Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

          Dismissed by critics during its original release and not subsequently elevated to any special status, the lugubriously titled Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? is nonetheless an interesting piece of work bursting with offbeat characterizations and unique dialogue. This is a rare example of a movie that has considerable virtues even though it doesn’t “work” in any conventional sense. It helps a lot, of course, that Harry Kellerman reflects a peculiar historical moment by portraying the anguish of a celebrity who seeks a reason to live after finding the goals he pursued all his life (fame, money, respect, women) to be insufficient. While it’s true that the early ’70s were lousy with “I gotta be me” character studies, the best of these movies turn a mirror on a period when the line separating egotism and introspection blurred.

          Written by Herb Gardner, best known for his plays I’m Not Rappaport and A Thousand Clowns, the picture depicts the last day in the life of Georgie Soloway (Dustin Hoffman), a pop songwriter living in a palatial New York penthouse. Delusional after several days without sleep, Georgie fantasizes about killing himself and experiences surreal visions that mix imagination and reality. At various times, he interacts with his aging father, Leonard (David Galef); his long-suffering accountant, Irwin (Dom DeLuise); his confrontational psychotherapist, Dr. Moses (Jack Warden); and troubled actress Allison Densmore (Barbara Harris), whom Georgie meets while she auditions for a show Georgie has cowritten. Adding to the otherworldly quality of Georgie’s experiences is the fact that he owns a small plane and spends many hours cruising the skies above New York City—in one of Gardner’s effective but unsubtle literary flourishes, Georgie literally has his head in the clouds.

          Many of the stylistic affectations in Harry Kellerman were commonplace at the time of the film’s release, including jump cuts that instantly shift Georgie from one location to another, and the way Dr. Moses magically appears in various situations wearing costumes suiting the situations (e.g., a ski instructor’s uniform, etc.). Furthermore, like so many “I gotta be me” stories, Harry Kellerman faces an uphill battle generating sympathy for a lead character who has everything but wants more. What makes the piece consistently interesting, however—besides the brisk pace and the way director Ulu Grosbard’s dark visual style unifies disparate scenes—is the humanity of the acting and the writing.

          Hoffman, who had a reputation at the time for being phenomenally self-involved, inhabits the character comfortably, and the boyish charm he brought to The Graduate (1967) shines through especially well during scenes when Georgie sings silly ditties. (The movie’s tunes were penned by poet/songwriter Shel Silverstein.) As for Harris, she’s heartbreaking, giving arguably the best performance of her career as a neurotic with a poetic streak. In fact, Harris netted an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the sole major honor bestowed on the film.

          Fitting a movie written by a playwright, Harry Kellerman truly shines in long dialogue passages, even though Gardner and Grosbard contrive several intricate scenes that rely upon surprising visual juxtapositions. Beyond the occasional zippy one-liner (“Her head belongs in a Cracker Jack box, and her ass in the Louvre”), Gardner fills the script with melancholy pensées. “I’m auditioning every day,” Harris’ character says sadly. “I wake up every morning, and the world says, ‘Thank you, Miss Densmore, that’ll be all for now.’” Gardner also does a fine job of illustrating the distance that exists in most relationships, making the way his leading characters strive for connection seem like a heroic act, albeit—thanks to the movie’s fatalistic worldview—a doomed one.

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?: GROOVY

Cover Me Babe (1970)

          Released around the same time that real-life graduates from film schools began finding purchase in Hollywood, Cover Me Babe adroitly captures several interesting things—the influence of European aesthetics on young American directors, the insufferable quality of arrogant counterculture dudes, and the tensions running through academia because of clashes between new ideas and old-fashioned attitudes. The movie is ultimately somewhat less than the sum of its parts, because watching leading man Robert Forster play a heartless asshole for 90 minutes isn’t that much fun, and because the story lacks momentum. Nonetheless, Cover Me Babe evokes a specific time thanks to a tasty mixture of angst, art, and erotica. Forster plays Tony Hall, a prize-winning student at a Southern California film school. Best known for an experimental film peppered with nudity and surrealism, Tony is nearing graduation and is considered the frontrunner for another big award, which presumably will open the gates of Hollywood.

          Yet Tony resents everything connected with authority and convention, so over the course of the film, he burns every bridge that he had previously built. Tony destroys his relationship with a professor he sarcastically calls “Uncle Will” (Robert Fields), because the professor has the temerity to demand that Tony submit a script for his thesis project. Tony humiliates his sensitive girlfriend, Melissa (Sondra Locke), by commencing an affair with busty coed Sybil (Susanne Benton), and then Tony does a number on Sybil by asking her to have sex, on-camera, with their mutual friend Ronnie (Floyd Mutrux), who is ashamed of being gay and wants to make a go at heterosexual relations. While all this is happening, Tony wanders through Los Angeles with his trusty 16mm camera, stealing footage of strangers: a mother wailing in grief after her young son drowns at the beach, a depressed man jumping off a building, and so on. Tony also stages several shocking scenes, at one point hiring a female prostitute to masturbate on-camera. Eventually, Tony assembles the footage into an abrasive but pointtless montage that, he claims, illustrates the despair of life. (For punctuation, Tony inserts stock footage of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot by Jack Ruby.)

