21 Hours at Munich (1976)

          A notorious terrorist action at the 1972 Olympics is re-recreated in this serviceable TV movie, which conveys a handful of important geopolitical nuances. Hampered by miscast leading actors and underwhelming dramaturgy, the picture is, predictably, most arresting during its opening and closing moments—the bloody siege on the Israeli compound in the Olympic village and, later, the tragic standoff between authorities and terrorists at a German airport. In between these vivid docudrama sequences, 21 Hours at Munich presents myriad scenes of political wrangling and tense negotiations. Had the acting and writing been more impassioned, the picture could have become a crucial dramatization of an intense moment in world relations; as is, the movie tastefully avoids pure sensationalism but gets stuck in flat recitations of well-known events.

          As directed by efficient TV helmer William A. Graham, from a script co-written by venerable Hollywood lefty Howard Fast, 21 Hours at Munich begins with a newsreel montage setting the uplifting mood of the Olympiad. Then the story proper begins with Palestinian terrorists led by Issa (Franco Nero) taking nearly a dozen Israeli athletes hostage. The filmmakers wisely eschew full-on melodrama during this sequence, focusing on the relentlessness of the attackers and the stalwart resistance of the Israelis. Next, viewers are introduced to Munich Chief of Police Manfred Schreiber (William Holden), and the haggling between various factions begins. There’s some deeply interesting content buried in the morass of the film’s middle section, including ugly buck-passing by political operators who don’t want to end up with Jewish blood on their hands if the situation deteriorates. Yet Issa and Schreiber remain the central figures—and, unfortunately, neither role is performed especially well.

          Italian-born Nero’s only qualifications for playing an Arab extremist seem to be abundant body hair and wide-eyed intensity; he’s creepy but a bit cartoonish. Holden’s casting as a German cop represents an even bigger stretch. Although Holden commands the screen effortlessly with his innate charisma and precise timing, the veteran star’s presence represents an obvious (and pandering) attempt to make this story palatable to U.S. viewers. (The supporting cast is not impressive, with Shirley Knight delivering a particularly lifeless performance as a fraulein who gets caught up in the drama.) Still, 21 Hours at Munich gets points for trying to show events the way they happened—or, in cases where imagination was required, the way they might have happened, Plus, the fact that the picture was shot on many of the locations where the events actually took place lends a certain gravitas.

21 Hours at Munich: FUNKY

Golden Needles (1974)

          The first 10 minutes of this actioner from Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse are wonderfully trashy. Over a shot of a primitive golden statue, a narrator explains hokey lore about how the statue’s design reveals secret acupuncture points—used properly, these points release incredible sexual pleasure, but used improperly, they lead to instant death. Hence the statue’s name: “The Golden Needles of Ecstasy.” Cut to a decrepit, wheelchair-bound Chinese man getting escorted into a modern-day acupuncture parlor for a session with the needles. Once the session is completed, the man rises to his feet, magically invigorated and ready for private time with his young female escorts—until two bad guys enter the parlor carrying flamethrowers. The assailants torch the old man, his ladies, and the acupuncturist before absconding with the statue. That’s how to get the cinematic party started, folks!

          Although the remaining 80 minutes of Golden Needles pale by comparison in terms of energy and verve, the movie has an appealing quality of loopy escapism. The picture combines Far East exotica with mysticism, sex, violence, and a slew of lively performances that border on camp. Golden Needles is ridiculous, but that’s why it’s fun to watch, even though the overwrought plotting eventually slows things down. The gist of the story is that various parties in Hong Kong want to acquire the “Golden Needles” statue. Dan (Joe Don Baker) is a towering American who knows his way around the local underworld, so he’s hired by visiting American Felicity (Elizabeth Ashley) to steal the statue, in exchange for cash and sex. (Dan drives a hard bargain, wink-wink.) Eventually, Dan finds himself in the midst of a caper that involves a kooky American crime boss (Burgess Meredith) and various representatives of the Hong Kong mob.

          Given his previous success with martial-arts pictures, Clouse hits the chop-socky button every so often, with kicks and punches thrown by Baker, Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones), and sexy Asian actress Frances Fong. Yet Golden Needles is only marginally a martial-arts flick, because the action scenes tend to focus on bare-knuckle brawls and death-defying escapes—at one point, Dan gets trapped in a factory into which a bad guy has released dozens of snakes. (An exciting score by Lalo Schifin helps pull together the random story elements.) Golden Needles won’t meet anyone’s criteria for quality cinema, but for sheer silly excitement, it’s hard to beat a movie that features a pervy Meredith licking his lips while his giant black manservant receives potentially lethal acupuncture, or that features man-mountain Baker leading pursuers on an epic chase through an overcrowded Hong Kong harbor and the surrounding area.

