The Monkey Hu$tle (1976)

There’s an interesting and offbeat blaxploitation movie buried somewhere inside The Monkey Hu$tle, but the film’s meritorious elements are suffocated by an incoherent script and half-assed postproduction. For fans of actor Yaphet Kotto, the movie is worth a look because he gives a charming performance as a flim-flam man with funky jargon and a natty wardrobe; Kotto even seems like a credible romantic lead in his too-brief scenes with underused costar Rosalnd Cash. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t primarily about Kotto’s character—instead, The Monkey Hu$tle has about five different characters jockeying for pole position, just like the movie has about five different storylines competing for attention. As a result, the picture is a discombobulated mess, a problem made worse by lazy scoring that features the same enervated funk jams over and over again. Set in Chicago, the movie begins with Daddy Foxx (Kotto), a con man who enlists local youths as accomplices/apprentices. Daddy Foxx’s newest aide is Baby ’D (Kirk Calloway), much to the chagrin of the boy’s older brother, Win (Randy Brooks), a musician who’s had troubles with the law. Each of these three characters has a romantic partner, and the movie also presents Goldie (Rudy Rae Moore), a hustler who’s alternately Daddy Foxx’s friend and rival, plus other subplots including the threat to a black neighborhood posed by impending construction of a freeway. Amid all of this, the single thread that receives the most screen time, inexplicably, relates to Win securing a set of drums. Although The Monkey Hu$tle is so shapeless that it feels like the movie’s still just getting started by the time it’s over, some of the acting is fairly good and the production values are excellent; as a travelogue depicting inner-city Chicago circa the mid-’70s, the movie has value. However, the realism of the settings is undercut whenever the ridiculous Moore comes onscreen, with his atrocious acting and his costumes that seem like leftovers from a Commodores show. Had producer/director Arthur Marks built a solid film around Kotto’s endearing characterization, he might have had something. Instead, The Monkey Hu$tle merely contains glimmers of a legitimate movie.

The Monkey HuStle: LAME

The Gambler (1974)

          While not a flawless film by any measure, The Gambler is one of the sharpest character studies of the ’70s, combining elegant filmmaking with exquisite writing and an extraordinarily nuanced leading performance. The picture offers a mature examination of addiction, portraying every troubling aspect of deception, manipulation, and risk that addicts manifest in pursuit of their illicit thrills. First-time screenwriter James Toback famously based the script on his own life, so protagonist Axel Freed (played beautifully by James Caan) is a respected college professor from a wealthy family. Driven by self-destructive compulsions, Axel regularly courts danger by making reckless bets with bookmakers. When the story begins, Axel gets in debt for $44,000 after a bad night of cards, and the pain Caan expresses in his face demonstrates that even for someone accustomed to losing, an impossible obligation triggers bone-deep fear. As the story progresses, Axel hustles for cash every way he can, whether that means hitting up family members or placing outrageous new bets.

         This fascinating protagonist’s entire life is a high-wire act, a nuance that Toback’s script explicitly articulates in myriad ways. Whether Axel’s telling a classroom full of students about a self-revealing analogy or explaining his behavior to long-suffering girlfriend Billie (Lauren Hutton), Axel says he’s after self-determination. In the twisted worldview of Toback/Axel, the threat of ultimate failure is the only acceptable proof of ultimate existence—he’s a daredevil of the soul. As such, Axel isn’t a sympathetic character, per se. Quite to the contrary, he’s a scheming son of a bitch whose idea of honor is tied in with revealing that everyone around him is a schemer, just like him. That’s why it’s so painful to see Axel inflict his lifestyle on the few innocents he encounters, such as his mother, Naomi (Jacqueline Brookes). And yet Toback carefully surrounds Axel with people who exist even lower on the moral spectrum, such as jovial loan shark Hips (Paul Sorvino) and vulgar mobster “One” (Vic Tayback).

          Director Karel Reisz, a Czech native making his first Hollywood movie, serves Toback’s script well. Among the film’s many effective (and subtle) directorial flourishes are a trope of slow zooms into Caan’s anguished face at moments of critical decision and the repeated use (via composer Jerry Fielding) of variations on a taut Mahler overture to suggest a life that’s all prelude. (After all, each climax in Axel’s existence is merely a fleeting high soon replaced by insatiable hunger.) Caan is on fire here, playing the cock of the walk in confident scenes (the tic of fixing his hair before important encounters illustrates Axel’s vanity) and quivering with ill-fitting anxiety during moments of emasculation. Vivid supporting players including Brookes, Sorvino, Tayback, Morris Carnovsky, Antonio Fargas, Steven Keats, Stuart Margolin, M. Emmet Walsh, James Woods, and Burt Young echo Caan’s intensity; each player adds a unique texture, whether guttural or sophisticated. Hutton is the weak link, her gap-toothed loveliness making a greater impression than her weak recitations of monologues. And if The Gambler sputters somewhat in its 10-minute final sequence—a love-it-or-hate-it microcosm representing Axel’s risk addiction—then a minor misstep is forgivable after the supreme efficacy of the preceding hour and 40 minutes.

