1980 Week: Windows

Although Gordon Willis’ directorial debut deserved each one of its five Razzie Award nominations, the movie is noteworthy exactly because of the ways in which it is terrible. After dominating the ’70s with his astonishing work as a cinematographer (All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, The Godfather, etc.), Willis finally stepped into the director’s chair for this offbeat thriller about shy NYC stutterer Emily (Talia Shire) being menaced by her unstable neighbor, Andrea (Elizabeth Ashley). Predictably, the movie looks amazing, with so many beauty shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and the New York skyline that the film could have been sliced up to make tourism commercials. Living up to his “Prince of Darkness” nickname, Willis accentuates the failing light of late afternoons and the smothering shadows of urban nights. In some scenes, it’s as if Willis challenged himself to see how little illumination he could use and still record an exposure on film; the climax, for instance, features a pair of faintly backlit silhouettes juxtaposed with the dim view seen though a background window. Unfortunately, it seems Willis had no energy left for directing actors after composing his artful images—the performances in Windows are so flat that it seems like sleeping gas was pumped into the soundstage during production. Shire, never the most dynamic performer, tries for a Mia Farrow-esque brand of fragile anguish, but her character is so dull and inactive that the actress’ efforts are for naught. Ashley is terrible, using bugged-out eyes and heavy breathing to convey instability, while leading man Joe Cortese (playing a detective who romances Emily) is positively zombified. Yet it’s the script, by Barry Siegel, that really sinks Windows. The storyline comprises a painfully slow succession of scenes in which interesting things almost happen, and then even more scenes in which people stand around waiting for things to happen. So even though Willis’ photography is as regal as ever, his movie is a detour to Dullsville. Happily, Willis returned to his original vocation for many years of great work after Windows.

Windows: LAME

1980 Week: Can’t Stop the Music & Xanadu

          Since disco was already dying by the time these two spectacularly bad dance-themed movies were released, it’s not fair to say that either picture killed disco. Nonetheless, the sleazy Can’t Stop the Music and the wholesome Xanadu certainly inflicted wounds. Starring the Village People, Can’t Stop the Music is perplexing right from the first frame, because the opening-credits sequence features Steve Guttenberg roller-skating through New York City, in a split-screen effect, as he listens to the Village People on his personal radio and as the credits reveal the motley crew assembled for the movie. Beyond Guttenberg, the cast includes athlete Bruce Jenner and sexpot Valerie Perrine. Stranger still, the picture was directed by Nancy Walker, best known for playing greasy-spoon waitress “Rosie” in ’70s commercials for Bounty paper towels.

          Can’t Stop the Music purports to tell the story of the Village People’s formation, and like everything else related to the ridiculous vocal group behind “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.,” Can’t Stop the Music avoids the elephant in the room—the fact that the Village People coyly repackaged homoerotica for mainstream consumption. Can’t Stop the Music is outrageously sexualized, featuring scenes in gyms and saunas and swimming pools—there’s even the occasional glimpse of a penis, despite the film’s PG rating. The five singers in the Village People give terrible acting performances, as does Jenner, and the whole movie is cut so fast that it feels like a hallucination. Weirdest of all, perhaps, is the unrelentingly upbeat tone—Can’t Stop the Music is like an old Garland-Rooney “let’s put on a show” picture, only set in a bathhouse.

          Xanadu is just as exuberant, and occasionally just as surreal, but it lacks the subversive quality of Can’t Stop the Music. Instead, Xanadu is an infantile phantasmagoria. However, I must confess to loving the movie’s soundtrack album, featuring songs by Electric Light Orchestra and the film’s leading lady, Olivia Newton-John. (True confession: Xanadu was the first LP I bought with my own money.) Michael Beck, a long way from The Warriors (1979), plays Sonny, an L.A. artist who paints billboard-sized versions of album covers. While roller-skating around Santa Monica one afternoon, Sonny meets the beguiling Kira (Newton-John), who turns out to be one of the Muses from Greek mythology. Kira provides magical inspiration to both Sonny and aging song-and-dance man Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) as the three contrive to build a roller-disco palace called Xanadu. That is, until Zeus decides Kira must return to Olympus.

          In the course of telling its silly story, Xanadu toggles between cinematic styles with great abandon. There’s an animated sequence, lots of special effects, endless roller-disco jams, and a bizarre mash-up number combining a WWII-style big band performance and a guitar-heavy throwdown by L.A. pop-punkers The Tubes. As with Can’t Stop the Music, the genuinely terrible Xanadu is best experienced with either abject disbelief or ironic amusement. The only unassailable aspect of the film is the leading lady’s appearance, because Newton-John was at the apex of her girl-next-door sexiness. Amazingly, Xanadu has enjoyed a long afterlife, even spawning a Broadway musical. Turns out you really can’t stop the music—no matter how hard you try.