          Headstrong boundary-pushers of Tony’s ilk are staples of film school, and many of them become interesting directors, so there’s a measure of authenticity in George Wells’ script. Additionally, director Noel Black (who peaked early with the fantastic 1968 teen noir Pretty Poison), approaches the material with artistry and craftsmanship, applying lyrical touches to sex scenes, and two songs by soft-rock band Bread give the picture unmistakable early-’70s atmosphere. In the end, however, Cover Me Babe is strangely uninvolving, which is partially attributable to Foster’s chilly performance and partially attributable to the off-putting nature of the lead character’s journey. Believable as the notion of a self-destructive diva may be, it’s a challenge to stay engaged while Tony inflicts pointless psychological wounds and recklessly squanders opportunities.

Cover Me Babe: FUNKY

Tristana (1970)

          An offbeat character study with elements of radical politics and romantic tragedy, the Spanish film Tristana was adapted from a novel by Bentio Péres Galdós’ novel by the acclaimed avant-garde director Luis Buñuel. French actress Catherine Deneuve, whose dialogue was dubbed into Spanish, stars as Tristana, a beautiful young woman with limited life experience who finds herself thrust into a new world after becoming an orphan. Taken in as a ward by much-older aristocrat Don Lope Garrido—who rebels against society by refusing to work, instead living off old money and the sale of heirlooms—Tristana is confused when Don Lope begins expressing romantic interest, but she accepts his advances out of a sense of obligation.
           Don Lope (played by Fernando Rey) does not insist on marriage because of his nonconformist ways, so when Tristana meets handsome artist Horacio (Franco Nero), a bizarre triangle emerges. Despite all his bold talk about personal freedom, Don Lope tries to enforce his economic, psychological, and sociopolitical claims on Tristana, which has the effect of pushing her further away. Then fate intervenes in cruel ways, creating unexpected complications that take the story from the pedestrian realm of domestic melodrama into the rarified terrain of literary irony.

          While Tristana forefronts issues of class, idealism, and political theory just as strongly as Buñuel’s other films, the movie can be consumed either as a sharp parable or as a simple human narrative. For example, Don Lope’s myriad proclamations about the role of the individual in society (e.g., “We’re happy because neither you nor I have lost our sense of freedom”) speak to Buñuel’s pet theme of preserving identity amid totalitarianism. Yet the proclamations also illustrate the self-serving worldview of a cad who wishes to justify his lascivious behavior. As a case in point, consider Don Lope’s perspective on work: “Down with work that you have to do to survive! That work isn’t honorable. All it does is fatten the exploiting swine. However, what you do for pleasure ennobles man. If only we could all work like that.”

          The catch, of course, is that Don Lope embraces his anarchistic principles when they help coax beautiful young Tristana into bed, and then sings a different tune when she meets an age-appropriate suitor. The X factor in the storyline is Tristana herself, whom Buñuel depicts as an innocent turned cynical and opportunistic by extended exposure to the avarice of man. (One can’t blame her for changing after hearing Don Lope spend years saying things like, “I’m your father and your husband—one or the other, as it suits me.”)

          Although Deneuve captivates with her magnetic screen presence and overwhelming beauty, it’s actually frequent Buñuel collaborator Rey who carries Tristana. He portrays Don Lope as a pathetic failure who hides behind a meticulous appearance and thunderous oratory. Once age and loneliness remove Don Lope’s armor, Rey shows the character’s sad vulnerability without mitigating Don Lope’s insidious qualities. (Costar Franco, an Italian whose dialogue was dubbed into Spanish, mostly gets lost in the shuffle.) Tristana moves along briskly and features several compellingly strange motifs, so while it lacks the edgy wit of, say, Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), it’s very much of a piece with the director’s myriad condemnations of the ruling class. Plus, on some levels, the movie is a good old-fashioned yarn about a woman trying to seize limited opportunities during an oppressive time—while appropriate for the feminism era, it’s also the type of story in which someone like Joan Fontaine might have appeared during the ’40s heyday of Hollywood “women’s films.”

Tristana: GROOVY

The Crazies (1973)

          Returning to the horror genre after a detour into romantic comedy, Pittsburgh-based indie icon George A. Romero cranked out two shockers in 1973, including this bio-terror flick and the quasi-supernatural melodrama Season of the Witch. Neither represents the filmmaker’s best work, although it’s easy to spot within The Crazies many tropes that fans adore in Romero’s zombie flicks. Like The Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its sequels, The Crazies focuses on a small band of survivors who find themselves caught between a mysterious plague and the overzealous military personnel assigned to contain the plague. The cure, as the saying goes, is worse than the disease.

