Guess What We Learned in School Today? (1970)

          Though he later become synonymous with inspirational movies, thanks to his success with Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid (1984), director John G. Avildsen dabbled in edgy sex comedies during the early ’70s, making this offbeat picture and the heinous Cry Uncle! (1971). Combining mockumentary and narrative elements, Guess What We Learned in School Today? ostensibly explores the impact of progressive sex education on the hypocritical residents of an uptight bedroom community. It’s the old satirical notion that folks who complain about sex are actually freaks at home. On some level, this sloppy and uneven movie’s politics are in the right place, since Avildsen and his collaborators portray open-minded intellectuals as forces for positive social change, while depicting hateful censors as villains who need their attitudes adjusted. The problem is how Avildsen and his collaborators express these ideas. Much of Guess What We Learned in School Today? comprises naughty vignettes with nudity and simulated sex, so there’s more than a little sensationalism sprinkled into the mix, and scenes of right-wingers getting their jollies are so perverse as to be cruel. Plus, it’s difficult to justify elements including the sexy, grown-up babysitter who nurtures a teenage boy’s nascent sexuality by reading him pornography while giving him handjobs. One suspects the filmmakers were trying to be outrageous, but more often than not, Guess What We Learned in School Today? is simply vulgar.

          The all-over-the-place storyline mostly follows three people. Roger (Richard Carballo) is a creepy cop who entraps women for solicitation arrests. Lance (Zachary Hains) is an insane ex-Marine who crusades against sex education, calling it a communist plot. And Dr. Lily Whitehorn (Yvonne McCall) is a sex educator with a clothing-optional institute. As various episodes unfold, Lily directly addresses the camera with remarks about the need for people to overcome inhibitions, while Lance and Roger engage in crazed antics. Lance has trouble getting it on with his wife until they convince a family friend to service their teenage son, at which point Lance mounts his wife from behind and drives her to climax while she watches her son have sex and moans her son’s name. Similarly, Roger seems averse to sex until a black transvestite goes down on him. You get the idea. Some of this is mildly interesting, but most of the camerawork is garish and ugly, the physical-comedy bits fall flat, and the satire is painfully obvious. Yet somehow, the picture develops a cumulative effect. The actors playing the rational characters are appealing (including a pair of attractive blondes who frequently appear topless), and, every so often, a throwaway scene gets the picture’s point across without lurid excess. The vignette of Lydia explaining the word “fuck” to schoolchildren accomplishes more than all the movie’s over-the-top carnal encounters put together.

Guess What We Learned in School Today?: FUNKY

Cat Murkil and the Silks (1976)

          This bizarre juvenile-delinquent melodrama tries to be several different things at once, causing regular instances of narrative whiplash as the picture shifts from a bummer character study to a moralistic cautionary tale to a violent exploitation flick. Yet the whole discombobulated experience is sufficiently lurid and zippy that the movie becomes enjoyable in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. For instance, the casting of fair-haired and slight actor David Kyle in the leading role is perplexing, since he’s about as intimidating as the average math-club nerd. The scene of his character squaring off against a trio of enormous African-American crooks decked out in ’70s pimp regalia—while they hassle teenagers on the grounds of their high school during class hours—can only be described as an unintentional comic highlight. Conversely, the scene during which Kyle’s character presses a gun to a woman’s crotch and then pulls the trigger is so extreme, especially compared to the rest of the film, that it rightly indicates the filmmakers didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Yet Cat Murkil and the Silks isn’t a mess, per se, because the characters behave consistently and the story makes sense. It’s a matter of taste. The folks behind the picture didn’t have any, so nearly every scene tips into self-parody.

          Eddie “Cat” Murkil (Kyle) is part of a teen gang called the Silks in modern-day Los Angeles. He’s a mixed-up kid who worships his older brother, Joey (Steve Bond), a former JD now serving time in jail. Eddie and the Silks are obnoxious small-time crooks whose idea of fun involves breaking into cars, partying with slutty girls, robbing stores, and rumbling with rival gangs. In other words, this movie’s idea of youth-run-wild behavior is laughably old-fashioned. The gist of the piece is that Eddie spins out of control after clashing with Joey, who warns his younger brother against a life of crime. Eddie kills the leader of his gang and usurps the command position, only to lead the Silks into disastrous clashes with a Latino gang. Hangups about sex lead Eddie further astray, because his attempts to make time with Joey’s hot wife culminate in tragedy. By the end of the picture, Eddie has become a full-blown psychopath, so one gets the feeling that the uptight filmmakers meant to portray youthful irreverence as the gateway drug for ultraviolent anarchy. Social-problem stridency combined with overwrought music and terrible acting—always good fodder for camp.