The Gambler: RIGHT ON

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

          Not many films merge existential ruminations, horrific re-creations of World War II tragedies, satirical vignettes about the domestic life of a suburban optometrist, and surrealistic sci-fi interludes featuring a topless starlet abducted by aliens. So it goes in Slaughterhouse-Five, the elegantly made but emotionally distant adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s most celebrated novel. Very much like Mike Nichols’ film of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1970), another impressionistic riff on World War II, George Roy Hill’s film of Slaughterhouse-Five boldly attempts to translate uniquely literary devices into cinematic language. And very much like Nichols’ Catch-22, Hill’s Slaughterhouse-Five boasts a handful of effective moments amid a whole lot of eclectic sprawl. In fact, Hill conveys certain elements of Slaughterhouse-Five exquisitely, such as the imaginative visual transitions that bounce the story back and forth between different time periods.

          Alas, bravura editing is not nearly enough to compensate for the way Vonnegut Jr.’s fantastical storyline is pulled down to earth by the oppressive realism of Hollywood filmmaking. Very specifically, the fact that very young leading man Michael Sacks plays his character in many stages of life, all the way to late middle age, forefronts artifice. Furthermore, because Hill creates believable images during outlandish scenes, he robs Vonnegut Jr.’s metaphors of their ability to percolate in the reader’s mind. Everything feels numbingly literal. And, of course, because Hill and screenwriter Stephen Geller dropped whole elements of the source novel, it’s hard to imagine this film fully satisfying either fans of the book (who could rightfully lament alterations) and newcomers (who could rightly claim befuddlement at how the reality-based and surrealistic aspects of the movie are supposed to converge).

          In any event, the movie concerns Billy Pilgrim (Sacks), whom we meet as an aging man living alone in the ’burbs following his wife’s death. Billy claims to be “unstuck in time,” so he flashes back to periods including World War II, when he was a POW in the German city of Dresden during its merciless firebombing by the Allies. (Over 100,000 people were killed in the attack.) The movie tracks Billy’s wartime interactions with fellow POWs including Edgar Derby (Eugene Roche), a well-meaning father figure, and Paul Lazzaro (Ron Leibman), a smart-mouthed psychotic. Other threads of the story include Billy’s relationship with his wife and kids, as well as Billy’s abduction by aliens to a distant planet, where he and starlet Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine) are put on display like zoo animals, expected to cohabitate (and copulate) so the aliens can study them.

          Hill shoots every scene of Slaughterhouse-Five beautifully, even if some aspects of the picture undercut his skillful direction. Sacks’ uninteresting non-performance is the biggest flaw, and it’s disheartening that the movie becomes, in its final scenes, a bit of a feel-good homily. Still, Slaughterhouse-Five is fundamentally ambitious and artistic, so there’s a strong temptation to seek hidden virtues, and, indeed, many viewers have found much to praise. The picture won the Jury Prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe and a WGA Award. The lingering question, however, is whether Slaughterhouse-Five actually does justice to Vonnegut Jr.’s novel—or, for that matter, whether it truly succeeds as a filmic statement.

Slaughterhouse-Five: FUNKY

Danny (1977)

Independently produced family films from the ’70s can make for some of the decade’s toughest viewing, because well-meaning amateurs attempting to create wholesome entertainment often overlooked the importance of conflict in dramatic construction. As a case in point, the equine drama Danny is borderline unwatchable simply because every character in the movie is so unrelentingly nice. The only adversarial forces in the movie are circumstance and the occasional petulance of the leading character, a 12-year-old girl. People in Danny tend to say things like this: “See, Janie? I told you all it takes is a lot of hard work, and maybe a little love.” In real life, meeting people as kind-hearted as the characters in Danny can be transformative. In reel life, encountering one-dimensional saints is boring. Directed by first-timer Gene Feldman, who later made a string of puff-piece celebrity documentaries for television, Danny tells the story of Janie (Rebecca Page), a suburban girl who works on a farm as a helper to Pat (Janet Zarish), a racehorse trainer. Janie has (mild) issues stemming from the death of her father some years back and from the fact that her mother is now seriously involved with a new man. Eager for a friend, Janie fixates on Danny, a white horse acquired by the farm where Pat works. In typically clichéd fashion, Danny’s got an injury, too—he goes lame—so he and Janie nurture each other back to health. (There’s also a beyond-trite subplot about Janie’s cutesy sorta-romance with a young boy who admires her.) Danny is a clumsy endeavor on every level, from the forgettable story to the inert performances by actors who, rightfully, never achieved notoriety elsewhere. The photography is basically competent, and very young equine enthusiasts will enjoy the many scenes set in obstacle courses, paddocks, and workout rings. Thanks to its good intentions, Danny is impossible to hate, but the movie is so bland and unoriginal that the strongest reaction it engenders is indifference.

