Forced Entry (1975)

Had this picture been written, performed, or filmed with even a modicum of sophistication, it could easily have become a disturbing thriller contrasting the everyday life of a killer with that of an unlucky individual doomed to cross the killer’s path. Unfortunately, the execution of Forced Entry adheres to the grindhouse playbook, with cheap-looking images of amateurish performances stitched together by way of jumpy editing and married to screechy music and sound effects. Instead of being creepy and provocative, the picture is mostly sluggish and unpleasant. For the first hour or so, Forced Entry cross-cuts scenes featuring deranged rapist/murderer Carl (Ron Max) with scenes of frustrated housewife Nancy (Tanya Roberts). Carl works as a mechanic, but in his spare time he picks up women, drags them to remote locations, and defiles them. Because the movie also includes scenes of Carl doing his work conscientiously and being kind to his elderly neighbor, the gist is that he’s got issues with pretty young women. Meanwhile, Nancy feels ignored by her husband even though she enjoys raising their children in a luxurious suburban home. The characters intersect when Nancy brings her car into Carl’s garage for service. Soon afterward, he breaks into her house (hence the title) and torments Nancy. As to what happens next, the film’s alternate title, The Last Victim, should offer more than a hint. One can almost feel a credible film trying to emerge from beneath Forced Entry’s sensationalistic surface, but the storytelling is too clumsy to take seriously, especially with the vapid Roberts—who later joined the cast of Charlie’s Angels during the show’s last season—providing the film’s emotional center. Interesting footnote: Because Forced Entry was unofficially adapted from a 1973 X-rated movie of the same name, it’s among the few examples of mainstream Hollywood borrowing story material from the porn industry.

Forced Entry: LAME

Racquet (1979)

An ugly riff on Shampoo (1975) substituting professional tennis for hairdressing while stealing many of the earlier film’s plot elements, Racquet was one of a handful of star vehicles for Bert Convy, a quintessential ’70s personality who acted in dodgy movies and schlocky TV series before finding his niche hosting game shows. (To be fair, he was terrific as the leader of an est-type program in the 1977 football comedy Semi-Tough.) In the thoroughly rotten Racquet, Convy stars as Tommy Everett, an aging tennis pro who moonlights as a gigolo for the rich ladies of Beverly Hills. Dreaming of becoming a business owner, Tommy tries to talk his wealthiest patron, Leslie (Edie Adams), into bankrolling the purchase of a house with a massive court where Tommy can provide private lessons. Meanwhile, Tommy reunites with an old flame, Monica (Lynda Day George), and stupidly romances Leslie’s teenaged daughter, Melissa (Katherine Moffat)—shades of the Shampoo storyline involving Warren Beatty and Carrie Fisher. Racquet compares poorly to Shampoo, since Racquet emulates the earlier film’s raunchiness without any of the sophistication that made Shampoo relevant. Typical of Racquet is a grotesque scene of Leslie humping Tommy while screaming about his “bionic peeper,” or the equally distasteful scene of Leslie’s husband, Arthur (played by TV-comedy icon Phil Silvers), requesting that Leslie act out his Thanksgiving-themed sex fantasy. (“Will you make turkey sounds for me? Gobble-gobble when we climax?”) The love story between Monica and Tommy is riddled with vapid clichés, including an endless romantic montage set to a dreary ballad, and the subplot about Tommy’s sexy roommate, Bambi (Tanya Roberts), is as pointless as the braying Bobby Riggs cameo and the goofy discotheque scene. Giving credit where it’s due, Convy looks credible as a tennis player and he uses all of his meager powers in a failed attempt to put this godawful material across.

Racquet: LAME

The Yum Yum Girls (1976)

A grungy story about models sleeping their way to success that one fears was intended to contain comedic elements in addition to tawdry melodrama, The Yum Yum Girls is a dull and unpleasant viewing experience. Although leading lady Michelle Daw is so appealing and pretty that it’s a surprising she never made another film, the movie surrounding her is repetitive and vapid. The story literally begins with Melody (Daw) getting off the bus in Manhattan after leaving Ohio, with dreams of becoming a top model. Yet instead of portraying Melody as a naïve Midwesterner, the filmmakers—actually, let’s call them culprits—depict her as a sexually experienced striver willing to disrobe, fellate, and fornicate whenever she meets someone who can help her career. So if The Yum Yum Girls isn’t a morality tale about the coarsening of a decent young woman, is it a male fantasy about the sexual availability of beautiful models? Whatever the case, the only conceivable reason for watching The Yum Yum Girls is the promise of titillation. Melody’s first love scene has a tiny bit of heat to it, but every other carnal vignette disappoints. Some of these physical encounters are nasty (producers demanding oral sex during auditions, a guy raping Melody because she won’t put out after he bought her dinner), while most are simply boring. Worse, a running “gag” in The Yum Yum Girls involves a stationary camera positioned inside a dressing room capturing shots of girls as they change clothes between photography sessions. Skeeve City. FYI, future Charlie’s Angels star Tanya Roberts plays a supporting role and somehow manages to stay dressed throughout her screen time, as does minor ’70s starlet Judy Landers, who displays her eye-popping form in bikinis and lingerie. Anyone seeking cheap thrills is sure to be disappointed by The Yum Yum Girls, and the movie offers nothing else to compensate.