          FYI, the collective awfulness of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu led to the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, which honor cinema’s worst achievements.

Can’t Stop the Music: FREAKY

Xanadu: FREAKY

1980 Week: The Empire Strikes Back

          Heretical though my viewpoint might be among old-school fans of a galaxy far, far away, I don’t subscribe to the belief that The Empire Strikes Back is a better film than Star Wars (1977)—even though, by most normal criteria, the second film in the Skywalker saga is superior. Yes, the acting is better, the dialogue is crisper, the narrative is deeper, and the storytelling is slicker. Even the special effects are more impressive the second time around. Still, two considerations always persuade me to keep the first picture atop the pantheon: 1) Empire doesn’t have an ending, because the resolution of the film’s plot doesn’t occur until the first 20 minutes of 1983’s Return of the Jedi; 2) By definition as a sequel, Empire cannot match the thrilling freshness of Star Wars. Ideas are only new once—even ideas like Star Wars, which was cobbled together from myriad preexisting influences.

          Having said all that, Empire is such an exciting, fast, intoxicating, romantic, and surprising ride that it’s unquestionably among the few sequels to match its predecessor in quality. One need only look at the precipitous drop from Empire to Jedi in order to understand how difficult it is to keep a good thing going.

          In any event, reciting Empire’s plot serves very little purpose, partially because the movie is familiar to most viewers and partially because the storyline will sound impenetrable and/or silly to anyone who hasn’t yet hitched their first ride in the Millennium Falcon. (See, we’ve lost the Star Wars virgins already.) Nonetheless, here are the basics. After destroying the Death Star, rebel forces decamp to the snow-covered planet Hoth, but the Empire’s main enforcer, Darth Vader, leads a successful siege. Escaping separately from the fight are wannabe Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, who heads to the planet Dagobah for training with Jedi Master Yoda, and the duo of mercenary Han Solo and rebel leader Princess Leia. While Luke channels his abandonment issues into supernatural Jedi skills, Han and Leia wrestle with their burgeoning attraction—even as Vader conspires to capture the heroes.

          Fantastical sights and sounds abound. The floating Cloud City overseen by suave Lando Calrissian. The epic lightsaber duel that concludes with perhaps the greatest single plot twist in sci-fi history. And so much more. Although series creator George Lucas stepped away from the director’s chair for Empire, enlisting his onetime USC teacher Irvin Kershner, Lucas’ fingerprints are visible on every frame. Better still, cowriter Lawrence Kasdan (beginning a hot streak of Lucas collaborations) helps introduce grown-up emotions into the Star Wars universe. The principal cast of the so-called “original trilogy” reaches its zenith here, with Mark Hamill transforming Skywalker from a hayseed into a haunted hero, Carrie Fisher elevating Leia into a full-on field commander (albeit with a soft spot for the men in her life), Harrison Ford perfecting his charming-rogue take on Han, and new arrival Frank Oz contributing wonderful puppetry and voice work as Yoda.

          Nearly everything in Empire is so terrific, in fact, that a tumble into mediocrity was probably inevitable by the time Jedi came around. Thus, for fans who were kids when the first Star Wars was released (myself included), Empire represents the last moment when we believed Lucas could do no wrong—a galaxy of possibilities, if you will. To say nothing of outer-space badass Boba Fett. (Now we’ve really lost the Star Wars virgins.)

The Empire Strikes Back: OUTTA SIGHT

The Cremators (1972)

A year after subjecting the world to the awful creature feature Octaman, which is indeed about an octopus that walks like a man, writer/director Harry Essex returned with The Cremators, a sci-fi/horror flick about a giant blob of otherworldly flame that rolls around and burns people alive. Essex, who cowrote the classic monster flick The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), employs a cinematic style that’s woefully out of time, so The Cremators includes such antiquated tropes as repetitive comin’-at-ya monster shots and wall-to-wall background music. How old-school is The Cremators? Consider the evidence. Cop-out ending that suggests the danger has not truly passed? Check. Obnoxious Theremin solos during the climax? Check. Square-jawed hero who contrives a scientific means of defeating the monster? Check. All in all, The Cremators is so old-fashioned that it could’ve just as easily been made in 1952, rather than 1972. (As an attentive reader of this blog noted, the story actually does originate from 1952—it was first filmed as an episode of the sci-fi anthology series Tales of Tomorrow.) There’s not a moment of originality or surprise to be found here, so every time heroic scientist Dr. Seppel (Eric Allison) tries to persuade disbelieving authorities that a space monster is responsible for mysterious killings, the viewer’s only possible reaction is a wide yawn. And while The Cremators is in some ways incrementally better than Essex’s previous movie—the photography is a smidgen more atmospheric, for instance, and this time there’s no dude running around in a rubbery-looking octopus suit—Essex set the bar so low with Octaman that even marginal improvement is insufficient to raise The Cremators from the ranks of grade-Z horror. Plus, the way Essex once again cops story elements from The Creature from the Black Lagoon represents a startling failure of imagination. And need we mention that the sight of a glowing special-effects ball is no more frightening here than it was in the innumerable ’60s Star Trek episodes featuring similar beasties bedeviling the starship Enterprise? Happily, Essex stopped directing after The Cremators, returning to the safe harbor of writing movies that better filmmakers captured on celluloid.