Danny: LAME

Janis (1974)

          Today, the so-called “rock doc” has become a commercialized extension of the subject’s brand—exhaustive documentaries about bands ranging from the Eagles to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers exist somewhere between gentle hagiographies and shameless sales tools, even if a few unflattering elements are included to create the illusion of “warts and all” veracity. Back in the early ’70s, however, the idea that rock singers’ lives merited feature-length examination was such a new concept that pieces of unvarnished truth occasionally reached movie screens, especially if the subject was deceased and therefore unable to exert editorial control. Thus, Janis—a 96-minute tribute to rock legend Janis Joplin, who died several years before the film’s release—has the raw quality of unfiltered observation.

          Since much of the film comprises extended performance sequences, only about 30 minutes feature actual reportage (fly-on-the-wall observations, casual interviews, etc.). Additionally, because director Howard Alk didn’t have the opportunity to capture new footage, he compiled the picture from such sources as The Dick Cavett Show and D.A. Pennebaker’s classic concert movie Monterey Pop (1968). Within these considerable limitations, however, Alk and co-writer Seaton Findlay give Janis a pleasing shape. The picture opens with Joplin’s breakout performance at the Monterey Pop festival (Pennebaker’s shots of a slack-jawed “Mama” Cass Elliot watching Joplin’s performance never get old), and then the picture proceeds chronologically through vignettes from the next two years, which ended up being the last of Joplin’s life. Janis shows its subject communing with fans, giving interviews, performing onstage, and working in the studio.

          In all of these scenes, Joplin comes across as a beguiling mixture of artifice and authenticity. Her hippie affectations are silly, especially the gigantic feather boas she often wears in her hair, but the way she talks about dodgy managers and the sweet release of performance is appealing. As for the actual singing scenes, Joplin’s amped-up version of the blues is consistently powerful, even if—as the artist herself acknowledges—she sometimes substitutes volume for nuance. (In one bit, Joplin says she aspires to sound like soul greats including Otis Redding, then laments that “all I’ve got now is strength.”)

          Some sections of Janis promise more than they deliver, including an anticlimactic sequence about Joplin’s visit to her high-school reunion in provincial Port Arthur, Texas; we see Joplin give a media interview but don’t see real interaction with classmates. The most revealing sequence, therefore, is probably Joplin’s studio session for her howling take on George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” during which a dressed-down Joplin all but tells her guitarist to forego perfectionism because the only thing listeners will care about is Joplin’s vocal. Ouch. Nothing in Janis recasts Joplin’s image, so viewers shouldn’t expect mind-blowing discoveries. That said, the movie suggests what it might have been like to occupy Joplin’s orbit during the period of her greatest success, so the film’s historical and musical value is beyond question.

Janis: GROOVY

Scott Joplin (1977)

          Piggybacking on the renewed popularity of Scott Joplin’s music that emanated from its use in The Sting (1973), this biopic tracks the rise and fall of Joplin, the first African-American composer to receive mainstream notoriety. Alas, the picture is delivered via the stilted artifice of a formulaic backlot production. Costumes look as if they just came from a warehouse, props and sets seem absurdly pristine, and director Jeremy Paul Kagan’s blocking and dramaturgy are pedestrian. It doesn’t help, either, that the film’s weakest performance is its most important. Billy Dee Williams, a charmer who did fine work in romantic and supporting roles throughout the ’70s, simply lacks the chops to play every dimension of Joplin’s turbulent life. Williams is too restrained in quiet scenes, and too unnatural in volatile moments. Another fundamental problem with Scott Joplin is that the movie hews painfully close to the standard playbook for cinema stories about artists who fall from glory to ignominy.
          The story begins jubilantly, with Joplin joining the ranks of “professors” who pound out tunes in Deep South whorehouses. Eventually, Joplin’s desire to compose his own music leads Joplin and his best friend, Chauvin (Clifton Davis), to enter a piano-playing contest in St. Louis. This event brings Joplin’s music to the attention of Stark (Art Carney), a music publisher who recognizes Joplin’s talent and the novelty of marketing a black tunesmith. With this key professional relationship in place, Joplin is off on a journey that soon includes marriage to the lovely Belle (Margaret Avery), although the syphilis Joplin contracted back in his brothel days spoils domestic bliss. And so it goes, through episodes of success and failure, until Joplin wanders off into obscurity at the end of the movie while narration describes his posthumous resurgence in the ’70s. Scott Joplin gets more and more turgid as it plunges deeper into Joplin’s life, because the movie succumbs to florid melodrama and wildly overwritten dialogue; only the most innately spontaneous performers amid the supporting cast manage to imbue their scenes with believability. Thanks to infectious music and a sprinkling of interesting biographical details, the picture merits a casual viewing, although the subject matter deserved better than this wax-museum recitation.

