The Mad Bomber (1973)

          Bottom-feeding director Bert I. Gordon is best known for his various movies about giant monsters—such as the execrable H.G. Wells adaptation The Food of the Gods (1976)—but he occasionally brought his dubious storytelling skills to bear on more conventional subjects. As the cowriter and director of The Mad Bomber, Gordon explores the dangers of deranged people walking the streets of America’s cities. Suffice to say that Gordon’s engagement with the psychological aspects of the story does not occur on an elevated plane. Quite to the contrary, Gordon presents a trite cause-and-effect explanation for why his bomber is mad, and Gordon’s dramatization of police efforts to capture said bomber imply that Gordon learned everything he knows about investigative procedure from watching bad movies. In fact, everything about The Mad Bomber is so overwhelmingly stupid that the movie passes through the Rubicon of awfulness and enters that special realm of enjoyably terrible cinema. Although The Mad Bomber is quite dull for most of its running time, every scene features a laughably nonsensical action or line or plot development.

          The demented individual referred to in the title is William Dorn, played by leather-faced TV veteran Chuck Connors in an amusingly inept performance. Driven mad by the death of his young daughter, he creates homemade bombs and detonates them at places where he believes his daughter was mistreated. Tasked with capturing the bomber is seasoned cop Lieutenant Geronimo Mitchell (Vince Edwards), a grumpy iconoclast who beats suspects, picks locks, and tampers with evidence. Caught between these two characters is rapist George Fromley (Neville Brand), who saw Dorn at a crime scene and is therefore Mitchell’s best hope for identifying the bomber. As sax-driven funk music better suited to a porno movie grinds on the soundtrack, Mitchell tries to pressure Fromley into testifying even as Dorn stalks the rapist.

          It’s all very bland, predictable, and unbelievable, with Edwards delivering a performance as indifferent as Connors’ is overwrought. On the plus side, Brand is creepy and twitchy as the rapist who also gets kicks by shooting stag reels of his mousy wife. And if nothing else, the rapist character’s final onscreen moment is laugh-out-loud funny because Gordon exhibits marvelously bad taste in the way he juxtaposes sex and violence.

The Mad Bomber: FUNKY

Thank You

Sending gratitude and greetings to readers Greg L., Jose D., Peter R., and William E., all of whom recently donated to support Every '70s Movie. Thanks! While I am of course deeply grateful for loyal readership and for the thoughtful comments that regular visitors share so generously, donations deserve special notice because any help with the expense of operating this blog is significant. Much as I wish that generating Every '70s Movie did not incur costs, there are expenses related to acquiring movies for review, and these costs will actually increase exponentially as the blog enters its final years, because the more obscure a title is, the more resources are required to track that title down. So although I only formally request donations once a year, on the blog's birthday every October, the donation button is always available at the upper right-hand corner of the homepage, just below the logo. There are still hundreds of movies yet to be reviewed, and I'm determined to see as many of them as humanly possible. You can help by supporting the blog through whatever means are available to you, whether that involves reading regularly (which boosts viewership statistics), commenting regularly to share your perspectives (which helps to keep the blog interactive), or donating. Everything is appreciated. Meantime, keep reading, and rest assured there are still years of '70s cinematic goodness yet to come!

Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)

          A significant commercial and critical hit back in the day, the ensemble dramedy Lovers and Other Strangers mixes keen observations about marriage with hit-or-miss sex-comedy vignettes. Based on a play by Joseph Bologna and Renée Taylor, the movie concerns the wedding of a young couple and how the event impacts the couple’s friends and relatives. On a deeper level, the story is an exploration of changing values during the Women’s Liberation era. Does marriage mean anything during a time when young people embrace premarital cohabitation? Is the old notion of accepting contentment in marriage passé for kids who expect to sustain passion forever? And how can young women protect themselves from predatory men who use with-it lingo to pressure women into sex? These were important questions in 1970, so even though time has dulled the edge off Lovers and Other Strangers, the picture is still interesting as a snapshot of a turbulent period. Additionally, some of the characters are rendered so well that they’re timeless.

