Good Guys Wear Black (1978)

          Considering that Chuck Norris achieved fame as a karate champion and as one of Bruce Lee’s most formidable onscreen sparring partners, it’s surprising that his first significant starring role was not in a martial-arts flick. Instead, Good Guys Wear Black is a quintessentially ’70s conspiracy picture, complete with nefarious politicians ordering hits on the commandos who participated in a Vietnam-era covert op. Norris gets to unleash his signature roundhouse kicks in a few combat scenes, but for the most part he treks from one location to the next, accompanied by an alluring mystery lady (Anne Archer), as he investigates the identities of the Washington, D.C., power players who targeted him for elimination. Yet even though Good Guys Wear Black has a bit more ambition than the usual grindhouse thriller, it’s not particularly good.
          The photography and production values look cheap, especially during the prologue of a nighttime raid in Vietnam, the star wattage is low (Gilligan’s Island costar Jim Backus gets special billing for a pointless cameo as a doorman), and Norris is wooden. In fact, he’s the virtual poster child for athletes trying to become movie stars; he cuts a solid figure but can’t deliver dialogue smoothly, so director Ted Post wisely restricts Norris to a flat monotone in most scenes. Furthermore, the less said about Norris’ attempts to express emotion, the better. Archer, who looks fantastic, fares somewhat better but not by much, and she and Norris benefit from the grown-up dialogue that was presumably contributed by co-screenwriter Mark Medoff (the playwright of Children of a Lesser God). James Franciscus has fun chewing on his role as a Machiavellian politician angling for a job as Secretary of State, although his big speech at the end is filled with movie-villain clichés.
          As for the action, it’s solid but sporadic—Norris’ extended brawl with an assassin at an airport is the only scene that delivers the sort of elaborate, high-kicking whammies the leading man’s fans might expect. Ultimately, Good Guys Wear Black is not exciting enough to work as an action picture, and not smart enough to work as a thriller—but it’s still is a watchable misfire, because the filmmakers deserve some small credit for trying to deliver dramatic heft within the action genre’s limited parameters.

Good Guys Wear Black: FUNKY

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)

          H.G. Wells’ horrific story about a mad scientist who gene-splices animals with men on his own private island was first filmed in 1932 as the extraordinary Island of Lost Souls, which boasted disturbing atmosphere and a perverse performance by Charles Laughton as medical maniac Dr. Moreau. Four decades later, schlock merchants American International Pictures produced a remake with a lot more action but a lot less artistry. Directed with typical indifference by Don Taylor, The Island of Dr. Moreau stars Michael York as an English seaman who survives a wreck and washes ashore on the titular land mass. Burt Lancaster plays the not-so-good doctor, but his stilted intensity fails to capture the unhinged majesty of the Moreau character, and York isn’t much better, substituting eye-bulging breathlessness for convincing terror. In one of her first major films, Nicaraguan model-turned-starlet Barbara Carrera is sultry as York’s love interest, although her presence is purely ornamental. In all versions of the story, the jungle surrounding Moreau’s compound is filled with examples of the doctor’s experiments, animals converted into hirsute bipeds whose innate bloodlust is (barely) kept in check by Moreau’s brutally enforced laws; tension arises from wondering how long these “manimals” will tolerate Moreau torturing them in his lab, which the creatures refer to as “the House of Pain.”
          The team behind the ’70s version unwisely depicts the manimals through the use of waxy-looking masks that are filmed in garishly bright lighting, so the sight of genetic aberrations roaming through the jungle is mundane instead of horrifying. Making matters worse, the story frequently degrades into clunky thriller scenes, like chases through the jungle and comin’-at-ya monster attacks. This lowbrow approach is a hell of a comedown from Island of Lost Souls, but for those who’ve never seen the original version (or read the Wells novel), The Island of Dr. Moreau is passable escapist junk: The production looks and feels like bad episodic television from the ’70s, with blandly utilitarian camera setups and twinkling music straight out of a Fantasy Island installment, and the climax is amusingly overwrought, right down to the endless final duel between the surviving major characters and a persistent manimal. The picture’s epilogue, unfortunately, is a complete cop-out.

The Island of Dr. Moreau: FUNKY

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

          Laced with some of the most haunting images in cinema history, A Clockwork Orange cemented director Stanley Kubrick’s reputation as a misanthropic genius, even though the film’s nauseating violence is delivered hand-in-hand with pitch-black humor. A polarizing movie that turns some people off Kubrick forever, A Clockwork Orange is also a cult favorite that devotees return to again and again, despite (or perhaps because of) its gleeful depiction of a sociopath’s inner life. Adapted by Kubrick from a novel by Anthony Burgess, the movie depicts a horrific near-future Britain plagued by a random violence, and the worst offenders belong to an anarchistic street gang led by Alex (Malcolm McDowell). In one notorious scene, Alex and his “droogs” beat an old man while warbling “Singin’ in the Rain,” and in another, they assault and rape a woman with, among other implements, a giant pop-art penis sculpture. Dressed in matching white uniforms and black bowler hats, Alex and his droogs are like a roving art installation moving through Kubrick’s harrowing vision of psychedelic future in which youths drink at “milk bars” in between bouts of “the old ultraviolence.”
          The first half of the movie, showing Alex running amok and cheerfully embracing his psychological demons in caustic voiceover, is filled with clever imagery and deft wordplay; the second half of the movie, in which Alex is captured, tortured, and “reformed” by sadists including doctors who use him as a guinea pig for inhumane experiments, presents the shocking thesis that Alex’s giddy malevolence is child’s play compared to the clinical evil of “civilized” society. Every frame of A Clockwork Orange is deliberately provocative, and Kubrick wasn’t above using controversy to goose ticket sales, although the strategy somewhat backfired when the movie encountered difficulties during its British release. (After troubled individuals claimed the picture influenced their violence, Kubrick had the picture yanked from UK screens.) But even taking into account Kubrick’s hucksterism, A Clockwork Orange is a meticulously rendered piece of cinematic art, its power derived as much from Kubrick’s craftsmanship as from the innate vigor of the lurid storyline. Masterfully orchestrating contributions from cinematographer John Alcott, electronic-music composer Wendy Carlos, film editor Bill Butler, and others, Kubrick presents an overwhelming phantasmagoria of angst, dissent, rebellion, and violence, which helps explain why so many disaffected people connect with the picture.
          Ultimately, the film rises and falls on McDowell’s fearless performance. With one strategically placed false eyelash, he’s a nightmarish image while rampaging through the first half of the movie, and with his eyes propped open by metal clamps, he’s a pathetic victim in the second half. A Clockwork Orange typecast McDowell as a villain, which indicates the power of the performance but doesn’t suggest how entertaining and weirdly sympathetic Alex becomes in McDowell’s skilled hands.
          Abrasive, cruel, rude, and vulgar, A Clockwork Orange is so excessive that watching the movie for the first time is like getting bludgeoned, but it’s also one of the few truly unique narrative features ever made. It exists almost completely in its own context.