          Shot throughout rural Pennsylvania, The Crazies begins with a gruesome scene of a crazed man murdering his wife and burning down his house with his children inside. Next, the picture cuts to a local clinic, where a small-town doctor treats the crazed man even as soldiers show up at the clinic door. It seems an experimental biological weapon was accidentally released, and that most people exposed to the chemical agent will become psychotic. Our heroes include the nurse and several other people with natural immunity. Using local actors instead of Hollywood players, Romero creates a sense of documentary-like realism, an effect accentuated by his unglamorous camerawork.

          At its best, The Crazies feels like a newsreel capturing the end of man. However, the use of semiprofessional actors frequently backfires, with many scenes falling flat due to inert performances, and Romero spends so much time cutting back and forth between underdeveloped characters that The Crazies unspools more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than an actual story. Some of the stuff in the movie is effective, some is merely gross, and some is genuinely disturbing, but the sum effect is less than Romero could have achieved by applying more discipline to his storytelling. Even the juiciest subplot, stemming from the realization that one of the “immune” survivors has turned psycho because the virus took a while to infect his bloodstream, feels predictable.

          Still, this subject matter exists solidly within Romero’s wheelhouse, and the notion of an airborne toxin changing normal people into murderers is unsettling no matter the context. And despite failing to cause a stir during its original release, The Crazies eventually gained enough stature to earn a 2010 remake starring Timothy Olyphant.

The Crazies: FUNKY

A Fan’s Notes (1972)

          Based on Frederick Exley’s offbeat memoir, which the author has described as a highly fictionalized riff on his troubled life, this unsatisfying attempt at a black comedy exists on the same continuum as End of the Road (1970) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), both of which were adapted from books about modern men grappling with insanity. As directed by Eric Till, A Fan’s Notes is far more lighthearted than either of the other pictures. It’s also less effective and memorable. Jerry Orbach stars as Fred, a young man chasing the American Dream by working in PR even as he wrestles with hallucinations and obsessions. The title stems partly from Fred’s preoccupation with the New York Giants; it seems Fred met Frank Gifford once during college, before Gifford became an NFL star, and subsequently spun the connection into a fixation, bogusly telling strangers he’s friends with Gifford.

          Presented with a disjointed timeline, the movie mostly takes place while Fred is a resident at a mental institution. (It’s unclear whether many scenes taking place beyond the walls of the institution stem from escape attempts or legitimate day passes.) The most time-consuming storyline concerns Fred’s courtship with, and marriage to, a blonde dream girl named Bunny Sue (Julia Ann Robinson). Fred’s delusional quality gives him the confidence to woo Bunny Sue, but then his neuroses manifest as impotence even as Bunny Sue engages in flamboyant role-playing to get his motor running. The Bunny Sue storyline also includes Fred’s strange interactions with Bunny Sue’s father, Poppy (Conrad Bain), who seems to take perverse pleasure in the knowledge that Fred is sleeping with his daughter. A Fan’s Notes also features therapy scenes at the mental institution and a recurring trope of Fred sitting in the middle of an empty country road while he chats with a biker who stops to keep him company. One suspects the road imagery is an unsubtle way of indicating that Fred isn’t going anywhere, since the title of Exley’s book also relates to the idea that Exley is more spectator than participant.

          Orbach seems badly miscast, since the actor conveys great self-assurance, and A Fan’s Notes is bogged down with pretentious and/or weird dialogue: “Football is an island of direction in a world of circumspection”; “The first time I saw Bunny Sue, I wanted to bury my teeth, Dracula-like, in her flanks, knowing that she would bleed pure butterscotch.” Similarly, it’s hard to make sense of the subplot involving Mr. Blue (Burgess Meredith), an eccentric aluminum-siding salesman who comports himself like an aristocrat even as he extols the virtues of “muff-diving.” By many critical criteria, A Fan’s Notes is unsatisfying, because it’s cold, dissonant, and strange. Yet the picture also has a certain pride of authorship simply because it conveys Exley’s unusual perspective.

A Fan’s Notes: FUNKY

Kiss of the Tarantula (1976)

One of several ’70s shockers about disturbed young people controlling animals for nefarious purposes—alongside Willard (1971) and Jennifer (1978)—the cheaply made but somewhat effective Kiss of the Tarantula combines creature-feature thrills with the icky sexual shenanigans of a screwed-up family. At the beginning of the picture, young Susan Bradley (shown at ages five and 10), develops a weird preoccupation with spiders and eventually trains one of her tarantulas to attack and kill Susan’s mother. No one suspects Susan’s involvement, so when the story proper catches up with Susan as a young adult, her father perceives Susan’s spider fixation as a peculiar but harmless hobby. Yet when various people start causing trouble in Susan’s life—a boy plays with her affections, a mean girl taunts her at school, an uncle tries to get inappropriately intimate—she unleashes her arachnids in a series of attacks. Starring ethereal and willowy Suzanna Ling as the grown-up Susan, Kiss of the Tarantula does fairly well in terms of character development, at least by the low standards of drive-in horror pictures. Susan’s behavior makes sense in a deranged sort of way because we see all the events that trigger her homicidal outbursts, and the way Susan reacts with guilt whenever her attacks go too far show that she’s a victim as well, suffering from epic mental problems. Herman Walter gives a decent performance as Susan’s meek father, who can’t read the obvious clues about trouble within his own family, and Eric Mason makes a solid villain as the lascivious uncle. To be clear, none of the acting in Kiss of the Tarantula is memorable, but the cast helps realize the impact of a highly efficient script credited to Daniel Cady and Warren Hamilton Jr. And even though the jolts in the movie are relatively timid, there’s something enjoyably creepy about the spider-attack scenes that take place in an air vent and in a car at a drive-in theater. Plus, the filmmakers get points for taking an unexpected direction during the finale, utilizing the central location of a funeral home—the family business run by Susan’s father—instead of taking the obvious route by presenting a final spider attack.