Cat Murkil and the Silks: FUNKY

Stranger in Our House (1978)

          As did his peers John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven made a pit stop in telefilms between his early independent efforts and his later success with big-budget movies. Yet while Carpenter made the respectable biopic Elvis (1979) and Hooper directed the passable Stephen King adaptation Salem’s Lot (also 1979), Craven marked time with this silly supernatural thriller starring Linda Blair. Reflecting none of the gonzo excess of his earlier pictures and none of the playful wit that made him famous in the ’80s and beyond, Stranger in Our House—also known as Summer of Fear—is wholly unimpressive from an artistic perspective. Yet because the movie is coherent and technically proficient, it demonstrated Craven’s ability to phone in a hack job as effectively as the next guy. Happily for horror-movie fans, Craven found his voice with 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, blending the polished filmmaking he demonstrates here with the out-there qualities of his earliest endeavors while also introducing the crucial element of humor.

          Stranger in Our House revolves around the middle-class Bryant family, parents Carol and Tom plus kids Peter and Rachel (Blair). When Carol’s sister and her husband are killed in a car crash, the Bryants take in their newly orphaned niece, Julia Trent (Lee Purcell). She’s overtly wholesome, with her Ozarks accent and shy politeness, but Rachel spots trouble immediately, because—cliché alert!—an animal, specifically Rachel’s beloved horse, reacts badly to Julia’s presence. (As in all mediocre movies of this sort, nobody finds the animal’s reaction noteworthy except Rachel.) Things proceed very much according to formula. Julia steals Rachel’s boyfriend, Rachel finds weird artifacts among Julia’s belongings, and Rachel consults the neighborhood occult expert. (Wait, your neighborhood doesn’t have an occult expert?) Things move along at a fair clip, though nothing truly frightening or suspenseful happens. As for the acting, Blair is insufferably whiny, and Purcell’s adequate work gets undercut by the goofy final scenes.

Stranger in Our House: FUNKY

Hot Tomorrows (1977)

          Made as his MFA thesis film while Martin Brest studied at the American Film Institute, Hot Tomorrows has many of the silly hallmarks one associates with student films, such as an angst-ridden protagonist and pretentious flourishes reflecting the influence of classic European art cinema. However, the picture also demonstrates many of the things that Brest did so well in his subsequent Hollywood films of the ’70s and ’80s, notably offbeat characterizations and sly humor. (Let’s not talk about Brest’s dubious latter-day pictures, because if you’re a fan of 1992’s Scent of a Woman or 2003’s Gigli, we probably don’t share the same taste.) Shot in grungy black and white at unusual locations throughout Los Angeles, Hot Tomorrows is a dark comedy about a transplanted New Yorker trying to make it as a writer. Fixated on death, he spends a strange evening escorting a buddy from back home around the city, eventually landing in such unlikely places as a nightclub featuring weird performance artists and a mortuary that serves free coffee to the after-hours crowed. The plot also involves a cranky little person played by Hervé Villechaize and the life-sized figure of death—a skeleton in a black robe holding a scythe—that the protagonist uses for decoration in his living room. At various times, Hot Tomorrows is deep, funny, tragic, and weird.

          Michael (Ken Lerner) is a gloomy youth preoccupied with memories of his dead aunt, so he spends his time writing depressing stories and taking night classes exploring Eastern theories about death. Louis (Ray Sharkey), just in from the Bronx, isn’t having any of this. Protesting in his loud dese-dem-dose accent, Louis says it’s time to ditch the heavy stuff and party. Unfortunately, both guys are broke, so they best they can do is bum around town and hope to stumble into something fun. Michael takes his pal to a club called the Paradise, where a strange musical troupe (played by an early version of nerd-pop band Oingo Boingo) performs. At the club, Michael and Louis befriend fellow Bronx guy Tony (Victor Argo) and his diminutive friend Alberict (Villechaize). Peculiar misadventures ensue. Considering his inexperience at the time, Brest does a remarkable job pulling naturalistic performances from his cast and unifying them into a cohesive style. This movie’s at its best during simple scenes of people talking, whether they’re bonding or fighting, and this movie’s at its worst whenever Brest gets arty with flashbacks, musical numbers, and narration. As gifted as Brest is behind the camera, it’s telling that he’s only written two of his subsequent features, adapting the wonderful Going in Style (1979) from Edward Cannon’s story and crafting the not-so-wonderful Gigli by himself.