A Clockwork Orange: FREAKY

Black Christmas (1974)

          Somewhat interesting as a footnote in the history of horror films because it bridges the suspenseful storytelling of Hitchcock thrillers and the gruesome excesses of slasher flicks, Black Christmas is a low-budget Canadian flick about a psychopath stalking the residents of a sorority house. Oddly, however, the film isn’t as lurid as the premise might suggest, because there’s very little gore and almost zero sexual content; instead, director Bob Clark focuses on colorful character details. Clark, whose strange career included everything from the juvenile T&A of Porky’s (1982) to the nostalgic sweetness of A Christmas Story (1983), demonstrates his ability to let actors form distinctive characters, but also displays his inability to maintain consistent tone. The movie begins with a POV shot of a heavy-breathing nutjob slipping into the attic of the sorority house, then trudges through lengthy soap-opera scenes involving the residents, interspersed with gruesome murder vignettes in which the killer exits the attic to kill the girls one at a time. The killer also places obscene phone calls to the house, most of which are answered by supposedly sophisticated coed Jess (Olivia Hussey).
          The story is predicated on everyone overlooking the obvious, so while the idea of a killer hiding several floors above his victims is creepy, the conceit strains credibility to a ridiculous degree. Furthermore, the premise strangles suspense: Since the “big secret” is revealed in the first scene, all viewers can do is wait for characters to stop being stupid, which they never do. Still, interesting things happen along the way. Hussey, the classically pretty female lead of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), is stiff and unconvincing, so Margot Kidder steals the show as a drunk, foul-mouthed coed named Barb, displaying the sexy vivacity that later won her the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978). B-movie stalwart John Saxon lends solid comic and dramatic support as a cop investigating the strange goings-on at the sorority house, and Marian Waldman scores cheap laughs with a Shelley Winters-type performance as the sorority’s lush housemother.
          Black Christmas isn’t scary, but it goes to unexpected places and it conjures genuine menace whenever Clark employs long traveling shots exploring spaces where horrible things are about to happen. As for the Christmas angle, that’s a minor element of the story hyped for marketing purposes; other than carolers, decorations, and snow, the holiday setting doesn’t have any significance.

Black Christmas: FUNKY

Alex in Wonderland (1970)

          The circumstances of this picture are so precious that you know what you’re in for before the film even starts. After scoring a massive hit with his directorial debut, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Paul Mazursky made this picture about a movie director who can’t decide how to follow up his successful debut. Thus, viewers meet Alex (Donald Sutherland), a self-involved hippie auteur simultaneously casting about for ideas and rejecting every idea that crosses his path. Alex wanders around L.A. in a daze, drifting into daydreams about hanging out with European-cinema giants Federico Fellini and Jeanne Moreau (who appear as themselves), suffering the obsequiousness of sycophants, trying the patience of his grounded wife (Ellen Burstyn) and smart children, and wigging out with acid-dropping friends who think they’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe.
          Mazursky, who wrote the picture with Larry Tucker, is at his best during loose scenes of people rapping about heavy things, man, but he ventures way outside his wheelhouse during the picture’s Fellini-esque fantasy scenes. Mazursky pointlessly cops from the Italian master’s playbook, filling the screen with circus folk, dwarves, religious figures, warfare, and other “significant” imagery that’s meant to illustrate the deep thoughts bouncing around Alex’s mind. At the film’s most ridiculous extreme, dozens of naked black people emerge from the ocean and dance around Alex in a tribal ritual because he’s contemplating a movie about the plight of African-Americans.
          Alex’s indecision and pretention make him seem like a spoiled brat, especially because he acts out whenever someone suggests that one of his utterances isn’t brilliant. Worse, the movie doesn’t go anywhere: Alex is just as lost at the end of the picture as he was at the beginning. The point, presumably, is to illustrate that Hollywood isn’t designed to nurture artists, but rather to present crass commercial opportunities. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight, which might explain why audiences and critics reacted so indifferently to Alex in Wonderland. The picture isn’t helped by Sutherland’s performance, which fails to add sympathetic colors to an inherently insufferable character, or by Burstyn’s, because she’s sour throughout most of her scenes. As a result, it’s impossible to get invested in the welfare of this unpleasant couple. Only Mazursky himself comes off “well,” because he’s funny and sharp in a featured role as a vapid Hollywood executive courting Alex for a slate of unattractive movie projects. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Alex in Wonderland: LAME

Thank God It’s Friday (1978)

          Given disco’s lowly status in the pantheon of pop-music genres, it will come as no surprise to say that disco didn’t inspire very many good movies; in fact it’s hard to think of another disco-themed classic besides Saturday Night Fever (1977). But even within this expectation-lowering context, some of the most prominent disco flicks are atrocious, with dippy storylines, moronic characters, and shoddy production values. Those three shortcomings are on ample display throughout Thank God It’s Friday, a simultaneously overstuffed and underdeveloped attempt to mimic the excitement of one crazy night at a hot discotheque. Several characters converge on the Zoo nightclub for a dance contest featuring a live performance by the Commodores, with half of the characters eager to prove their worth on the dancefloor and the other hot to strut their skills in the bedroom.
          What should be flashy and sexy is instead dull and laborious, because the filmmakers focus on milking uninspired running gags instead of trying to develop colorful characters. Valerie Lansburg and Terri Nunn play ditzy teenagers who want the contest prize money so they can buy tickets to a Kiss concert. Mark Lonow and Andrea Howard play a tightly wound married couple who get tempted to stray from each other. Jeff Goldblum plays a sleazy club owner who tries to score with every hot chick who walks through the door. Real-life recording artist Donna Summer plays a would-be singing star (wink, wink), and so on.
          Aside from the anthropological interest of listening to cheesy pickup lines and looking at terrible clothes, the only appeal is seeing interesting people in an uninteresting context. Nunn, who later became the lead singer of the New Wave band Berlin, was a runner-up for the Princess Leia role in Star Wars (1977) around the time she made this flick, so it’s fun to watch her chipper performance and wonder how she might have fared in a galaxy far, far away. Goldblum and Debra Winger (who plays a nice girl adrift in a sea of horny men) shot Thank God It’s Friday just before they became famous, and Summer briefly performs her hit “Last Dance,” which was written for this movie and won an Oscar. So as a time capsule of the disco era, Thank God It’s Friday has merit, but in every other regard, it’s an 89-minute slog until viewers can sing “Thank God It’s Over.”

