the source material’s inherent ambiguity prevents easy translation to the cinematic medium.

          The basics of the movie’s storyline are intact from the novel. In 1920s Long Island, carefree young socialite Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow) endures a financially comfortable but loveless marriage to the abusive and adulterous Tom Buchanan (Bruce Dern). One summer, Daisy’s life is brightened by the arrival on Long Island of a favorite cousin, comparatively penniless Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston). Nick resides in a small cottage next to the palatial estate of Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford), a mystery man who throws lavish parties that he doesn’t attend.

          Jay befriends Nick as a means of arranging a meeting with Daisy, whom we learn was in love with Jay prior to her marriage. The Daisy/Jay romance was originally thwarted by Jay’s poverty, so in the intervening period he acquired great wealth through dubious means. A dreamer mired in the past, Jay hopes to steal Daisy away from her unworthy husband and reclaim the idylls of yesteryear. Fitzgerald’s novel is a meditation on the blithe manner in which the rich trifle with the lives of the poor, and the book explores such rich themes as ambition, jealousy, self-delusion, and self-destruction.

          The screenplay, credited to Francis Ford Coppola but reportedly tweaked by director Jack Clayton and producer David Merrick, simplifies Fitzgerald’s story in hurtful ways, accentuating some of the novel’s least interesting aspects—the seductive glamour of Roaring ’20s clothing, the silly revelry of Prohibition-era parties, the trashy extremes of a subplot involving Tom’s déclassé mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Karen Black). Clearly, when the adaptation of a book famed for its internal qualities gets mired in surfaces, there’s a major disconnect on some level.

          Furthermore, it’s no coincidence that Clayton didn’t direct another Hollywood movie for nearly a decade after The Great Gatsby: His storytelling is so awkward that he sometimes contrives complex tracking shots that land in the wrong place, with a key character obscured while delivering dialogue, and Clayton gets completely lost during party scenes, lingering on unimportant details like the flailing hem of a flapper’s skirt while she’s doing the Charleston.

          The lead performances are similarly unfocused. Farrow is far too stilted to evoke Daisy’s signature quality of intoxicating carelessness, and Farrow’s clumsy reactions during the most dramatic scenes recall the over-the-top mugging of silent films. Redford fares better, nailing several important nuances, though he seems like he’s in a different movie from everyone else—he’s striving for quiet depth while other actors settle for loud melodrama. Waterston finds a comfortable middle ground between the extremes of Farrow’s and Redford’s performances, and the scenes between him and Redford are the movie’s best.

          Dern is very good, too, though he’s boxed in by a one-note characterization, and supporting player Scott Wilson is quietly moving in a key role. As for Black, there’s a reason a punk band bears the ironic name The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black—the operatic style she displays here is an acquired taste.

          The commercial and critical failure of this movie was enough to scare Hollywood away from Fitzgerald’s book for decades, as had happened previously with a reckless 1949 adaptation starring Alan Ladd; notwithstanding a bland TV version broadcast in 2000, Hollywood avoided The Great Gatsby until 2012, when flamboyant director Baz Luhrmann mounted a lavish new version (in 3D!) starring Leonardo Di Caprio as Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby: FUNKY