Golden Needles: GROOVY

Barry Lyndon (1975)

          Slow, somber, and subtle, Stanley Kubrick’s three-hour historical drama Barry Lyndon, adapted from an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, isn’t just one of the most unusual films of the 1970s—it is, in many ways, one of the most unusual films ever released by a major Hollywood studio. Arty and meditative from its first frame to its last, the picture is more of a cerebral exercise than an entertainment experience—envision a serious of gorgeous paintings accompanied by mesmerizing classical music and a wry narration track that contextualizes onscreen events, and you’ll come close to imagining what it’s like to watch Barry Lyndon. Even the film’s principal actors, Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson, are featured as objects, their beautiful faces and figures used as blank slates onto which Kubrick projects his (and Thackeray’s) timeless themes of gamesmanship and greed. By reducing the importance of his actors to visual impact, Kubrick amplifies that Barry Lyndon is auteur filmmaking in the purest sense—even though the writer/director/producer didn’t generate the underlying material, he orchestrates every miniscule detail. (There’s a reason the movie took a reported 300 days to shoot, an eternity compared to normal production schedules.)

          Set throughout Europe in the middle-to-late 1700s, the story follows Irishman Redmond Barry (O’Neal) as he seeks his fortune. The synchronicity between Kubrick’s dry humor and Thackeray’s narrative becomes evident during an early scene featuring a highwayman. The robber stops Barry on a remote path in a forest, then steals Barry’s horse and money, but the whole exchange is conducted with the high language and perfect manners of gentlemen. Courtly criminality—could there be a better metaphor with which to communicate Kubrick’s cynical worldview? After being stripped of his humble resources, Barry transitions to a series of military adventures, but he eventually flees the military and bewitches a fabulously wealthy Countess, Lady Lyndon (Berenson). The minor obstacle of her husband is quickly dispatched when Barry’s brazen play for Lady Lyndon’s affections causes the husband to die of a coronary. Barry installs himself as the man’s replacement, but Barry’s social climb commences a new series of travails.

          Even though the film sprawls across three hours and moves at a stately pace, Barry Lyndon is hypnotic. Working with the genius cameraman John Alcott, Kubrick designs one beguiling visual after another, using deft tricks to create verisimilitude suggestive of the story’s era—most of the shots are static (and when they’re not, the camera moves are generally gradual and understated). Further, in the film’s most talked-about flourish, Kubrick and Alcott employ specially designed lenses to shoot nighttime interior scenes with only candlelight for illumination. Every sensation that meets the eye in Barry Lyndon casts a spell, from the spectacular Old Europe locations to the ornate costumes and hairstyles; better still, Kubrick merges images, music, and narration with symphonic precision. Whether the movie actually packs an emotional punch is a subjective matter—as is the larger question of whether such a story needs to pack an emotional punch—but the consummate artistry of the endeavor is undeniable. Whatever its shortcomings, not the least of which is O’Neal’s beautifully vacuous presence in the title role, Barry Lyndon captures moods and sensations virtually no other film has before or since.

Barry Lyndon: RIGHT ON

Shout at the Devil (1976)

          While not a great movie—or even, for that matter, a particularly coherent one, given its odd mixture of light comedy and nasty violence—Shout at the Devil is worth investigating for fans of manly-man adventure flicks. Among other things, the picture includes the only screen pairing of Roger Moore, who shot this movie in the early days of his long run as 007, and the inimitable Lee Marvin. The movie’s convoluted narrative and lengthy running time give both actors opportunities to hit many different notes, and Marvin’s rough-and-tumble charisma complements the alternately grim and suave flavors of Moore’s performance. Shout at the Devil also boasts incredible production values.

          Set in German-controlled East Africa circa 1913, the story concerns an amiably disreputable ivory hunter named Colonel Flynn O'Flynn (Marvin). An American expat with a mysterious past, Flynn needs a stooge for his next poaching excursion, so he snookers traveling English aristocrat Sebastian Oldsmith (Moore). The biggest hiccup in Shout at the Devil’s storyline is that Oldsmith doesn't turn himself over to the Germans once he realizes Flynn is a scam artist—but if you can suspend your disbelief on that point, the rest of the movie is quite enjoyable. Without going into laborious detail (there's a lot of story in Shout at the Devil), Oldsmith hangs around with Flynn long enough to get injured, at which point he's nursed back to health by Flynn's beautiful daughter, Rosa (Barbara Parkins). Naturally, Oldsmith and Rosa fall in love. Thereafter, Flynn persuades the Englishman to help rip off the Germans, especially odious regional commander Fleischer (Reinhard Kolldehoff). Once all the narrative pieces fall in place, the movie becomes a covert-mission story about Oldsmith hunting down and sabotaging a strategically important German warship.

          Director Peter Hunt edited several 007 movies before making his helming debut with one of the series' best installments, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), but he never worked on any of Moore's Bond pictures. Instead, the two teamed up for the first time to make the similarly overstuffed action-drama Gold (1974). While Hunt does a great job creating tension within individual scenes, he's not adept at balancing performance styles, so Marvin and Moore sometimes seem as if they're acting in different movies. (Leading lady Parkins, who generally played decorative and/or villainous roles, does some of her best work here, lending elegance and weight to her scenes.) Nonetheless, the best parts of Shout at the Devil are rousing and/or whimsical, if not both.