Thank God It’s Friday: LAME

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

          The only film that venerable director David Lean made in the ’70s, Ryan’s Daughter disappointed people who were expecting something similar to Lean’s previous successes, the blockbuster epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Although Ryan’s Daughter has echoes of both earlier films, Ryan’s Daughter neither coheres as organically nor achieves the same cumulative power as Lean’s ’60s smashes. Seen with fresh eyes, however, it’s an impressive but flawed film that deserved a better reception. Set in Ireland during World War I, the picture follows the emotional journey of Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), a small-town girl who gets everything she ever wanted and then decides she wants more, with disastrous consequences.
          In the tiny village of Kirray, Rosy marries the much-older schoolteacher Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum), only to discover that marriage isn’t full of the magical romance she expected. Anguished, dissatisfied, and guilty, Rosy becomes even more confused when she meets Major Doryan (Christopher Jones), the new commandant of the British force occupying Kirray. A beautiful creature scarred with war wounds and tortured by PTSD, he’s a kindred spirit to Rosy in that neither of them feels synchronized with the rest of society, so they commence a torrid affair. Their indiscretion leads to trouble when Doryan confronts Tim O’Leary (Barry Foster), a charismatic revolutionary who enlists the aid of Kirray’s entire population for a gun-smuggling operation.
          The original screenplay by frequent Lean collaborator Robert Bolt spins an absorbing yarn, and while it’s tempting to lament that the movie is excessive at its full length of three and a half hours (including entrance, exit, and intermission music), nearly everything onscreen during those three and a half hours is artful and interesting. Lean’s methodical storytelling is wondrous, because he conveys subtle mental shifts through expert juxtapositions of images and sounds; for instance, the myriad nuances contained in the wedding-night scene with Charles and Rosy are excruciating and specific. Additionally, the Oscar-winning cinematography by Freddie Young is indescribably beautiful. Whether he’s shooting a delicately lit interior scene or a spectacular panorama of the wild Irish coast, Young fills the screen with such masterful interplays of light and texture that each shot is like a timeless painting. Even more impressively, Lean manages to make Mitchum, the quintessential macho movie star, believable as a soft-spoken pacifist.
          Having said all that, the picture has significant problems. Inexplicably, John Mills won an Oscar for his vigorous but cartoonish performance as Kirray’s village idiot, and composer Maurice Jarre opts for a distractingly arch style in several of the film’s musical themes. Worse, the characterization of Rosy’s father, Thomas Ryan (Leo McKern), is muddy at best; the second half of the story turns on one of Thomas’ actions, and his motivation is woefully unclear.
          Still, for every shortcoming, the picture has a virtue—while Thomas Ryan is poorly conceived, Kirray’s hard-driving minister, Father Collins (Trevor Howard), is a complex figure who evolves from stern to nurturing. Plus, Ryan’s Daughter has not one but two believable love stories: Rosy’s marriage to Charles is illustrated as effectively as her dalliance with Major Doryan. Ultimately, the fact that Ryan’s Daughter isn’t an unqualified masterpiece shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s a compelling drama writ large.

Ryan’s Daughter: GROOVY

The Fortune (1975)

          If not for its stellar pedigree, The Fortune might have passed muster as a silly homage to old-school cinematic farce—but given the monumental talent involved, it’s incomprehensible that the movie is so charmless. The names on the marquee are impressive: Mike Nichols directs Warren Beatty, Stockard Channing, and Jack Nicholson in a script written by Five Easy Pieces scribe Carole Eastman (working under the alias Adrien Joyce). Playing against a backdrop of lavish early 20th-century costumes and production design, Beatty delivers an uninspired spin on his usual flummoxed-lothario routine, Nicholson does a gruesome caricature of his wild-and-crazy shtick (complete with Bozo the Clown hair), and Channing grates in a thankless role as the heiress both men try to swindle. This ensemble’s idea of hysterical farce is having Beatty sweet-talk Channing on a plane while Nicholson climbs onto the wing and mugs through the window like a lunatic peering into someone’s living room. According to movie lore, Beatty put the movie together as an audience-friendly complement to his risky pet project Shampoo (1975), then stipulated that Columbia Pictures could only have The Fortune if the studio financed Shampoo as well. Nichols said yes because the project seemed like it could be the box-office hit he needed after two major flops, and Channing was hired when Nichols nixed first-choice leading lady Bette Midler. As for Beatty’s offscreen buddy Nicholson, he slid the picture into his schedule while waiting to shoot One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
          Befitting its calculated genesis, The Fortune is soulless product that emanates contempt for the audience—it’s as if viewers are expected to laugh out of gratitude for seeing this much star power assembled in one place. Even the plot is tired. The story hinges on the Mann Act, which forbade the transportation of women across state lines for immoral reasons, so of course the filmmakers contrive feeble reasons for Beatty and Nicholson to ferry Channing from one state to the next, thus making them fugitives in addition to scoundrels. It’s been widely reported that filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen are fond of this picture, which makes sense given their affection for screwball comedy, but like some of the Coens’ weak screwball flicks (such as Intolerable Cruelty), The Fortune is an hour and a half of unpleasant people doing stupid things for vile reasons. Some might regard this approach as sophisticated because it doesn’t pander to the audience, and, indeed, The Fortune is quite tart—but aren’t comedies supposed to be fun? If that’s the benchmark, then The Fortune is a bust.

The Fortune: LAME

Tentacles (1977)

The world was awash with Jaws rip-offs in the late ’70s, and for every aquatic amusement like Piranha (1978), there was a bottom-feeder like this Italian/American coproduction about an ornery octopus (or squid, depending on the scene) stalking the shores of Southern California. Since much of the picture was obviously shot in Italy, there’s a logic gap because the coastlines in many scenes don’t look right for the story’s American location, but of course that’s the least of the movie’s problems. The script, presuming there was one, is a string of drab clichés about wooden characters investigating mysterious maritime deaths, with an intrepid reporter trying to blame the trouble on corporate irresponsibility while a fish whisperer correctly identifies the murder weapons as, to quote the movie’s Italian-language title, Tenatacoli. Landlocked vignettes with slumming American actors (Claude Akins, Bo Hopkins, John Huston, Shelley Winters, even Henry Fonda) are juxtaposed with oceanic mayhem featuring Italian bit players, giving the flick a stitched-together feel. And while some of the fright scenes have decent jolts, the FX are pathetic: The illusion of the titular monster is created with crude animatronics, grainy rear projection, shoddy miniatures, and silly inserts of real octopi that look too small to pose any real threat. Things get completely absurd when the barely seen monster attacks a regatta, overturning dozens of boats while zooming through the water like a torpedo. A few stretches of the movie have so-bad-it’s-good zing, but for the most part it’s just depressing to watch Hopkins and Huston (the Hollywood stars with the most screen time) churn through pointless dialogue, often with Italian actors whose English-language lines are dubbed, when all the audience really wants to see is stuff like the climax in which the fish whisperer sics his two favorite killer whales on the giant octopus. No, really.