The Cremators: SQUARE

Tilt (1979)

          Even though the main bullet point for any discussion of Tilt should be the brazenness with which cowriter/producer/director Rudy Durand ripped off the classic drama The Hustler (1961), moving the original story about pool into the oh-so-’70s arena of pinball, it’s impossible to discuss any of leading lady Brooke Shields’ early films without marveling at the unpleasant influence of the male gaze. Few starlets have been as overtly sexualized as Shields was in the late ’70s, whether she was modeling jeans in print advertisements or striking sultry poses in feature films. Even her most seemingly innocuous movies, like this one or the equally dodgy Wanda Nevada (1979), feature scenes in which men discuss their sexual attraction to the very young Shields. “Distasteful” is too timid a word. Anyway, setting that aside, Tilt is unimpressive for a number of reasons. The pacing is deadly dull, male lead Ken Marshall gives a performance of numbing vapidity, and the film is loaded with aimless montages set to bland singer-songwriter tunes. Plus, close-ups of little silver balls bouncing around inside pinball machines quickly lose their novelty.

          Yet Tilt has one very important saving grace, which is the presence in the cast of the great Charles Durning. He’s so good in his scenes, elevating clichéd material into passable drama, that he’s almost reason enough to watch the movie.
          The plot begins in Texas, where would-be singer Neil (Marshall) tries to hustle obese pinball wizard Harold (Durning), only to be caught cheating. Neil decamps to California, where he meets teen runaway Tilt (Shields), a preternaturally gifted pinball hustler. Neil lies to Tilt by saying he needs money for recording a music demo, when in fact what he really wants is to employ Tilt’s skills for revenge against Harold. A long and uninteresting sequence of Neil and Tilt traveling from California to Texas follows, but things pick up once Harold and Tilt meet. Durning and Shields share a long scene together, which is thankfully bereft of erotic implications, and watching the scene is like watching Durning give an acting lesson to an eager young student. While Durning decorates his lines with subtle gestures and vocal flourishes, Shields provides a gentle sounding board, occasionally reflecting back some subtle nuance that Durning has injected into the scene. Interesting stuff.

Tilt: FUNKY

Born Innocent (1974)

          After starring in perhaps the most controversial theatrical feature of 1973, The Exorcist, perhaps it was fitting for 14-year-old Linda Blair to appear in one of the most controversial small-screen features of 1974. Part of a lurid series of girls-gone-bad telefilms, the relentlessly grim Born Innocent tracks the downward spiral of Christine Parker (Blair), who runs away from her abusive home so many times that her parents surrender custody of Christine to the government. Thus, Christine lands in a juvenile detention center for girls, where fellow inmates subject her to an incident of soul-crushing abuse. Then, despite the valiant efforts of a counselor named Barbara Clark (Joanna Miles), Christine dangles on the precipice of complete disengagement from emotions and morality. The drama of the piece stems from the question of whether Barbara will be able to help Christine save herself, complicated by the secondary question of how much degradation and disappointment one human being can withstand before hiding behind a shell of contempt and cynicism.

          This is heavy stuff, and even though there’s an innately salacious element to Born Innocent—ads hyped that Blair would appear in explicit scenes—the movie is kept on track, narratively speaking, by Gerald Di Pego’s sensitive teleplay. Di Pego, an occasional novelist who has subsequently accrued an impressive string of big-screen writing credits, employs minimalism to great effect throughout Born Innocent. For instance, only one scene between Christine and her parents (played by Kim Hunter and Richard Jaeckel) is needed to communicate why Christine felt the need to escape her household. Working from a book by Creighton Brown Burnham, Di Pego and director Donald Wrye create a tense mood that compensates for the unavoidably episodic nature of the storyline.

          In fact, it’s to the filmmakers’ great credit that Born Innocent works quite well despite a leading performance that’s mediocre at best. Skilled as she was at mimicking intense emotions during her younger years, Blair can’t come close to matching the power that, say, Jodie Foster could have generated in the same material. In any event, the lasting notoriety of Born Innocent stems largely from a single scene—the lengthy and shocking sequence during which Christine’s fellow “inmates” rape her with the handle of a plunger. Although nothing truly graphic is shown, the scene is startlingly forthright considering the context, and it casts such a dark shadow over the rest of the story that everything afterward seethes with subtext. Because of the intensity of that single scene, and because of the delicacy of the film’s character work, Born Innocent may be the best example of its sordid genre, as well as the most haunting.