          The youngsters preparing to marry are Mike (Michael Brandon) and Susan (Bonnie Bedelia). He’s terrified of commitment even though he and Susan have lived together for some time, and he’s nervous that his old-fashioned Italian parents will find out he’s “living in sin.” The engaged couple’s anxieties are juxtaposed with problems plaguing new marriages, troubles faced by single people, and the wisdom of people who have been married for decades. One of the imperiled new marriages is between Susan’s sister, Wilma (Anne Meara), and Johnny (Harry Guardino)—she tries to keep the sexual spark alive while he resents her rejection of the idea that being male entitles Johnny to unconditional dominance. The other endangered new union is between Mike’s brother, Richie (Joseph Hindy), and Joan (Diane Keaton, in her first movie role), who have scandalized the family by announcing plans to divorce. Representing the singles scene is Susan’s friend Brenda (Marian Hailey), who runs hot and cold with fast-talking horndog Jerry (Bob Dishy). There’s also a subplot about Susan’s father, Hal (Gig Young), having an affair with his sister-in-law, Kathy (Anne Jackson). Rounding out the principal cast are Mike’s parents, Frank (Richard Castellano) and Bea (Beatrice Arthur).

          Some threads of the story have more punch than others. The stuff with Bea and Frank is terrific because veteran stage actors Arthur and Castellano give pitch-perfect comic performances; Castellano earned an Oscar nomination for his work, and Lovers and Other Strangers helped pave the way for Arthur’s conquest of television a few years later. The Brenda/Jerry storyline gets old quickly because Brenda is depicted as a mess of catch phrases and neuroses, while Jerry is portrayed as nothing but a compendium of come-on lines. Similarly, the Hal/Kathy storyline is mostly a vehicle for Hal contriving ways to string Kathy along while Kathy endures humiliating treatment because the alternative of being alone is too dismaying. Whereas those two subplots feel shallow and trite, the Johnny/Wilma storyline pays off nicely when the couple embraces compromise.

          Lovers and Other Strangers gives viewers a lot to digest, but despite some honest insights and zippy one-liners, the movie never achieves real depth or hilarity. Although the film is thoroughly respectable, the writers (including David Zelag Goodman, who helped adapt the play) employ comedy as a means of dancing around tough issues. Nonetheless, the mere fact that Lovers and Other Strangers engages with serious topics places the movie a few notches above the average bedroom farce, and the presence of consistently good acting raises the movie’s quality even higher.

Lovers and Other Strangers: GROOVY

The Naked Zoo (1970)

While some folks might take perverse pleasure in watching World War II-era screen goddess Rita Hayworth star as a sex-starved housewife who dives into the drug culture of the late ’60s and early ’70s by taking a decades-younger lover and emulating his controlled-substances habits, most viewers are wise to avoid The Naked Zoo, which is among Hayworth’s final films. Although the movie’s production values are passable, the only thing worse than The Naked Zoo’s discombobulated editing is its pointlessly lurid script. Most of the scenes feel unrelated to each other, strange things happen without explanation, and vast stretches of the film comprise montages of dancing and partying that fail to advance the storyline. The Naked Zoo is not unique, in that many other unhip movies about the counterculture devolve into shapeless sequences depicting wigged-out kids drugging and screwing, but The Naked Zoo achieves and sustains a noteworthy level of incoherence, ensuring that the few logical scenes are like islands in a sea of nonsense. The basic gist is that Mrs. Golden (Hayworth) wants stud service because her husband, Harry (Ford Rainey), is a crusty old dude in a wheelchair. Enter golden-haired swinger Terry (Stephen Oliver), who can’t seem to make it through a conversation without drinking or popping or snorting or toking. Not that it matters much to the narrative, but Terry has a lover of his own, African-American beauty Nadine (Fleurette Carter), whom he offensively calls a “pickaninny.” (Terry also does things like starting indoor bonfires, so racial insensitivity is merely one of his flaws.) By the end, The Naked Zoo devolves into a soap opera replete with betrayals and tragedies, though anyone watching the flick unironically is likely to have checked out long before that point.