Tentacles: LAME

Cabaret (1972)

          Cabaret is the quintessential musical for people who don’t like musicals, myself included. Not only does it tell a hard-hitting, provocative story instead of just delivering cheerful fluff, it’s a real movie that happens to have music instead of a contrived framework for musical numbers. Tunes arise naturally during moments in which characters believably break into song, such as performances in the titular nightclub, so the numbers become tools that wizardly director Bob Fosse employs, alongside brazen editing and meticulous camerawork, to guide viewers into the psyches of the characters.

          Adapted from a pair of musicals that were in turn based on autobiographical stories by the English writer Christopher Isherwood, who lived in Germany during the Third Reich’s rise to power, Jay Presson Allen’s Oscar-nominated script weaves the myriad threads of source material into a seamless whole, telling the story of how sexually confused Englishman Brian Roberts (Michael York) learns life lessons with, and from, crass but vulnerable American songstress Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli) during their eventful idyll in pre-World War II Berlin. Sally sings at the debauched Kit Kat Klub, and Brian is a new neighbor at her boarding house. After her overpowering personality draws Brian into Sally’s life, the two become enmeshed with three Germans: poor striver Fritz (Fritz Wepper), rich Nazi apologist Maximilian (Helmut Griem), and sheltered Jewish heiress Natalia (Marisa Berenson). The audience’s sense of what the future holds for these people lends a sense of pervasive dread to the narrative.

          Tying the film together are surrealistic scenes featuring the Kit Kat Klub’s unnamed Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey), who functions as a perverse Greek Chorus complete with grotesque makeup and an immaculate tux.
          Fosse’s storytelling is astonishing from the first scene to the last because he jumps from incisive subtlety to shocking directness at regular intervals, often in the same scene, and his legendary choreography infuses the film with propulsive physicality. Whether he’s staging a comical number such as “Two Ladies” or a tender one (especially the moving “Maybe This Time”), Fosse adeptly weaves the themes of the musical interludes into the flow of the story, so Cabaret never feels like it’s stopping for big numbers. Yet while the dancing is sensuous and spectacular, Fosse’s handling of quiet dramatic scenes is just as confident. Minelli and York have never been better than they are here, with Minelli blending soft colors into her brash persona, and York expertly depicting his character’s complicated mix of moral outrage and sexual angst. Grey is equally great, turning “Emcee” into one of the most enigmatically creepy characterizations of the early ’70s.

Cabaret: OUTTA SIGHT

I Walk the Line (1970)

          Gregory Peck’s campaign to complicate his image throughout the ’70s was admirable, and the public’s expectation that he would always play morally righteous characters gave him an edge whenever he ventured outside of his wheelhouse. Unfortunately, not all of the material he used for his experiments was worthy of the effort. I Walk the Line is a good example. A standard melodrama about a small-town Southern sheriff tempted from morality by the sexual charms of a moonshiner’s young daughter, the picture is salacious, but far too sluggish. Worse, Peck isn’t loose enough to convey the extremes of a man driven beyond his inhibitions by animal lust; instead of coming across as feverish, Peck comes across as psychotic. The blame for this atonal portrayal can probably be shared equally by Peck and by director John Frankenheimer, a wizardly storyteller when handling the right action/suspense material but a hit-and-miss filmmaker in the world of straight drama. Given that he specialized in generating close-quarters tension through mano-a-mano psychological warfare, Frankenheimer probably had no more business tackling this sort of simplistic Southern-fried pulp than his leading man did; Frankeneheimer doesn’t come close to creating the sort of sweaty, melodramatic aesthetic that would have kicked this thing into the realm of, say, Tennesse Williams-style hysterics.
          Still, the picture looks great, thanks to Frankenheimer’s characteristically slick camerawork and the participation of strong artists in front of and behind the camera. As the moonshiner’s daughter, Tuesday Weld brings more than enough wild sex appeal to make her role in the story convincing, and cinematographer David M. Walsh creates a glossy look capturing the untamed openness of the picture’s Tennessee locations. While the device of scoring the movie entirely with Johnny Cash songs is gimmicky, the Man in Black’s haunted drone is an effective sonic signifier for the torment inside the sheriff’s soul. The picture also benefits from supporting actors who sink their teeth into screenwriter Alvin Sargent’s meticulous dialogue. Charles Durning gives a sharp turn as Peck’s sly second-in-command, Ralph Meeker is appropriately odious as Weld’s pragmatic father, and Estelle Parsons suffers poignantly as the sheriff’s cast-aside wife. With all of this talent involved, I Walk the Line offers many rewards for the patient viewer, but lackluster storytelling keeps the picture mired in mediocrity.

I Walk the Line: FUNKY

Mandingo (1975)

          This lurid story of sex and violence in the slavery-era South stands alongside The Klansman (1974) as one of the most reviled race dramas of the ’70s. Shameless even by producer Dino De Laurentiis’ déclassé standards, Mandingo is an overwrought soap opera about Falconhurst, a 19th-century plantation owned by aging monster Warren Maxwell (James Mason). The callous patriarch is preoccupied with getting his son Hammond (Perry King) hitched so he can produce an heir, and with buying a Mandingan slave in order to breed “suckers” (a nasty slang term for black babies) who’ll fetch high price tags. However, most of the screen time is devoted not to the master of Falconhurst but to his son’s conflicted relationship with various slaves. Hammond falls in love with his “bed wench,” Ellen (Brenda Sykes), growing closer to her once he enters a loveless marriage with his drunken shrew of a cousin, Blanche (Susan George). Then, when Hammond buys a Mandingo named Mede (Ken Norton), who brings glory to Falconhurst by defeating opponents in brutal bare-knuckle brawls, Hammond buys into the delusion that he’s found a friend. When the threads of Hammond’s life converge in tragedy, however, his true nature as the son of a heartless slave owner emerges.
          Mandingo is a strange movie, because on a technical level, it’s executed with considerable artistry: Richard H. Kline’s shadowy cinematography, Maurice Jarre’s menacing main theme, and the evocative locations create an oppressive mood. Yet journeyman director Richard Fleischer lets scenes run wild, with George flailing and screaming like a wild animal, and the startlingly miscast Mason camping it up as a greasy old son of a bitch who constantly rests his feet against slave children because he believes doing so will cause his rheumatism to drain out of the soles of his feet. One major problem is that the movie never fully develops any of the slave characters, so the slaves come across as caricatured narrative mechanisms instead of people. And though it’s a given that the movie is tasteless, the inevitable scene when Blanche demands sex from Mede is beyond stereotypical, the bloody fight scene in the middle of the picture is beyond excessive, and Mede’s final fate is beyond vile. Mandingo also seems to take itself quite seriously, which is confusing: Did the people making this movie actually think they were tackling a serious subject with the appropriate respect? Still, Mandingo can’t be entirely dismissed because it’s watchable despite a fleshy 127-minute running time. That said, the semi-sequel Drum (1976) has the same lurid appeal without Mandingo’s pretentions to relevance.