          The running gag of Flynn inventing reasons why Oldmsith must endanger himself works nicely, and there's a peculiar but fun subplot involving Flynn's mute sidekick, Mohammed (Ian Holm), who mostly communicates with sarcastically raised eyebrows. Some of the action is genuinely thrilling, too, like Oldsmith's incursion (while wearing blackface!) onto the German warship. So while Shout at the Devil is excessive and sloppy, it’s also a lively throwback to the adventure movies of yesteryear, with just a touch of modernized grit. FYI, those with P.C. sensibilities might have a tough time with this picture, since the heroes slaughter elephants for profit, and it’s worth mentioning that Shout at the Devil is widely available both in the original cut (which runs 147 minutes) and a snipped version (which runs 128 minutes). The longer cut is recommended.

Shout at the Devil: GROOVY

Crime and Passion (1976)

          Ivan Passer, a Czech writer/director of considerable skill who emerged in tandem with Milos Forman, has worked steadily in Hollywood but never joined Forman on the A-list. Projects such as Crime and Passion explain way. A discombobulated mess for which Passer deserves much of the blame—in addition to directing, he was one of seven (!) writers—this would-be caper flick lurches tonally from carefree to creepy and back again, often within the space of a single scene. The script combines countless incompatible elements, and the awful leading performances are delivered by two actors who simply don’t exist in the same universe—Omar Sharif acts with his usual swarthy intensity, while Karen Black pitches her portrayal to the level of operatic campiness for which she is (in)famous. Poor Joseph Bottoms forms the third side of a romantic triangle, but his laconic energy is smothered by the work of the other stars.

          The nonsensical story goes something like this. Andre Ferren (Sharif) is a European investment counselor who plays games with his clients’ money. His associate/mistress, Susan Winters (Black), agrees to manipulate a rich aristocrat into marriage, with the intention of divorcing him for a huge financial settlement that Susan will share with Andre. Things get complicated when Susan meets a handsome American (Bottoms) and when Susan becomes convinced that the aristocrat’s castle is haunted. There’s also a subplot about the aristocrat electronically spying on Susan, so the aristocrat may or may not be hip to the fact that she and Andre are running a con. Yet the story isn’t the only bizarre element of Crime and Passion so bizarre—the film is decorated with deeply strange flourishes.

          Andre gets aroused whenever he experiences professional setbacks, so Susan’s pillow talk consists of stock losses and so forth; during scenes featuring this behavior, Sharif seems frightening rather than eccentric, as if he’s about to rape Black. The unpleasant vibe is exacerbated by the film’s heavy-handed score, comprising moody electric-piano music and sudden, horror-movie-style stings. Toward the end of the movie, Bottoms sits in the castle dining room, receiving (offscreen) oral sex from Black until he hallucinates—or does he?—that a knight in full battle armor has entered the room. This bit is topped by the finale, during which Black and Sharif hump outside the castle while Black shoots a dead body out of a cannon into the valley below the castle. How any of this actually got filmed is a mystery. For instance, did anyone think the vignette of Sharif taking a bath and singing “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” was a good idea?

Crime and Passion: LAME

Brian’s Song (1971)

          From the time of its release until, arguably, the arrival of Field of Dreams (1989), the iconic TV movie Brian’s Song enjoyed an enviable status as the ultimate male-oriented tearjerker, combining the bittersweet tropes of the melodrama genre with the macho textures of sports cinema. Yet it would be wrong to dismiss Brian’s Song as a cheap exercise in audience manipulation—even though the film is too brief and schematic to dig particularly deep into the lives of its characters, Brian’s Song is a credible drama distinguished by a terrific leading performance and solid supporting turns. In fact, much of the picture’s power stems from the presence of James Caan in the title role, because at the time he made Brian’s Song, Caan was bursting with so much ambition and talent that his imminent ascendance to big-screen stardom was inevitable; all it took was an incendiary supporting performance in The Godfather, released a few months later, to complete Caan’s transformation from up-and-comer to household name.
          Based on pro football player Gale Sayers’ memoir about his friendship with doomed fellow Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, Brian’s Song is a sensitive exploration of camaraderie in the face of hardship. Adapted with restraint and taste by screenwriter William Blinn and director Buzz Kulik, the picture begins with the arrival of Gale (Billy Dee Williams) to a Bears training camp. He’s immediately razzed by fellow newbie Brian (Caan), but the two subsequently bond. Later, Brian provides stalwart support when racists resist African-American Gale’s integration into the team. The budding friendship deepens further once Bears coach George Halas (Jack Warden) breaks a color barrier by making Brian and Gale roommates during trips for away games, and one of the warmest scenes in Brian’s Song revolves around Brian’s inability to make racist remarks even when he’s trying to motivate Gale during the painful recovery from a leg injury.