The Naked Zoo: LAME

On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (1979)

          Married filmmakers Beverly and Ferd Sebastian took a break from cranking out trashy exploitation flicks when they made On the Air Live with Captain Midnight, a lighthearted underdog story about a high-school kid who achieves notoriety by operating a pirate radio station out of his van while driving around Los Angeles and avoiding a dogged pursuer from the FCC. On the Air Live with Captain Midnight is rife with problems ranging from dubious plot elements to underdeveloped characters, and the movie never fully realizes the potential of the fun premise. Nonetheless, the texture of the piece is suitably unvarnished, some of the supporting performances are mildly amusing, and the presence of real FM tunes from the late ’70s—as well as the presence of noteworthy real-life Los Angeles DJ Jim Ladd, playing himself if a supporting role—grant the picture a certain degree of authenticity. Curly-haired everydude Tracy Sebastian (presumably a relative of the filmmakers) plays Ziggy, an adolescent ne’er-do-well who skips school to hang out with his nerdy pal Gargen (Barry Greenberg) and to work on his hobby of radio broadcasting. After Ziggy loses his part-time job at a radio station by screwing up a live transmission, he and Gargen trick out Ziggy’s van so that Ziggy can assume the new on-air identity of “Captain Midnight.”

          Soliciting donations and requests from high-school kids throughout LA, Ziggy broadcasts illegally and becomes a cult hero, occasionally receiving encouragement and warnings from legit DJ Ladd. Meanwhile, uptight FCC Agent Pearson (John Ireland, giving an enjoyably crank performance) prowls the streets of Los Angeles, hoping to catch Captain Midnight in the act. Excepting a few scenes of Ziggy’s home life, which feature Ted Gehring giving an amusing turn as Ziggy’s aphorism-spewing dad, that’s the whole story. Had On the Air Live with Captain Midnight been made by more ambitious people, it might have grown into a satire about censorship or even a Capra-esque fable about a little guy fighting The Man. As is, On the Air Live with Captain Midnight feels like a rough sketch indicating where the concept might lead. Still, there’s a lot of ’70s SoCal flavor on display here, right down to the third act set at the Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia, just north of the San Fernando Valley, and the raunchy Ted Nugent tunes on the soundtrack set the right kids-wanna-party vibe.

On the Air Live with Captain Midnight: FUNKY

All This and World War II (1975)

          This one needs a disclaimer. While the film All This and World War II is quite awful, taking a wrongheaded idea far into the realm of bad taste, the movie features a nifty soundtrack comprising covers of Beatles songs by noteworthy musicians. Therefore, it’s possible to watch the flick as a sampler platter for the songs, some of which appear via snippets and some of which are played in their entirety. The basic premise of All This and World War II is as simple as it is stupefying—using the Beatles’ songbook as the score for a greatest-hits survey of how key events during World War II affected Great Britain. The resulting juxtapositions of songs and imagery (newsreels, stock footage, and clips from fictional films released by 20th Century-Fox, the distributor of All This and World War II) are maddeningly literal. Helen Reddy sings “Fool on the Hill” over shots of Hitler during prewar days. Henry Gross performs “Help!” over scenes of Nazi tank commander Erwin Rommel pummeling UK forces in North Africa, as well as scenes of American President Franklin Roosevelt battling resistance from isolationists in order to help—get it?—the British. Sometimes, director Susan Winslow struggles so hard to match footage with tunes that madness ensues: Why the hell does Leo Sayer howl “I Am the Walrus” during combat scenes? And what’s the deal with Frankie Laine crooning “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” during a sequence celebrating American volunteerism?