Mandingo: FUNKY

Greased Lightning (1977)

Easily mistaken for one of the myriad demolition-derby comedies that flooded theaters in the ’70s, Greased Lightning is actually a charming biopic about real-life stock-car racer Wendell Scott, a former bootlegger who rose through his sport in the ’50s and ’60s to become America’s first black stock-car champion. Made with an easygoing vibe and a strong pace by cult-fave director Michael Schultz, the picture stars Richard Pryor in one of his most amiable leading performances. While not completely suppressing his comic gifts, Pryor mostly plays it straight, combining the inherent exuberance of a thrill-seeker with the latent anger of a black Southerner busting through racial barriers prior to the Civil Rights era. The story begins just after World War II, when Wendell (Pryor) returns from the war to his tiny town of Danville, Virginia. He marries local girl Mary (Pam Grier), buys a taxicab, and starts a dodgy business driving the community’s mostly impoverished black residents to and from errands. Eager to make more money, Wendell joins his childhood buddy Peewee (Cleavon Little) running moonshine, soon becoming the scourge of local police with his prowess behind the wheel. When Wendell finally gets caught, he’s given a choice: rot in jail, or compete in a dangerous stock-car race where he’ll be a target as the only black competitor. Wendell chooses the race, thus beginning his storied racing career. Given Wendell’s colorful backstory, the movie loses a little of its novelty value once his racing career begins, but the picture is helped along by a solid cast. Grier is lovely and warm in one of her few non-sensationalized roles of the era; Little adds the same sharp timing he contributed to Blazing Saddles (1974); and Beau Bridges is amiable and loose as a good ol’ boy who unexpectedly joints Wendell’s pit crew. A major sequence about two-thirds of the way through the picture suffers because it’s mostly assembled from stock footage, and in general the movie streamlines Scott’s narrative to a fault, so everything plays out in the most sanitized and simplistic fashion possible. Nonetheless, the picture’s fundamentally interesting story and its thoroughly watchable cast make Greased Lightning a fun romp.

Greased Lightning: FUNKY

Dillinger (1973)

          Action auteur John Milius couldn’t have picked better subject matter for his maiden voyage behind the camera. A gun nut with an astonishing gift for imbuing dialogue with macho poetry, Milius clearly found kindred spirits in the real-life figures of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger and his relentless pursuer, FBI agent Melvin Purvis. Crafting one of his finest scripts (high praise, considering he wrote Apocalypse Now and Jeremiah Johnson), Milius deftly parallels Dillinger’s heyday as the scourge of the Midwest with Purvis’ methodical annihilation of public enemies. Milius depicts Dillinger as a flamboyant iconoclast doomed by his greed and his sociopathic rage, and he depicts Purvis as a patient lawman who never hesitates when he gets a crook in his crosshairs. So even as the film hurtles through exhilarating crime-spree passages, there’s a sense of impending doom that colors everything down to leading man Warren Oates’ animalistic performance as Dillinger. As a result, the whole movie feels like a slow burn leading to the legendary explosion of violence that happened in 1934 when Purvis came face-to-face with his elusive quarry outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
          Making the most of the minimal production resources available to this tightly budgeted American International Pictures production, Milius employs a spare visual style in order to focus on the Spartan elegance of his dialogue and the violent ballet of his expertly staged gunfights. Incisive lines permeate the picture, like Purvis’ plan of attack (“Shoot Dillinger and we’ll find a way to make it legal”) and a bystander’s rationale for why a group of strangers must be gangsters (“Decent folk don’t live that good”). Keeping his tendency for romanticism in check, Milius integrates ugly elements like Dillinger’s rough treatment of women, the excruciating deaths of gunshot victims, and the carnage visited upon innocent bystanders. So while the filmmaker clearly gets a charge out of the larger-than-life duel between Dillinger and Purvis, he can’t be accused of making the outlaw life attractive. Oates commands the screen, presenting a potent strain of dangerous charisma in every scene, and iconic Western actor Ben Johnson is a perfect complement as Purvis—Johnson’s stoicism sharply contrasts Oates’ hyperkinetic quality.
          Playing members of Dillinger’s gang are an eclectic bunch of actors, including Richard Dreyfuss, Steve Kanaly, Frank McRae, and John P. Ryan; the standout sidekicks are Geoffrey Lewis and Harry Dean Stanton, both of whom deliver funny, tragic performances. Cloris Leachman pops in for a tasty cameo as the infamous “Lady in Red” who accompanied Dillinger to the Biograph, and gorgeous pop singer Michelle Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) is unexpectedly good in her first real role, as Dillinger’s longtime girlfriend, Billie Frechette. FYI, a year after this feature was released, a TV pilot called Melvin Purvis: G-Man hit the small screen, with Dale Robertson taking over Johnson's role; Milius co-wrote the script and Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis was the producer-director. A second Robertson pilot, made by Curtis without Milius’ involvement and titled The Kansas City Massacre, appeared in 1975, but the proposed series never materialized.

Dillinger: RIGHT ON

Daisy Miller (1974)

          Cocksure young director Peter Bogdanovich was poised for a fall after the back-to-back triumphs of The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), and Paper Moon (1973), and the fall happened when the Henry James adaptation Daisy Miller hit movie screens in the summer of 1974. In addition to the usual jealousy surrounding anyone who achieves success, critics had their knives out because Bogdanovich had left his wife, producer Polly Platt, for Last Picture Show costar Cybill Shepherd, a former model.
          Therefore, when he cast his pretty lover in the title role of a major film, wags characterized Bogdanovich as a horny Svengali. And indeed, Shepherd isn’t right for the role: Though she later developed strong light-comedy skills, at the time she was too inexperienced to pull off such a daunting acting challenge. In her defense, the role could have bested far more seasoned performers, because Daisy has to come across as enchanting and infuriating at the same time. The character is a flirtatious, motor-mouthed American touring Europe in the late 19th century with her absent-minded mother (Cloris Leachman). She scandalizes other members of expat high society by keeping company with single men, including exasperated American aristocrat Frederick Winterbourne (Barry Brown), who desperately wants to defy convention by telling Daisy that he’s in love with her, even though she comes from a family of low birth.
          It’s easy to see what Bogdanovich and screenwriter Frederic Raphael were going for, and what they nearly achieve: The movie barrels through dense dialogue at such a fast clip that the filmmakers want viewers to be as breathless as Winterbourne, caught in the wake of Daisy’s reckless exuberance. The script is terrific—sly in some stretches, arch in others—and Bogdanovich uses the camera so precisely that the movie is as slick as any Michael Curtiz gem from the heyday of the studio era. Brown’s sad-eyed bewilderment anchors the movie perfectly, and Eileen Brennan is fabulous in an atypical role as his disapproving upper-crust aunt. Leachman is strong but underused as Daisy’s mother, sharply demonstrating in just a few scenes where Daisy got her gift of gab, and a very young James McMurtry (son of Last Picture Show author Larry McMurtry, and now an acclaimed singer-songwriter), gives an amusing performance as Daisy’s wiseass little brother.
          But the whole movie ultimately rests on Shepherd’s shoulders, and she’s not up to the task. The actress gamely powers through the script’s mile-a-minute dialogue, and she lands some great loaded glances in isolated close-ups, but she never seems comfortable or real. Moreover, she’s so icy that it’s hard to believe men are falling over themselves to be with her. The genius casting for Daisy Miller would have been Goldie Hawn, presuming she could pull off 19th-century diction, or perhaps Diane Keaton. Alas, while Shepherd doesn’t give an awful performance by any stretch, she’s simply not playing on the same level as everyone else involved in the movie. This is a shame, since her performance holds the movie back from greatness; as is, Daisy Miller is admirable but not amazing.

