City on Fire (1979)

A drab disaster flick featuring phoned-in performances by faded Hollywood stars, the Canada/U.S. coproduction City on Fire never quite delivers on its title, offering instead a few explosions at a refinery and an extended sequence during which flames threaten the occupants of a crowded hospital. Vignettes depicting the impact of an allegedly citywide fire are anemic at best. Furthermore, the underlying premise is quite sketchy. After getting passed over for a promotion, disturbed refinery worker Herman (Jonathan Welsh) rushes around the facility, releasing fuel into the adjoining city’s water supply so that when sewer workers using a welding torch accidentally ignite the fuel, flames emerge throughout the city. Because, of course, disgruntled former employees are generally allowed free reign at high-security facilities. Oh, well. The nominal hero of the piece is he-man physician Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman). Other characters include an alcoholic newscaster (Ava Gardner), a stoic fire chief (Henry Fonda), an opportunistic mayor (Leslie Nielsen), and a worldly nurse (Shelley Winters). As for the female lead, she’s heiress Diane (Susan Clark), who shares romantic history with Frank and happens to be at the hospital during the crisis. City on Fire is so predictable and sluggish that it’s quite boring to watch, though a few absurd moments amuse. In one scene, Diane scoops vomit from a patient’s mouth while trying to deliver mouth-t0-mouth resuscitation. In another, Frank walks down a row of burn victims, touching each one but never performing medical services or issuing commands to subordinates. City on Fire eventually features a decent fire walk by a brave stunt performer, but that’s hardly reason enough to tolerate 106 minutes of stupidity and tedium.

City on Fire: LAME

Skullduggery (1970)

          Before he found his groove playing macho rascals, Burt Reynolds made a slew of random movies and TV shows, none quite as random as Skullduggery. Even setting aside the misleading title, which suggests a con-man thriller or a pirate flick, this is a deeply weird science-fiction melodrama about missing-link primates, inter-species romance, and a courtroom showdown with echoes of the legendary Scopes trial. Yet the strangest aspect of all may be Reynolds’ character, who improbably evolves from a low-rent schemer into a passionate defender of the missing-link primates. Reynolds plays both aspects of the character well, but the shift from one to the other is as whiplash-inducing as every other bizarre thing that happens in Skullduggery.

          The picture opens with anthropologist Dr. Sybil Greame (Susan Clark) preparing to explore rough terrain in New Guinea. Local miscreants Douglas (Reynolds) and Otto (Roger C. Carmel) worm their way into the expedition for nefarious reasons. Upon reaching the jungle interior, the group encounters shaggy orange primates they refer to as the Tropi. Seeing how local cannibals mistreat the Tropi sparks sympathetic feelings from the previously callous Douglas and Otto. In fact, Otto impregnates one of the Tropi females. Highly contrived circumstances shift the action back to civilization, where Douglas uses the occasion of a Tropi tragedy to force a court trial that tests whether the Tropi shall be considered animals or people. It’s all quite outlandish and silly, even though everyone plays the material straight.

          Reading about this project, one learns that director Otto Preminger was involved at one point, though it’s safe to assume his version would have been much longer, with endless debates about morality and the nature of man. The strangeness imbuing the extant version suggests Preminger dodged a bullet. Not only are the ape suits worn by performers portraying Tropi characters unconvincing, but the notion of a sexual dalliance between a civilized man and a wild creature is distasteful. And whenever Skullduggery isn’t violating propriety, it’s violating logic. In some ways, Skullduggery is a train wreck, but somewhere inside this slipshod movie is a moralistic oddity yearning to be free. Adventurous viewers might be able to perceive glimmers of that better film through the muck of Skullduggery.