          Yet the truly cringe-inducing bits involve generalizations about race and culture, such as matching the Bee Gees’ version of “Sun King” with Pearl Harbor and pairing Richard Cocciante’s weirdly overwrought take on “Michelle” with the liberation of France. To Winslow’s credit, every so often something works. Sayer’s plaintive reading of “The Long and Winding Road” works as accompaniment for harrowing images of London during the blitz, and Jeff Lynne’s faithful remake of “Nowhere Man” is a droll companion for shots of ousted Italian strongman Benito Mussolini in exile. Still, the basic flaw of this project—matching the Beatles’ peace-and-love tunes with war imagery—becomes painfully clear in the end, which is to say marrying the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance of “The End” with a shot of an A-bomb test meant to represent America’s nuclear attack on Japan. Just wrong. As for the handful of cover versions that add luster to the enterprise, including Elton John’s hit version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (listen for John Lennon himself singing the chorus), they are better appreciated outside the context of this misguided movie.

All This and World War II: LAME

Another Nice Mess (1972)

If online remarks about this obscure comedy are any indication, people were so eager to laugh at Richard Nixon’s expense during his campaign for a second term as U.S. president that the few cinemagoers who caught Another Fine Mess in theaters recall it fondly. Alas, time has damaged this film more than Nixon’s infamous CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) ever did, if one believes allegations that CREEP helped prevent Another Fine Mess from being widely exhibited. Written and directed by Bob Einstein, who cut his teeth writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Tom Smothers produced this movie), Another Fine Mess portrays Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, as old-time comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Literally. The actors portraying Nixon and Agnew mimic the comedy duo’s slapstick antics, with Nixon incarnating the grumpy Oliver Hardy while Agnew represents the idiotic Stan Laurel. To hammer the analogy, Einstein periodically cuts to film clips of the real Laurel and Hardy. Stupidity reigns in Another Nice Mess. A running gag involves Secret Service agents disguised as ferns, and one bit features agents reacting to out-of-control flatulence. In the most elaborate scene, Agnew delivers so many offensive malapropisms during a state dinner that he causes a visiting dignitary to declare war. And in the “highlight” of the movie, Nixon and Agnew get wasted on pot-laced cookies. Throughout Another Fine Mess, the jokes are obvious, the performances are weak, and the production values are pathetic. It’s also confusing that masterful mimic Rich Little has top billing, since it’s not clear whether Little portrays Nixon throughout the film; the actor with the most screen time does a weak approximation of Nixon’s voice, whereas another actor appears as Nixon in brief interstitial bits, commenting on the movie as it unspools, and that performer gets Nixon’s voice right. Anyway, sorting out who did what isn’t worth the trouble, because this dated flick is a comedy footnote at best. Einstein later portrayed daredevil character Super Dave Osborn, and fellow Smothers Brothers writer Steve Martin plays a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it supporting role.

Another Nice Mess: LAME

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)

          Quite possibly the least truthful film ever to win an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, The Hellstrom Chronicle plays like a horror movie about insects plotting to seize control of the Earth from mankind. Actor Lawrence Pressman appears onscreen in the role of Dr. Nils Helstrom, a scientist whose investigation into the adaptive and reproductive habits of insects leads him to believe they are the only species on the planet capable of evolving in step with changes wrought upon the environment by humans. The picture is loaded with “real” footage depicting activities within ant colonies and beehives, filmed with macro lenses that capture tiny objects in fantastic detail. This stuff is breathtaking, not just because of cinematic beauty—directors Walon Green and Ed Spiegel, abetted by a small army of cinematographers, shot insect scenes as if the creatures were trained extras hitting their marks perfectly—but also because of insights the footage provides about a world beyond normal human vision.

          Allowing that certain things were juiced through editing, musical scoring, and narration, the behavior and feats of strength shown in The Hellstrom Chronicle are stunning. Drone insects sacrificing their bodies simply to move an immobile queen and her pulsing egg sac from one safe place to another. Bees breeding several replacement queens, forcing the first two replacements to fight to the death upon birth, and then eating the half-formed bodies of unborn replacements so only one queen exists. Hordes of ferocious jungle ants piling onto the body of a lizard easily 100 times the size of an ant, then immobilizing and eventually consuming the huge lizard through a terrifying process of attrition.