Daisy Miller: GROOVY

Casey’s Shadow (1978)

          After scoring a hit by playing the coach of a misfit Little League team in The Bad News Bears (1978), it was inevitable that Walter Matthau would make more pictures costarring loveable urchins, and luckily, the first such movie is pretty good. Directed by the venerable Martin Ritt with his customary sensitivity, Casey’s Shadow is an old-fashioned story about a bottom-rung horse trainer named Lloyd Bourdelle (Matthau). The single father of three children, Lloyd lucks into possession of a promising foal fathered by a champion stud. Then Lloyd’s youngest son, Casey, bonds with the horse but runs it before its bones have fully grown, creating a permanent imperfection in one of the animal’s legs. Nonetheless, Lloyd nurses the horse, Casey’s Shadow, back to health and pins his hopes on winning a race with a $1 million purse. As word spreads about the horse’s promise, Lloyd gets offers for the animal from a pair of big-time horse breeders; trouble brews when one of the breeders employs devious means in order to eliminate potential competition. Lloyd even feels pressure from his children, who worry that Dad’s lust for a big paycheck might blind him to the danger Casey’s Shadow faces by running on its dodgy leg.
          As scripted by Carol Sobieski (Fried Green Tomatoes), Casey’s Shadow has an easy authenticity, from the colorful idioms of the Louisiana-bred protagonist to the racing jargon that’s expertly layered throughout the movie. Ritt shoots the picture with a loose touch that meshes staged interactions and documentary-style vignettes of life in the grandstands and paddocks, so even though the picture’s goal is to tug at viewers’ heartstrings, the filmmaking never feels cloying. The storytellers restrict manipulative bits of Casey weeping to a few key moments, and even though Lloyd’s characterization is inherently sentimental, the tasteful writing and Matthau’s cantankerous personality put the characterization across in an effective manner. It’s easy to believe that Lloyd is fundamentally decent, since he successfully raised three kids on his own, but he’s got an edge because that the filmmakers show him making a series of poor decisions. The young actors playing Lloyd’s kids are solid but unremarkable, and reliable utility players Whit Bissell, Harry Caesar, Murray Hamilton, Alexis Smith, and Robert Webber contribute fine work as various racing-world characters. It’s mostly Matthau’s show, however, and the contrast between his ornery vibe and the sweetness of the story gives Casey’s Shadow a highly watchable vitality.

Casey’s Shadow: GROOVY

Taxi Driver (1976)

          “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” That snippet of voiceover, an excerpt from the apocalyptic interior monologue of New York City cabbie Travis Bickle, gets to the heart of what makes Taxi Driver so intense: Instead of simply throwing a monster onscreen for lurid spectacle, the psychologically provocative drama takes us deep inside a man who does monstrous things for reasons he considers unassailably virtuous. As brilliantly realized by director Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader’s astonishing script introduces viewers to Vietnam vet Travis (Robert De Niro), an insomniac loner cruising the nighttime streets of the city within the self-imposed prison of a metal coffin on four wheels. His unique vantage point exposes him to the worst the city has to offer, the junkies and pimps and psychos, so his PTSD and whatever else is cooking inside his troubled brain compel him toward a “righteous” mission with a body count. Disturbing but mesmerizing, Travis’ journey is a profound exploration of the ennui chewing at the outer edges of America’s collective unconscious.
          The story elements are simple but audacious. Travis becomes preoccupied with two women, a polished campaign worker named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and an underage prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster). So disassociated that he can’t remember how to relate to people normally, Travis takes Betsy on an excruciatingly awful date to a low-rent porno movie, and presents himself as Iris’ savior even though she doesn’t believe she needs to be saved. Zeroing in on men he perceives as enemies, Travis targets Betsy’s politician boss and Iris’ pimp, leading our “hero” to arm himself for battle with an arsenal of illegal handguns. By the time Travis sits alone in his apartment, practicing his quick-draw with a cannon-sized pistol and a shoulder holster while delivering his infamous “You talkin’ to me?” soliloquy, viewers know they’ve been drawn into a nightmare.
          Scorsese’s camerawork and dramaturgy are extraordinary, infusing scenes with lived-in reality while never departing from the dreamlike stylization that makes Taxi Driver feel like a horrific fable; with the heavy shadows of Michael Chapman’s photography and the pulsing waves of Bernard Hermann’s insidious score, Scorsese achieves something like cinematic alchemy. In front of the camera, De Niro gives a selfless performance that channels Schrader’s vision of a lost soul who can’t differentiate idealism from insanity, becoming a figure of almost otherworldly menace. As the opposite ends of Travis’ imagined romantic spectrum, Foster nails the ephemeral idea of a jaded innocent, while Shepherd’s chilly inaccessibility is perfectly fitting. Comedian Albert Brooks provides helpful levity as Betsy’s coworker, Peter Boyle adds worldliness as one of Travis’ fellow cabbies, Harvey Keitel lends seedy color as Iris’ pimp, and Scorsese appears in a startling cameo that illustrates how deeply he saw into the meaning of this allegorical phantasmagoria.
          A breakthrough for everyone involved, Taxi Driver plays out like the anguished cry of a society in need of deliverance, filtered through the twisted worldview of someone damaged and discarded by that very society.