Hot Tomorrows: FUNKY

MIA: Rare '70s Movies

          With nearly seven years of cinematic exploration now in the rearview mirror, the adventure known as Every ’70s Movie is slowly but steadily nearing the finish line, simply because my list of titles yet to be reviewed is dwindling down to mostly comprise films that have fallen out of general distribution. Many of the remaining pictures have never been officially issued on any form of home video, most are rarely shown on television, and none, as yet, appears on legitimate streaming outlets. And that’s where you, dear readers, enter the conversation.

          Periodically through the next few months, I’ll share lists of titles that have proven elusive, but should definitely be reviewed if possible because of noteworthy elements—a familiar star or director, a major studio, what have you. So here’s my request. If you have or know of any pathways toward seeing these hard-to-find movies, please contact me either publicly through the comments function of this post or privately through the e-mail information in my profile. I will continue to search for these pictures, of course, but tracking some of them down has proven challenging. Therefore, any help is appreciated. With any luck, someone out there will recognize a title or two and be able to share a private DVD, a web link, a copy recorded off TV back in the day, or (shudder) a VHS copy the release details of which have escaped my notice. Thanks in advance for anything you can do! And with that, here’s my first list of missing movies . . .

Black Chariot (1971, US, with Bernie Casey)

Black Cream a/k/a Together for Days (1972, US, directed by Michael Schultz)

Boardwalk (1979, US, with Ruth Gordon)

Chandar, the Black Leopard of Ceylon (1972, US, Disney)

Coast to Coast (1980, US, with Robert Blake)

Country Music (1972, US, with Marty Robbins)

Countdown at Kusini a/k/a Cool Red (1976, US/Nigeria, with Ossie Davis)

The Divine Mr. J a/k/a The Thorn (1971, US, with Bette Midler)

The Double McGuffin (1979, US, directed by Joe Camp)

Hangup (1974, US, directed by Henry Hathaway)

The London Connection a/k/a The Omega Connection (1979, US, Disney)

Irish Whiskey Rebellion (1972, US, with William Devane)

Limbo (1972, US, with Kate Jackson)

Mackintosh and T.J. (1975, US, with Roy Rogers)

Mule Feathers (1977, US, cartoon featuring the voice of Don Knotts)

Sammy Stops the World (1978, US, with Sammy Davis Jr.)

The Sporting Club (1971, US, with Jack Warden)

Stand Up and Be Counted (1972, US, with Jacqueline Bisset)

Sudden Death (1977, US, with Robert Conrad)

Two People (1973, US, with Peter Fonda)

Mansion of the Doomed (1978)

          Fast-moving shocker Mansion of the Doomed has the shape of a classic mad-doctor movie from the ’30s or ’40s, though the gruesome makeup FX and shadowy cinematography are unquestionably modern. The simple story concerns Dr. Leonard Chaney (Richard Basehart), an eye surgeon who goes around the bend when his beloved adult daughter, Nancy (Trish Stewart), loses her sight in a car accident. Aided by his compliant wife, Katherine (Gloria Grahame), Dr. Chaney drugs Trish’s fiancé, Dan (Lance Henriksen), surgically removes Dan’s eyes, and places them into Nancy’s head so she can regain her vision. Dr. and Mrs. Chaney then lock Dan in their basement dungeon—because, really, doesn’t every good home in an affluent suburb have one of those? When Dan’s eyes fail, Dr. Chaney abducts a succession of people, repeatedly replacing the eyes in Nancy’s head while telling her that each time her vision fades and revives, it’s the result of some mysterious procedure he performed while she was anesthesized. You can figure out where it goes from there. The eyeless prisoners in the dungeon plot an escape, and Dr. Chaney becomes more and more reckless as his mental state deteriorates. Although Mansion of the Doomed is highly formulaic, it’s an enjoyable little thriller, more cartoonishly spooky than genuinely frightening.
          Plotwise, the film bears more than a little resemblance to French director Georges Franju's cult-favorite thriller Eyes Without a Face (1960), which concerns face transplants instead of eye transplants. Even the main setting of a mansion was lifted from the earlier picture. Mansion of the Doomed has energy, but it's a shameless enterprise on virtually every level.