Scott Joplin: FUNKY

Where the Red Fern Grows (1974)

          While I freely admit a weakness for sentimental dog stories, Where the Red Fern Grows held my attention much more than I anticipated, which I interpret as a testament to the way the substance of the piece compensates for the Christian-themed sermonizing that permeates the narrative. After all, Where the Red Fern Grows seems highly unlikely to engage cynical viewers (myself included), because it’s a guileless yarn about pure-hearted country folk enduring the Depression, and the movie is scored with tunes penned by the Osmonds and warbled by Andy Williams. American cinema doesn’t get more whitebread. Furthermore, Where the Red Fern Grows has a sketchy budget—a problem the filmmakers easily conceal since every character in the movie is dirt-poor—and the dialogue is spoon-fed because the intended audience includes young children.

          Still, the bittersweet nature of the story, the sincerity of the acting, and the vivaciousness of the locations grant the movie an appealingly nostalgic glow. Thus, even though the actual filmmaking is crudely mechanical, many scenes capture the simple joy of a young boy romping through the woods with four-legged friends, and the overall narrative tells a redeeming story about the protagonist discovering mortality. The picture is so edifying that it borders on being educational, but at the same time, it steers clear of the goopy emotional excess one might expect from, say, a Walt Disney Company treatment of similar material.

          Based on a 1961 novel by Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows is about Billy (Stewart Peterson), an adolescent living in the Ozark Mountains with his impoverished family. All Billy dreams about is having coonhounds so he can hunt in the woods, but buying such animals is beyond his family’s means. Working odd jobs in between his chores at home, Billy saves enough to buy two pups, whom he names Ann and Dan, and then he trains them to be champion trackers. Adventures including a dangerous storm, a hunting contest, and a nasty encounter with a mountain lion ensue. Through it all, Billy earns the respect of his parents (played by Beverly Garland and Jack Ging) and he learns life lessons from his grandfather (played by James Whitmore). Billy also endures a few run-ins with rotten redneck youths, and he encounters death on several sobering occasions.

          Director Norman Tokar, a veteran of many family pictures featuring animals, tells the story in an unvarnished style, bridging sequences with lyrical soundtrack passages integrating music and narration (which is spoken by Rawls, the author of the novel). Whitmore, unsurprisingly, does most of the heavy lifting in terms of acting, although Peterson makes up for in earnestness what he lacks in skill. While Where the Red Fern Grows isn’t a children’s film for the ages by any measure, it’s a solid entry into a beloved genre. (Those who share my affinity for canines will, of course, get more out of the experience than other viewers.) A belated sequel, Where the Red Fern Grows: Part Two—with Doug McKeon taking over the Billy role—was released straight to video in 1992.

Where the Red Fern Grows: GROOVY

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

          As most people recall from childhood, A.A. Milne’s classic character Winnie the Pooh is a loveably simple bear who lives in a fantasy realm called the Hundred Acre Wood. Along with animal friends including Eeyore the Donkey, Kanga and her baby Roo, Owl, Piglet, and the irrepressible Tigger—as well as human companion Christopher Robin—Pooh is the device by which Milne told sweet stories about devotion, friendship, and love. Given this combination of cute-animal whimsy and inspirational themes, Pooh was a natural subject for cartoon adaptation by the Walt Disney Company. Disney initially released three theatrical shorts, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), which were compiled—along with a small amount of new material—for this feature.

          Since Milne’s books were anthologies, the compilation of the shorts works exceptionally well for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, with one “chapter” flowing seamlessly into the next. Additionally, because the vignettes integrate clever references to their literary sources—shifts between scenes are often depicted by cutting to book pages featuring an illustration that becomes the first shot of the next scene, and so on—The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh gracefully balances animated entertainment with a visual celebration of reading. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is lovingly designed, with gentle hand strokes visible in character delineation and wonderful washes of color permeating backgrounds. (While Disney didn’t retain the exact character designs from E.H. Shepard, who illustrated the original Pooh books, Disney’s style honors the spirit of Shepard’s work.)