Taxi Driver: OUTTA SIGHT

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

          An exploitation flick whose importance to film history far outweighs its cinematic values, Boxcar Bertha is famous because it’s the movie that turned Martin Scorsese into a professional director. Prior to shooting this low-budget Bonnie and Clyde rip-off for producer Roger Corman, Scorsese’s film experience included studying and teaching at NYU as well as making a grimy black-and-white indie feature. Watching Boxcar Bertha, it’s easy to see the growing pains that Scorsese experienced once he was let loose with experienced actors and a proper camera crew. The story isn’t of particular interest, especially because the screenplay is so thematically formless and sloppily paced, but the gist is that after Depression-era drifter Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) falls in love with outlaw union organizer Bill Shelly (David Carradine), they form a band of robbers with several other misfits. This sets the stage for assorted repetitive run-ins with the agents of a corrupt railroad magnate, H. Buckram Sartoris (John Carradine). There’s plenty of nudity and violence (to say nothing of cloying old-timey music), but there isn’t much coherence or fun—it’s all way too episodic and nasty.
          Former NFL player Bernie Casey stands out among the cast, because he makes credible leaps from amiability to intensity as the lone African-American in Bertha’s motley crew. And while David Carradine and Hershey are both earnest and somewhat invested, they’re held back by the script’s inconsistent characterizations; their characters are alternately crusaders and victims. The real interest for movie fans, of course, is in parsing the movie for glimmers of Scorsese’s filmmaking style. Aside from the director’s onscreen cameo (he’s one of Bertha’s whorehouse clients), his signature is most clearly evident during the ultraviolent finale, when Scorsese goes way overboard with religious imagery and experiments with inventive ways to photograph people getting killed. It’s also interesting to note the various scenes punctuated by seemingly random cutaways of static objects, since those shots reflect early attempts at a device for building physical environments that Scorsese perfected by the time he made Taxi Driver a few years later. Ultimately, however, Boxcar Bertha is a bit of a jumble, because its artiness undercuts its value as drive-in trash, and it trashiness undercuts its value as art.

Boxcar Bertha: FUNKY

The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)

          A charming Western comedy in the vein of Howard Hawks’ cowboy classics, this amiable picture pairs two of the genre’s greatest stars, Henry Fonda and James Stewart, in a lively story that both pokes fun at their wholesome images and suits their advanced ages at the time the movie was made. John O’Hanlan (Stewart) and Harley Sullivan (Fonda) are graying cowpokes working on a Texas ranch when John receives word that he’s inherited a business from his late brother. They travel to Wyoming, where they discover the business is actually a brothel, much to the chagrin of aw-shucks John. Aghast at the idea of running a house of ill repute, John decides to close the Cheyenne Social Club, which makes him a pariah among the business’ loyal patrons, but then he discovers he can’t cash out his inheritance. Furthermore, when the club’s sunny madam, Jenny (Shirley Jones), is attacked by a client, John’s sense of Texas justice kicks in and starts him down the road of developing a proprietary interest in the ladies’ welfare. Unfortunately for John, his noble actions make him a target for a huge clan of no-good varmints, meaning an extended stay in Cheyenne would be hazardous to his health.
          Smoothly directed by studio-era Hollywood pro Gene Kellly, the dancer/filmmaker of Singin’ in the Rain fame, The Cheyenne Social Club is unabashedly old-fashioned, even with a handful of modern touches like location photography and brief nudity, so the dialogue gets a bit corny at times, there’s a great deal of sitcom-style patter between the stars, and the plotting is slick and uncomplicated. The Cheyenne Social Club also features the most whitewashed portrayal of prostitution this side of Pretty Woman (1990), which might make it unpalatable for some viewers. The cheerfully vanilla picture undoubtedly felt archaic in an era of revisionist Westerns, but seen with modern eyes, it’s as diverting as anything Hawks or Henry Hathaway helmed in the heyday of big-screen oaters. Fonda amusingly undercuts his heroic image by portraying a fellow more inclined to run from a fight than run into one, and Stewart uses his signature flummoxed stammer to great effect as a character unaccustomed to being a “man of property.” The Cheyenne Social Club isn’t a laugh-out-loud comedy so much as it’s a lighthearted yarn with comic touches, but that’s a good thing: The picture delivers a broad spectrum of entertainment, from action to jokes to romance, over the course of 103 amiable minutes.

The Cheyenne Social Club: GROOVY

The Other Side of Midnight (1977)

          Adapted from a bestselling novel by shlockmeister Sidney Sheldon, The Other Side of Midnight provides a snapshot of Hollywood at a cultural crossroads. With its epic running time, international locations, and opulent production design, the romantic tragedy is a glossy example of old-school Hollywood escapism—yet the film’s abundant smut represents a concession to modern tastes. As a result, Midnight isn’t suited for either of its intended audiences: It’s way too sleazy for fans of classic Hollywood melodrama, and it’s way too ponderous for moviegoers craving exploitation. Although the picture runs a preposterous 165 minutes, the story is very simple. Poor French girl Noelle (Marie-France Pisier) learns to use sex to her advantage in the years leading up to World War II. During the war, she falls in love with a caddish American pilot, Larry (John Beck), who abandons her and later marries an American publicist, Catherine (Susan Sarandon). Hungry for revenge, Noelle seduces a super-rich Greek tycoon, Costantin (Raf Vallone), then uses his money to cause problems for Larry, eventually hiring him as the pilot for her private jet. Once the ex-lovers reunite, things get predictably ugly until the movie reaches its ridiculous conclusion.
          Why the film needs almost three hours to communicate this information is a mystery, but the strange thing is that Midnight isn’t exactly boring. There’s just enough bitchery, scheming, and sex in every sequence to keep things moving along. The problem is that it’s all so inconsequential. Noelle doesn’t engender much sympathy, and though very pretty, Pisier is cold and vapid. Larry is a one-dimensional asshole, a narrative shortcoming not overcome by Beck’s shallow performance. It’s even difficult to root for Catherine, despite the fact that Sarandon easily outclasses the rest of the cast with her earnest work; her character is written so poorly that Catherine is alternately mousy, shrewish, and stupid. To cut the unfortunate actors some slack, the fault is really in the underlying material, a storyline so contrived that viewers get hit with one scene after another like the following exchange between Noelle and her father. After Noelle refuses the sexual advances of an employer, dear old dad scolds her thusly: “War is coming. Beauty is your only weapon. Use it. Let the hand under your dress wear gold, and you will be that much ahead of the game.” Classy!
          FYI, The Other Side of Midnight earned footnote status in film history because of an unusual aspect of its release. Twentieth Century-Fox execs were so confident the picture would be a hit, they demanded that every exhibitor showing the film also book a picture for which the studio had much lower expectations, a sci-fi adventure titled Star Wars. Suffice it to say that The Other Side of Midnight was as much of a box-office bust as Star Wars was a box-office bonanza. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Other Side of Midnight: LAME

The Choirboys (1977)