          Hollywood veteran Basehart gives an entertainingly twitchy performance that’s forever verging on camp, and it’s a kick to see this early performance by Henriksen—later to become a cult-favorite star of fantasy-oriented films and television—even though he delivers most of his performance from behind a Stan Winston-designed makeup that obscures his eyes. Producer Charles Band applies his signature veneer of low-budget cheesiness, borrowing every stylistic trick he can from the Argento and De Palma playbooks with nary a trace of artistry, while director Michael Pataki (better known as a C-list Hollywood actor) powers through scenes with clumsy but relentless efficiency. There’s even a friendly nod to the sort of old-school fright flicks after which Mansion of the Doomed is patterned, since the main character’s name abbreviates to Dr. Len Chaney (read: Lon Chaney). All in all, a fun serving of empty calories for horror fanatics. FYI, this picture’s myriad alternate titles include Eyes of Dr. Chaney, House of Blood, Massacre Mansion, and The Terror of Dr. Chaney.

Mansion of the Doomed: FUNKY

Bad Charleston Charlie (1973)

A rotten would-be farce about Depression-era criminals, Bad Charleston Charlie represents a failed attempt by actor Ross Hagen to create a star vehicle. In addition to playing the leading role, he cowrote the script (with Ivan Nagy, who directed) and produced the project. Set somewhere in the American heartland, the picture begins with Charlie Jacobs (Hagen) and his buddy Thad (Kelly Thordsen) quitting their jobs at a mine after one too many humiliating demands for payoffs from a corrupt union boss. Declaring their intent to become “important” people, they take inspiration from the exploits of Al Capone and begin careers as gangsters. Eventually, Charlie and his rapidly growing cadre of followers antagonize a corrupt local cop and the members of a KKK cell, so they find themselves with enemies on both sides of the law. Prostitution figures into the mix, as well, since Charlie makes most of his money peddling female flesh. Despite antiauthoritarian themes and high-spirited action, Bad Charleston Charlie is a world apart from the myriad similar films that Roger Corman produced in the ’60s and ’70s to draft off the success of Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Even the worst of Corman’s gangster pictures has a clearly defined narrative, but this flick just trundles from one pointless episode to the next, striving for a lighthearted tone but missing the mark because the characters are repugnant and the jokes aren’t funny. Not helping matters is Nagy’s horrendous camerawork; although he later became a serviceable hack making junk for TV and the straight-to-video market, he’s out of his depth throughout this project, which was his directorial debut. On the plus side, Hagen recruited a few decent actors to play supporting roles (watch for John Carradine as a drunken reporter), and Hagen’s buddy-comedy shtick with Thordsen almost works.

Bad Charleston Charlie: LAME

Booby Trap (1970)

One of several ’70s movies about angry men from the World War II generation declaring war on hippies, this abysmal drive-in picture features the sensational premise of a psycho planning mass murder at a music festival. Suffice to say, cowriter-director Dwayne Avery hasn’t a clue how to realize the potential of this premise, and Booby Trap—befitting its title—spends more time on boring sex scenes than on suspenseful vignettes dramatizing the villain’s outrageous scheme to kill flower children. In fact, so much of the picture’s screen time gets chewed up on carnal encounters and strip scenes that Booby Trap ends up feeling a lot like a porno flick without the money shots, right down to the cheap production values and unforgivably bad acting. Anyway, unhinged Jack Brennan (Carl Monson) buys a cache of Claymore anti-personnel mines on the black market, then makes his way across the dusty American southwest to the location of a planned Woodstock-type event. Investigators tracking the stolen munitions follow clues, leading to the inevitable showdown between a lawman and the wannabe mass murderer. Beyond the rotten camerawork and sloppy sound recording, Booby Trap suffers from incompetent pacing. Early on, the movie is derailed by a pointless subplot when Jack picks up a hippie hitchhiker, sleeps with her, and kills her the next morning. Similarly, the movie stops dead close to the ending so the lawman chasing Jack can have his own sex scene. Is Booby Trap an action movie, softcore sleaze, or a thriller? Does anyone actually care enough to make that determination? Oh, well. If nothing else, it’s pleasant to ponder the potent potboiler a proper provocateur could have produced from this premise.

Booby Trap: LAME

Players (1979)

          The rapid decline of model-turned-actress Ali MacGraw’s screen career continued with Players, a misfire produced by her ex-husband, Robert Evans. Having established her inability to deliver emotionally convincing performances in hits (1970’s Love Story) and misses (1978’s Convoy), she attempted the challenging role of a cynical jet-setter whose heart opens when she falls for a younger man. While MacGraw is not as screamingly awful here as she is in some of her other films, she can’t conjure the complexity or heat that any number of her contemporaries could have brought to the role. Which is not to say that if, say, Faye Dunaway or Diane Keaton had been cast in the leading role, Players would have been special. The movie’s problems run too deep. The story, revolving around the MacGraw character’s entanglement with a headstrong tennis player, is clichéd and episodic and tiresome. Worse, MacGraw’s costar, Dean Paul Martin, is even more of a mannequin than MacGraw. So if you want to experience two handsomely photographed hours of tennis scenes interspersed with repetitive and trivial vignettes of attractive people making out and breaking up, then Players is the movie for you. Otherwise, beware.

