The Chicken Chronicles (1977)

          The teen-sex romp The Chicken Chronicles is a pleasant surprise for many reasons. First, it’s almost entirely bereft of sleaze—don’t look for nude scenes here—which means that director Frank Simon and his collaborators exhibited great restraint given the exploitive norm of the teen-sex genre. Second, the movie stars the much-maligned Steve Guttenberg, appearing in his first significant movie role, and he gives a charming performance. Third, the script by Paul Diamond, who adapted his novel of the same name, treats female characters with intelligence and respect, which is even more of a rarity in the teen-sex genre than restraint. Yes, The Chicken Chronicles has the usual tropes of cheap pranks played against school officials, nostalgia for a lost era, a wild party, and a young man questing for carnal bliss. Yet in this context, the tropes are enjoyable and organic instead of contrived and trite.
           To be clear, The Chicken Chronicles pales next to, say, American Graffiti (1973). Accepted on its own humble terms, however, The Chicken Chronicles is endearing and fun.

          Set in Beverly Hills circa 1969, the story revolves around senior David Kessler (Guttenberg), a wealthy jock with girl trouble and a rebellious attitude. The rebelliousness manifests as friction with uptight vice principal Mr. Nastase (Ed Lauter), and the girl trouble stems from all the obstacles that David’s beautiful girlfriend, Margaret (Lisa Reeves), puts in the way of consummating their relationship. As the movie progresses, David becomes more and more frustrated because of Margaret, so he acts out in ways that threaten his graduation—no small problem, with the shadow of the Vietnam draft looming over him. Other elements of David’s life include the misadventures of his dorky younger brother, an unexpected relationship with a girl who is wrongly perceived as the school slut, and David’s shenanigans at a fast-food joint owned by the cheerfully vulgar Max Ober (Phil Silvers).

          While none of this material cuts very deep, the specifics of David’s life feel authentic and complete—everything from the upper-crust mom who wires her house with intercoms to the Hawaiian buddy who weeps after flushing his pot stash during a moment of panic. Better still, the way the major female characters develop over the course of the story makes David’s growth believable. (The plot even has some genuinely serious elements, though sexual yearning and tomfoolery occupy center stage.) More than anything, The Chicken Chronicles reminds viewers that movies about adolescence need not be adolescent.

The Chicken Chronicles: GROOVY

1980 Week: Can’t Stop the Music & Xanadu

          Since disco was already dying by the time these two spectacularly bad dance-themed movies were released, it’s not fair to say that either picture killed disco. Nonetheless, the sleazy Can’t Stop the Music and the wholesome Xanadu certainly inflicted wounds. Starring the Village People, Can’t Stop the Music is perplexing right from the first frame, because the opening-credits sequence features Steve Guttenberg roller-skating through New York City, in a split-screen effect, as he listens to the Village People on his personal radio and as the credits reveal the motley crew assembled for the movie. Beyond Guttenberg, the cast includes athlete Bruce Jenner and sexpot Valerie Perrine. Stranger still, the picture was directed by Nancy Walker, best known for playing greasy-spoon waitress “Rosie” in ’70s commercials for Bounty paper towels.

          Can’t Stop the Music purports to tell the story of the Village People’s formation, and like everything else related to the ridiculous vocal group behind “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.,” Can’t Stop the Music avoids the elephant in the room—the fact that the Village People coyly repackaged homoerotica for mainstream consumption. Can’t Stop the Music is outrageously sexualized, featuring scenes in gyms and saunas and swimming pools—there’s even the occasional glimpse of a penis, despite the film’s PG rating. The five singers in the Village People give terrible acting performances, as does Jenner, and the whole movie is cut so fast that it feels like a hallucination. Weirdest of all, perhaps, is the unrelentingly upbeat tone—Can’t Stop the Music is like an old Garland-Rooney “let’s put on a show” picture, only set in a bathhouse.

          Xanadu is just as exuberant, and occasionally just as surreal, but it lacks the subversive quality of Can’t Stop the Music. Instead, Xanadu is an infantile phantasmagoria. However, I must confess to loving the movie’s soundtrack album, featuring songs by Electric Light Orchestra and the film’s leading lady, Olivia Newton-John. (True confession: Xanadu was the first LP I bought with my own money.) Michael Beck, a long way from The Warriors (1979), plays Sonny, an L.A. artist who paints billboard-sized versions of album covers. While roller-skating around Santa Monica one afternoon, Sonny meets the beguiling Kira (Newton-John), who turns out to be one of the Muses from Greek mythology. Kira provides magical inspiration to both Sonny and aging song-and-dance man Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) as the three contrive to build a roller-disco palace called Xanadu. That is, until Zeus decides Kira must return to Olympus.