Kiss of the Tarantula: FUNKY

The Midnight Man (1974)

          Like farce, the mystery genre is a space where convoluted plotting is not necessarily a detriment. Consider The Midnight Man, a twisty thriller starring, cowritten, coproduced, and codirected by the venerable Burt Lancaster, who adapted the picture from a novel by David Anthony. Set on a college campus, the movie features an offbeat leading man—a former cop turned ex-con who becomes a night watchman on the campus of a small college because his old police buddy runs the school’s security detail. Shortly after beginning his new job, Jim Slade (Lancaster) responds to the discovery of a dead coed. Thereafter, Jim battles with an obnoxious small-town sheriff, Casey (Harris Yulin), who determines that a creepy campus janitor was the culprit. Unsatisfied with Casey’s hasty resolution, Jim investigates further and discovers a complex web of conspiracies, lies, and secrets involving a United States Senator and several people connected with the college. Before long, Jim becomes a target, even as he begins a romance with his parole officer, Linda (Susan Clark), who may or may not be connected to various prime murder suspects.

          Although The Midnight Man is unquestionably too complicated for its own good—since it’s occasionally difficult to keep track of who’s doing what to whom and why—the movie is enjoyably melancholy and seedy on a moment-to-moment basis. Lancaster underplays, always a relief given his usual tendency toward grandiosity, and he generates an easygoing vibe with veteran supporting player Cameron Mitchell, who plays Slade’s boss/friend. Each of the significant performers in the cast delivers exactly what’s needed for his or her character, lending the whole piece depth and tonal variations. Clark is tough but vulnerable as the seen-it-all parole officer who fights to protect ex-cons from being needlessly hassled; Yulin is formidable and oily as the shoot-first/ask-questions-later sheriff; Catherine Bach, later of Dukes of Hazard fame, is intriguing as the sexy but troubled coed whose tragic fate drives the story; Charles Tyner is believably squirrely as the Bible-thumping, porn-reading janitor; and Morgan Woodward oozes smug confidence as the senator with one too many dirty secrets. Furthermore, Dave Grusin’s moody score, which is dominated by buttery electric-piano melodies, is as comfortingly smooth, warm, and unmistakably ’70s as a V-neck pullover.

          So, even if the story gets stuck in the mud of double-crosses and reversals and surprises, the vibe of the piece and the seriousness with which actors play their roles carry the day. The Midnight Man isn’t a superlative ’70s noir on the order of The Long Goodbye (1973) or Night Moves (1975), but it’s an interesting distraction with plenty of pessimism and a smattering of sleaze.

The Midnight Man: GROOVY

Blood Legacy (1971)

Also known as Legacy of Blood and Will to Die, this lifeless shocker shamelessly recycles the basic premise of the 1922 play The Cat and the Canary, which was legitimately adapted for the screen several times, spanning 1927 to 1979. Alas, the durable narrative is rendered here to desultory effect. As in The Cat and the Canary, the storyline involves several heirs to a fortune being forced to spend time together in a house, where rules of succession motivate them to murder each other in order to seize more cash. There’s also some nonsense about a killer on the loose (as in The Cat in the Canary), although the viewer never doubts that one of the principal characters will be revealed as the true culprit. Presented somewhat in the mode of a soap opera, with lots of talky bits during which relatives complain about and/or scheme against each other, Blood Legacy takes forever to get started. The character played by horror-cinema icon John Carradine, the only name actor in the cast, is dead before the opening credits, and 25 minutes of this very short 82-minute feature elapse before the first kill. Beyond the illogical narrative and the leaden pacing, the movie’s acting and dialogue exist on an Ed Wood level of awfulness. One character laments that, “Instead of loving her, dear old dad turned on the hate machine.” Another says, “You may have married into a screwball family, but this guy’s got all his marbles.” Occasionally, director Carl Monson tries to spruce up the movie with a gory shot of a corpse or a violent attack scene, but the special effects are as anemic as every other aspect of the production. Even Monson’s meager attempts at titillation fail to generate excitement—although attractive starlet Brooke Mills spends most of the movie wearing a low-cut negligee, she mostly just lays in bed and whines. Worse, costars Richard Davalos and Buck Kartalian give comically atrocious performances. FYI, this picture is not to be confused with the 1978 release Legacy of Blood, helmed by trash-cinema icon Andy Milligan.

