Smile, Jenny, You're Dead (1974)

 

          Offering a thoughtful spin on the TV-detective genre, Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead is a reboot of sorts, serving as the second pilot attempt for a series starring small-screen veteran David Janssen as sensitive private eye Harry Orwell. (A few months after this telefilm was broadcast, hourlong series Harry O began its two-year run.) What distinguishes Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead from other TV mystery fare of the same era is a focus on emotions and psychology, rather than action and plot twists. The effort to render a serious crime drama for grown-up viewers is bolstered by imaginative cinematography and moody scoring. Alas, the acting is not universally outstanding, and the suspense quotient is low, an unavoidable repercussion of avoiding the standard whodunnit route. Nonetheless, the movie is in many ways refreshingly humane.

          Harry (Janssen) is a cop on disability following an on-the-job shooting, so he picks up extra cash working as a private investigator. Living alone on a Southern California beach, he’s forever toiling on a boat that seems years away from seaworthiness, and his most perverse characteristic—by Los Angeles standards, anyway—is that he doesn’t drive. Another quirk? No gun. When a friend’s adult daughter gets harassed by a stalker, Harry takes the job of protecting her. She’s Jenny (Andrea Marcovicci), a model trying to divorce an overbearing man while taking comfort in the arms of a much older lover; Harry also finds himself attracted to her. Things get dangerous once Jenny’s stalker decides the men in Jenny’s life are better off dead.

          Writer Howard Rodman provides nuanced characterizations and slick dialogue, while director Jerry Thorpe periodically uses offbeat camera positions to give the movie an idiosyncratic quality. Accordingly, there are compensations in place of the thrills one might normally expect to encounter in such a piece. Janssen excels in the lead role, channeling his signature grumpiness into something complicated, so he’s at once appealing and harsh. Marcovicci does not leave a lasting impression, but Clu Gulager and Tim McIntire lend twitchy specificity to supporting roles, and Jodie Foster contributes her impressive poise to a small role as a youth separated from her mother. As for Jenny’s twisted tormentor, he’s portrayed by future softcore producer Zalman King, and his onscreen behavior is weirdly fascinating because he manages to simultaneously overact and underact.

Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead: FUNKY

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

Some Call It Loving (1973)

          Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to show what happens when a beautiful young woman awakens from years of slumber to discover the crass realities of the early ’70s. Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to explore the life of a fabulously rich (and fabulously narcissistic) jazz musician who uses his mansion as the stage for a life lived as a kind of avant-garde performance art with an erotic edge. Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to ask the question, “Will I always be your jellybean?” If all of this sounds bewildering, there’s a good reason why—the deeply strange Some Call It Loving is best described as an arthouse treatment of a B-movie concept.

          Meticulously crafted and yet at the same time quite inept—much in the same way the film is both pretentious and sincere—this movie commits wholeheartedly to characters and events that exist far outside the spectrum of recognizable human behavior. However, it’s not as if Some Call It Loving provides an ingenious metaphor representing some foible of the species. Quite to the contrary, the picture unfolds like an anthropological study of people who are so odd that they might as well be aliens from outer space. Compounding the weirdness, Some Call It Loving is made with the leisurely pacing and pictorial beauty of a European auteur piece.

          Giving an alternately somnambulistic and whiny leading performance, Zalman King plays Robert, a gentleman of leisure who wanders through a carnival until he encounters an exhibit promising a real-life “Sleeping Beauty.” She's Jennifer (Tisa Farrow), a lovely young woman who, according to her keepers, has been unconscious for years. Bewitched, Robert pays the keepers $20,000 for Jennifer, bringing her to his mansion. Instructed that she will wake if not consistently sedated with drugs, Robert cuts off her supply. Upon regaining consciousness, Jennifer accepts her new surroundings as if they’re normal, whereas the reaction one might expect is utter horror at being turned into chattel. Robert woos Jennifer with weird rituals, often involving his live-in companion Scarlett (Carol White), hence myriad scenes of role-playing and theatricality. (In one bit, Robert actually controls a curtain behind which two women perform a sapphic dance.)

          The film’s dialogue is as absurd as the accompanying dramatic events. Consider this riff from Scarlett: “Yes, I can understand. I’ve always understood. I’ve always understood because I love you. And when a woman loves a man, there’s no limit to her understanding.” The punch line? Two minutes later, Scarlett concludes the scene by saying, “Then maybe I don’t understand.” (That’s okay, honey—viewers are just as confused.) Woven into this bizarre narrative, which one fears was conceived as an offbeat romance, are pointless scenes featuring Richard Pryor as Robert’s drug-addicted best friend. Although Pryor’s appearances are high points because his acting is full of believable pathos, his scenes feel like they belong in a different movie.

          Directed by James B. Harris, whose sporadic output includes a number of gritty genre pictures, Some Call It Loving benefits from gorgeous cinematography. Italian DP Mario Tosi shoots the whole movie with gauzy frames, languid camera movies, and vividly colorful lighting patterns. Accordingly, it's tempting to peer deep into the movie’s mysteries and search for something resonant. Good luck with that.

Some Call It Loving: FREAKY

The Ski Bum (1971)

          Flat, ponderous, and shapeless, this snow-capped drama depicts the travails of a dude who makes his living doing easy jobs for crass rich people in an idyllic resort town, yet somehow feels affronted and pained, as if The Man is oppressing him. At their worst, hippie-era character studies presented ridiculous juxtapositions of attitude and context, and The Ski Bum is a prime example. The rebels in Easy Rider (1969) walked it like they talked it, living off the grid while chasing the counterculture dream. Conversely, The Ski Bum’s protagonist, Johnny (Zalman King), is a petulant little asshole who expects the world to give him everything while retaining the right to whine about his circumstances. In one of the film’s myriad annoying tropes, Johnny often responds to simple questions with dull-eyed confusion and the barked response, “What?” Apparently, even the simple act of making conversation is too much of a personal-space invasion when this self-involved dweeb gets his knickers in a twist. Whatever.