          Predictably, the one area in which Disney succumbs to sticky-sweet excess is sound, since the studio created the aural aspect of the Hundred Acre Wood from scratch. Voice actor Sterling Holloway incarnates Pooh as the spirit of childlike innocence, just as John Fiedler (as Piglet) and Clint Howard (as Roo) personify adorableness with the squeaky little voices they provide for their characters. (It helps that narrator Sebastian Cabot provides a solidly adult sound for balance, and that voice actor Paul Winchell, as Tigger, channels eccentricity and exuberance instead of mere cuteness.) The music, by Mary Poppins tunesmiths Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman, also registers quite high on the glucose scale, especially with such silly wordplay as “Hip Hip Pooh-Ray” (the title of one of the Shermans’ songs).

          As for the “many adventures” depicted in the film, they’re mostly slight contrivances designed to showcase endearing characters. In order, Pooh gets into trouble while trying to score his favorite snack, honey; the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood face a torrential rainstorm; and Tigger makes mischief with his incessant bouncing. Adults may find 74 minutes of this stuff a bit hard to take in one sitting, but The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is about as edifying as children’s entertainment gets, in terms of exposing young viewers to wholesome themes of belonging, community, and companionship.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: GROOVY

Slaughter (1972) & Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off (1973)

          For various reasons, it’s not entirely accurate to call the 1972 Jim Brown movie Slaughter a blaxploitation flick. After all, ex-football player Brown was already a movie star before the blaxploitation genre emerged; he’s nearly the only actor of color in the movie; the story takes place outside the urban milieu normally associated with the genre; and certain tropes in Slaughter, such as the lead character’s sexual appeal to white women, had been present in Brown’s cinematic output since the late ’60s. That said, even if Slaughter wasn’t conceived as a blaxploitation movie, it was completed and marketed as one—the funky Billy Preston theme song and the “stickin’ it to the man” vibe of promotional materials reflect the influence of films including Shaft (1971). Anyway, if all this quibbling about categories seems tangential to the movie itself, that’s because Slaughter is so vapid that there’s not much to discuss in the way of actual content.

          Brown stars as Slaughter, an ex-Green Beret whose parents are murdered by mobsters. After killing two functionaries in reprisal, Slaughter is offered amnesty by the Feds so long as he travels to South America and takes out higher-level mobsters. That puts Slaughter into the orbit of crooks including Hoffo (Rip Torn), whose girl, Ann (Stella Stevens), is assigned to seduce Slaughter. (Torn lends a fair measure of weirdness, and Stevens mostly parades around in various states of undress.) A romantic triangle emerges, and everything leads, inevitably to a big showdown. Director Jack Starrett fills Slaughter with car chases, fistfights, shoot-outs, and nudity—Stevens’ topless appearance is probably the most memorable scene in the movie—but it’s all quite crude and routine. Brown holds the thing together, more or less, with his casual cool, and it’s a kick to hear Slaughter describe himself as “the baddest cat that ever walked the earth.” Thankfully, costar Don Gordon livens things up by providing comic relief as Slaughter’s unlikely sidekick; as is true for every other actor in the picture, however, he’s forced to make the best of clichéd dramatic situations.

          When the Slaughter character returned to movie screens a year later, in Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, a new creative team was in place, led by director Gordon Douglas, and their mandate was clearly to make a full-on blaxploitation joint. Unlike its predecessor, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off is filled with hookers, pimps, slang, terrible clothes, and white women who can’t get enough of Slaughter—played, once more, by Brown. Deepening its blaxploitation bona fides, the sequel even boasts a high-octane funk score by the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. The story is diffuse, because even though the plot kicks off with another murder/revenge scenario, the narrative gets mired in convoluted underworld machinations. Furthermore, there’s zero urgency in the story until the very end, so Slaughter spends lots of time driving around, enjoying meals, and getting laid. Plus, in lieu of the previous film’s Rip Torn, the sequel’s main villain is played by Ed McMahon, better known as Johnny Carson’s second banana. McMahon does competent work, but he hardly makes a formidable opponent for “the baddest cat that ever walked the earth” (a line reprised in the sequel). Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off also loses points for a narrative predicated on wildly incompetent assassins, seeing as how the lead character survives a crazy number of attempts on his life. Neither of the Slaughter films is genuinely awful, but neither of them is anything special, either.