Blood Legacy: SQUARE

Dersu Uzala (1975)

          The revered Japanese director Akira Kurosawa only made one feature film in a language other than his native tongue, and it was this poetic character study about the impact a soulful primitive has on a man from the civilized world. Painted on a broad canvas comprising myriad widescreen vistas of the natural world and unspooling at epic length (144 minutes), Dersu Uzala takes place mostly in the wilderness of Russia’s section of the Far East. Spoken entirely in Russian, the movie begins in 1910, when government surveyor Arsenev (Yurly Solomin) travels to Siberia upon hearing that his old friend, frontier guide Dersu (Maksim Munzuk), has died. Revisiting the place where they met, Arsenev remembers his long acquaintance with Dersu, triggering the lengthy flashbacks that provide most of the picture’s running time.

          The movie’s central relationship begins in 1902, when Arsenev first travels to Siberia, tasked with mapping the area for the Russian government. Aresnev eventually stumbles across Dersu, a Nanai mountain man who travels alone because he lost his family during an outbreak of smallpox. Expert at survival and reverential toward the natural world, Dersu escorts Arsenev’s survey team through remote terrain and quickly evolves from an object of ridicule (Arsenev’s people initially mock Dersu’s superstitious beliefs) to a valued colleague. In the film’s most riveting scene, Aresenev and Dersu find themselves lost and alone on a frozen field just before nightfall, so Dersu leads his friend in a desperate endeavor to gather stalks of tall grass with which to build a makeshift shelter, thereby saving both of them from certain death overnight. Although Kurosawa’a visual style throughout much of Dersu Uzala is frustratingly static, with lugubriously long takes of people talking, the great artist’s consummate skill emerges when he uses quick-cut angles of two men fighting for their lives amid the golden hues of twilight.

          Based upon a nonfiction book by the real-life Vladimir Arsenev, Dersu Uzala gains potency in its second half, when Arsenev returns to Siberia for a subsequent mission and discovers that Dersu’s failing eyesight has eliminated his value as a guide and endangered his ability to survive in his beloved wilderness. This plot development motivates another standout sequence, during which Dersu reacts with terror after he shoots at but misses a tiger that’s bedeviling Arsenev’s men; in Dersu’s superstitious mind, the spirit of the tiger will hunt him down because Dersu has failed to fulfill his role in the natural order of things. Arsenev nobly brings his friend home to the city, but Dersu is too much a creature of the frontier to blend into the modern world. During the passages depicting Dersu’s decline, Kurosawa laces the film with lyrical narration about loss that sums up not only the key themes of Dersu Uzala, but also metaphysical tropes that ran through myriad Kurosawa masterpieces, from Ikiru (1952) to Ran (1985).

          Although Dersu Uzala won considerable acclaim, including an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, it might be a stretch to call the picture one of the essential works in Kurosawa’s towering filmography. It’s a soulful film, but also an unwieldy one that would have benefited from judicious editing. Nonetheless, it represented a creative rebirth after a dark time in the filmmaker’s life (Kurosawa attempted suicide in the early ’70s), and he would soon return to the samurai milieu of his ’50s and ’60s classics with the poetic Kagemusha (1980).

Dersu Uzala: GROOVY

Delinquent Schoolgirls (1975)

Not many grimy B-movies blend the exploitive textures of softcore porn with the giddy flavors of gay camp, but Delinquent Schoolgirls manages to do just that. It’s a rotten movie, no question. Nonetheless, it contains passages that are weirdly compelling, even though most of the running time comprises leering shots of buxom women dancing, stripping, swimming, or otherwise moving their bodies in such a way as to fill the screen with undulating mammary glands. (We’re talking topless jumping jacks, topless karate, and so on.) The picture opens in a prison for the criminally insane, where psychotic inmate Carl (Michael Pataki) receives electroshock therapy. Returning to his cell, Carl conspires with raging queen Bruce (Stephen Stucker) and serial rapist Dick (Bob Miner) on an escape plan. The men break out of prison and stumble upon a nearby school for girls, where the only students in residence are troublemakers who were denied vacation passes. Carl and his cronies force the women to display themselves while selecting just the right young lady to kidnap, but eventually the women rebel against their captors. Predictably, Delinquent Schoolgirls is a disaster in terms of characterization and story, though some puerile viewers will be pleased with the endless variety of nude and/or semi-nude scenes featuring attractive starlets. (The less said about the subplot concerning a middle-aged teacher who drugs and rapes one of his students, the better.) Leading man Pataki’s attempts at spicing his performance with humor are weak, since his main gag involves second-rate impressions of Daffy Duck, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, and others. It’s also difficult not to feel embarrassed for Minor, who must incarnate the ugly cliché of an animalistic, sex-crazed black stud. And then there’s Stucker, beloved by comedy fans for his bizarre turn as air-traffic controller Johnny in Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). Stucker is cheerfully flamboyant in every scene, though his finest moment is undoubtedly playing piano and belting out “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” while Minor’s character rapes a housewife in the next room.