Born Innocent: GROOVY

Dogs (1976)

          One could easily program an entire film festival comprising nothing but grade-B (and grade-Z) horror movies that were made to capitalize in the success of Jaws (1975). Yet amid the predictable foll0w-ups about aquatic menaces were a handful of pictures about animals gone bad on dry land, including not one but two features in which domesticated dogs become killers. The better of these pictures is most certainly The Pack (1977), with the inimitable Joe Don Baker, but Dogs has its pleasures, as well. To be clear, Dogs is quite horrid, thanks to repetitive attack scenes, stiff acting, and trite plotting. The movie even suffers a unique problem because costar George Wyner later became a familiar face in comedy films, notably Spaceballs (1987), so it’s nearly impossible to take any of his scenes seriously. Yet for many horror fans, sometimes a consistently silly movie can be just as enjoyable as a consistently scary one.
          Set on the campus of a university in the American Southwest, Dogs depicts the problems that emerge once household pets slip out of homes to run wild on suburban streets, forming a murderous pack. There’s some lip service given to the notion that the dogs are driven wild by creepy experiments at a government facility near the campus, but the explanation is so perfunctory it barely merits inclusion. Absent genuine logic and/or suspense, the “appeal” of Dogs stems from its campy approach to fright. David McCallum, formerly of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., hides behind a beard and a bowl cut to play Harlan Thompson, a sullen scientist at the university. As per the norm of such movies, he’s the one who figures out that canines are the culprits behind a series of mysterious deaths. Later, Harlan leads the inevitable race against time as citizens seek shelter during a savage rampage by the dogs. Meanwhile, stupid characters take reckless risks, ensuring a plentiful body count.
          The first half of Dogs is very slow going, because the film’s character development leaves much to be desired, but things pick up once critters start prowling. (The filmmakers wisely focus on shots of a German Shepherd pouncing on people, since the beagle and the sheepdog aren’t especially threatening.) The best scenes in the second half of Dogs are fun in an undemanding sort of way, and special mention should be made of the absurd scene in which dogs lay siege to future Dallas star Linda Gray while she’s in the shower. Yes, there is indeed a Psycho homage in a movie about killer dogs.

Dogs: FUNKY

Scavenger Hunt (1979)

          Producers have spent years trying to mimic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), the all-star comedy epic about an international treasure hunt. Lesser attempts, such as Scavenger Hunt, succumb to predictable problems including bloated running times and underwritten characters. Trying to adequately service roles for a dozen or more principal actors seems to vex even the most well-meaning filmmakers. Additionally, trying to maintain the desired level of hellzapoppin excitement for an entire feature film usually drives the people behind pictures like Scavenger Hunt to rely on chases, screaming, and slapstick—all of which get tiresome. Inevitably, the initial sugar rush leads to a crash. Although Scavenger Hunt is largely a disappointment, especially considering the incredible array of gifted comic actors appearing in the film, it has some meritorious elements. Cowriter/producer Steven Vail and his team (mostly) avoid taking cheap shots at ethnic stereotypes, and they play a clean game by opting for family-friendly jokes instead of lurid ones. It’s not difficult to see the frothy confection the filmmakers had in mind.

          The premise, naturally, is simple. When multimillionaire board-game titan Milton Parker (Vincent Price) dies, his would-be heirs are forced to compete in a scavenger hunt that will determine who inherits the Parker fortune. On one team is Parker’s greedy sister (Cloris Leachman), along with her idiot son (Richard Masur) and her slimy lawyer (Richard Benjamin). Another team includes Parker’s son-in-law (Tony Randall) and the son-in-law’s kids. Next up is a duo comprising two of Parker’s nephews (played by Willie Aames and Dirk Benedict). Still another team features Parker’s household help—the butler (Roddy McDowall), the chauffeur (Cleavon Little), the chef (James Coco), and the maid (Stephanie Faracy). The wild-card contender is a dimwitted taxi driver (Richard Mulligan), whom Parker included because the cab driver accidentally killed Parker’s business partner, making Parker rich.

          You can figure out where this goes—as the teams pursue items on their lists, the evil people bicker and steal while the virtuous people help each other. Some scenes that presumably were meant to be comic highlights fall flat, including a lengthy bit of McDowall supervising his team’s theft of a toilet from a hotel bathroom. Cameos from random actors (Ruth Gordon, Meat Loaf, Arnold Schwarzenegger) add little, and the gags are uninspired. Nonetheless, director Michael Schultz keeps everyone upbeat and moving fast, so several sequences generate mild amusement, especially the anything-goes finale. Additionally, while none of the performances truly stand out (excepting perhaps Benjamin’s vigorous turn as a long-suffering schmuck), the vibe is consistently and pleasantly silly.