Skullduggery: FUNKY

Trapped (1973)

          Generic but mildly enjoyable, this made-for-TV thriller explores the threadbare premise of a man getting stuck inside a department store and battling vicious Dobermans that a security company unleashes inside the store overnight. A few scenes comprise vapid melodrama about the man’s relationship with his young daughter and his embittered ex-wife, but most of the screen time features star James Brolin either running from dogs, using makeshift weapons to push the animals away, or extricating himself from close encounters. Here’s the setup, such as it is. Chuck (Brolin) meets his ex, Elaine (Susan Clark), and their preteen daughter, Carrie (Tammy Harrington), in a department store so Chuck can purchase Carrie a going-away gift, because Elaine and her new husband, David Moore (Earl Holliman), are about to move overseas. They’re taking Carrie with them, much to Chuck’s chagrin. Old resentments spark an argument, with Carrie caught in the middle, and the fight ends with a promise to reconvene at the airport for a more civil goodbye. Chuck lingers at the store to await the delivery of an out-of-stock toy, but he gets mugged in the men’s room, so he’s unconscious at closing time. While he’s out, dogs are set loose.

          Thereafter, the movie cuts between canine-suspense sequences and vignettes of Carrie moping about her missing dad. Nice guy David insists on tracking Chuck down, lest Carrie blame him for her father’s absence. Decent movies have arisen from material this simplistic, but Trapped (sometimes known as Doberman Patrol) still manages to underwhelm. The script is hackneyed and the acting is serviceable. Brolin, for instance, evidences his usual shortcomings. In conversational scenes, he’s enjoyably charming and macho, but whenever he tries for a big emotional display, his facial expressions turn cartoonish. Holliman is characteristically vapid, while Clark’s likable grit isn’t enough to significantly move the quality-control needle. As for the dog action, it’s okay. Seeing big animals perform simple stunts lacks novelty, and the money-shot scenes—Brolin fending Dobermans off with a handmade torch, a nasty-looking dog climbing along a thin railing to chase Brolin, and so on—pale in comparison to similar moments in bigger-budgeted productions.

Trapped: FUNKY

Promises in the Dark (1979)

          The sole directorial effort by movie producer Jerome Hellman, whose small but impressive list of productions includes Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978), this pedestrian drama explores the topic of a teenager dying from cancer and the emotional impact her disease has on family members and physicians. Setting aside that there’s absolutely no reason why this should have been a theatrical feature, seeing as how TV movies of the same vintage handled this sort of material quite well, the movie is absurdly overlong at 118 minutes, suggesting that Hellman couldn’t bear to leave unused a single frame that he had shot. Yet the problems with the movie run even deeper than issues of editing: Loring Mandel’s script is so unfocused that for most of the picture’s running time, it’s hard to tell whether the young patient or her principal doctor is the main character. The movie is redeemed by sensitive performances and thoughtful dialogue, and of course the subject matter has innate grit. Nonetheless, Promises is a Dark is a slog when it should have been a quick and steady descent into the profound terrain of existentialism.

          The movie’s nominal star is Marsha Mason, quite good as physician Alexandra Kendall. While treating high school student Elizabeth “Buffy” Koenig (Kathleen Beller) for a broken leg, Dr. Kendall determines the bone shouldn’t have broken under the given circumstances. Tests conducted with radiologist Dr. Jim Sandman (Michael Brandon) reveal cancer. This understandably rocks Buffy’s emotional world and that of her parents, strong mother Fran (Susan Clark) and weak father Bud (Ned Beatty). What ensues is an ordinary melodrama during which Dr. Kendall wrestles with how much to tell Buffy about the grim prognosis, and during which all parties experience levels of denial about the inevitable conclusion of Buffy’s sad saga.

          Doe-eyed starlet Beller gives a fairly muscular performance, though of course playing a character with a disease is every actor’s dream, and supporting actors Beatty, Brandon, Clark, and Donald Moffat make strong contributions in underwritten roles. Mason believably alternates between brittle and vulnerable. Alas, there’s only so much the performers can do in the absence of clear-headed direction. Hellman’s storytelling is so tentative that during a scene of Buffy and her boyfriend discussing the transmutation of the soul after death, the soft-rock bummer “Dust in the Wind” plays on the soundtrack. Subtle! It’s impossible to genuinely dislike a well-meaning fumble like Promises in the Dark. At the same time, however, it’s tough to get excited about a story that doesn't truly find its way until the last scene.