          The picture tracks Johnny as he navigates a sexual relationship with Samantha (Charlotte Rampling), the hostess at a ski resort owned by loudmouth businessman Burt Stone (Joseph Mell). Samantha gets Johnny a job teaching Burt and his family to ski, and Burt’s wife and 13-year-old daughter both make passes at Johnny. Even Burt takes a shine to the ski instructor, despite the fact that he’s temperamental and unreliable, so Burt enlists Johnny to run quasi-legal errands. Johnny also hangs out with stoner pals and scores dope from local dealers. The movie wanders from one drab episode to the next, depicting Johnny’s existential malaise without providing any credible explanation for why he’s so upset.
          Leading man King, who later found his niche as a producer of softcore films, delivers a forgettable non-performance, and Rampling barely registers beyond her usual quality of stoic beauty. Interestingly, the picture was shot by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who gives the piece more visual elegance than it deserves, and famed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne cameos during a druggy party scene. Even more interestingly, New Zealand-born director Bruce D. Clark made this picture while still attending UCLA’s film school, so the end credits report that The Ski Bum comprised Clark’s thesis. Full disclosure: Although the original version of this film runs an epic 136 minutes, I watched the 95-minute cut, so the extended footage may contain virtues absent from the sludge that I encountered.

The Ski Bum: LAME

Trip With the Teacher (1975)

A rotten thriller about a busload of schoolgirls being terrorized by psychotic motorcyclists, Trip With the Teacher is entirely predicated on the females in the story being helpless and stupid. In other words, feminist propaganda this is not. For the first half the picture, four young ladies—along with their female teacher and male bus driver—are intimidated and manipulated by two jerks who never even brandish weapons. Then, later, once weapons actually are presented, the same group of victims (minus the driver) does nothing while the two men commit numerous verbal, sexual, and psychological assaults. Trip With the Teacher is so profoundly insulting to women that it’s a wonder Gloria Steinem never firebombed theaters showing this piece of junk. But then again, there’s a reason Trip With the Teacher wouldn’t have come to the attention of anyone prominent, because the movie is such a negligible endeavor that it’s barely worth discussing. Written and directed by Earl Barton, this shlocky flick boasts uniformly bad performances in the service of consistently uninteresting scenes. Even the would-be “exciting” sequences, featuring chases and violence, fail to engage much interest because the characters are so vapid that it’s impossible to care what fates befall them. By far the worst offender, acting-wise, is star Zalman King, who started out as a featured player on TV, then expanded his repertoire to include low-budget features. (Once his acting career stalled, King became a leading producer of softcore porn, with his “classiest” project being the glossy 1986 smutfest Nine 1/2 Weeks.) King demonstrates every cliché of self-indulgent, Method-style acting in Trip With the Teacher, whether laughing at inappropriate moments or writhing on the ground while simulating migraine headaches. He’s absurd, and certainly not formidable enough to validate the terror his character supposedly invokes in everyone around him. Easily one of the dullest movies ever made about the lurid topics of abduction, murder, and rape, Trip With the Teacher is the definition of disposable.

Trip With the Teacher: LAME

Blue Sunshine (1978)

          There’s a great story to be told about the lingering aftereffects of ’60s experiments with LSD, but Blue Sunshine is not that story. Instead, it’s a so-so horror picture in which an interesting concept gets bludgeoned by uninspired execution. The movie begins at a party, where several young adults listen to their friend Frannie (Richard Crystal) sing tunes and tell jokes. Then someone playfully yanks Frannie’s hair, revealing that he’s wearing a wig and that his scalp is bald except for a few patches of stringy hair. Frannie flees the party, only to return later in a crazed state and kill two women who are lingering at the location after the party has nearly ended. Discovered by Jerry (Zalman King), another late-to-leave party guest, Frannie runs from the party house to a nearby highway and gets run over by a truck. Through unfortunate circumstance, Jerry ends up under suspicion not only for the maniac’s death but also for the murders of the two women.

          Thus, in the mode of a conspiracy thriller, Jerry becomes a fugitive determined to explain why his friend went crazy—a quest that gains urgency when he realizes that others have experienced similar homicidal breakdowns. Eventually, with the covert help of his pal David (Robert Walden), a physician with knowledge of illegal drugs, Jerry realizes the psychotic episodes involve users of a form of LSD called “Blue Sunshine,” which was sold years ago by Edward (Mark Goddard), who is now a respectable citizen running for Congress. Predictably, Jerry has a hard time proving his wild theory that a fast-rising politician is responsible for the spread of a mind-altering substance that destroys its users.

          Although writer-director Jeff Lieberman’s filmmaking is relatively slick—his camerawork is calm and sensible, his storytelling lucid—he can’t really overcome confused intentions. On one level, the picture is a dark drama about the dangers of amateurs creating their own brands of LSD. But on every other level, Blue Sunshine is a tacky horror flick, complete with scenes of housewives freaking out and attacking their children with butcher knives. Plus, the acting runs the gamut from terrible to workmanlike—nobody in the cast of Blue Sunshine is particularly credible except for Walden, a fine character player known for All the President’s Men (1976) and the TV series Lou Grant (1977-1982). King, who later produced and/or directed myriad  ’80s and ’90s softcore movies, is an especially weak link, offering bug-eyed intensity instead of real acting. And while the murder scenes are undeniably creepy, they’re also a bit goofy, with each murderer suddenly revealing a bald scalp before shifting into pyschosis.

Blue Sunshine: FUNKY