          Martin, the ill-fated son of beloved entertainer Dean Martin, plays Chris, an American tennis player competing in his first Wimbledon championship match. He’s distracted from his game by flashbacks to his on-again/off-again relationship with Nicole (MacGraw). After meeting in Mexico City, they took up housekeeping in her sprawling villa, even though she was engaged to super-rich European businessman Marco (Maximilian Schell). Adopting Chris as a sort of pet project, Nicole guided his transformation from hustler to professional, connecting him with big-time coach Pancho Gonzales (a real-life former world champion who plays himself). Predictably, a love-versus-money crisis emerged when Chris pushed Nicole to choose between their romance and her comfy future with Marco. And that’s basically the whole story, give or take a few sex scenes and training montages.

          Players is one of those bad movies that feels very much like a good movie, since the slick plotting—by Arnold Schulman, who gets a fancy playwright-style credit after the opening title—gracefully bounces back and forth between flashbacks and present-day scenes. The production values are beyond reproach, with glamorous international locations (including the real Wimbledon court), impressive celebrity cameos (John McEnroe, Liv Ullman, etc.), and marvelous music and photography. Players has everything money can buy, though what it really needs are the things that stem from organic creativity: compelling characters, narrative originality, real emotion. Some may enjoy this movie for its glossy textures, though most will fade long before the picture grinds toward its inconsequential climax. As for MacGraw, she makes a respectable effort here but, unfortunately, she cannot will natural talent into being, The failure of Players was one more humiliating step toward has-been status, a fate only briefly forestalled by some high-profile TV work in the mid-’80s.

Players: FUNKY

Weed (1972)

          Pot was such an integral part of late-’60s/early-’70s youth culture that the prospect of a vintage documentary on the subject is tantalizing. The good news is that Weed comprises thorough reportage, with interviews and vignettes collected from various different countries, thereby illuminating global attitudes toward ganja. The bad news is that Weed seems like the product of blissed-out true believers who, one presumes, spent as much time rolling joints as they did rolling camera. Casual, flat, and meandering, Weed covers a number of topics and gives marijuana critics opportunities to speak, but in the end, the picture comes across as either a PSA for the benefits of smoking dope or a how-to manual for smuggling grass across international borders. Rather than reaching for a broader audience by engaging the subject with an open mind, director Alex de Renzy approaches the movie like he’s writing some groovy feature article for High Times. De Renzy, who made his living before and after this project as a hardcore pornographer, appears on camera throughout the film, his long blonde hair tied in a ponytail, so he looks a bit like a counterculture analogue to a 60 Minutes correspondent. The director brackets his movie with footage of hearings overseen by a national commission on marijuana use, essentially contextualizing the whole picture as a response to governmental warnings against grass.

          In some scenes, de Renzy speaks with police officers and scientists about the effects of weed and related lawlessness, though most of these interviews are skewed toward remarks that downplay the dangers of pot. In other scenes, de Renzy travels to Canada, Mexico, and Southeast Asia to investigate other countries’ perspectives on pot as compared to America’s. The Canada scene is particularly galling, because it tracks kids as they ferry dope across the border, then enjoy a celebratory toke. The Mexico sequences make the questionable argument that America should lighten up because pot is so important to the Mexican economy. Things get even loopier in Vietnam and Cambodia. De Renzy speaks with soldiers who describe easily accessible weed as a virtual staple of their existence in Vietnam, and then Weed becomes a sort of fetish film once De Renzy’s camera discovers Cambodian marketplaces where huge quantities of pot and hash are openly displayed for sale. What’s missing from Weed are interviews with pot users about how the drug figures into their lifestyles, as well as voices from the political sphere about reasons for legislation. One assumes that de Renzy wanted viewers to walk away from Weed feeling as cool about cannabis as he does, but it’s unlikely this movie has ever changed anyone’s mind.

Weed: FUNKY

More Than Friends (1978)

          A charming rom-com piffle starring a pair of actors who were nearing the end of their real-life marriage, More Than Friends presents Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner as close friends who drift in and out of relationships with each other and with separate partners over the course of two decades. Acquaintances since childhood, the leading characters make their first halting attempt at getting together on the occasion of their graduation from high school. Thereafter, the pals move in different directions, with Marshall’s character pursuing an acting career while Reiner’s character becomes a writer. Through it all, he remains hung up on his childhood sweetheart, even though her ambitions to explore the world beyond the New York neighborhood where they grew up lead her to behave in fickle and insensitive ways. Although Reiner’s character is imperfect, prone to sarcasm and self-loathing, the notion is that he’s a grounded everyman while Marshall’s character has her head in the clouds.