          Brian’s Song gets heavy during its second half, after Brian is diagnosed with cancer.  Suffice to say that only the most hard-hearted viewer could possibly get through the picture’s final scenes without shedding a tear, because the aim of Brian’s Song isn’t to bludgeon audiences with the pointless tragedy of a young life cut short, but rather to invigorate audiences by celebrating a friendship that outlasted death. Caan hits one right note after another here, blending sensitivity and toughness in a manner that later became his signature. Williams, never the most dexterous performer, benefits from a characterization based on reticence, so when the cracks in his character’s emotional armor finally show, the moments count. Warden, who won an Emmy for his performance, provides the definition of reliable support, grounding the film in the harsh realities of professional sports while also conveying a strong sense of innate decency.

Brian’s Song: RIGHT ON

They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way (1978)

The second of two pictures that funnyman Tim Conway made for a short-lived outfit called the International Picture Show Company, this abysmal would-be farce tries to present Conway and Chuck McCann as a bumbling comedy duo. The actors get the bumbling part right, but if either of them actually does anything funny in the course of the picture’s painfully stupid 95 minutes, it escaped my view. Sadly, Conway also penned the flick—one of the only feature-length projects for which he took a solo writing credit—so one fears They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way represents his best guess at what makes people laugh. To say Conway was someone who benefitted when collaborators raised his game is an understatement. The story concerns a pair of idiot small-town cops (Conway and McCann) going undercover as convicts in order to uncover corruption among prison officials, but mostly the script is a vessel for delivering one sequence of physical comedy after another. Even from the first scene, the gags in They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way bludgeon the senses with their ineffectiveness. In the opening bit, Conway and McCann sit in a patrol car, and Conway tries to start the car. The failure of the engine to ignite is meant to be funny—during five repeated attempts. And yet then, when a suspect drives by, Conway starts the car without any difficulty, as if the previous five gags hadn’t happened. Unimaginably, it gets worse. The bad guy (played by a valiant Dub Tayl0r) is named “Warden Warden,” the lead characters prove incapable of using such simple devices as potato peelers and tape dispensers without causing chaos, and the “high point” of the picture involves an extended Carol Burnett Show-style sketch of Conway’s character attempting to perform dentistry on the bad guy while repeatedly injecting himself with Novocain. Oh, and the climax involves Conway and McCann disguised as, respectively, a buck-toothed Japanese dignitary and his geisha companion—because, apparently, the film’s various portrayals of brainless rednecks weren’t sufficiently offensive.

They Went That-a-Way & That-a-Way: SQUARE

Face Off (1971)

Contrived, dull, and trite, the Canadian-made hockey drama Face Off would be negligible if not for the inclusion of many real-life NHL players and footage of the athletes plying their trade. Given the shabby storyline, however, even hardcore hockey fans will have a tough time sitting through the whole thing. Brace yourself for clichés: Protagonist Billy Duke (Art Hindle) is a rookie player whose talent is undermined by anger-management issues; his girlfriend, folksinger Sherry Nelson (Trudy Young), is a gentle spirit who hates the violence associated with hockey; Billy’s coach, Fred Wares (John Vernon), tries to separate Billy and Sherry so Billy can focus on training and winning; and Sherry’s manager, Joe MacMillan (Steve Pirnie), has romantic designs on Sherry, resulting in a love triangle. Oh, and Sherry gets addicted to drugs, too. Written by George Robertson and directed by George McCowan, Face Off feels like a made-for-TV tearjerker—think stiff dialogue, noxious music, and tedious montage sequences. Face Off is best when it hits the ice, because the scenes of hockey players swooshing past each other in between brawls have a certain innate energy that the mediocre filmmaking cannot suppress. The trouble kicks in whenever the hockey stops. For instance, Hindle must try to keep a straight face while delivering the following dialogue to Sherry: “I’m younger and stronger and tougher. That’s why you dig me.” Hindle, who has enjoyed a long but not particularly distinguished career in both American and Canadian films, has a comfortable vibe onscreen, but his performance is not a cause for excitement. Young’s work invites even less praise, so it falls to reliable veteran Vernon—chewing scenery as always—to give the picture bite. He does what he can with a one-dimensional role. Like a lot of low-rent sports flicks, Face Off eventually moves into a zone where it’s less about sports and more about the angst of uninteresting characters, but until that happens, the NHL gets loads of screen time; many of the people portraying commentators, executives, and players are actual NHL personalities of the early ’70s, including iconic skaters Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, and Derek Sanderson.

Face Off: FUNKY

The Visitors (1972)

          Lots of ink has been spilled analyzing the latter-day career of director Eliza Kazan, a onetime champion of the left-wing theatrical community and a key figure in the process of introducing Method acting to America. Around the same time he made cinematic masterpieces with Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire), James Dean (East of Eden), and Andy Griffith (A Face in the Crowd), Kazan turned on old friends by “naming names” before the U.S. government’s anti-communist witch hunters. Partially owing to the complex political dynamics of his career, Kazan was effectively finished as a director of major studio films just a few years later, circa the early ’60s. Nonetheless, he still had some creative gas left in the tank, as evidenced by the offbeat low-budget project The Visitors, Kazan’s penultimate feature.