Promises in the Dark: FUNKY

The Midnight Man (1974)

          Like farce, the mystery genre is a space where convoluted plotting is not necessarily a detriment. Consider The Midnight Man, a twisty thriller starring, cowritten, coproduced, and codirected by the venerable Burt Lancaster, who adapted the picture from a novel by David Anthony. Set on a college campus, the movie features an offbeat leading man—a former cop turned ex-con who becomes a night watchman on the campus of a small college because his old police buddy runs the school’s security detail. Shortly after beginning his new job, Jim Slade (Lancaster) responds to the discovery of a dead coed. Thereafter, Jim battles with an obnoxious small-town sheriff, Casey (Harris Yulin), who determines that a creepy campus janitor was the culprit. Unsatisfied with Casey’s hasty resolution, Jim investigates further and discovers a complex web of conspiracies, lies, and secrets involving a United States Senator and several people connected with the college. Before long, Jim becomes a target, even as he begins a romance with his parole officer, Linda (Susan Clark), who may or may not be connected to various prime murder suspects.

          Although The Midnight Man is unquestionably too complicated for its own good—since it’s occasionally difficult to keep track of who’s doing what to whom and why—the movie is enjoyably melancholy and seedy on a moment-to-moment basis. Lancaster underplays, always a relief given his usual tendency toward grandiosity, and he generates an easygoing vibe with veteran supporting player Cameron Mitchell, who plays Slade’s boss/friend. Each of the significant performers in the cast delivers exactly what’s needed for his or her character, lending the whole piece depth and tonal variations. Clark is tough but vulnerable as the seen-it-all parole officer who fights to protect ex-cons from being needlessly hassled; Yulin is formidable and oily as the shoot-first/ask-questions-later sheriff; Catherine Bach, later of Dukes of Hazard fame, is intriguing as the sexy but troubled coed whose tragic fate drives the story; Charles Tyner is believably squirrely as the Bible-thumping, porn-reading janitor; and Morgan Woodward oozes smug confidence as the senator with one too many dirty secrets. Furthermore, Dave Grusin’s moody score, which is dominated by buttery electric-piano melodies, is as comfortingly smooth, warm, and unmistakably ’70s as a V-neck pullover.

          So, even if the story gets stuck in the mud of double-crosses and reversals and surprises, the vibe of the piece and the seriousness with which actors play their roles carry the day. The Midnight Man isn’t a superlative ’70s noir on the order of The Long Goodbye (1973) or Night Moves (1975), but it’s an interesting distraction with plenty of pessimism and a smattering of sleaze.

The Midnight Man: GROOVY

The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)

          Sludgy family entertainment produced at the nadir of Walt Disney Productions’ live-action cycle, this convoluted comedy concerns a priest recruiting a group of housewives and neighborhood women to topple the crime organization that’s plaguing a once-wholesome town. Showcasing such wheezy comic elements as chase scenes, cross-dressing, and slapstick, the movie is made moderately palatable by the usual glossy production values associated with Disney flicks and by leading man Edward Herrmann’s affable performance. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine kids being able to wrap their heads around bits like the scene in which a church-going woman masquerades as a streetwalker, just like it’s hard to imagine adults mustering the patience to endure myriad silly physical-comedy vignettes. Moreover, once the laborious story elements fall into place, the remainder of the picture is painfully predictable. The North Avenue Irregulars isn’t as insultingly stupid as the worst Disney live-action offerings, but neither is it as charming or energetic as the best such films—it’s just a random title in the middle of the heap.