          The vibe is set right from the beginning, with delightful romantic patter during a would-be makeout session. After Matty (Marshall) says she finds chrome-domed 1950s movie star Yul Brynner appealing, Alan (Reiner) indicates his own receding hairline, then pounces: “You stick with me, you’ll get all the sexy baldness you want!” Comic interplay with chewing gum further deglamorizes the scene, accentuating the idea of how awkward it is to get intimate with someone you already know well on a platonic level. Another key notion, that of working-class New Yorkers getting put in their place for having highfalutin goals, gets expressed in the scene where Matty’s mother scoffs at dreams of stardom: “You are not a special person,” she says to Matty. “You are less than average.” Ouch. One of the many strengths of the script, written by Reiner and Phil Mishkin, is that the main characters have dimensions beyond their archetypal qualities. By the end of the picture, they seem like real people—or as real as people inside a foregone-conclusion rom-com can seem.

          Smoothly directed by TV-comedy icon James Burrows, the movie has a literary quality, with Reiner’s character providing retrospective voiceover that connects vignettes from different periods. Each major scene lingers just long enough for comic and dramatic effect, at which point the story zips ahead to the next significant juncture. Even though the story is completely predictable, every scene in More Than Friends is entertaining or heartfelt, if not both. And while the picture is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, some bits are delicious. Howard Hesseman is great in a small role as a pretentious theater director, and Michael McKean—at the time, Marshall’s costar on Laverne & Shirley—has a killer sequence as a ridiculous folksinger. That particular bit presages the beloved musical satires that McKean later made with Reiner and with Christopher Guest.

More Than Friends: GROOVY

Isle of the Snake People (1971) & Alien Terror (1971) & Blind Man's Bluff (1971)

          In a perfect world, horror-movie legend Boris Karloff would have concluded his epic screen career with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968), which features an excellent Karloff performance and many sly references to the actor’s dubious status as an aging horror-movie icon. In the real world, the final gasps of Karloff’s career included some of the worst films he ever made, because a trio of awful projects he completed near the end of his life crept into the marketplace two years after Karloff's death in 1969. Two of these pictures, Isle of the Snake People and Alien Terror, were made in Mexico as part of a package deal. The behind-the-scenes story goes that Karloff initially nixed the package deal, only to say yes once producers hired up-and-coming B-movie guy Jack Hill to “improve” the material. One can only imagine what this junk was like before Hill lent a hand.

          Isle of the Snake People is confusing and tedious and weird, but it has something to do with Carl van Molder (Karloff) overseeing a cult of supernatural natives on a remote island in the Pacific. Most of the picture concerns the natives performing gruesome rituals, and there’s a dreary romantic subplot involving van Molder’s niece and a dashing young military officer. Karloff has a bit more screen time in this one and seems moderately livelier than he does in Alien Terror, but with his diminished physicality and silly-looking Colonel Sanders outfit, he’s hardly intimidating; moreover, he’s unconvincingly doubled in some scenes by an actor wearing a black veil and dark sunglasses. Although Hill did some writing on the project, one hopes he’s not to blame for the rotten dialogue. Consider this sweet nothing the officer coos to van Molder’s niece: “The fire of the sunset in your eyes is consuming my heart!” Still, Isle of the Snake People is nearly tolerable thanks to the intense ritual scenes. The movie opens with natives including a weirdly dressed little person dancing around the gauze-wrapped corpse of a sexy woman until the corpse revives, strips off some of her gauze, grabs a dude, and starts making out with him. While this happens, the little person throttles the live poultry in his hands. Yes, he chokes the chicken. Who knows if the naughty visual joke was intentional, but we take our minor pleasures where we can find them.