Delinquent Schoolgirls: LAME

Don’t Look in the Basement (1973)

Gruesome but too amateurish to generate real scares, the bloody horror flick Don’t Look in the Basement—also known as The Forgotten—takes place in a mental institution where patients are encouraged to act out their delusions as a means of therapy. Whatever psychological and visual possibilities that concept promises, however, remain unrealized throughout the 90 minutes of coproducer/director S.F. Brownrigg’s tedious movie. Presenting a basically coherent but completely forgettable story, the movie tracks the deadly goings-on at the hospital following the murder of the head doctor by a crazed patient. The story is ostensibly shown through the eyes of an attractive new nurse, Charlotte (Rosie Holotik), whom the late doctor hired before his demise. Charlotte turns up at the institution just after the murder and offers her services to the new boss, Dr. Masters (Anne MacAdams). What follows is a dull intrigue during which Charlotte must determine whether Masters is who she claims to be, and whether the psycho who killed the head doctor—a patient named Judge (Gene Ross)—is a monster or a victim. There’s also some weird business about a patient named Harriet (Camilla Car), who carries around a plastic doll that she believes is a living baby. The storyline involves a nymphomiac, as well. Although it’s possible to follow the narrative of Don’t Look in the Basement while the thing is unspooling, massive logic problems are immediately apparent—such as the little matter of authorities failing to become involved after an axe murder occurs in broad daylight. Similarly, characterizations in the movie are pathetic, with most of the patients acting chipper despite the presence of a killer in their midst. By the time the picture grinds into the familiar Bedlam/Freaks finale of patients turning on their tormentor, it’s difficult to care what happens. Even for fans of low-budget gore, this picture contains very little of interest, so it’s befuddling that Tony Brownwrigg, son of the original film’s director, bothered to make Id: Don’t Look in the Basement 2, which is set for a 2015 release.

Don’t Look in the Basement: LAME

Savage Messiah (1972)

          The outrageous British director Ken Russell spent most of the ’70s making biopics, some comparatively restrained and some unapologetically insane. Savage Messiah, about the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, falls somewhere in between these extremes. Adapted by Christopher Logue from a book by H.S. Ede, the movie charts the artist’s short but intense life, illustrating how he railed against mainstream culture before dying at the age of 23. Although the movie is set in the early 20th century, it’s clearly meant to parallel the counterculture attitudes of the early ’70s, as seen in episodes of civil disobedience and—thanks to fearless costar Helen Mirren—a lengthy scene of full-frontal nudity.

          As with most of Russell’s films, Savage Messiah is made with more craftsmanship than discipline, because very often, scenes that are acted and filmed skillfully serve dubious narrative purposes. And, as was true throughout his career, Russell never knows when to quit, so instead of one or two sequences featuring the lead character giving insufferably self-aggrandizing speeches about the importance of pushing artistic boundaries, the movie has seemingly dozens of such scenes. While Savage Messiah doesn’t give viewers a pounding headache the way that some of Russell’s phantasmagorias do—the bizarre composer biopic Lisztomania (1975) comes to mind—it nonetheless suffers for its excesses.

          Set in London, Savage Messiah revolves around the complex relationship between Henri (Scott Anthony) and the Polish writer Sopie Brzeska (Dorthy Tutin). Both headstrong and idealistic, they meet while positioned on opposite ends of the existential spectrum—he’s bursting with excitement based upon his artistic potential, whereas she is suicidal. Henri wows Sophie by making a scene in a public garden, drawing a crowd while splashing in a fountain and screaming slogans: “Art is dirt! Art is sex! Art is revolution!” Eventually, the two form a platonic bond while Henri uses questionable means to acquire art supplies and simutaneously battles with gallery owners, building a reputation as a mad genius. For a while, the arrangement works, but then Henri meets willful suffragette Gosh Boyle (Mirren), who shares his lack of inhibitions. Henri’s relationship with Gosh creates distance between Henri and Sophie, even though Sophie pays for Henri’s room and board.

          Given all this domestic tumult, Russell ends up portraying his central character a bit like a rock star—part romantic visionary, part self-centered hedonist. During Savage Messiah’s most obnoxious scenes, Henri storms into public spaces, including a museum and a theater, and makes noisy spectacles by causing property damage and/or hurling insults at strangers. One gets the sense that he’s on about something he considers important, but it’s hard to endure his overbearing behavior and even harder to parse his jumbled rhetoric. Still, Russell puts across the counterculture parallels effectively, and he does an expert job of using cues from the classical-music canon to score the piece. The performances are all strong, with Tutin the standout, and Mirren somehow manages to make nudity seem dignified during her show-stopping scene. Savage Messiah trumpets its messages loudly and proudly, even if the actual content of those messages remains elusive.