          Holding all of these scenes together are creepy vignettes of Pressman hammering the theme that when insects prey upon man, man doesn’t stand a chance—hence locusts, which Pressman-as-Hellstrom says can consume in one week the quantity of grain that would otherwise feed 1 million people for a year. Codirectors Spiegel and Green, the latter of whom is a prolific Hollywood screenwriter with credits ranging from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) to myriad episodes of various Law & Order shows, and Spiegel gracefully advance The Hellstrom Chronicle from a cautionary tone to an apocalyptic one. The picture’s screenplay was penned by David Seltzer, who later scripted The Omen (1976), so there’s more than a little bit of horror-movie mojo sprinkled into the Hellstrom Chronicle mix. Still, there’s no arguing with results, and The Hellstrom Chronicle is compelling and even periodically frightening. Even though the movie’s bullshit quotient probably exceeds in scope the number of verifiable facts that Pressman delivers with quiet menace, The Hellstrom Chronicle is mightily entertaining.

The Hellstrom Chronicle: GROOVY

The Woman Hunt (1972)

Boring, gruesome, mean-spirited, and sleazy, the grade-Z exploitation thriller The Woman Hunt is part of a long tradition of stories about people hunting other people for sport, only this time there’s an ugly element of misogyny added for spice. Yes, the title should be taken literally: The Woman Hunt is about repulsive dudes who get off on stalking and slaughtering pretty young ladies. Set in the Philippines and directed by prolific Filipino hack Eddie Romero, The Woman Hunt features frequent screen partners John Ashley and Sid Haig, alongside a number of relatively anonymous costars. Ashley and Haig play Tony and Silas, thugs who kidnap women for a rich psycho named Spyros (Eddie Garcia), and Spyros is the dude who arranges for wealthy customers to hunt the ladies whom Tony and Silas have obtained. (Abetting Tony and Silas is a third crook, played by Ken Metcalf.) Predictably, Tony has a crisis of conscience when he develops feelings for a woman he kidnapped, eventually turning against Spyros by helping several women escape. Thereafter, Spyros and his trigger-happy pals pursue the fugitives, so jungle-hunt action is intercut with drab scenes of friction among the fugitives. Every so often, the movie is punctuated with a gory kill or a nude scene, but even going so far as to call the acting and filmmaking inept would require giving the folks behind The Woman Hunt too much credit. Considering how much lurid spectacle is woven into the DNA of this movie’s premise, it’s a wonder that The Woman Hunt generates so little excitement. Making a movie this dull from an idea so shamelessly sensationalistic requires special gifts.

The Woman Hunt: LAME

Delta Fox (1979)

The distinctive character actor Richard Lynch didn't play many leading roles in his career, largely because the burn scars marking his face and body contributed to his typecasting as a villain. Given his memorably florid performance style in films ranging from the poignant Scarecrow (1973) to the silly The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and beyond, it's tempting to wonder what Lynch might have accomplished in parts with more dimensionality. Based on his work in the dreary exploitation flick Delta Fox, it seems fair to say that Lynch’s talents were not squandered in shallow roles. He plays a crook given a chance at both redemption and revenge if he helps the government capture a criminal overlord for tax evasion, so Delta Fox gives Lynch the opportunity to drive fast cars, engage in merciless brawls, hiss tough-guy dialogue, shoot big guns, and woo a sexy young woman. Unfortunately, Lynch is a dud as a leading man, posturing and preening his way through shootouts and verbal confrontations. Plus, with all due respect, it's creepy to watch the hulking actor get romantic with 18-years-younger leading lady Priscilla Barnes. In Lynch's defense, the movie surrounding him is so shoddy that no actor would have thrived in such surroundings. Written, produced, and directed by unapologetic hacks Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, Delta Fox is borderline incoherent, even though the opening scenes are smothered in explanatory onscreen text. Supporting characters drift in and out of the storyline, with bored-looking name actors including John Ireland, Richard Jaeckel, and Stuart Whitman phoning in colorless line readings. As for the basic plot, it’s a juvenile sex fantasy—after David “Delta” Fox (Lynch) escapes a double-cross, he kidnaps a pretty young landscaper named Karen (Barnes) for a hostage in order to avoid a police blockade. The two characters fall in love, even though he endangered her life and forced her to strip at gunpoint. Yet seeing as how the Sebastians try to pass off Los Angeles’ famous Bradbury Building as a New Orleans hotel, it’s not as if credibility was a priority here. Oh, and one more thing: Keener ears than mine would be able to confirm this, but I’m fairly sure the Sebastians stole a music cue from an old Ennio Morricone score for their main musical theme. Stay classy, Bev and Ferd!