          In the course of telling its silly story, Xanadu toggles between cinematic styles with great abandon. There’s an animated sequence, lots of special effects, endless roller-disco jams, and a bizarre mash-up number combining a WWII-style big band performance and a guitar-heavy throwdown by L.A. pop-punkers The Tubes. As with Can’t Stop the Music, the genuinely terrible Xanadu is best experienced with either abject disbelief or ironic amusement. The only unassailable aspect of the film is the leading lady’s appearance, because Newton-John was at the apex of her girl-next-door sexiness. Amazingly, Xanadu has enjoyed a long afterlife, even spawning a Broadway musical. Turns out you really can’t stop the music—no matter how hard you try.

          FYI, the collective awfulness of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu led to the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, which honor cinema’s worst achievements.

Can’t Stop the Music: FREAKY

Xanadu: FREAKY

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

          Novelist Ira Levin came up with some of the kickiest thriller plots of his era, providing the source material for the films Rosemary’s Baby (1967) and The Stepford Wives (1972), as well as for this picture. Levin’s book The Boys from Brazil blended the sci-fi concept of human cloning with themes related to the World War II Holocaust into an entertainingly paranoid fantasy, and an impressive roster of actors and behind-the-camera talents translated the book into one of the great cinematic guilty pleasures of the late ’70s. The movie version of The Boys from Brazil is almost impossible to take seriously, especially because the leading performances are so over the top as to border on camp, but the picture unspools at a ferocious speed while stacking thrills atop thrills. It’s pure escapism. That is, so long as one sets aside the question of whether it was in good taste to predicate a popcorn movie on the murders of six million Jews. (Although, to be fair, The Boys from Brazil can be viewed as a revenge fantasy against one of the Third Reich’s worst real-life monsters.)

          Anyway, the story begins in Paraguay, where a resourceful young American Jew, Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg), tracks down several Nazi war criminals living in exile and stumbles across a conference during which infamous Nazi surgeon Joseph Mengele (Gregory Peck) outlines a plan to murder nearly 100 seemingly innocuous 65-year-old men living throughout the world. Barry transmits his initial findings to Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), an aging Nazi hunter based in Austria, who is initially skeptical. Meanwhile, Mengele discovers Barry’s spying and has the young man killed, initiating a cat-and-mouse game—can Mengele execute his evil scheme before Lieberman brings the notorious “Angel of Death” to justice? The Boys from Brazil is an old-fashioned potboiler with a modern-age twist, because it turns out Mengele’s scheme—stop if you don’t already know the details—involves “activating” dozens of clones made from Adolf Hitler’s DNA.

          As directed by Franklin J. Schaffner with his customary elegance, The Boys from Brazil is simultaneously goofier and smarter than the average thriller. The premise is outlandish and Levin’s plotting is mechanical, but individual scenes are sharp and the escalation of tension from start to finish is terrific. Regular Schaffner collaborator Jerry Goldmsith deserves ample credit for jacking up the excitement level with his vivacious music, and cinematographer Henri Decaé lends epic scope with evocative location photography from around the globe. Yet on many levels this one’s about the acting, because the star power in the leading roles is formidable.

          It’s a hoot to see Olivier play the inverse of his character in Marathon Man (1976), which featured the actor as an insane Nazi. Olivier’s acting is way too broad in The Boys from Brazil, from the thick accent to the comical eye rolls, but he’s inarguably fun to watch. Similarly, it’s wild to see beloved leading man Peck play an out-and-out monster. Peck succumbs to the same excesses as his co-star, employing an overdone accent and exaggerated facial expressions, but he too is highly entertaining. Supporting actors lend zest, from the exuberant Guttenberg to cameo players including Denholm Elliot, Bruno Ganz, Uta Hagen, and Rosemary Harris. Plus, the always-watchable James Mason has a tasty featured role as Mengele’s pissy colleague.

The Boys from Brazil: GROOVY