Husbands (1970)

          Actor/director John Cassavetes’ cycle of semi-improvised movies reached a new level with Husbands, a showpiece for the acting of Casssavetes and his pals Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. By melding his signature style of spontaneous performance with the specific energies of established screen personalities, Cassavetes achieved a noteworthy synthesis of Hollywood artifice and verité grunginess. Yet while the picture is historically significant as a formative step for the burgeoning indie-cinema aesthetic—of which Cassavetes is now considered the de facto godfather—Husbands is an acquired taste. Like all of the director’s improv-driven pictures, Husbands is an overlong and repetitive survey of unappealing behavior, presenting endless scenes of self-involved people groping with language and violent physicality as they strive to articulate petty anxieties. The problem, as always, is that Cassavetes fails to explore his fascinations in a balanced way, so there’s no real context around the characters. Thus, viewers are subjected to a world in which men have tacit license to follow every whim, no matter how injurious the results might be to other people—and yet viewers are expected to sympathize with these boors.

          The story is so simple that the film could (and should) have run 90 minutes instead of nearly 140. After a close friend dies of a sudden heart attack, buddies Frank (Falk), Gus (Cassavetes), and Harry (Gazzara) go on a drunken bender as they wrestle with the shocking reminder of their mortality. The first half of the movie comprises the pals meandering from the funeral to various New York dives, drinking and singing and whining all the way. The second half of the picture begins when Harry fights with his wife and impulsively decides to fly to England. Concerned for Harry’s emotional welfare, Frank and Gus tag along, so the pals end up in a London hotel with three women they pick up in a bar. And so it goes from there, up until the inconclusive ending.

          Fans of Cassavetes’ work generally single out the freshness of the acting as a core virtue, but the performances by the three leads in Husbands hardly seem praiseworthy. While it’s true that Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara generate verisimilitude by channeling the sloppy way real people move and talk, there’s a reason screen acting generally involves shrinking normal human behavior down to illustrative indicators—watching “real” people in real time is boring. And that, from my perspective, is the best possible adjective for describing Husbands. Sure, critics have spent decades talking about how the picture captures the unchained id of the male animal, blah-blah-blah, and there’s a kernel of truth within that interpretation. After all, the characters in Husbands are as likely to break down in tears as they are to physically and/or verbally abuse women, so there’s nothing flattering in the picture Cassavetes paints. Whether there’s anything interesting in the picture, however, is another matter.

Husbands: FUNKY

Embryo (1976)

          The sci-fi thriller Embryo is one of a zillion movies patterned after Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, because it’s a cautionary tale about a scientist who pays a terrible price for attempting to create new life. You know the drill: madman makes monster, monster causes havoc, madman and monster meet in a final confrontation. Yet Embryo imprudently alters the familiar formula by adding a love story, which drains energy from the middle of the story. For a good 40 minutes, viewers are subjected to repetitive sequences of the scientist bonding with his creation—and, as every good dramatist knows, there’s nothing more destructive to narrative momentum than characters getting along. So, while Embryo isn’t awful, it’s not the lean-and-mean shocker it could and should have been.

          Rock Hudson stars as Dr. Paul Holliston, a widower who specializes in the use of chemicals to stimulate fetal development. After successfully experimenting on a dog fetus, which matures to adulthood in the space of a few days, Paul repeats the experiment on a human embryo. Thus he begets Victoria (Barbara Carrera), a beautiful young woman who grows from fetus to twentysomething in the space of a month. Once Paul arrests her rapid growth, he educates her and introduces her to the world, concealing the secret of her birth from everyone except Victoria. Predictably, the two develop feelings for each other, and Paul happily satiates Victoria’s curiosity about sex. (As if you couldn’t have guessed, she’s hot.) Unbeknownst to Paul, however, the dog he created develops violent tendencies—so when Victoria discovers she possesses built-in abnormalities that might prove fatal, it’s no surprise that she goes on a rampage. (Paul’s inability to recognize danger signs is one of the movie’s biggest logical lapses.)

          As directed by skillful journeyman Ralph Nelson, Embryo is okay on a scene-by-scene basis; among other things, Nelson does a fine job of turning Paul’s lab into a forbidding place simply by using shadows. But on a macro level, Embryo falls apart. Subplots are handled poorly, with plot twists overly telegraphed and rich veins left unexplored. Leading lady Carrera’s performance is another weakness—appearing in one of her first movies, she’s pretty but unconvincing. (Hudson is merely okay, hitting his marks with crisp professionalism.) It’s tempting to say that Embryo is ripe fodder for a remake, since a more exciting version of the story is easily envisioned, but it’s also possible that this middling interpretation is as strong a treatment as the hokey premise deserves.