          Stamped with his signatures of emotional intensity and truthful acting, the picture feels hipper and rougher and more contemporary than anything one might reasonably expect from a 63-year-old (Kazan’s age at the time of the movie’s release). A small, character-driven drama/thriller written by one of Kazan’s sons, Chris Kazan, The Visitors is a nihilistic story about psychologically scarred Vietnam veterans, and the whole film is set on a remote farm in the Northeast during wintertime.

          Unassuming vet Bill Schmidt (James Woods) lives with his girlfriend, Martha (Patricia Joyce), on a farmed owned by her father, Harry Wayne (Patrick McVey). Harry, who resides in a guesthouse adjoining the farm’s main residence, is an alcoholic he-man novelist, so underlying tension stems from his disapproval of Bill’s pacifistic timidity.  One day, two of Bill’s Army comrades show up unexpectedly. Mike Nickerson (Steve Railsback) feigns courtesy but obviously hides tremendous rage, while Tony Rodrigues (Chico Martinez) tags along and follows Mike’s orders without question. As the day-long visit progresses, the vets bond with Harry—who respects their blood lust and racist attitudes—while Bill prepares for inevitable violence. It turns out that during the war, Mike and Tony committed atrocities, and Bill was the soldier who testified against them. (Make what you will about the parallels between this backstory and Kazan’s personal history.)

          Shot in grainy 16-millimeter, The Visitors has the feel of a scrappy independent film even though Kazan’s handling of pacing and tone is masterful. The picture has the slow-burn structure of a horror film, and it’s stomach-churning to watch a metaphorical cloud of darkness form over the tiny farm. Moreover, the screenplay illuminates the line dividing the “sanctioned” violence germane to American life (the brutal football game several characters watch, Harry’s tales of killing enemies in World War II, etc.) from the “unsanctioned” violence of actual criminals. Does one beget the other?

          The Visitors has flaws, of course, notably a nasty sort of sexual politics. Further, the film is unremittingly grim, which will make it a tough experience for many viewers. But especially thanks to incendiary performances by Railsback (one of the screen’s great portrayers of psychosis), Woods (a live wire even in a restrained role such as this one), and McVey (who channels Sterling Hayden with a vengeance), The Visitors is gripping from start to finish.

The Visitors: GROOVY

Corky (1972)

          One of the very best things that happened in American movies during the late ’60s and early ’70s was that filmmakers began telling stories about losers on a regular basis. Utilizing such unconventional leading players as Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, bold directors explored the complex life experiences of men living on the fringes of modern society, thus broadening the spectrum of what was considered acceptable in mainstream cinema. But, as the saying goes, you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelete. So, for every groundbreaking story about an offbeat protagonist, there were plenty of failed attempts. Hence Corky, a bummer drama about an asshole who dreams of becoming a top racecar driver. As portrayed by the diminutive but volatile Robert Blake, Corky Curtiss is a foul-mouthed, ignorant, narcissistic redneck who abandons his family, endangers his coworkers, objectifies women, punches his friends, and eventually succumbs to sociopathic madness. And while there’s a school of thought that says any character capable of provoking strong reactions is inherently interesting, the problem with Corky Curtiss—and with Corky as a whole—is that the character’s behavior becomes so repetitive and ugly that, eventually, the only possible reactions are fatigue and indifference.

          The story gets off to a shaky start. Corky works in a garage and moonlights as a demolition-derby driver on the team run by the garage’s owner, Randy (Patrick O’Neal). Corky’s dangerous antics behind the wheel get him fired from both jobs, so Corky tells his wife, Peggy Jo (Charlotte Rampling), that he’s leaving town, ostensibly to make money on the racing circuit. Yet Corky spends all of his time away from home boozing, brawling, and gambling. Then, when he finally returns home (spoiler alert), he gets angry that Peggy Jo has moved on with her life and he goes on a shooting spree. Good luck finding anything edifying here, especially since key elements of the movie are maddeningly distracting: The music is gooey and weird; the intermittent flashbacks illuminate nothing; and Rampling, the epitome of icy European beauty, is laughably miscast as a barefoot-and-pregnant redneck housewife. Were one to strain in the effort to find something praiseworthy in Corky, it could be said that Blake’s commitment to his performance is impressive—but then again, wouldn’t Blake’s intensity have been more impressive if his character came across as sympathetic instead of merely repulsive?

Corky: LAME

What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

          Although many ’70s filmmakers brilliantly modernized the film-noir genre of the 1940s and 1950s, most ’70s attempts to revive the “screwball comedy” style of the 1930s fell flat. Part of the problem, of course, is that screwball comedies are inherently fluffy, a tonality that creates an inherent dissonance when juxtaposed with the realism to which viewers gravitated in the ’70s. Plus, for better or worse, film comedy had grown up since the ’30s, so the idea of a gentle farce predicated on silly misunderstandings seemed archaic. Yet somehow, wunderkind director Peter Bogdanovich managed to turn an unapologetic throwback into a major success—in every possible way, What’s Up Doc? is an homage to yesteryear. After all, the deliberately confusing storyline swirls several frothy subplots around the even frothier main plot of a fast-talking misfit trying to win the heart of a bumbling scientist.