Scavenger Hunt: FUNKY

The Education of Sonny Carson (1974)

          Based on a popular nonfiction book by real-life criminal-turned-activist Robert “Sonny” Carson, this deeply flawed drama tries to frame the crisis of African-American gang violence within a larger context of racial marginalization. Had the picture been executed with more responsibility and sophistication, it could easily have become one of the seminal black films of the ’70s. Instead, the movie reaches far beyond its grasp, because despite lots of grandiose talk about how the title character is the innocent victim of a cruel system, the storytellers tend to put the cart before the horse—in other words, they offer sociopolitical explanations for Sonny’s criminal acts after he’s committed them, which creates the effect of convenient justification instead of legitimate proof. What the film has to say may in fact be correct and important, but the argument is made poorly.

          At the beginning of his journey, Sonny (played as a child by Thomas Hicks) is a tough street kid in a Brooklyn neighborhood filled with gang violence. After serving a stretch in juvenile detention for petty theft, Sonny (played as an adult by Rony Clayton), joins street gang the Lords and becomes friends with fellow member Lil Boy (Jerry Bell). When Lil Boy is killed during a huge brawl with a rival gang, Sonny steals money to pay for flowers at Lil Boy’s funeral. This puts Sonny in the crosshairs of vicious cop Pilgilani (Don Gordon), who beats Sonny before shipping the young man off to prison. (Yes, the movie is so blunt that the main cop has a name including the word “pig.”)

          While the preceding events might seem as if they should comprise merely the first 20 minutes of screen time, setting up Sonny’s odyssey through punishment and redemption, it takes more than an hour for Sonny to land in prison. This first hour of the movie is padded and slow, while the rest is rushed and superficial. Director Michael Campus lingers endlessly on marginal scenes, like an endless shot of Sonny and his girlfriend riding a ferry past Liberty Island or a ridiculous scene of a preacher (Ram John Holder) eulogizing Lil Boy. (There’s a hell of a lot of weeping in The Education of Sonny Carson.)

          Even though the storytelling is clumsy, the notion that audiences are supposed to sympathize with the going-nowhere lives of inner-city youths comes across. Yet the actual dialogue in the picture doesn’t convey the message effectively. For instance, when Sonny asks a parole board who gave the board “the authority to impose your will on me,” he’s expressing the right sentiment to the wrong people. And so it goes throughout this frustrating movie, which is so weakly constructed that a key plot point of heroin addiction plaguing black neighborhoods isn’t even introduced until the last 10 minutes. There’s an impassioned and soulful drama buried inside The Education of Sonny Carson, but sifting through the dissonant and superfluous material takes work.

The Education of Sonny Carson: FUNKY

Luther (1973)

          In addition to starring in some of the darkest and strangest Hollywood films of the ’70s, the extraordinary actor Stacy Keach appeared in a handful of ’70s projects that employed a more classical style, including this cerebral offering from the American Film Theatre. Essentially a filmed (and slightly modified) version of John Osborne’s 1961 play about historical figure Martin Luther, the feature tracks the events that led Luther to break from the Catholic Church at the moment the world was shifting from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The story takes the title character along a painful journey from being a self-loathing monk to being a morally conflicted revolutionary, so Keach gets to employ his signature intensity as well as his mellifluous speaking voice. The movie is not perfect, simply because it’s so talky that parts of the story go slack, but Keach is deeply impressive.

          Luther begins in 1506, when the Catholic Church is at an apex of sociopolitical influence and unchecked corruption. Young German monk Luther (Keach) wrestles with the strict doctrines of the church, punishing himself for not loving God in the “right” way, and struggling to reconcile his feelings of pride and rebellion with his orders to be humble and subservient. As the years pass, Luther becomes a respected Biblical scholar, but knowledge merely sharpens his disdain for church authorities. Adding to Luther’s indignation is the ubiquity of such theologically dubious practices as the selling of “indulgences,” essentially get-out-of-jail-free cards for wealthy sinners. It all comes to a head in 1517, when Luther issues his scorching Ninety-Five Theses, a methodical explanation of how the church has lost touch with true faith. Showdowns with Catholic authorities ensue, but Luther remains unbowed.

          The historical significance of this story is of course monumental, since Luther was one of the architects of Protestantism, and it would take a more learned person than me to appraise the accuracy of the film’s chronology. Taken solely on dramatic terms, the picture is effectively structured—Luther as the crusading hero, the bloated church as the collective villain—and much of the dialogue is powerful. Additionally, Osborne deserves ample credit for lightness of touch, since the high-minded text is sprinkled with excretory humor, of all things, stemming from the real Luther’s lifelong stomach trouble.