Slaughter: FUNKY

Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off: FUNKY

Moon of the Wolf (1972)

          For about three-quarters of its brief running time, the TV movie Moon of the Wolf unfolds like a bland but professionally made murder mystery, combining smooth performances with a fair amount of Southern-fried atmosphere, befitting the setting of a small island community in Louisiana. During the last quarter of the picture, however, Moon of the Wolf remembers that it’s actually a monster movie, and the quality of the piece drops precipitously, thanks to hackneyed situations and substandard makeup. So, while it’s accurate to say that Moon of the Wolf is a bust as a creature feature, the movie works fine as an undemanding thriller that simply happens to contain a very silly conclusion involving a rampaging lycanthrope. David Janssen, all disdainful crankiness, plays a small-town sheriff investigating a series of brutal killings, which the unsophisticated locals blame on wild dogs. Over the course of his investigation, the sheriff uncovers tawdry secrets about a wealthy landowner (Bradford Dillman) and his beautiful sister (Barbara Rush); the sheriff also digs into the lives of a physician (John Beradino) and a tempestuous redneck (Geoffrey Lewis).

          As directed by Daniel Petrie, a reliable professional with an enormous résumé that includes such respected projects as the award-winning telefilm Sybil (1976), Moon of the Wolf is crafted with more care than the forgettable material deserves (although the monster stuff at the end seems half-hearted). Petrie gets especially good work out of Rush, an elegant beauty who has primarily worked in B-movies and small-screen fare; playing the wayward daughter of a moneyed clan, she invests her part with dignity and poignancy. (Never underestimate an actor who refuses to accept the limitations of the movie in which she’s been cast.) Dillman has some fine small moments as well, playing an aristocrat who’s mortified to have his privacy invaded by circumstance, and nobody does bug-eyed rural rage quite like the versatile Lewis. If all of this praise seems excessive for an obscure TV movie about werewolves, rest assured the goal here is not to suggest that Moon of the Wolf is by any measure a good movie; it’s not. But in the realm of schlocky ’70s horror, thoughtful storytelling is a rarity to be praised when found, even if that’s not the element one actually wants from schlocky ’70s horror. Still, better some decent performances than a bunch of mindless gore, right? Right? On second thought, don’t answer that one.

Moon of the Wolf: FUNKY

The Asphyx (1973)

          The core idea of The Asphyx is so fascinating that it seems likely someone will eventually revisit the material, if not necessarily by mounting a direct remake then by contriving a more exciting story around the premise. Set in Victorian England, this UK horror picture—which is really more of a Poe-esque psychological drama with macabre elements—concerns a scientist preoccupied with death. More specifically, Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) is part of a paranormal society that, while taking photographs of people as they die, stumbles across a possible means of capturing on film souls exiting bodies. Yet after Hugo inadvertently records a personal loss on a primitive move camera, he realizes that instead of the soul, he’s been making images of the asphyx of each dying individual. (A concept borrowed from old mythology, the asphyx is a personal demon arriving to claim the soul of one specific being just before the end of life, so each living thing has its own asphyx.) Through morbid experiments, Hugo determines that if he captures the asphyx of any being, then the being gains immortality. As in all genre-fiction stories about mad doctors playing god, things go poorly, with bloodshed and ironic tragedy unfolding around Hugo.

          On the plus side, The Asphyx is a handsomely mounted production, with careful costuming, detailed sets, and glossy cinematography. The movie also features several nasty moments, such as the handling of corpses, although the filmmakers almost completely avoid outright gore. Plus, as noted earlier, the asphyx notion is creepy, and the filmic representation of the asphyx—a ghostly form with a skeletal face, visible only in a beam of specially concocted blue light—has a visual kick.

          On the minus side, The Asphyx is slow and talky, a problem made worse by the cast’s stiff acting. Stephens has some fun with extreme scenes (notably the bit in which his character voluntarily electrocutes himself), though he’s a poor substitute for, say, Peter Cushing. Similarly, Asphyx director Peter Newbrook assembles scenes tidily but lacks the gusto and luridness of a proper UK horror helmer (think Freddie Francis, Roy Ward Baker, etc.). Costars Robert Powell (as the scientist’s aide) and Jane Lapotaire (as the aide’s fiancée) are even less interesting than leading man Stephens, though Powell does call to mind the eclectic modern-day British actor Richard E. Grant. The Asphyx offers a fairly intelligent alternative to the usual pulpy delights of ’70s horror, and the script—by Brian Comport, from a story by Christina and Laurence Beers—gives considerable attention to ethical/scientific/philosophical ruminations. The cost of this approach, however, is that The Asphyx feels dry and monotonous except in its biggest moments, but even then, the movie wants for actual jolts.