Savage Messiah: FUNKY

Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (1974)

Among the least impressive examples of the blaxploitation genre, this cheaply made and confusing crime thriller is allegedly set in 1956, but cultural anachronisms appear regularly, ranging from such props as the banana bicycle to various iterations of ’70s slang. Yet the inability to conjure realistic period detail is minor compared to the movie’s other problems. Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes is ostensibly about a crime lord who runs a numbers ring. Yet like many other crime-themed stories that are executed without narrative discipline, the picture wanders far afield of its principal subject matter, introducing such outré elements as a transvestite mob enforcer who enjoys slitting his/her victims’ throats. Similarly, lots of screen time gets consumed with irrelevant nonsense including belly dancing and an opium den. What any of this has to do with a numbers guy trying to protect his turf is anybody’s guess. Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes fails to impress on every technical level, with the shoddy photography burying story events in murky shadows while haphazard editing jumbles scenes together in a seemingly random fashion. About the only slightly amusing element in the picture is a run of colorful street names for characters, since Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes introduces viewers to DuDirty, Moma Lottie, Pasha, Sweetman, and, of course, Serene (the aforementioned cross-dressing killer). Leading man Paul Harris, who played supporting roles in a number of black-themed movies and TV shows during the ’70s, has a solid physical presence but very little charisma, and it says a lot about the picture’s quality that the actor with the best billing is Frank DeKova, whose biggest claim to fame was costarring in the silly ’60s sitcom F Troop. There are worse blaxploitation pictures than Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes, but not many—so only those determined to see every entry in the genre should subject themselves to this flick, which easily lives up to the second word in its alternate title: Jive Turkey.

Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes: LAME

The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)

          Sludgy family entertainment produced at the nadir of Walt Disney Productions’ live-action cycle, this convoluted comedy concerns a priest recruiting a group of housewives and neighborhood women to topple the crime organization that’s plaguing a once-wholesome town. Showcasing such wheezy comic elements as chase scenes, cross-dressing, and slapstick, the movie is made moderately palatable by the usual glossy production values associated with Disney flicks and by leading man Edward Herrmann’s affable performance. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine kids being able to wrap their heads around bits like the scene in which a church-going woman masquerades as a streetwalker, just like it’s hard to imagine adults mustering the patience to endure myriad silly physical-comedy vignettes. Moreover, once the laborious story elements fall into place, the remainder of the picture is painfully predictable. The North Avenue Irregulars isn’t as insultingly stupid as the worst Disney live-action offerings, but neither is it as charming or energetic as the best such films—it’s just a random title in the middle of the heap.

          Herrmann stars as Reverend Michael Hill, the new pastor at a Presbyterian church. After clashing with the church’s secretary, Anne (Susan Clark), Reverend Hill discovers that an aging parishioner foolishly entrusted all the money in the church’s restoration fund to her ne’er-do-well husband, who lost the cash at an illegal gambling parlor. Seeking redress, Reverend Hill discovers that the town’s criminals have purchased police protection, so the only way to fix his church’s problem is to help federal authorities entrap the criminals. None of the men in town is willing to help, so Reverend Hill turns to the ladies in his congregation, beginning with his nemesis-turned-love interest Anne. (Never mind the absurdity of a priest asking members of his flock to engage in dangerous undercover work.) Eventually, Reverend Hill assembles a motley crew portrayed by actresses including Virginia Capers, Barbara Harris, Cloris Leachman, and Karen Valentine. After several yawn-inducing comedy setpieces, notably a brawl inside the aforementioned illegal gambling parlor, Reverend Hill’s crusade climaxes with, of all things, a demolition derby during which the ladies use their station wagons against the criminals’ sedans. Oh, and there’s also a long scene built around the unfunny joke of Reverend Hill driving around town on a motorcycle while he isn’t wearing pants.

          The North Avenue Irregulars has lots of events, and most of them are colorful. Moreover, Herrmann plays his role straight, giving the weak enterprise a small measure of dignity. However, the presence of second-rate supporting players including Ruth Buzzi and Alan Hale Jr. is a good indicator of how low viewers’ expectations should be set before plunging into The North Avenue Irregulars.

The North Avenue Irregulars: FUNKY

Lifespan (1976)

          An international coproduction shot in the Netherlands with a combination of American and European actors, this sci-fi mystery includes a provocative central concept and a surprising dose of edgy sexual content. The piece doesn’t work, partly because it seems as if all of wooden leading man Hiram Keller’s dialogue was looped by another actor during post-production, and partly because the story crumbles beneath the weight of too many bewildering plot complications. Nonetheless, Lifespan is beautifully photographed, enlivened by some interesting notions, and filled with arresting images of leading lady Tina Aumont trussed up on bondage gear. So, even though Lifespan is a mess, it’s never boring.  When the story begins, American doctor Ben Land (Keller) arrives in Holland to work with a European colleague, Dr. Linden (Eric Schneider)—but Linden kills himself before the two can start their experiments. Undaunted, Ben picks up where Linden left off, while simultaneously investigating the circumstances of Linden’s death. It seems Linden was working on a cure for aging, and that he had advanced to the stage of testing serums on lab rats. Predictably, Linden was something of a laughingstock among his peers, so Ben finds little encouragement among Dutch medical professionals. Instead, he finds Anna (Aumont), the late doctor’s sexy young lover.