          The weirdness of this comedy-drama adapted from a Joseph Wambaugh novel about debauched L.A. police officers is epitomized by one particular scene. Hot-tempered redneck cop Roscoe Rules (Tim McIntire) wakes up by a pond in L.A.’s MacArthur Park after passing out from heavy drinking (the characters call their drunken revels “choir practice”). Roscoe looks down and discovers that a duck is, well, enjoying Roscoe’s private parts with its beak. All around Roscoe, his fellow officers bust out laughing. Turns out that practical-joke-loving cop Francis Tanaguchi (Clyde Kusatsu) found Roscoe drunk, opened Roscoe’s zipper, and laid a trail of breadcrumbs from the pond to Roscoe, thereby luring the frisky foul. Unspooling across 119 deranged minutes, The Choirboys zigzags wildly between sub-Animal House humor like the duck scene and horrific moments like the opening sequence, in which Roscoe taunts a potential suicide by shouting, “Go ahead and jump, bitch!” until she does exactly that.
          The theme of this wildly overstuffed ensemble picture seems to be that anything goes if you’re wearing a badge, so one storyline involves a sensitive cop (Perry King) who gets his kicks through S&M, while another follows a Vietnam vet (Don Stroud) perpetually on the edge of a complete meltdown. And then there’s the nerdy beat cop (James Woods) enlisted to entrap hookers because he looks like an accountant, and the fat slob named “Spermwhale” (Charles Durning), whose grudge match with his overbearing superior officer gets serious when the lieutenant threatens Spermwhale’s pension. Most of the storylines include some sort of raunchiness, like the cringe-inducing scene of a slow-witted cop sliding under a glass table to “kiss” the nether regions of a female officer sitting on the table, and the picture also has more than its share of physical and psychological violence. At one point, a mischievous vice cop (Vic Tayback) taunts Roscoe with put-on homosexual advances, triggering a gay-panic freakout in which Roscoe mercilessly pummels the vice cop until other officers intervene.
          What makes all of this so odd is that venerable director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) exerts absolutely zero control over the movie’s tone. Pathetically sad moments are played for laughs, idiotically silly scenes are played straight, and the film’s sympathies seem to lie with its most depraved characters. The indescribably inappropriate music by Frank DeVol only accentuates the strangeness; DeVol’s sunny tunes punctuate sequences the way rimshots accompany a nightclub comic’s routine, though often with no apparent connection to the actual content of the sequences. Eventually, a plot of sorts emerges from the chaos, but even that is so distasteful as to seem utterly perplexing: The “heroes” scheme to cover up the accidental killing of the most sympathetic character in the movie. The Choirboys is loaded with colorful events and interesting actors, but it’s a sure sign of trouble when the never-subtle Burt Young, playing a disgusting vice cop named “Scuzzi,” gives the most disciplined performance in the movie.

The Choirboys: FREAKY

Emperor of the North Pole (1973)

          The opening moments of this Depression-era action story set the disjointed mood. After Marty Robbins sings a corny theme song over a montage of a freight train barreling through the wilderness, the train pulls up to a water tower, and a hobo sneaks aboard one of the junctions between cars. Once the train restarts, a thuggish railroad cop known as Shack (Ernest Borgnine) spots the hobo and slams the poor schmuck in the head with a lead hammer, sending him under the train to become a mutilated corpse. Then composer Frank De Vol’s weirdly upbeat music pops in, like the whole sequence was a comedy vignette. As proven by peerless movies like The Dirty Dozen (1967), director Robert Aldrich knew his way around action sequences. However, he often erred tonally, and Emperor of the North Pole shows off the strengths and weaknesses of his filmmaking. The sequences of danger on the rails are thrilling, but the overlong movie wobbles awkwardly between lighthearted adventure and brutal suspense. After far too much preamble, the main storyline pits Shack against a veteran rail rider called “A No. 1” (Lee Marvin), who sets out to become the first hobo to ride Shack’s train without getting killed. As a result, most of the picture comprises scenes of A. No. 1 and a young cohort, Cigarette (Keith Carradine), hopping on and off the train in between violent skirmishes with Shack.
          Had the movie been whittled down to just 90-ish minutes of exciting mano-a-mano action, the flick would have been killer, but instead, viewers get meandering scenes of A No. 1 hanging out in hobo camps and harassing Baptists. Marvin is his usual cruelly cool self, all grizzled attitude and manly presence, and Carradine complements him with overbearing youthful arrogance, but it’s mostly the bad guy’s show. As played by boisterous bull Borgnine, Shack is memorable monster, defending his train with insane vigor—in one especially vivid throwaway scene, Shack glances at a coworker who just died on the job and growls the epithet “useless bastard” before getting back to his own work. Despite its flaws, Emperor of the North Pole is solid stuff for the intended audience: The Oregon location photography by old Hollywood pro Joseph Biroc is impressive, the actors do a fair number of their own stunts on moving trains, and the final confrontation between Borgnine and Marvin is frightening for its sheer malevolence.

Emperor of the North Pole: FUNKY

Halloween (1978)

          Filmmaker John Carpenter secured his legendary status with this brutally efficient thriller, which reigned for several years as the most successful independent film of all time, turned Jamie Lee Curtis into a movie star, and established the slasher movie as a major force at the box office. After Halloween, the formula of horny teenagers getting stalked by mystery men wielding butcher knives became a gruesome cliché, but it Carpenter’s deft hands, the original movie is a merciless exercise in audience manipulation. Co-written by Carpenter and producer Debra Hill, the movie opens with a famously lengthy point-of-view sequence depicting the first horrific episode in the career of demented killer Michael Myers. (If you don’t know the kicker to this vignette, I won’t spoil it for you.) The film picks up years later, when Myers escapes from a mental institution and returns to his hometown for a murderous rampage. Meek babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and haunted psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) stand in his way, so the harrowing narrative asks whether Strode and Loomis can stop Myers’ killing spree before becoming victims. Much has been written about the deeper psychological implications of the movie, and the film is crafted with such a Spartan approach to characterization that it’s tempting to play critical-interpretation games.
          But even without the justification of higher purpose, Halloween is a must-see for its minimalistic style. Cinematographer Dean Cundey uses huge anamorphic-widescreen frames to lend grandeur to simple locations like suburban streets and the interiors of teenagers’ bedrooms; Carpenter creates disquieting atmosphere with simple devices like having the killer enter the soft-focus backgrounds of shots; and Carpenter propels the film with the beloved synthesizer score he composed and performed. Speaking of the music, the main-title theme alone, with its relentless rhythm track and brooding melody, is a huge component of the film’s elemental power. Whereas many subsequent slasher flicks substituted elaborate gimmicks for real inspiration, Halloween features just a few choice contrivances, like grimly artistic murder tableaux and Myers’ creepy disguise, a hood the filmmakers created by modifying a cheap William Shatner mask. Among the actors, Curtis hits all the right notes, moving from shy and sweet to terrified and tough, while Pleasence is entertainingly deranged (“Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.”). An unforgettable demonstration of what a visionary director can accomplish by locking into the right subject matter, no matter how meager the available production resources, Halloween comprises equal measures of high art and low sensationalism. It’s also, not coincidentally, a great ride.

Halloween: RIGHT ON