The Yum Yum Girls: LAME

Fingers (1978)

          The first movie directed by James Toback, a ferocious chronicler of the male animal in extremis, Fingers can be viewed as a blueblood’s response to the cinema of Martin Scorsese. Whereas Scorsese made his name by dramatizing the lives of small-time hoods prowling the streets of New York, Toback announced his presence by depicting intersections between New York street crime and the city’s supposedly civilized intelligentsia. In his script for The Gambler (1974), which was directed by Karel Reisz, Toback presented the semiautobiographical character of a college professor who spends his private hours feeding his gambling addiction no matter how dangerous his circumstances become. In Fingers, Toback introduces a character following the opposite trajectory, thereby approaching the same themes from a different perspective.

          Jimmy “Fingers” Angelelli (Harvey Keitel) is the son of aging loan shark Ben Angelleli (Michael V. Gazzo), but Jimmy wants more from life than threatening people for repayment. A self-taught pianist, he has visions of performing on the Carnegie Hall stage, and he may or may not have sufficient talent to realize his dream. As with all of the troubled men in Toback’s movies, however, Jimmy is his own worst enemy. Not only does he allow feelings of guilt and obligation to pull him deeper into his father’s violent world, but Jimmy is a sexual daredevil who can’t resist the thrill of the chase. Everything in Jimmy’s twisted psyche conspires to shift his focus away from his dreams. Even before the grim machinations of the plot take hold, this is grim material on every level—meaning that Fingers exists in the creative sweet spot for both Toback and leading man Keitel.

          Toback has a special gift for showing how testosterone drives men to madness, and he’s also a master at creating fully rounded leading characters—by accumulating detail and drawing subtle connections, Toback creates a space in which strange behaviors feel like eccentricities instead of literary contrivances. Jimmy blows through his world like a whirlwind, all fidgety energy and pretentious scarves, and he nearly always carries a portable radio issuing vintage pop tunes along the lines of “Mockingbird” and “One Fine Day”; the juxtaposition of these sweet melodies with the savage nature of Jimmy’s actions is strangely appropriate.

          Toback also plays an interesting game by having Jimmy alternate between gutter vulgarity and outrageously lofty dialogue, because it’s clear that Jimmy receives messages on frequencies inaudible to others. Consider this jaw-dropping pickup line, which Jimmy uses on artist/prostitute Carol (Tisa Farrow): “Don’t you understand? I’m going to bring you into your dreams of yourself. All you have to do is believe in me.” Showing his street side, Jimmy takes a wholly different tack when trying to make time with gang moll Julie (Tanya Roberts), cooing that he can sense her nether regions are like “silk.”

          Fingers goes to many, many strange places—for instance, the subplot about Jimmy’s encounters with Carol’s brutal pimp, Dreems (Jim Brown)—even though the movie eventually drifts down to earth for a violent finale that borrows from the Scorsese playbook. Keitel gives one of his most crucial performances, employing so much intensity while channeling the soul of the peculiar man he portrays that Jimmy seems alternately magnetic, pathetic, and terrifying. While very much an acquired taste thanks to its bone-deep darkness, its fascination with sleaze, and its primitive portrayal of women, Fingers ranks among the most unique American directorial debuts of the ’70s.

Fingers: GROOVY

Tourist Trap (1979)

Although films about colorful psychopaths have been around virtually since the beginning of cinema—Lon Chaney Sr. played madmen throughout the silent era—the “slasher” genre largely began with the success of Halloween (1978). Yet while Halloween imaginatively exploits primal fears, most of the film’s countless imitators simply borrow the device of a maniac with a distinctive signature menacing young people. Tourist Trap, released in 1979, is exemplary of where the slasher genre was headed, which is to say it’s ugly movie with a moronic script. Oddly, however, Tourist Trap avoids two elements prevalent in both Halloween and most of its knock-offs—gore and nudity. Yes, Tourist Trap is a PG-rated slasher flick, and yes, that’s as pointless an endeavor as it sounds. Produced by schlockmeister Charles Band, who never met a penny he’d rather not spend, the picture begins when a carload of teenagers encounters an old roadside waxworks run by kooky redneck Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors). One by one, a killer stalking the waxworks murders the kids, eventually leading to a long sequence in a torture dungeon, during which the killer encases one of his victims in wax. Tourist Trap shamelessly cops from The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and House of Wax (1953), both of which are unvarnished pinnacles of cinematic achievement compared to this silliness. Although co-writer/director David Schmoeller tries to add a smidgen of psychology by giving the killer long speeches explaining why he does bad things, across-the-board terrible acting makes it impossible to care about anything that happens in the flick. Connors is so self-consciously “weird” that he’s never believable, and the attractive young actors playing the victims—including future Charlie’s Angels sexpot Tanya Roberts—whine and whimper their way through scenes of maddeningly stupid behavior. Adding insult to injury, the filmmakers hired composer Pino Donaggio, whose score for Carrie (1976) began a long series of collaborations with Brian De Palma. Donaggio bludgeons Tourist Trap with his usual overbearing sounds, giving this very small movie a hilariously grandiose sonic attack.

Tourist Trap: LAME