Embryo: FUNKY

Mitchell (1975)

One of the least interesting entries in the ’70s cycle of action movies about cops behaving as lawlessly as the criminals they pursue, Mitchell features a disjointed storyline, lackluster action scenes, and perfunctory acting. The movie is more or less coherent, but it’s also boring, clichéd, and stupid. Hulking B-movie star Joe Don Baker plays the title character, a dim-bulb detective who gets mixed up with sophisticated crooks, so the bulk of the story involves Baker’s character trying to outwit people whose intellects greatly surpass his own. This sort of premise worked well in a zillion other movies; for instance, Baker offered an entertaining, Southern-fried spin on similar material in Walking Tall (1973). Yet everything about Mitchell feels half-assed. Baker isn’t the right casting for a tough city cop, since he’s unmistakably a good ol’ boy from Texas, and he plays nearly every scene like light comedy, even though death and destruction follow in his wake. As directed by the normally reliable Andrew V. McLaglen, Mitchell wobbles between escapism and seriousness, so it seems likely that many of the film’s tonal problems emerged during postproduction. After all, there’s no excuse for the inclusion of cornpone country singer Hoyt Axton’s lackadaisical theme song during a lengthy love scene between Baker and leading lady Linda Evans—for several excruciating minutes, Mitchell becomes the equivalent of the worst type of Burt Reynolds romp. Future Dynasty star Evans is as forgettable as always, while the actors playing the villains—the great Martin Balsam and the emphatic John Saxon—are wasted in one-dimensional roles. (Saxon’s big scene is a silly chase involving dune buggies.) Virtually nothing in Mitchell works, and the climax is beyond ludicrous. Baker’s character commandeers a helicopter to chase after bad guys who are in a boat, transfers from the helicopter to the boat, and takes out a henchman with a metal hook. All the while, the main villain simply stands at the boat’s controls, waiting to get shot instead of taking defensive action. But then again, seeing as how he’s stuck in an awful movie, can you blame him?

Mitchell: LAME

Equus (1977)

          British playwright Peter Shaffer has gone to many dark and deep places in his work—the crowning achievement of his career is arguably Amadeus, which premiered in 1979 and was adapted into the lauded 1984 film of the same name. Yet perhaps the most provocative of Shaffer’s works is Equus, which premiered onstage in 1973 and ran for years in London and New York before reaching the screen in this 1977 adaptation. (As with Amadeus, Shaffer handled the screenwriting chores.) Inspired by a gruesome incident from real life, Equus imagines the psychology of a young man who blinded six horses with a scythe. The picture is structured as a duel of sorts between the disturbed teenager, Alan Strang (Peter Firth), and his psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Richard Burton). Equus begins when Alan is committed to Martin’s hospital following the incident, so Martin spends the rest of the movie interviewing Alan—as well as Alan’s parents and former employer—to discover what drove the boy to heinous violence.

          Shaffer and director Sidney Lumet embellish their storytelling with vivid flashbacks depicting past events in Alan’s life, eventually culminating in a dramatization of the horse-blinding rampage, which is exactly as hard to watch as you might imagine. The crux of Shaffer’s story is revealing the complex nature of Alan’s personal belief system. Blending the religious views of his parents, the confusing impulses of burgeoning sexuality, and the mystifying impact of an early childhood encounter with a horse, Alan constructs a bizarre psychosexual ideology in which “Equus,” the spirit of all horses, is a god overseeing Alan’s development. Martin learns that Alan has secretly enjoyed erotic experiences with horses, such as stripping off his clothes to ride horses bareback until he climaxes, and that Alan’s skewed vision of physicality triggered the bloodshed. Shaffer’s story, which the writer has said is wholly invented except for the blinding incident, represents an incredible leap of imagination.