          There’s no denying Bogdanovich’s craftsmanship, because he clearly studied the work of everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Howard Hawks in order to analyze the construction of repartee and sight gags. As a clinical experiment, What’s Up Doc? is impressive. Furthermore, Bogdanovich benefited from the contributions of smart co-writers, namely Buck Henry and the Bonnie and Clyde duo of Robert Benton and David Newman, and the talent represented onscreen is just as first-rate, with one notable exception. Leading lady Barbra Streisand is terrific as she blasts through thick dialogue, somehow making her overbearing character likeable. She also looks amazing, oozing her unique strain of self-confident sexiness. Comedy pros lending their gifts to smaller roles include Madeleine Kahn (appearing in her first movie), Kenneth Mars, Michael Murphy, and Austin Pendleton.

          The aforementioned exception, however, is leading man Ryan O’Neal, who comes across like a beautiful puppet—in addition to being far too fit, handsome, and tan to believably play a cloistered researcher, O’Neal evinces no personality whatsoever. One gets the impression that his every gesture and intonation was massaged by Bogdanovich, so O’Neal’s performance has a robotic feel. Similarly, the movie’s elaborate physical-comedy set pieces are so mechanically constructed that they seem more focused on showcasing production values than on generating laughs. For instance, the finale, during which the heroes soar down San Francisco streets inside a Chinese dragon parade float—and during which characters keep just missing a sheet of plate glass that’s being delivered across a roadway—is exhausting to watch instead of exhilarating. (Even the movie’s rat-a-tat dialogue has an overly rote quality. At one point, O’Neal says, “What are you doing? It’s a one-way street!” Streisand shoots back, “We’re only going one way!”)

          Ultimately, however, the real problem with What’s Up, Doc? (at least for this viewer) is twofold. Firstly, it’s impossible to care about characters who exist only to trigger jokes, and secondly, it’s difficult to overlook the anachronism of ’70s actors playing situations borrowed from the 1930s. But then again, millions of people flocked to What’s Up, Doc? during its original release, putting the movie among the highest grossers of 1972. So, as the saying goes, your experience may differ.

What’s Up, Doc?: FUNKY

The Evictors (1979)

Low-budget filmmaker Charles B. Pierce was relentless about trying to recapture the success of his first movie, The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a backwoods monster movie that was shamelessly sold as a true story, even though it wasn’t. For instance, Pierce’s last flick of the ’70s, The Evictors, wasn’t a true story either, despite hype to the contrary. Set in Louisiana circa 1942 (with extensive flashbacks to the same area in 1928), The Evictors employs the scary premise of displaced psychos tormenting the current residents of the psychos’ former home. Unfortunately, the movie is far less interesting than the concept. To the dismay of viewers suckered by the spooky poster and trailer, The Evictors comprises an hour of boring preamble and about 30 minutes of underwhelming climax. Like Pierce’s other Southern-fried shockers, the picture has atmospheric widescreen cinematography and decent production design, but there isn’t enough narrative to sustain a feature. The picture begins with a sepia-toned flashback of cops trying to evict rednecks from an attractive rural home in 1928. Bloodshed ensues. Cut to 1942, when newlyweds Ben Watkins (Michael Parks) and Ruth Watkins (Jessica Harper) decide to buy the house from overly solicitous realtor Jake Rudd (Vic Morrow). For the next hour, Ruth grows worried based on cryptic written threats and the resulting vague suspicions. (The acting in The Evictors is exactly as lifeless as the material deserves, though cult-fave starlet Harper is a uniquely vulnerable presence in any context.) To get a sense of how ineptly Pierce tries to build tension, consider the bit where Ruth walks into her property’s barn, looks directly at a group of chickens, then yelps when one of the chickens hops off the ground. Pierce tries to jack up moments like these with spooky music, but the sum effect is still ridiculous. Occasionally, the movie livens up with a grisly flashback—as when someone gets murdered with a horseshoe attached to the end of a stick—and, of course, when “the evictors” finally show up at the end of the movie, a few minutes of chasing and running and screaming occur. This is followed by a head-scratcher of a “twist” ending.