          For Alien Terror, Hill rewrote at least part of the script and also directed the handful of scenes featuring Karloff—but once again, it doesn’t seem as if hiring a ringer made much difference. Alien Terror, also known as The Incredible Invasion, is so rotten it’s hard to imagine a version of the film that’s any worse. Set in 19th-century Europe, the story begins when altruistic scientist Professor John Mayer (Karloff) invents some sort of radioactive ray beam. The invention alerts aliens, who send an emissary in a flying saucer to destroy the ray beam. With his shaggy hair and tin-foil space suit, the emissary looks like a refugee from a glam-rock band. Amid various turgid subplots, the emissary takes the least efficient path imaginable toward accomplishing his goal. He inhabits the body of a Jack the Ripper-type killer, hangs out while the killer commits murders and whines about psychological torment, then eventually jumps into the professor’s mind. It’s all very boring and discombobulated, though the climax does feature Karloff exclaiming, “Did you really think I’d sit quietly in a corner of my brain while you did exactly what you like?” Karloff looks and sounds weak, sitting during many scenes and breathing with considerable difficulty between lines. Compounding the indignity is the way some of his dialogue, again delivered by a double wearing a mask, is dubbed in a voice that sounds nothing like Karloff’s.

          Rounding out this ignominious trio is Blind Man’s Bluff, also known as Cauldron of Blood (and The Corpse Collectors and Death Comes from the Dark and The Shrinking Corpse). Featuring a recognizable leading man (Gallic heartthrob Jean-Pierre Aumont) and a relatively coherent story, Blind Man’s Bluff also benefits from a bit of kinkiness. It’s a bad movie, but it’s less insultingly terrible than its predecessors. Set in Spain, the flick follows reporter Claude Marchant (Aumont) as he pursues an audience with elusive sculptor Franz Badulescu (Karloff). The artist lives in a remote villa with his decades-younger wife, Tania (Viveca Lindfors), who controls his world because Franz is blind and confined to a wheelchair. Karloff gets some colorful dialogue (he describes an art installation by saying “the work consisted of a group of small goats in repose”), and there’s a tragic quality to his characterization. Alas, he’s not onscreen that often, so the filmmakers compensate with boring subplots. Episodes of pretty girls modeling and moping are pointless, the recurring trope of a sex maniac killing women is handled clumsily, and the thread concerning Claude’s scheme to develop a tourist attraction is befuddling. Better are the campy scenes with Lindfors as a whip-cracking fetishist. All of this leads down the usual Mystery at the Wax Museum route of a crazed artist using human remains in his creations. Karloff deserved better.

Isle of the Snake People: LAME

Alien Terror: SQUARE

Blind Man's Bluff: LAME

Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1970)

From any other filmmaker, the action/sexploitation hybrid Cherry, Harry & Raquel! would seem outrageous, what with the fever-dream editing and incessant closeups of bouncing breasts. From Russ Meyer, the king of mammary movies, it’s tame both in narrative conception and sexual content. Seeing as how Meyer’s appeal stems from his over-the-top aesthetic, the notion of a “restrained” Meyer flick is not appealing. Running just over 70 minutes, the picture tells the story of Harry (Charles Napier), an Arizona sheriff who spends his work hours patrolling the desert by the Mexican border and spends his private hours cohabitating with voluptuous nymphet Cherry (Linda Ashton). He also works for a drug kingpin named Mr. Franklin (Frank Bolger), whose main enterprise involves smuggling weed from Mexico. Franklin tasks Harry with killing Apache (John Milo), who has stolen some of Franklin’s dope. Interspersed with this threadbare story are innumerable sexual encounters, plus weird cuts to an unnamed topless woman (Uschi Digard) wearing an elaborate Indian headdress while gyrating in various settings (e.g., splashing in a swimming pool while flailing a tennis racquet). Most Meyer movies are cheerfully chaotic thanks to an overabundance of plot, but Cherry, Harry & Raquel! suffers the opposite affliction. The paucity of narrative material invites close scrutiny, revealing that most of what happens is grotesque or nonsensical or both. As always with Meyer, the name of the game is getting well-endowed women naked, so a solid 40 percent of the running time comprises nudie shots and/or sex scenes. Most of the remainder comprises brisk but repetitive chase scenes, as well as an epic shootout during which Meyer seems to echo Sam Peckipah’s style of operatic bloodshed (minus the slow motion). Naturally, there’s some weirdly patriotic speechifying mixed into the sleaze, including the rambling text crawl about freedom of speech that opens the movie—a text crawl, it should be noted, that is superimposed over a frenetic montage of breast closeups. Oh, and for those who’ve been longing for a full-frontal nude scene featuring iron-jawed B-movie guy Napier, here’s your chance.