          Furthermore, Shaffer is in some sense insulated from criticism because the most outlandish proposition of the story—the notion that a boy fascinated by horses would intentionally mutilate six of them—is extracted from reality. Given a world where such things happen, can anything Shaffer presents by way of possible explanation be dismissed as too bizarre? Plus, because Shaffer complements Alan’s tragic journey with a completely fictional construct—Martin’s tortured emotional life—it becomes apparent that Shaffer is after something more than simply “explaining” a monstrous act. Among other things, Equus is a story about transference, since Martin seeks to heal Alan by absorbing the boy’s demons into his own wounded soul. This is grim stuff, and Lumet presents the narrative unflinchingly.

          Burton is rendered naked emotionally during long monologues that demonstrate the actor’s remarkable facility for rendering both intricate language and bone-deep pain. Firth is rendered naked emotionally and physically, his frequent onscreen nudity a fitting way of representing Alan’s childlike vulnerability. (Supporting actress Jenny Agutter, always a brave trouper during revealing roles, adroitly counters Firth by showing an adult’s ownership of her nudity, which confuses Firth’s character terribly.) Some viewers will accept Shaffer’s narrative as a metaphor representing the mixed signals we receive in life about religion and sex, while others will discard the story as gruesome and pretentious. To say the least, this movie is not for everyone. Yet while Equus is bleak and excessive and grandiose and strange, its finest moments have searing power.

Equus: GROOVY

The Van (1977)

It’s no mystery why most teen sex comedies are awful, since the producers of such films prioritize raunchy humor and sleazy scenarios over more high-minded storytelling considerations. Nonetheless, generating a few cheap laughs (and a few cheap thrills) from a simple premise shouldn’t be the most difficult task in the world. Therefore, upon encountering a dud like The Van, one can only marvel at how completely the filmmakers in question failed to vault such a low hurdle. Built around the most rudimentary of ideas—a high school graduate buys a tricked-out van to use as a bachelor pad on wheels—the movie churns through one unfunny scene after another, the inherent nothingness of each sequence exacerbated by choppy editing. Naturally, the acting is terrible, with the lone exception of future star Danny DeVito, who appears in a smallish supporting role. The picture begins when Bobby (forgettable redhead Stuart Goetz) graduates from high school and cashes in the money he’s made working at a car wash to buy a rig that he christens “Straight Arrow.” (Those words, accompanied by a phallic graphic, appear on the side of Bobby’s van.) Although Bobby is in love with classmate Tina (Deborah White), he spends the summer wooing various women into his van for sex. The comedic “highlight” of his carnal campaign involves sleeping with a heavyset girl whose weight breaks the waterbed Bobby installed in the back of the vehicle. The narrative is disjointed, with subplots introduced and discarded arbitrarily, and whenever the filmmakers run out of ideas (which is often), they cut to a montage and play the tacky soft-rock song “Chevy Van”—notwithstanding the fact that the Straight Arrow is a Dodge. The Van is so enervated that at one point, Bobby and Tina spend an entire lengthy montage attending a beachside van show, looking at other people’s tricked-out rigs with admiration. And as if failing to deliver in every other way wasn’t bad enough, The Van strikes out in the smut department, since there’s virtually no nudity in the film. So, unless ogling vehicles that are adorned with airbrushed murals raises your temperature, leave this wreck on the side of the highway where it belongs.

The Van: LAME

The Butterfly Ball (1977)

          The symbiotic relationship between movies and rock music generated some oddities during the ’70s, and this obscure hybrid of concert footage, live-action scenes, and a single animated vignette is nothing if not odd. A musical extravaganza intended for children but featuring several hard-rock singers, the piece was put together by Roger Glover, the longtime bassist of UK band Deep Purple, but the process involved a few fits and starts. In 1973, an illustrated children’s book titled The Butterfly’s Ball, and the Grasshopper’s Feast was released. It was based on William Roscoe’s 1802 poem of the same name. As the title suggests, the story is a fanciful lark about a party for woodland critters. A short cartoon was made from one section of the book, and Glover wrote the accompanying music. This generated a minor UK hit single titled “Love Is All,” with vocals by heavy-metal howler Ronnie James Dio, and plans were made for a full-length animated feature. Yet by the time Glover finished writing songs for the proposed movie, production was cancelled.

          Undaunted, Glover staged a live concert in at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall, recruiting several celebrities to perform his song suite, which bears the abbreviated title The Butterfly Ball. Footage of the 1975 concert comprises most of this movie. The picture also features the “Love Is All” short, as well as weird interstitial bits of performers in animal costumes strolling through London. The film climaxes with a live-action version of the ball, at which the various animal characters sit around a table in a scene straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Despite Glover’s obvious passion for the project, The Butterfly Ball is inherently half-assed—it’s like watching the recording session of the soundtrack for an unmade movie, with glimpses of test footage suggesting what the movie might have been like. That said, the concert has appealing moments.