The Evictors: LAME

The Peace Killers (1971)

A clash between hog-riding outlaws and peacenik longhairs is the subject of the mildly provocative drama/thriller The Peace Killers. Unfortunately, because the movie’s abundant violence is so mean-spirited and sleazy, it’s difficult to argue that The Peace Killers is about anything real, despite the way the storyline approaches issues pertaining to moral relativism. The movie begins with commune members Jeff (Michael Ontkean) and Kristen (Jess Walton), who are siblings, pulling their hippy-dippy VW van into the wrong place at the wrong time—Jeff and Kristen encounter members of a biker gang with which Kristen was once associated. It turns out that in her wilder days, Kristen was the squeeze of the gang’s leader, psychotic cyclist Reb (Clint Ritchie). Jeff and Kristen escape the bikers, but when Reb learns that his ex-mama has resurfaced, he vows to capture her for humiliating payback. Eventually, Reb terrorizes the entire commune, so the movie hangs on the question of whether Kristen’s guru/love interest, Alex (Paul Prokop), will abandon his pacifist principles and use force to protect her. The Peace Killers does a decent job of capturing the era’s lingo, as when Alex lays down his touchy-feely Philosophy 101 raps. “Speech is such a poor means of communication,” he blathers at one point. “Words distort so much.” The movie’s verbal verve also manifests in Reb’s nasty screeds: “I’m gonna find that little whore, and when I do I’m gonna give her a special midnight ride—I’m gonna ram into her and tear her wide open.” Ouch. Even though The Peace Killers drags a bit, the lurid scenes have considerable lowbrow potency thanks to plentiful nudity and violence; after all, The Peace Killers is first and foremost an exploitation flick. Leading man Ontkean is fine, displaying the same gentle sincerity that distinguished his work on the TV series The Rookies (which hit the airwaves a year after The Peace Killers was released), while darkly pretty Walton makes an alluring if somewhat vapid leading lady. (One hopes she didn’t have to do many takes of the movie’s unsavory gang-rape scene.) As for the rest of the cast, each actor delivers a one-note performance as needed.

The Peace Killers: FUNKY

Bank Shot (1974)

          To get a sense of the endearingly fluffy humor that pervades this caper flick, consider a moment when bumbling FBI agent Streiger (Clifton James) shows his team surveillance footage of master criminal Walter Upjohn Ballantine (George C. Scott). First, the surveillance camera is angled away from Ballantine because the cameraman is ogling a pretty girl’s figure, and second, Ballantine reveals he’s aware of the surveillance camera by dabbing the lens with the tip of an ice cream cone. Gritty realism this is not. Yet while some other adaptations of lighthearted crime books by author Donald E. Westlake spiral into stupidity, the Westlake adaptation Bank Shot comes awfully close to cooking that most delicate soufflé of pure farce, especially during sequences of epic-proportioned slapstick. It helps, of course, to have a leading actor of consummate skill, since Scott plays every single scene perfectly straight, no matter how absurd the circumstances. Together with an adept supporting cast and the confident direction of Gower Champion (a former dancer and choreographer), Scott’s performance makes Bank Shot highly entertaining.

          The plot is a standard Westlake lark. Career thief Ballantine, whom Scott portrays with comically bushy eyebrows and a pronounced lisp, is stuck in a prison work farm until his excitable accomplice, A. G. Karp (Sorrell Booke), visits with news that a bank has been identified as vulnerable for robbery. Ballantine stages a ridiculous escape by hijacking an earthmover and bulldozing his way through prison walls. Then he meets the unimpressive crew Karp has gathered. These offbeat theives include a nebbish ex-FBI agent (Bob Balaban), a jittery goodfella (Don Calfa), and a sexy society dame (Joanna Cassidy) who’s moonlighting as a crook for thrills. Karp’s undercooked plan involves robbing a bank that’s temporarily housed in a mobile home, so Ballantine arrives at an audacious method—hook the mobile home to a truck, cart it away to a safe location, and crack the bank’s vault later.

          Even though the movie is very brief (83 minutes), Bank Shot includes a string of goofy running gangs, like the trope of Ballantine dosing himself with saltpeter in order to resist the advances of Cassidy’s character, lest he get distracted from his task. (Cassidy, playing one of her earliest major film roles, enlivens the picture with her carefree spirit and throaty laugh.) The picture is handsomely shot and quickly paced, though it slows down, appropriately, during moments displaying the thieves’ careful technique; watch for the bit when an explosives man gets more and more frustrated each time a charge proves insufficient for blowing a safe open. Bank Shot gets very cartoonish toward the end, with Streiger and his men chasing after a runaway mobile home—c’mon, you knew that was going to happen—but the charm of the main performances and the cheerful unpretentiousness of the whole enterprise compensate for a lot of rough edges.

Bank Shot: GROOVY

Walking Tall (1973) & Walking Tall Part II (1975) & Final Chapter: Walking Tall (1977)

          The Walking Tall franchise provides an object lesson in diminishing returns. The first picture has a certain crude but undeniable power, meaning follow-ups were inevitable. Yet critical lashings and meager box-office returns for the second and third pictures did not deter the films’ producers from generating a TV movie, titled A Real American Hero, about the same real-life historical figure who inspired the franchise. Later, a different company picked up the reins by creating a short-lived Walking Tall TV series in 1981. And then, decades after it seemed as if the Walking Tall brand was exhausted, a remake of the original film was released in 2004 (with Dwayne Johnson as Pusser), and the remake begat straight-to-video sequels (enter Kevin Sorbo). What gave the series its staying power? Well, if you believe the self-mythologizing of the late Buford Pusser, the subject of all of these stories, he was a real-life action hero. A former wrestler who became the sheriff of Tennessee’s McNairy County, Pusser took on organized crime and won, purging McNairy of moonshiners, prostitutes, racketeers, and so on. Yet justice came at a terrible price. Pusser’s wife was murdered, and he died under mysterious circumstances just a year after the first Walking Tall movie was released.