          Herrmann stars as Reverend Michael Hill, the new pastor at a Presbyterian church. After clashing with the church’s secretary, Anne (Susan Clark), Reverend Hill discovers that an aging parishioner foolishly entrusted all the money in the church’s restoration fund to her ne’er-do-well husband, who lost the cash at an illegal gambling parlor. Seeking redress, Reverend Hill discovers that the town’s criminals have purchased police protection, so the only way to fix his church’s problem is to help federal authorities entrap the criminals. None of the men in town is willing to help, so Reverend Hill turns to the ladies in his congregation, beginning with his nemesis-turned-love interest Anne. (Never mind the absurdity of a priest asking members of his flock to engage in dangerous undercover work.) Eventually, Reverend Hill assembles a motley crew portrayed by actresses including Virginia Capers, Barbara Harris, Cloris Leachman, and Karen Valentine. After several yawn-inducing comedy setpieces, notably a brawl inside the aforementioned illegal gambling parlor, Reverend Hill’s crusade climaxes with, of all things, a demolition derby during which the ladies use their station wagons against the criminals’ sedans. Oh, and there’s also a long scene built around the unfunny joke of Reverend Hill driving around town on a motorcycle while he isn’t wearing pants.

          The North Avenue Irregulars has lots of events, and most of them are colorful. Moreover, Herrmann plays his role straight, giving the weak enterprise a small measure of dignity. However, the presence of second-rate supporting players including Ruth Buzzi and Alan Hale Jr. is a good indicator of how low viewers’ expectations should be set before plunging into The North Avenue Irregulars.

The North Avenue Irregulars: FUNKY

Night Moves (1975)

          Complementing outright throwbacks such as Chinatown (1974), several ’70s thrillers updated classic film-noir style with modern characters, settings, and themes. Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is among the best of these current-day noirs, featuring a small-time detective who has seen too much misery to muster any real hope for the human species. Nonetheless, like all the best noir heroes, he strives to do something good as a way of compensating for all the bad in the world, and thus ironically dooms not only himself but also the very people he’s trying to protect. Penn, whose erratic feature career peaked with a run of counterculture-themed pictures spanning from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to this film, was at his best orchestrating subtle interactions between complicated characters, and he does a terrific job in Night Moves of meshing bitter tonalities.

          A seething Gene Hackman stars as low-rent L.A. investigator Harry Moseby. An amiable idealist whose principles alienate him from the compromisers who surround him, Harry is married to Ellen (Susan Clark), who wants him to shutter his one-man agency and work for a big firm. Preferring to steer his own course, Harry focuses on his next case, which involves tracking down teen runaway Delly (Melanie Griffith), the daughter of a blowsy widow (Janet Ward) who, a lifetime ago, was a promiscuous Hollywood starlet. During downtime between investigative chores, Harry discovers that Ellen is cheating on him, so he’s only too happy to follow a lead on Delly’s whereabouts to Florida, a continent away from his troubled marriage. In the sweaty Florida Keys, Harry finds Delly living with her lecherous stepfather, Tom (John Crawford), and his sexy companion, Paula (Jennifer Warren). Also part of the mix is Quentin (James Woods), a squirrelly friend of Delly’s who works as a mechanic for film-industry stuntmen.

          Alan Sharp’s provocative script features murky plotting but crisp character work, so even when the story is hard to follow, moment-to-moment engagement between people is interesting. And since the film is driven by Harry’s zigzag journey from naïveté to despair and then to a misguided sort of optimism, each time he encounters some tricky new piece of information, his relationship with someone changes. Though Hackman was never one to play for cheap sympathy, it’s heartbreaking to watch Harry cast about for someone who deserves his trust, only to be disappointed again and again.

          Every performance in the movie exists in the shadow of Hackman’s great work, but all of the actors hit the right notes, with Griffith’s adolescent petulance resonating strongly. Composer Michael Small and cinematographer Bruce Surtees contribute tremendously to the film’s shadowy mood, and Penn achieves one of his finest cinematic moments with the picture’s desolate finale. Night Moves gets a bit pretentious at times, but when the movie is really flying, it becomes a potent meditation on the challenge of finding sold moral footing during a confusing period in the evolution of the American identity.