          Vincent Price, eschewing his normal horror-movie style, participated in the concert as narrator, sitting in a chair above the stage and reading the illustrated book’s whimsical lines. Each song has a different singer, so the film presents an eclectic range of vocal styles. Hard-rockers including David Coverdale put muscle into their numbers, while twee songbirds including model/actress Twiggy offer more ethereal sounds. John Lawton provides one of the loveliest vocals, for the gospel-tinged ballad “Little Chalk Blue,” and he also subs for Dio on the movie’s epic-length rendition of “Love Is All.” Alas, most of the tunes come across as weak imitations of the Lennon-McCartney songbook, with fanciful numbers such as “Sir Maximus Mouse” bearing their Sgt. Pepper’s/White Album influences far too obviously.

The Butterfly Ball: FUNKY

The Candidate (1972)

          “Our lives are more and more determined by forces that overwhelm the individual,” remarks Senatorial candidate Bill McKay (Robert Redford) at one point in The Candidate. The same can be said of McKay’s life, because over the course of this remarkable movie, the idealistic young activist gets swallowed by the machine that sells politicians to the American public. And keep in mind this sobering film was made two decades before the emergence of the Internet as a key factor in campaigns, so the realities to which it speaks have only become more troubling in the ensuing years. The wild part, of course, is that The Candidate isn’t a pure drama—it’s got a strong thread of comedy, because the filmmakers zeroed in on the absurdity of modern American politics. This is mainstream cinema of the highest order, blending lively entertainment and important themes into a unique viewing experience.

          The Candidate was written by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign and, incidentally, the author of the book and screenplay for the eccentric 1971 drama Drive, He Said. Larner netted a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The Candidate—although, inexplicably, he’s never written another movie—and his work meshes beautifully with that of his two plugged-in collaborators, director Michael Ritchie and star Robert Redford. Together, the team present the fictional McKay as a keeper of the Kennedy flame, an unapologetic liberal concerned with the troubles of minorities and the underclass. He’s blessed and cursed with unique political gifts, not only because he’s articulate and handsome but also because he’s the son of a legendary Senator, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas).

          When the story begins, Bill is happily involved with community activism and legal aid for the poor. He’s approached by ambitious campaign manger Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), who envisions Bill as an ideal opponent for slick Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). Naïvely (or cunningly) accepting Marvin’s line that a Senatorial campaign can be used to air Bill’s favorite issues, Bill agrees to run, although he’s told there’s little chance of actually winning. Then, as the campaign gains momentum, Bill’s idealism suffers the death of a thousand cuts when he makes compromises and softens his rhetoric into noncommittal generalities. The magnificent tension of the story arises from the question of whether Bill genuinely regrets the changes he’s making. As he succumbs to power and temptation, does Bill retain his inherent goodness, or does he willingly accede to “forces that overwhelm the individual”?

          Director Ritchie, who previously collaborated with Redford on Downhill Racer (1969), delivers some of his career-best work here, orchestrating complex scenes that simultaneously explore multiple dynamics, and his use of montage to simulate the excitement and pageantry of political events is impressive. The filmmakers also benefit from outstanding performances across the board. Yet it’s the subtlety of The Candidate that impresses the most, from the way Larner’s script evokes the fraught relationships between Bill and the people in his life to the way Redford communicates tiny nuances as they pass through his character’s mind.

          The Candidate runs a bit long at 110 minutes, and the picture could have benefited from a few more jokes to arrive at a more consistent tone. The movie is also, to be frank, a bit on the clinical side. However, these quibbles are insignificant in the face of how many things this truly great movie gets right. The Candidate is without question among the handful of truly essential films ever made about American politics, and it’s a career milestone for everyone involved.