          Still, Luther is slow going, even when Keach locks horns with such formidable scene partners as the urbane Alan Badel, the boisterous Hugh Griffiths, and the menacing Patrick Magee. (Judi Dench, years before her stardom, plays a small role toward the end of the picture as Luther’s wife.) Ultimately, Luther is too fiery to be dismissed as a dry history lesson, and too static to quality as full-blooded cinema. It’s a sophisticated presentation of important subject matter, elevated by an extraordinary leading performance.

Luther: GROOVY

Rabbit Test (1978)

          Among the many impressive accomplishments in comedienne Joan Rivers’ long and multifaceted career, she was one of the few women to direct a Hollywood feature in the ’70s. Unfortunately, the significance of this professional milestone is largely symbolic, because Rabbit Test is an embarrassingly bad movie that flopped during its original release and has aged poorly. Starring Billy Crystal in his first big-screen starring role, the movie is about the world’s first pregnant man. Yet the picture, which Rivers also cowrote, never offers any explanation for how the lead character defies human physiology. In fact, there isn’t much of a storyline at all, because Rabbit Test mostly comprises sketches filled with rude jokes at the expense of every ethnic group imaginable.

          In the film’s nadir, Lionel Carpenter (Crystal) becomes a worldwide celebrity invited to meet various heads of state, so he ends up in the hut of an African chieftain. Men from the tribe entertain their illustrious visitor by performing an R&B version of “Frére Jacques” while wearing grass skirts—as other tribesmen stand around the room wearing jockstraps and holding basketballs. Then, to drag the scene all the way down into cringe-worthiness, ’70s TV star Jimmie “J.J.” Walker shows up in the hut to perform a ventriloquist act, and Walker’s “dummy” is played by little-person actor Billy Barty. In blackface. It’s like that for the movie’s entire 84-minute running time. The UN Secretary-General lauds Lionel’s achievement by saying, “Next to you, the moon walk was doo-doo.”  Lionel’s cousin Danny (Alex Rocco) makes a TV deal to broadcast the impending birth, and then says, “If the money’s up front, we can show Lionel’s gentiles.”

          Crystal struggles valiantly to give a humane performance while Rivers bombards viewers with clunky one-liners and laborious sight gags, but the shallowness and stupidity is stultifying. Rivers’ desperation shows in the way she crams in bit-part performances by second-rate celebrities including Norman Fell, George Gobel, Rosey Grier, Peter Marshall, Roddy McDowall, Tom Poston, Charlotte Rae, and, of course, Rivers herself. None of it generates so much as a chuckle, except perhaps for the outrageous line that flamboyant comic Paul Lynde delivers while playing an excitable gynecologist: “Call maintenance—I have sperm all over my desk again!”

Rabbit Test: LAME

The Villain (1979)

          Revered stuntman Hal Needham made a successful transition to directing by helming a pair of hit comedies starring his buddy Burt Reynolds, Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978), and the team scored once more with The Cannonball Run (1981). Unfortunately, the rest of Needham’s directorial filmography is quite grim, and the downward spiral began with this ghastly Western. Starring Kirk Douglas as an inept outlaw who tries to bushwhack a young woman carrying a strongbox filled with money, The Villain represents a sad attempt to piggyback on the success of Mel Brooks’ outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974). Even in his prime, Douglas wasn’t particularly well suited to comic material, and by the time he made The Villain, Douglas had succumbed to an excessive style of acting that approached self-caricature. Worse, The Villain was clearly conceived as a live-action cartoon in the style of classic Looney Tunes, so the middle of the picture comprises numbingly repetitive vignettes of Douglas falling off cliffs, getting run over by boulders, and receiving the full blasts of dynamite explosions. Think Wile E. Coyote, but without the wiliness.

          The allusions to vintage Warner Bros. cartoons are so overt that Douglas actually spends the last moments of the film bouncing up and down, in wearisome fast-motion photography, while the Looney Tunes theme plays on the soundtrack. It’s all as painful to watch as you might imagine, and yet the juvenile textures of Douglas’ performances aren’t the only eyesores in The Villain. Ann-Margret gives a vapid turn as the imperiled young woman, “Charming Jones,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger costars as Charming’s escort, “Handsome Stranger.” The unfunny running gag with these characters is that Charming is so hot for Handsome that she’s virtually salivating in every scene, but Handsome is too dim to notice. Even Ann-Margret’s beguiling cleavage fails to make her scenes interesting. Campy actors including Foster Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Jack Elam, Paul Lynde (as an Indian named “Nervous Elk”), Robert Tessier, and Mel Tillis populate the periphery of the movie, though none is able to elevate the infantile rhythms of Robert G. Kane’s script. Bill Justis’ godawful score—which punctuates every would-be gag with an over-the-top horn blast—merely adds insult to injury.