Night Moves: GROOVY

Skin Game (1971)

          Even in the changing times of the post-Civil Rights era, the prospect of a Hollywood comedy about slavery would seem to promise something wildly offensive, and yet the James Garner-Louis Gossett Jr. romp Skin Game is not only thoroughly enjoyable but, in its irreverent way, respectful. The story, by Richard Alan Simmons, is clever and nervy. In the pre-Civil War South, white hustler Quincy Drew (Garner) travels from town to town “selling” his friend Jason (Gossett), a free man posing as a slave. Exploiting the arrogance of slave owners, they realize nobody expects Jason to slip away after he’s been purchased, so they divide their earnings each time they bilk another rube. The movie finds entertaining ways to address nearly every possibility suggested by this scheme—nefarious types figure out what’s happening and try to hustle the hustlers; Jason ends up getting bought by someone who makes easy escape impossible; Quincy ends up on the receiving end of a bullwhip, making him understand the dangers Jason faces; and so on.

          Even though the picture apparently had some rockiness behind the camera (two directors, a screenwriter working under an alias), Skin Game unfolds confidently, zooming along at a steady pace and revealing witty surprises at nearly every turn. It’s true that some of the twists are a bit too convenient (Jason’s bonding with a group of newly arrived African slaves is a stretch), but the resourcefulness with which the filmmakers complicate the heroes’ lives is impressive. The result is a breezy “another fine mess you’ve gotten us into” buddy comedy, with Garner at the apex of his rascally charm and Gossett mixing lightness into his customarily intense screen persona. Their bickering scenes are thoroughly amusing, and the depth of friendship the story conveys is touching.

          The movie provides love interests for both characters, appropriately a brazen grifter (Susan Clark) for Quincy and a beautiful house slave (Brenda Sykes) for Jason. (Clark, a solid player in a variety of ’70s movies, does some of her best work here, though she’s not in Garner’s league.) However, even with Simmons’ ingenious story and the winning performances by Garner and Gossett, the real star of the show is screenwriter Peter Stone, credited as Pierre Marton. The light-comedy master behind Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964), Stone fills Skin Game with effervescent dialogue, like this quip from Garner after Clark’s sticky-fingered character offers to safeguard a bankroll: “It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s the money—it begins to act strangely whenever it’s in your possession.”
          FYI, the 1974 TV movie Sidekicks represented a failed attempt to turn Skin Game into a series; Larry Hagman took over the Quincy Drew role while Gossett reprised his Jason character. (Skin Game available at WarnerArchive.com)

Skin Game: GROOVY

Showdown (1973)

By the time Showdown was released, the traditional Western had been all but replaced on American movie screens by revisionist Westerns filled with dark characterizations and grimy location photography. So it’s jarring to watch this utterly traditional film featuring two utterly traditional stars (Rock Hudson and Dean Martin), because the picture feels as if it could have been made in the ’60s or even the ’50s. Accepting as a given that the movie is hopelessly out of step for its era, Showdown is harmless enough—an earnest story about two lifelong friends who end up on opposite sides of the law. Hudson plays an Old West sheriff who makes a small but honest living with his spitfire wife (Susan Clark), and Martin plays his long-lost pal, a ne’er-do-well who has fallen in with a gang of thieves. When Martin’s crew robs a train in Hudson’s territory, Hudson has to hunt his old friend. Martin is torn between his desire for freedom and his reluctance to shoot a pal, and the situation gets complicated when Martin’s ex-partner (Donald Moffat) decides he wants revenge, meaning Martin now has two gunslingers after him. Notwithstanding a series of illuminating flashbacks showing the main characters bonding prior to current events (an admirable attempt at deepening characterization), there’s nothing in Showdown that Western fans haven’t seen a hundred times before. The dialogue is decent and the various open-desert shootouts and high-desert chases are okay, though it’s distracting that the film employs antiquated rear-projection techniques. Hudson is a solid presence, especially since the stoicism of cowboy characters suits his limited range, and Martin is charming even if he’s a bit long in the tooth for this sort of thing. Showdown is too innocuous to dislike, but it’s not a cause for much excitement.