The Candidate: RIGHT ON

The McMasters (1970)

Despite earning cinematic immortality with his moving performance as a victim of prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Brock Peters didn’t get many opportunities to play leading movie roles. The middling race-relations Western The McMasters is an exception, because even though avuncular thespian Burl Ives has top billing, this is Peters’ movie from start to finish. Set in a small Deep South town just after the Civil War, the picture dramatizes the explosive consequences of a free black man trying to live quietly as a property owner in a heavily racist white community. Benjie (Peters) returns from service in the Union army and reconnects with Neal McMasters (Ives), the white rancher who raised Benjie and regards him as a son. Recognizing that he’s getting older and has no other heirs, Neal gives Benjie his last name and half-ownership of his ranch. This development doesn’t sit well with nasty rednecks including Kolby (Jack Palance), a former Confederate officer, and Russel (L.Q. Jones), a local troublemaker. The racists ensure that Benjie and Neal can’t hire white workers for their ranch. However, Benjie befriends a band of Indians led by White Feather (David Carradine), and the Indians agree to help with chores. White Feather also “gives” his sister, Robin (Nancy Kwan), to Benjie as a concubine. Predictably, Benjie and Robin fall in love, and just as predictably, Robin is raped during a siege on the ranch. All of this leads up to a bloody showdown, though the climax of The McMasters is neither as decisive nor or simplistic as one might expect. And while it would be inaccurate to describe The McMasters as a surprising film, the story has just enough emotional texture to make a casual viewing worthwhile. The acting is generally solid, although Ives delivers rote work and Peters comes on a bit theatrically at times, while Western-cinema veterans including Jones, Palance, and R.G. Armstrong provide standard-issue varmint flavor. The miscast Kwan is appealing, and as for Carradine, his performance as an Indian is a stretch, since his line deliveries sound suspiciously modern, but his unique persona adds vitality. (The actor’s father, John Carradine, shows up for a small role as an idealistic preacher.) One of the only features directed by prolific TV helmer Alf Kjellin, The McMasters is never less than competent in terms of technical execution, and it’s never less than serious about its subject matter.

The McMasters: FUNKY

Death Race 2000 (1975)

           When is a bad movie a good movie? Death Race 2000 falls short of any serious standards, because it’s campy, cartoonish, and silly, with one-dimensional characters cavorting their way through absurd adventures. Yet the film’s exuberance and lack of pretention manifest as a crude sort of charm, which works in tandem with breakneck pacing—the movie’s like a piece of candy you don’t realize you shouldn’t be eating until it’s all gone. Science fiction delivered by way of black comedy, Death Race 2000 presents a future in which the United States has become the United Provinces. The supreme ruler of the United Provinces, Mr. President (Sandy McCallum), has eliminated many personal freedoms and keeps the population narcotized by presenting an annual blood-sport extravaganza called the Transcontinental Road Race. A small group of drivers, each of whom has an oversized persona and a colorful costume to match, competes not only by racing each other from one coast to the next but also by running over pedestrians for points. During this particular iteration of the race, however, leftist rebels subvert Mr. President’s authority by sabotaging the event.

          The main racers are Frankenstein (David Carradine), the reigning champion whose body comprises replacement parts after years of racing injuries; “Machine-Gun” Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), a gangster-styled competitor determined to replace Frankenstein as the crowd’s favorite; “Calamity” Jane Kelly (Mary Woronov), who works a Western-outlaw motif; Herman “The German” Boch (Fred Grandy), the league’s resident ersatz Nazi; and Ray “Nero the Hero” Lonagan (Martin Kove), a vainglorious putz with a Roman Empire shtick. Each racer is paired with a navigator, so most of the film comprises standoffs in which teams try to beat each other’s racing times and score points by nailing innocent victims. Also woven into the film are running gags related to announcers and fans. Plus, of course, the violence of the rebels.

          Based on a story by Ib Melchior, Death Race 2000 was produced by Roger Corman and co-written by longtime Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith, whose sardonic touch is audible in the film’s playful dialogue. Director Paul Bartel, the avant-garde humorist who later made the cult-fave comedy Eating Raoul (1982), does a great job throughout Death Race 2000 of balancing goofy humor with sly social commentary—every gag is a nudge at consumerism, egotism, sensationalism, or something else of that nature. The movie is never laugh-out-loud funny, but the tone is consistent and the story (mostly) makes sense. Plus, this being a Corman production, there’s plenty of gore and nudity to keep l0w-minded fans happy. Carradine makes an appealing antihero, his casual cool suited to the role of a seasoned killer, and Stallone is amusing as his hotheaded rival. Meanwhile, Woronov lends a touch of heart, Don Steele (who plays the main announcer) sends up showbiz phoniness, and leading lady Simone Griffeth (who plays Frankenstein’s navigator) blends likeability with sexiness. Best of all, Death Race 2000 runs is course in 80 brisk minutes—all killer, no filler.