          In one of the strangest seduction scenes in cinema history, Ben and Anna attend a party where the host walks to the roof of an apartment building and blows an African horn designed to replicate the wail of an elephant, thus triggering vocal responses from pachyderms in a nearby zoo. “That mating call was intended for the elephants, but I got the message,” Ben says in voiceover. “Anna wanted to be alone with me.” After Ben sleeps with Anna, he discovers photos depicting her S&M love life, and then begins using bondage gear with her. (What any of this has to do with the main idea of scientifically eradicating aging is a bigger mystery than the question of why Linden killed himself.) Amid the lab scenes and sexual shenanigans, Ben discovers that Anna is somehow connected to the enigmatic Nicholas Ulrich (Klaus Kinski), who was, in turn, involved with Linden’s experiments. The introduction of this character occasions another truly weird scene, during which Kinski wears a devil mask while going down on a lady friend—until the phone rings, at which point Kinski whines, “Now I’ve lost my concentration.”

          Lifespan is a very strange sort of conspiracy movie, meandering into carnal extremes and obfuscating central truths so completely that the actual narrative becomes opaque. Still, the picture has an abundance of skin and a certain amount of style—it’s a bit like the ’70s sci-fi equivalent of some ’90s erotic thriller. Better still, the crisp photography presents European locations well, and the electronic score by Terry Riley has an eerie quality reminiscent of Tangerine Dream’s music.

Lifespan: FUNKY

A Little Night Music (1977)

          Considering his godhead status in the world of musical theater, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim has been strangely unrepresented in movies. Although most of his major plays have been telecast in some form or another, to date only six have become feature films: West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd (2007), and Into the Woods (2014). The 30-year gap between A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd is partially attributable to musicals going out of fashion, and it’s fair to say that West Side Story is, to date, the only unqualified smash Sondheim movie adaptation. Still, a talent of Sondheim’s stature surely deserves better in general—and better, specifically, than the middling film version of A Little Night Music.

          Adapted from the Ingmar Bergman movie Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), which also inspired Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), A Little Night Music premiered onstage in 1973, introducing the bittersweet ballad “Send in the Clowns.” Cover versions by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins popularized the tune. Like many of Sondheim’s musicals, A Little Night Music is a sophisticated collage of intricate musicality and rigorous wordplay, to say nothing of complex plotting, so it was hardly a natural for a mainstream adaptation. Indeed, the movie version was financed by a German company and distributed in the U.S. by, off all entities, Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

          Elizabeth Taylor, far from the apex of her box-office power but still a formidable presence, leads a cast including Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg. Set in turn-of-the-century Austria, A Little Night Music tracks the romantic travails of a group of wealthy but lonely people. For instance, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik (Cariou) has recently married his second wife, 18-year-old beauty Anne (Down), though he carries a torch for middle-aged actress Desiree (Taylor). Meanwhile, Fredrik’s son, priest-in-training Erich (Christopher Guard), wrestles with sexual longing and family friend Countess Charlotte (Rigg) laments the passage of time.

          The movie opens with the characters performing onstage as the song “Night Waltz” presents rarified central themes (one lyric states that “love is a lecture on how to correct your mistakes”). After a graceful transition to location photography, the movie winds through its narrative, and most numbers are staged as intimate dramatic scenes. As always, Sondheim’s language is dazzling. Anne assures the sex-crazed Erich that “my lap isn’t one of the devil’s snares,” and Fredrik offers the following observation: “I’m afraid being young in itself is a trifle ridiculous.” In one of A Little Night Music’s nimblest numbers, “Soon,” Fredrik contemplates ravaging his wife, who remains a virgin nearly a year into their marriage (“I still want and/or love you,” Fredrik sings). Although Broadway veteran Cariou has a strong voice, the best performance actually comes from Rigg, who imbues “Every Day a Little Death” with hard-won wisdom. Conversely, Taylor fails to impress when she delivers “Send in the Clowns.” In fact, Taylor is the film’s biggest weak spot, thanks to her distracting cleavage and flamboyant acting and weak singing.

          Yet the ultimate blame for the mediocre nature of this film must fall on Harold Prince, who directed the original Broadway production as well as the movie, and on Sondheim. Prince’s filmmaking is humorless and mechanical, failing to translate the elegance of the material into cinematic fluidity. And for all their intelligence and sophistication, Sondheim’s songs are frequently cumbersome and pretentious. The film version of A Little Night Music contains many fine elements, but if it served as any viewer’s first introduction to Sondheim, the viewer might be perplexed as to what the fuss over the Grammy-, Oscar-, Pulitzer- and Tony-winning songsmith is all about.

A Little Night Music: FUNKY