Showdown: FUNKY

Valdez Is Coming (1971)

          The presence of iconic leading man Burt Lancaster is the only thing that separates this revenge-themed Western from dozens of similar movies, and even though Lancaster is miscast as a Mexican-American lawman, the actor’s signature intensity adds gravitas to the thin storyline. Based on one of Elmore Leonard’s many pulpy Western tales, Valdez Is Coming depicts a bloody campaign by a Mexican sheriff named Valdez (Lancaster) to get justice from a wealthy rancher, Tanner (Jon Cypher), who killed a man for trumped-up reasons and left the victim’s widow penniless. Tanner is romantically involved with Gay (Susan Clark), the widow of another murdered man, so Valdez kidnaps Gay in order to gain leverage over his enemy.

          Not only is this set-up unnecessarily convoluted, it’s also ineffective: The movie is supposed to be fueled by Valdez’ obsessive desire for justice, but the lawman’s connection to the injured parties is so tangential that it doesn’t make sense for him to antagonize the powerful and ruthless Tanner. The story gains credibility when Tanner instructs his underlings to abuse Valdez and the lawman’s friends, thereby deepening the hero’s motivation, but because the picture proceeds from a weak premise, everything that follows feels contrived.

          That said, Valdez Is Coming has enough blood, sweat, and tears to satiate the appetites of undemanding fans of ’70s Westerns. So even though the story isn’t especially interesting or persuasive, there are lots of close-ups of sneering villains, wide shots of perspiring men trudging through brutal deserts, and briskly edited scenes of Lancaster picking off Tanner’s men at a great distance with his reliable Sharps Carbine. The actors supporting Lancaster generally contribute undistinguished work, but Richard Jordan makes the most of his multidimensional role as a would-be gunslinger who waffles between overbearing arrogance and pathetic weakness.

Valdez Is Coming: FUNKY

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

          Offering an imaginative sci-fi companion to Fail Safe (1964)—the chilling “what if?” drama in which a technological glitch triggers nuclear conflict—this brisk but overly talky thriller imagines what might happen if America relinquished control of its nuclear arsenal to a supercomputer. Setting aside the kitsch factor of now-dated movie imagery featuring a computer so massive it occupies the entirety of a hollowed-out mountain, Colossus has, well, colossal logic problems. The movie assumes that none of the geniuses who built the computer anticipated its likely evolution; that nobody imagined what might happen if similar systems were built by other countries; and that the entire U.S. government okayed a system lacking an “off” switch. (The script provides an explanation for that last item, but the explanation is a dodgy storytelling workaround.) Even with its flaws, however, Colossus is a noteworthy entry in the continuum of stories about the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, a topic that gains more importance with each passing year.

          In the opening scenes, Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden) celebrates the launch of Colossus, a supercomputer authorized by the U.S. government to automate decisions related to the country’s nukes. As explained by Forbin, the idea is that Colossus can cycle through countless potential scenarios in seconds and then take immediate action without the impediment of emotions. Soon after Colossus goes live, America learns the Soviets have a similar system called Guardian, and Colossus demands the ability to communicate directly with Guardian. Unwisely, the American and Russian governments okay the interface, which starts a chain of events that may or may not lead to Armageddon. Meanwhile, Forbin struggles to reclaim control over Colossus, even though he designed the system to resist human intervention. And that’s basically the totality of the narrative, excepting a quasi-romantic subplot involving scientist Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark)—characterization is not a priority here.

          Scripted by deft James Bridges (later to make The China Syndrome) and helmed by reliable journeyman Joseph Sargent, Colossus zips along with respectable momentum, notwithstanding the occasional lull. It also boasts consistently intelligent dialogue and a handful of clever maneuvers—for example, the sly means by which Forbin slips information out of the Colossus facility without the pesky computer noticing. The movie also benefits from an exciting and suitably futuristic score by Michael Colombier. Yet the aforementioned logic problems are mightily distracting, and it’s easy to imagine another actor doing more with the leading role than Braeden does. He’s fine whenever scenes require mild derision or smooth charm, but too often his limited range of expression flattens moments that should have radiated tension. Luckily, he’s supported by a deep bench of proficient players, including Georg Sanford Brown, William Schallert, Dolph Sweet, and—in one of those tiny roles that contributes to the epic scope of his filmography—James Hong.

Colossus: The Forbin Project: FUNKY