Death Race 2000: GROOVY

A Force of One (1979)

Former karate champ Chuck Norris continued his ascendance to B-movie stardom with this lifeless martial-arts saga, which tries to compensate for its myriad shortcomings by showcasing long scenes of Norris in action. Karate aficionados may find this picture more satisfying than the actor’s previous flick, Good Guys Wear Black (1978), but, as always, catering to a niche audience is the easiest way to alienate everyone else. Accordingly, viewers hoping for things like believable acting, intriguing drama, and passable writing should direct their attention elsewhere. Model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill stars as Mandy Rust, the lone female on a San Diego police unit tasked with investigating narcotics activity in the city. When two cops from the unit are murdered via karate, Mandy persuades her boss (Clu Gulager) that everyone on the unit needs martial-arts training. Then she recruits title contender Matt Logan (Norris), who runs a local dojo, for the job. Predictably, Matt gets drawn into the investigation, suffers a horrific personal loss that makes him vengeful, and helps the police take down the drug kingpin who ordered the hits on the cops. There’s also a twist involving a corrupt detective, a quasi-romance between Mandy and Matt, and a touchy-feely subplot concerning Matt’s guardianship of a plucky teenager. It’s all very rote, with nary an original idea in evidence, and the storytelling is turgid in the extreme. Scenes plod along aimlessly, and the only thing flatter than the writing is the acting. Norris is awful, since he had not yet learned to emulate Clint Eastwood’s less-is-more approach, so his line deliveries sound awkward and his “emoting” is pathetic. O’Neill is almost as bad, a delicate beauty preening her way through the absurd role of a tough street cop. Gulager borders on camp with his twitchy take on the clichéd role of a put-upon top cop, and Ron O’Neal (of Superfly fame), who plays one of the officers on the drug unit, waffles between distracted indifference and silly swagger. In short, if you want to see an in-his-prime Norris deliver lightning-fast punches and walloping roundhouse kicks, A Force of One will satisfy for needs. Beyond that? Not so much.

A Force of One: LAME

Emmanuelle (1974)

          Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, hardcore porn enjoyed a brief moment of mainstream acceptability in the early ’70s, but enough moviegoers remained unwilling to patronize explicit cinema that a unique opportunity emerged for softcore flicks. (The success of 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, a X-rated “real” movie with simulated intimacy, helped make lurid movies fashionable.) Enter Emmanuelle, a lavishly photographed French movie that enjoyed box-office success worldwide and kicked off a seemingly immortal franchise. As of this writing, something like 70 Emmanuelle movies have been made, including official films and knock-offs.
          Moreover, Emmanuelle set the template for mainstream softcore. All of the genre’s now-familiar elements are present in the first Emmanuelle—gauzy cinematography, languid music that accelerates in tandem with onscreen intercourse, scandalous behavior ranging from exhibitionism to sadomasochism, and so on. It’s as if producer Yves Rouseet-Rouard, writer Jean-Louis Richard, and director Just Jaeckin set out to make a training film for softcore entrepreneurs. As is true of most softcore, however, Emmanuelle is boring and silly because of insipid dialogue, repetitive scenes, and vapid acting. Whether the movie actually provides erotic stimulation is a highly subjective matter, but helping viewers get their jollies is clearly the raison d’être. After all, it’s hard to take the picture seriously as a political statement about people unmooring themselves from old-fashioned social restrictions given how the lead character’s “liberation” largely comprises acquiescence to humiliating encounters at the behest of men. Even the heroine’s least fraught encounter—a lesbian trysts—is filmed with a male gaze.
          Based on a French novel written by Emmanuelle Arsan, the movie depicts a fictional Frenchwoman named Emmanuelle, who travels to Thailand, where her husband is employed. Beginning on the plane trip to Bangkok (cue snickering laughter), Emmanuelle has a series of wild sexual experiences. Director Jaeckin, a top fashion photographer before he made Emmanuelle, handles the film’s images skillfully, so each composition is artful and delicate. Unfortunately, this sophisticated veneer masks enervated storytelling. Characters in Emmanuelle speak in pretentious fragments, and the story makes very little sense; instead of balancing carnal exploits with real-world concerns, the people in Emmanuelle act like they’re in some sort of erotic theme park. (Actual line: “Have you had sex since squash?”)
          Dutch model-turned-actress Sylvia Kristel became a minor international star by portraying Emmanuelle, but her work in this film hardly qualifies as a performance even though she simulates sexual delight with gusto. The way the filmmakers objectify Kristel is just one of many distasteful aspects of Emmanuelle, because the picture also portrays Thais as primitives driven solely by animal instincts. Ultimately, Emmanuelle is significant because of how many imitators and sequels came afterward, but it’s negligible as cinema. FYI, Kristel appeared intermittently in Emmanuelle sequels until 1992’s Emmanuelle 7, the last “official” movie. The Italian-made Black Emanuelle series (note the different spelling) is a knock-off franchise starring Laura Gemser, and a third Emmanuelle franchise was produced for ’90s TV with Krista Allen in the title role.