          Or at least that was the perception until a 2025 investigation unearthed evidence suggesting Pusser killed his wife. One imagines the next cinematic treatment of Pusser’s life, if there ever is one, will bear little resemblance to the pulpy sagas of the ’70s.

          The first movie, simply titled Walking Tall, was based on a nonfiction book about Pusser. At the beginning of the story, Pusser (Joe Don Baker) gives up wrestling for a quiet life in his native McNairy County, only to discover the area is overrun with crooks. Idealistic and stubborn, Pusser gets into hassles with the area’s criminal element. Before long, he’s beaten, mutilated, and left for dead. Unable to exact justice via the legal system after his recovery, Pusser runs for sheriff and wins, becoming a one-man vengeance squad. The title relates to his signature weapon, a four-foot wooden club that he uses to beat evildoers (as in, “Walk tall and carry a big stick”). One of the most interesting elements of the movie is Pusser’s gradual education about things like search-and-seizure laws and suspects’ rights; he evolves from recklessly kicking ass to slyly trapping bad guys through their own misdeeds. Meanwhile, he tries to build a stable home life with his wife, Pauline (Elizabeth Hartman), and their two kids.

          As directed by competent journeyman Phil Karlson, Walking Tall moves along at a good clip even though it runs 125 minutes; call it the Citizen Kane of fascistic southern-fried vigilante pictures. Plus, by the time the movie slides into its final act—during which Pusser metes out bloody justice while half his face is masked in bandages following a near-fatal assault—Walking Tall becomes just a little bit deranged. (How deranged? The plaintive theme song is performed by, of all people, Johnny Mathis.) Baker is in his natural element here, exuding badass ’tude and cornpone charm, so it doesn’t really matter that the rest of the cast is largely forgettable; only crusty character actor Noah Berry, Jr., as Pusser’s papa, makes an impression. The aesthetic is pure Me Decade garishness, the FX team is generous with the fake blood, and every narrative point is made with the subtlety of a hammer to the forehead. The amount of sweat pouring from actors seems to reflect how hard they're working to generate lurid entertainment.

          The real-life Pusser’s death cast a morbid pall over Walking Tall Part II, in which the statuesque Bo Svenson assume the leading role. Lacking Baker’s charisma, Svenson struggles through emotional moments and relies on his intimidating physique to sell action scenes. Further, he seems too gentle to play a man who’d rather crack skulls than read suspects their rights. It isn’t giving much away to say the original Walking Tall ends with Pusser killing the men who murdered his wife, or that Walking Tall: Part II dramatizes his attempts to arrest the crooks who ordered the hit. The sequel adds swampy flavor, with supporting characters bearing names like “Pinky Dobson” and “Stud Pardee,” and the caliber of the supporting players is a slight improvement on the first film. Reliable actors including Luke Askew and Richard Jaeckel add energy, though leading lady Angel Tompkins is largely decorative as a temptress hired to ensnare Pusser. And while periodic car chases and shootouts keep things lively, there’s too much aimless yakety-yak—not exactly Svenson’s strong suit as a performer. Worse, the way the movie addresses the real Pusser’s death is highly unsatisfying.

          The last of the ’70s Pusser flicks, the oddly titled Final Chapter: Walking Tall, is as interminable as it is unnecessary. Fabricating a thin story to depict what happened to Pusser between the climax of the previous film and his death—while, of course, presenting a wholly unsubstantiated conspiracy theory in order to name Pusser’s killers—Final Chapter: Walking Tall mostly features Pusser (Svenson again) fretting about his troubles. A long scene of Pusser weeping over his wife’s grave represents the nadir of Svenson’s acting in the series; he tries mightily but can’t conjure anything genuine. Weirdly, the makers of Final Chapter: Walking Tall often forget they’re cranking out an exploitation flick, instead trying to generate wholesome family drama. Pusser saves a kid from an abusive father, romances a girl-next-door secretary, and generally tries to set a positive example for his kids—yawn. Literally an hour of screen time elapses before serious action occurs.

          Anyway, one last item for trivia buffs—two performes who appear in all three ’70s Walking Tall movies are teen idol Leif Garrett, as Pusser’s son, and character actor Bruce Glover, as Pusser’s deputy. Best known for playing a gay hit man in the 007 romp Diamonds are Forever (1971), Glover also sired oddball actor-director Crispin Glover.

Walking Tall: GROOVY

Walking Tall Part II: FUNKY

Final Chapter: Walking Tall: LAME