Delta Fox: LAME

Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1971)

          Seeing as how delivering great sets at the Woodstock festival in 1969 helped lift many artists into the pop-music stratosphere, it was probably inevitable that at least one of the musicians who made a strong impression in the documentary-film record of the festival, Woodstock (1970), would earn a movie all his own. Hence Mad Dogs & Englishmen, a lengthy nonfiction movie about the tour of the same name headlined by English blues/rock howler Joe Cocker, whose rendition of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” was a shining moment in Woodstock. Had the folks behind Mad Dogs & Englishmen concentrated solely on Cocker’s musical performances, the picture might have been consistently interesting. Yet the filmmakers unwisely emulated the style of rock docs including D.A. Pennebaker’s famous Bob Dlyan study, Don’t Look Back (1967), juxtaposing personal and private moments. Put bluntly, Joe Cocker is no Bob Dylan in terms of charisma and prismatic identity. Quite to the contrary, Cocker is rather dull to watch in the offstage bits, coming across as a pleasant but thoroughly average bloke who simply happens to have an exciting job. The filmmakers also rely too heavily on generic footage of fans and groupies, none of whom do or say anything remarkable on camera. At least the bits of roadies packing joints are amusing to watch.

          Anyway, the performance scenes, which should have been the focus, are fine, even though it’s anticlimactic when the film proper concludes with, you guessed it, “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Haven’t we seen that somewhere before? Along the way to “Friends,” Cocker and his ferocious band—led by guitarist, pianist, vocalist, and arranger Leon Russell, one of the mad geniuses of classic rock—rip through “Delta Lady” and “Feelin’ Alright,” among other tunes. In quieter passages, Cocker and his mates play rehearsal versions of “Darling Be Home Soon” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”; additionally, Cocker’s backup singers entertain themselves during a plane ride by harmonizing on the Carpenters’ “Superstar.” Shot on grainy 16mm stock and weighed down by a muddy audio track, Mad Dogs & Englishmen is undoubtedly a treasure for fans of the singular Cocker, whose much-satirized physical gyrations are front and center throughout performance scenes. For non-devotees, Mad Dogs & Englishmen ranks with the least essential rock films of the ’70s.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen: FUNKY

The Ghost of Flight 401 (1978)

          Given their low budgets and quick turnaround times, TV movies have always been able to jump on both cultural trends and ripped-from-the-headlines stories more easily than theatrical features. That's one reason why numerous ’70s telefilms dramatize sensationalistic events with supernatural connotations. “Weird news” items lacking the factual foundation and/or social significance to merit feature treatment were ideal fodder for movies of the week. All of this should set the proper context for The Ghost of Flight 401, a slight but somewhat thoughtful riff on strange phenomena that followed the crash of a commercial airliner in Florida. In real life, people reported hearing, seeing, and even smelling the ghost of the doomed plane's copilot long after he died from injuries sustained in the crash.

          After the usual gravitas-laden opening narration warning viewers that what they're about to see maybe-kinda-sorta could have actually happened, the picture introduces veteran flyer Dom Cimoli (Ernest Borgnine), a likeable family man with a weakness for Bay Rum cologne. Despite a premonition from his wife that something bad is about to happen, Dom joins the cockpit crew of a plane that suffers landing-gear failure, loses altitude, and crashes in the Everglades. Among the few survivors is flight attendant Prissy Frasier (Kim Basinger). She and others who knew Dom sense his presence in the days and weeks after the crash, first by catching a whiff of Bay Rum and then by actually seeing his physical body for fleeing moments. Airline administrator Jordan Evanhower (Gary Lockwood), an avowed agnostic, dismisses the sightings as mass hysteria, so when Prissy swears she encountered the deceased Dom on a night flight, Jordan tells her she needs to see a shrink before returning to duty. Eventually, enough people report sightings that Jordan is forced to broaden his horizons, leading to a kicky final act.