Emmanuelle: LAME

1776 (1972)

          Adapted from the 1969 Broadway show of the same name, 1776 is an epic-length musical about the Second Continental Congress, the fractious delegation that represented the American colonies during the Revolutionary War and eventually ratified the Declaration of Independence, thus severing the U.S. from Great Britain. While producer Jack L. Warner (a founder of the studio that bears his family’s name) is to be commended for bringing such historically important subject matter to the screen—and for allowing his collaborators to treat the material intelligently—the movie is a lumbering beast.

          Running various lengths owing to changes made during its original release and reissues (the most widely available version runs about three hours), the movie has a strange rhythm, with long stretches performed as straight drama without music. Furthermore, some determinations of when characters should burst into song make little sense. At its most unfocused, the picture stops dead for “He Plays the Violin,” a love ballad sung by Thomas Jefferson’s wife (Blythe Danner) about her husband’s sexual prowess. Still, there’s almost as much interesting stuff in the movie as there is pointless nonsense like “He Plays the Violin.”

          The main storyline involves John Adams (William Daniels)—who is portrayed, unwisely, as an overbearing snob—trying to ram the idea of independence down the throats of his Continental Congress colleagues, particularly those from Southern states. The film’s best number, “But, Mr. Adams,” features Adams and others, including Benjamin Franklin (Howard Da Silva), dumping the chore of writing the Declaration onto a nobly self-sacrificing Jefferson (Ken Howard). During this scene, the filmmakers combine clever choreography, rousing music, and witty lyrics into purposeful satire. Many noteworthy sequences, however, are bereft of songcraft. After all, revered playwright/screenwriter Peter Stone (Charade) wrote the book for the stage musical and the screenplay for the film, and his dialogue is generally quite choice. For instance, the spirited floor debates that Stone renders, which were inspired by the memoirs of Continental Congressmen, feature charged exchanges about capitalism, elitism, monarchism, and—the thorniest subject of all—slavery.

          Had Warner’s team mercilessly cut the show down to, say, two hours, they could have zeroed in on the essential drama of forming “a more perfect union.” As it stands, for every potent moment—the song “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” is a savage number about right-wing politics, and the harrowing “Molasses to Rum” skewers Northerners for their hypocritical attitude toward slavery—there are a dozen scenes that serve no important purpose. Furthermore, except for the catchy “But, Mr. Adams,” Sherman Edwards’ music is generally mediocre; his melodies are labored, and his taste for operatic grandiosity is tiresome.

          And in terms of generating audience engagement, the movie also badly wants for a strong sympathetic performance. Daniels is far too prickly to serve as a leading man for an epic musical, Da Silva’s penchant for cheap comedy is undignified even though he lands a few successful jokes, and Howard is simply too vanilla. In fact, the performers who come off best are bad guys John Cullum and Donald Madden, playing two obstinate Southern representatives. When the strongest players in a story about the formation of America portray characters opposed the formation of America, that’s a sign something is awry.