The Asphyx: FUNKY

Soul Soldier (1970)

Originally titled The Red, White, and Black—but also marketed under the name Buffalo Soldier—this awful Western seems as if it was conceived to be an ensemble story about the exploits of free black men fighting for the Union Army in the American frontier circa the years immediately preceding the Civil War. Unfortunately, the film’s amateurish storytelling treats this worthwhile subject like grist for the melodramatic mill, substituting clichés and nonsense for meaningful narrative. Much of the picture comprises an uninteresting romantic triangle involving two enlisted men and the beautiful seamstress who is married to one of the men but trysts with another; there’s also a lot of screen time devoted to patrols in Indian country, which generates a few limp action sequences. Characterization is in short supply, because the people in Soul Soldier (or whichever of the film’s many titles one prefers) are all paper-thin contrivances. The basic plot involves ladies’ man Eli (Robert DoQui), who enlists in the Army to avoid the wrath of jealous husbands. Eli’s sent to a fort commanded by Col. Grierson (Cesar Romero), where Eli meets Julie (Janee Michelle), with whom he falls in love. Later, Julie’s dalliance with Eli’s friend and fellow solider, Sgt. Hatch (Lincoln Kilpatrick), causes strife. Yawn. Shot in the flat, ugly style of late ’60s/early ’70s television—and edited so aggressively (and haphazardly) that the whole discombobulated thing runs just 77 minutes—Soul Soldier provides a few fleeting moments of vapid entertainment, mostly owing to the diligence of actors DoQui and Kilpatrick, who try valiantly to surmount the lifeless material. (Athlete/political activist Rafter Johnson appears, inconsequentially, in a supporting role, so his star billing is deceptive.) Despite DoQui’s and Kilpatrick’s endeavors, a few well-delivered lines and some effectively simulated camaraderie are hardly reason enough to romp through this slag heap of random scenes, especially when cheap production values and a horrifically bad score—which wobbles between bleak motifs and inappropriately exuberant horn statements—accentuate the shoddiness of the enterprise.

Soul Soldier: LAME

Citizens Band (1977)

          While not a particularly interesting movie, the offbeat comedy Citizens Band represents the convergence of two interesting careers. For director Jonathan Demme, the movie was a breakthrough studio job after making three low-budget exploitation flicks for producer Roger Corman. For second-time screenwriter Paul Brickman, the movie provided a transition between working on existing material (Brickman debuted with the script for 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training) and creating brand-new characters; Brickman later blossomed as the writer/director of the extraordinary Risky Business (1983). A further point of interest is that while Citizens Band tangentially belongs to the mid-’70s vogue for trucker movies, it’s much more concerned with the possibilities of a communication format to bridge distances between people. In other words, this is an earnest project from serious people, so it can’t be discounted. Nonetheless, watching all 98 minutes of the loosely plotted and sluggishly paced feature requires abundant patience.

          Since Citizens Band never even remotely approaches outright hilarity, the charms of the picture are found in small character moments and—one of Demme’s specialties—scenes that celebrate human compassion and understanding. One wonders, however, whether a shambling assortment of kind-hearted vignettes was what Brickman had in mind, since certain sequences feel as if they were conceived to become full-on comedy setpieces. While Demme’s preference for intimacy over spectacle gives Citizens Band an amiable sense of reality, this directorial approach results in a decidedly low-energy cinematic experience.

          Anyway, in lieu of a proper storyline, the movie has a number of interconnected subplots. The main character, if only by default since he has the largest number of scenes, is Spider (Paul LeMat), a small-town CB-radio operator who watches out for truckers and vainly tries to keep emergency frequencies free of outside chatter. Spider lives with his ornery father (Roberts Blossom), a former trucker, and Spider’s part of a love triangle involving his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Electra (Candy Clark), and Spider’s brother, Blood (Bruce McGill). The Spider scenes are quite sleepy except when he plays vigilante by destroying radio equipment belonging to rule-breaking CB operators. Another thread of the movie involves a long-haul trucker nicknamed “Chrome Angel” (Charles Napier), who is revealed as a secret bigamist; the first meeting of his two wives plays out with unexpected warmth. There’s also some material involving various eccentric radio enthusiasts, such as Hot Coffee (Alix Elias), a plain-Jane hooker catering to truckers. The movie toggles back and forth between various characters, presenting one inconsequential scene after another. (Don’t be fooled by the exciting opening sequence of a truck derailment; thrills are in short supply thereafter.)

          Citizens Band has a slick look, thanks to inventive cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, though it’s questionable whether his moody style actually suits the material. Yet the presence of artful lighting is just one more random point in Citizens Band’s favor. The movie’s a collection of many things, some of which merit attention; the problem is that these things never coalesce into a worthwhile whole.