The Villain: LAME

The Plumber (1979)

          Seeing as how Australian director Peter Weir has long been ranked among the best living filmmakers, even the seemingly trivial projects from his early days are of interest, if only to study how he developed his craftsmanship. Originally made for Australian television and running a scant 76 minutes, The Plumber is especially noteworthy in this regard because it represents a transitional stage between Weir’s initial theatrical features (which tended toward eerie surrealism) and his breakthrough films (which were straight-ahead narratives with lyrical touches). The Plumber is a seemingly simplistic thriller about a housewife being menaced by a strange contractor, but the deceptive façade hides layers of meaning and symbolism. None will mistake The Plumber for a lost classic of the thriller genre, but it’s an expertly made piece that demonstrates how much texture a gifted storyteller can derive from minimal elements.

          Set in a graduate-student housing complex, the movie focuses on anthropology student Jill Cowper (Judy Morris), who spends most of her days in a small apartment while her husband, medical researcher Brian Cowper (Robert Coleby), works in a lab. One day, a burly bloke named Max (Ivar Kants) shows up unannounced and claims he’s got a work order to check the plumbing in the apartment’s bathroom. Thus begins a strange odyssey during which Max shows up, day after day, to bedevil Jill by making inordinate amounts of noise, poking through her personal items, and revealing frightening facts about himself—at one point, for instance, Max “jokes” that he was once imprisoned for rape. The clever spin that writer-director Weir puts on the material is a level of ambiguity related to Max’s true nature. Is he evil or merely obnoxious? And is Jill justifiably nervous or just high-strung?

          Resisting every opportunity to elevate The Plumber into a full-on horror show, Weir focuses exclusively on the tensions of interpersonal relationships, as well as the problems that arise from otherness. Despite all of her insights into primitive cultures, for instance, Jill seems completely flummoxed about how to handle a working-class bruiser. Many viewers will find The Plumber underwhelming or even dull, since it never quite goes to the place that one expects (read: outright violence). Nonetheless, the complexity and naturalism of the performances is impressive. Further, Weir and his crew find an incredible number of angles for shooting the main location of the apartment, so even though the film feels claustrophobic (which suits the story), it never feels visually repetitive.

The Plumber: GROOVY

Devil Rider (1970)

Seeing as how the major tropes of the biker-movie genre were clearly established by 1970, it’s amazing how badly the makers of Devil Rider missed the mark. Seriously, how challenging would it have been to assemble simplistic footage of leather-clad dudes brawling, cruising, and screwing their “mamas”? Yet from the first frame of Devil Rider to the last, cowriter/director Brad F. Grinter seems utterly confused about what sort of movie he’s trying to make. For instance, even though Devil Rider is ostensibly about a reckless young woman who hooks up with a motorcycle gang, and the ensuing attempts by her family to rescue her, Grinter wastes an inordinate amount of screen time investigating the psyche of a hooker who was once traumatized by a kidnapping/gang-rape ordeal. In addition to seeming quite irrelevant to the main story, the whole hooker/rape thing is handled with a queasy style that falls somewhere between mildly exploitive and mildly sensitive, so the main reaction this distasteful material elicits is bewilderment. Grinter also gets mired in subplots related to a karate instructor and a private investigator, and he wastes a good three minutes of the film’s very short running time (75 minutes) on an extended musical number. In perhaps the picture’s most ridiculous scene, the middle-aged (and totally sqauresville) P.I. dons a stupid wig before attempting to “infiltrate” a biker gang. His ruse lasts about one minute before one of the bikers yanks off his wig and IDs him as a spy. Soon afterward, the P.I. is tied to a tree and repeatedly impaled by bikers who attack him like jousting knights—but the moment he’s freed, the P.I. bops around as if he’s not even tired, let alone wounded. Does it even matter that the acting, cinematography, editing, and music in Devil Rider are as amateurish as the storytelling? Probably not.

Devil Rider: LAME

Butley (1974)

          Literature professor Ben Butley (Alan Bates) is a horror show of a human being. Possessed of singular wit that he uses almost exclusively to belittle his acquaintances, he’s at a tenuous place in his life. Although his position at a reputable school in his native England is basically solid, Ben has gotten into the bad habit of alienating colleagues and students with his incessant derision, and his love life is complicated—after his wife, Anne (Susan Engal), left him, Ben became romantically involved with his male assistant, Joey (Richard O’Callaghan). On what might be the worst day of his life, it all comes crashing down. Anne announces her intention to remarry, Joey reveals that he’s left Ben for swaggering Reg (Michael Byrne), and Ben’s elder colleague, Edna (Jessica Tandy), secures a publication deal for the book she’s spent 20 years writing—even though Ben is nowhere near completing his own book. In short, it’s time for karma to kick Ben Butley’s ass. And that’s the simple plot of this production from the American Film Theatre.