1776: FUNKY

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

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

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

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

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

The Boys from Brazil: GROOVY

Young Winston (1972)

          It’s appropriate that the longest sequence in Young Winston takes place during the Boer War, because the movie is a bore. Restrained and respectful in the extreme, this adaptation of a memoir by the revered UK wartime leader Winston Churchill sprawls across 157 lugubrious minutes. Written for the screen and produced by the great Carl Foreman, with Richard Attenborough handling the direction, the film boasts impressive production values but an overly sterile narrative style.
          The most interesting thread of the movie relates to future politician Winston's fraught relationship with his father, forceful Member of Parliament Lord Randolph Churchill (Robert Shaw). During childhood, Winston struggles to earn his aloof father's attention, and during adulthood, Winston seeks revenge against the political establishment that bested his father. This is rich stuff, but Foreman and Attenborough approach the intense family material with the stuffiness of textbook authors. Another thread of the picture involves Winston's relationship with his American-born mother, Lady Churchill (Anne Bancroft). She represents an interesting collision between aggressive and passive impulses, but her complexities remain largely unexplored. The third and final major thread of the story—which gets the most screen time--involves Winston's military career. Alas, the filmmakers can't decide where they stand on Winston's conduct as an officer. Is he a hero willing to risk all for his country and himself (two entities he considers inextricably linked), or is he the glory-hound his detractors criticize him for being? Like so many questions that are raised by Young Winston, this one goes unanswered.

          Foreman integrated many of Churchill's own musings into the script, and those remarks are read in voiceover by star Simon Ward, performing a cartoonish impression of the real Churchill's distinctive speech pattern. Attenborough, who later found his groove as a director of critic-proof dramas about saintly characters—notably Gandhi (1982)—delivers acceptable work during the picture's big-canvas scenes, such as those depicting Winston's battlefield exploits circa the late 19th century and early 20th century. (It helps that the filmmaker shamelessly copies David Lean’s pictorial techniques.) Attenborough's filmmaking doesn't fare as well during close-quarters sequences. For instance, he relies on an ineffective device of filming just one side of long interview scenes while an unseen journalist peppers the interview subject with questions. These scenes drag on forever.

          Not all of Young Winston’s shortcomings should be blamed on Attenborough, however. Leading man Ward (who plays Winston as a young adult) lacks charisma and dynamism, which short-circuits the whole enterprise, and Foreman’s script features excruciating detail about the internecine processes of British government. (Even the long Boer War sequence, which portrays Winston's capture by enemy forces and subsequent daring escape, gets bogged down with narration explaining the political significance of Winston’s situation.) Unsurprisingly, Shaw gives the closest thing the picture has to a full-blooded performance. His appearance climaxes with a poignant scene of Lord Churchill succumbing to mental decay in the midst of a speech. But if the best scene in a two-and-a-half-hour biopic doesn't revolve around the protagonist, that’s a problem.

Young Winston: FUNKY

Moonfire (1970)

Since there’s not much to discuss with relation to the content of this insipid trucker flick, let’s note something peculiar on the movie’s Internet Movie Database page. The first user review was written by the film’s director, Michael Parkhurst, who spends half his post arguing that his picture isn’t as bad as its reputation suggests (Parkhurst valiantly labels Moonfire “fair”). The filmmaker spends the other half of his review bitching that Leonard Maltin once mistakenly described the plot as having a blackmail element. Only here’s the kicker—Moonfire does indeed have a blackmail element, unless one plays a semantic game and says that a villain taking technology hostage and demanding payment for its release somehow qualifies as kidnapping instead of blackmail. Anyway, one reason we’ve gone so far down this road is to demonstrate how vehement online movie-related discussions can become, no matter how insignificant the picture in question. The other reason is to underscore that even a hair-splitting e-debate about Moonfire’s storyline is more interesting than the film itself. The problem with Moonfire is that virtually nothing happens—Parkhurst’s film comprises 107 of the dullest minutes ever committed to celluloid. The plot is confusing, but it contains enough lurid elements that Moonfire should have amounted to something. First, a manned space mission ends when the capsule falls to the ground in Mexico. Next, an ex-Nazi recovers the capsule and the pilot, triggering the blackmail/kidnapping. Then truckers are recruited to deliver ransom to the ex-Nazi, though they’re told neither what they’re hauling nor where they’re going. (Instead, the truckers stop at regular intervals to receive instructions.) As a result, most of the movie comprises endless, repetitive scenes of the truckers heading to their destination, and Moonfire has enough shots of engine maintenance and truck-stop convenience stores to qualify as a training film. Yawn. The cast includes journeyman actor Richard Egan (who’s barely in the picture), square-jawed B-movie staple Charles Napier, and boxer Sonny Liston. None does anything memorable, though Napier and Liston briefly fight a gang of bikers and both spend lots of time shirtless and sweaty. So, until Michael Parkhurst pops up on this blog to argue with what’s just been written here, that’s about all there is to say.

Moonfire: SQUARE