Cherry, Harry & Raquel!: LAME

Escape from Angola (1976)

Difficult as it might seem to make a boring film about a desperate quest for survival, violent political unrest, and wild animals, the folks behind Escape from Angola accomplish just that. A lifeless sprawl of vapid scenes acted poorly and filmed indifferently, the G-rated action picture drags across 110 sluggish minutes while conveying perhaps 10 minutes of actual narrative. Stolid naturalist James Mallory (Stan Brock) operates a 20,000-acre preserve for endangered animals in Africa, aided by his wife, Karen (Anne Collings), and their three sons. The family’s biggest challenges involve pesky animals eating their food, because, of course, people living on a preserve wouldn’t think to secure their food in places animals can’t reach. One day, a neighboring rancher asks for help moving a herd of antelopes past the Angolan border because hordes of political revolutionaries are on their way. James recklessly endangers his entire family by helping move the antelopes, and this leads to the Mallorys getting stuck in hostile territory while the revolutionaries advance. Need it be reiterated that Escape from Angola is rated G? The gulf between the potentially horrific subject matter and the sort of storytelling G-rated movies can accommodate is huge, so Escape from Angola is 110 minutes of nothing. The roughest scene involves James squaring off against a lion, but the staging of the scene is timid, save for some liberally applied fake blood, and the filmmakers pause afterward so James can apologize to the animal he killed in order to survive. Although the picture has fine production values, including plentiful shots of animals crawling and prowling and running through exotic terrain, the script is anemic. Nothing much happens, some of the behavior defies credibility, and the kid-gloves approach ensures that action scenes underwhelm. Those who want an inspirational story about foreigners bonding with African animals should stick with Born Free (1966), and those looking for a similar scenario with real danger should check out the insane Tippi Hedren flick Roar (1981), during production of which actors and crew members were frequently injured by the big cats that ran wild on the set.

Escape from Angola: LAME

Best Boy (1979)

          Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of its year, the straightforward but deeply moving Best Boy encompasses not only some of the highest aspirations of nonfiction storytelling, but also, in an unpretentious way, some of the highest aspirations of the popular arts. Telling the story of a mentally challenged man’s difficult journey from isolation to a sort of independence, it’s a profound testament to the bond between a mother and her child, with all the joy and sadness that connection implies. Filmmaker Ira Wohl made the film to record his efforts to help a cousin, 52-year-old Philly Wohl, transition from his parents’ house to a group home. At the beginning of the picture, Philly enjoys a loving but sheltered existence with his aging parents, Max and Pearl. Given his severe impairments, Philly is childlike, capable of managing little more than everyday grooming functions and a few simple chores. Yet he’s affectionate and he projects contentment, so Best Boy doesn’t play for cheap audience sympathy. Rather, the film asks viewers to enter Philly’s world while also forcing viewers to consider larger questions of what responsibility society has with regard to providing for citizens who cannot provide for themselves.

          To the extent of their abilities, since both are diminished by age and illness, Max and Pearl give Philly a comfortable home life. With Ira’s prodding—the filmmaker appears in a few scenes and provides narration throughout—the doting parents acknowledge plans must be made for Philly in the event of their deaths. This realization triggers the most heartbreaking element of the story, because Max and Pearl have to begin their separation from Philly while they’re still alive, lest he find himself completely overwhelmed trying to make a transition without their support. It’s giving nothing away to say that Max died partway through production of the documentary, since he’s in poor health from the earliest scenes, but when Max goes, the emotional aspect of the movie becomes even more powerful, because viewers can see that, all along, it was Pearl who provided the familial lifeline for her “best boy,” as she calls Philly.

          The last half-hour of the picture, give or take, is simultaneously inspiring and wrenching, because just as Philly begins to adjust to his new life in a group home—replacing familiar patterns with new ones—Pearl crumbles, partially from the loneliness of an empty home and partially from the realization that she’s no longer solely responsible for Philly’s welfare. Only the most hard-hearted viewers will be able to resist Best Boy’s power. The film starts slowly, using conversations and vignettes to establish the particulars of Philly’s circumstances, and the intimacy with which Ira presents the story gives the early scenes a home-movie quality. (In one sweet scene, Philly, who often hums the Fiddler on the Roof score, attends a performance of the play and meets star Zero Mostel backstage.)

          The longer Ira stays with the story, the more intense and relevant Best Boy becomes. After all, but for the availability of a publicly funded group home, Philly’s options might have included homelessness or institutionalization. Yet the story’s heavier implications are rarely stated outright, since Ira keeps his focus on the day-to-day reality of helping Philly find his place in the world. Accordingly, the climax—played, like the rest of Best Boy, without unnecessary dramatic adornment—is devastatingly sad and surpassingly uplifting all at once. Ira Wohl returned to the subject matter of this film for two follow-up documentaries, Best Man: ‘Best Boy’ and All of Us Twenty Years Later (1997) and Best Sister (2006).

Best Boy: RIGHT ON