Citizens Band: FUNKY

The Doll Squad (1973)

Cheap, dull, and silly, this would-be espionage thriller introduces an all-female commando group of U.S. secret agents, tasked with infiltrating the remote fortress of a former American spy who plans to sell a synthesized version of the bubonic plague to international criminals. (As with James Bond movies, a clear influence on this laughable endeavor, it’s better not to waste too much energy scrutinizing the practicality of the villain’s scheme.) Produced and directed by one Ted V. Mikels, The Doll Squad is about as glamorous-looking—and as well-acted—as a drivers’-ed instructional movie. Michael Ansara, a deep-voiced character actor known for his roles in the original Star Trek series and such ’70s genre fare as The Manitou (1978), is the closest thing to a recognizable name in The Doll Squad. He plays the bad guy, badly. Ansara was perfectly capable of interesting and even memorable work in the right context, so the fact that even he was defeated by the suffocating crappiness of The Doll Squad says volumes about the picture’s substandard approach to everything—action, cinematography, directing, editing, writing. (The so-called “special effects” are particularly crude, with bright flashes superimposed on the screen whenever the filmmakers wish to suggest an explosion.) The Doll Squad isn’t a complete disaster, because the storyline basically makes sense (in a cliché-ridden way), and because some viewers might find distraction in the ample curves of starlets including Francine York, who plays the lead “doll,” and Tura Santana (a veteran of many Russ Meyer productions). That said, The Doll Squad is an exploitation movie without much exploitation, since the titular ladies never disrobe past bikinis—except for Santana, who does a quick bump-and-grind in a strip club at one point. The shootouts deliver low thrills, too, with squibs aplenty popping as the squad mows down dozens of enemy soldiers—who, in the nature of these sorts of movies, stand around waiting to get shot except when the plot requires them to suddenly become formidable. The whole enterprise is scored with atrocious music that sounds like a hybrid of porn tunes and the sort of frenetic, horn-driven jams that used to run beneath Hanna Barbera’s cheaply made superhero cartoons. Oh, and the clothes and hairstyles? Unimaginably bad, even for the ’70s.

The Doll Squad: LAME

Kid Blue (1973)

          Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, adventurous filmmakers stretched the boundaries of the Western genre in previously unimaginable ways, often using stories set in the American frontier as allegories for contemporary themes. Yet while such provocateurs as Peckinpah and Penn mixed irreverence with ultraviolence, some filmmakers dabbling in the postmodern-Western arena opted for a gentler approach. For example, consider Kid Blue, a ingratiating comedy of sorts starring Dennis Hopper. The picture was written by Bud Shrake and directed by TV veteran James Frawley, who capitalized on his experience with such lighthearted series as The Monkees to earn gigs directing a handful of ’70s diversions, including the silly The Big Bus (1976) and sublime The Muppet Movie (1979). Translation: Don’t dig too deep into Kid Blue for auteurist statement, because Frawley mostly just plays traffic cop for the peculiarity permeating the story.

          Hopper plays Bickford, a second-rate outlaw-turned-drifter who wanders into the small town of Dime Box, looking to quit the criminal life for something more predictable. Alas, Bickford quickly gets on the wrong side of Sheriff “Mean John” Simpson (Ben Johnson)—who, in Bickford’s defense, probably doesn’t have a good side—which means that living righteously turns out to be as much of a hassle as criminality. Still, Bickford finds solace in the friendship of a sensitive factory worker, Reese (Oates), who evinces qualities that suggest a closeted homosexual. (Oates plays the put-upon textures of this character beautifully.) Bickford’s life is further complicated by trouble with women, because Reese’s wife, Molly (Lee Purcell), is a hot-to-trot spitfire who wants more than Reese is able to give, and Bickford’s old girlfriend eventually shows up, as well. Meanwhile, Bickford befriends an eccentric by the name of Preacher Bob (Boyle), who lives on the outskirts of town while he constructs a flying machine that he hopes will take him up in the air and away from the provincial rhythms of Dime Box.

          The filmmakers play heavily into Hopper’s offscreen persona, portraying Bickford as a hippie unfairly constrained by the Establishment’s rules; in one key moment, Bickford undoes his ponytail and shakes out his long tresses like a Woodstock Nation resident letting his freak flag fly after a long shift at a 9-to-5 gig. And if the superimposition of ’70s ideas and themes onto the Western milieu is a bit forced, that’s a small price to pay for the enjoyably strange textures of Kid Blue. Dime Box is unlike the towns in most Westerns, because it’s filled with believably individualistic people—who, with the obvious exception of Preacher John, are defined more by their troubled inner lives than by their peculiar outer behavior. Dime Box has more than its share of shortcomings, including a slow pace, a deficit of big laughs, and an unmemorable ending. Furthermore, Hopper’s performance can be grating at times, so the actor fails to generate much audience empathy despite his character’s sad-sack plight. Nonetheless, while it’s unfolding, Kid Blue takes viewers to novel places, and it does so with charm and compassion.

Kid Blue: GROOVY