          Based on Simon Gray’s 1971 play of the same name, Butley was the first feature film directed by Harold Pinter, the revered British playwright and stage director. Ironically, given Pinter’s reputation as a master of subtext, Butley comprises wall-t0-wall dialogue. Working with master cinematographer Gerry Fisher, Pinter does an excellent job of capturing performances via judicious picture editing, subtle camera moves, and thoughtful compositions, So even though Butley runs a bit long—120 minutes of Bates acting like a shit tests viewers’ patience—the picture, which is set almost entirely in one room, never feels claustrophobic. And while the storyline hits themes of academic competition, alcoholism, professional envy, self-loathing, and writers’ block, Butley isn’t some navel-gazing character study of a drama. Quite to the contrary, it’s meant to be high comedy, in the sense of elevated language and lofty ideas.

          Some viewers may find the title character too cruel to be amusing, and, indeed, nearly all the “jokes” stem from Ben’s suffocating narcissism. For instance, when he learns of Edna’s success, Ben unfurls a rant: “She never did understand her role, which is not to finish an un-publishable book on Byron! Now the center cannot hold—Edna is unleashed upon the world!” Clearly, the source of Ben’s troubles is the same thing that makes him interesting as a dramatic subject, which is his delusion that the world revolves around him. Accordingly, the slow toppling of Ben’s fragile universe is a process of stripping away his overinflated ego. So in the same way that Ben might be a turnoff for some because he’s monstrous, the elimination of companionship and hope and joy from his life isn’t especially pleasurable to watch.

          Butley, therefore, is more a clinical piece of business than a proper entertainment—but that doesn’t mean the film is without its distractions. Bates is terrific, even as he devolves from bickering with his lover to eviscerating a helpless coed, and the supporting cast provides sufficient resistance to make Bates’ attacks seem formidable. Mostly, however, the rewards of Butley are found in Gray’s dexterous wordplay. Other writers exploring similar terrain have created deeper and/or funnier material, but Gray stays balanced on a high wire from start to finish, almost completely avoiding the traps of melodrama, pretentiousness, and superficiality.

Butley: GROOVY

Rogue Male (1976)

          Fascinating but flawed, this adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel was made for the BBC and never properly released in the U.S. Nonetheless, the picture tells such an interesting story, and features such a masterful performance by leading man Peter O’Toole, that it’s well worth seeking out for fans of offbeat thrillers. The film begins, literally, with a bang. Absent any explanation for how and why the circumstances emerged, the first scene features Sir Robert Hunter (O’Toole) pointing a powerful rifle at Adolf Hitler, who is enjoying an outdoor lunch near a country estate. Alas, Hunter’s shot misses the mark. Then the would-be assassin is captured by Hitler’s guards and tortured for an explanation of why he tried to kill Der Fürher. Incredibly, Hunter escapes and makes his way back to England—through a combination of endurance, luck, and wit—but that doesn’t end his troubles. Dogged German agents track Hunter down, forcing the Englishman to go into hiding even as global politics change perceptions of what he did.

          Set in the 1930s, before Germany and the UK became enemies, the film plays a clever game of withholding the truth about Hunter’s motivation. His planned killing wouldn’t have been an act of war, per se, but the revelation of why he put Hitler in the crosshairs is too cryptic to be entirely satisfying. Further, director Clive Donner and screenwriter Frederic Raphael employ a few awkward literary devices, such as having Robert explain his feelings during soliloquies and having various characters provide narration at random moments. Yet these are essentially minor issues, considering that most of Rogue Male is compelling and surprising. The first act, filled with bravado and danger and violence, is mesmerizing. The middle of the picture, which alternates between Hunter’s secret-agent type operations in London and his guerilla tactics in the countryside, twists in unexpected ways. And the finale, an extended showdown between Robert and his chief pursuer, bursts with intelligence in the form of debate and strategy.

          Raphael’s script works equally well during wordless moments, such as a long chase scene set in the London subway, and during lengthy dialogue exchanges. Similarly, O’Toole thrives in both extremes. His graceful physicality makes his silent scenes magnetic, and few actors convey the British idiom more entertainingly than O’Toole. (After being tortured and pushed off a cliff, Hunter dryly remarks, “I’ve had a bit of a bother.”) Also benefiting from Raphael’s best lines are costars John Standing, who plays an Englishman collaborating with the Nazis, and movie veteran Alistair Sim, who plays Hunter’s politically connected uncle. In fact, the flair of the movie’s dialogue is neatly encapsulated by one of Sim’s lines: “Shooting heads of state is never in season—they’re protected, like osprey.” Ultimately, however, it’s the sleek melding of urbane language and visceral visuals that keeps Rogue Male interesting. Despite significant hiccups in its storytelling, Rogue Male covers unique terrain in a unique fashion.

Rogue Male: GROOVY