          As directed by the capable Steven Hilliard Stern, The Ghost of Flight 401 doesn't break ground in terms of otherworldly thrills. Instead, the film effectively depicts the emotional states of otherwise rational people who encounter things beyond their understanding. Stern guides actors toward restrained, tense performances, and cinematographer Howard Schwartz bathes everything in evocative shadows that Stern maximizes with elegant camera moves. Calling The Ghost of Flight 401 a cut above the normal made-for-TV fare would be exaggerating, and it's worth noting that Borgnine's screen time is limited (although Basinger, in one of her earliest roles, is quite prominent). Nonetheless, the respectful way that the filmmakers explore such pseudoscientific concepts as pscyhometry makes The Ghost of Flight 401 more ruminative than exploitive.

The Ghost of Flight 401: FUNKY

Homebodies (1974)

          Whereas Paul Mazursky's poignant dramedy Harry and Tonto took a serious look at the plight of impoverished big-city seniors displaced by rapacious developers, another film released in the same year approached the subject matter from a markedly different angle. Part black comedy and part horror movie, Homebodies features a determined group of elderly people fighting back against businesses seeking to evict the seniors from their longtime homes. While the film's premise is enjoyably outlandish, the execution is disappointingly uneven. Homebodies is photographed quite well, and some of the performances are whimsical. Yet credibility problems, drab pacing, and the lack of laugh-out-loud moments keep the picture firmly rooted in mediocrity. Homebodies never explodes into the satirical farce it could have been, and the lighthearted storytelling makes it difficult to buy into the tragic aspects of the narrative.

          Anyway, the principal characters are sisters Emily (Frances Fuller) and Mattie (Paula Trueman), who share an apartment in a decaying building occupied exclusively by fixed-income seniors. Mattie is preoccupied with a nearby construction project, because she's aware of a troubling pattern--the more the project sprawls, the more buildings like the one in which she lives are condemned in the name of "progress." Sure enough, municipal functionary Miss Pollack (Linda Marsh) shows up one day with eviction notices for Emily, Mattie, and their neighbors. The only thing that halts the eviction process is a fatal accident at the construction site. Then, as more accidents occur, it becomes evident that Mattie is responsible—she's deliberately killing the people threatening her lifestyle. Mattie eventually enlists her neighbors as coconspirators, leading to somewhat droll scenes of assembled seniors functioning as a slow-moving murder squad.

          Among the cast, familiar character actor Ian Wolfe stands out for his performance as an aging superintendant, although Trueman’s portrayal has a certain twisted charm. It's also worth mentioning that Homebodies picks up steam during its final act thanks to a volley of colorful plot twists, so the movie rewards viewers who slog through the more workmanlike stretches.

Homebodies: FUNKY

Cries and Whispers (1972)

          One of the most acclaimed films from a body of work containing multiple masterpieces, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers is disturbing, mysterious, and profound. Those who avoid Bergman’s work because they dread emotionally wrenching narratives and existentially themed monologues will find the experience of watching Cries and Whispers challenging, because it’s unrelentingly bleak. The concept of death permeates every frame, and characters wrestle with demons including betrayal, hopelessness, self-loathing, and suicidal impulses. The movie also contains a gruesome scene of self-abuse, and a painful sequence in which a man assaults his lover’s psyche by listing all of her faults, external and internal, until she’s deeply wounded. Like all of Berman’s important films, Cries and Whispers explores how the battlefield of the human condition intersects with the caprice of fate, essentially cataloguing the thousand cuts we inflict on each other every day while also recognizing the likely futility of existence.

          Set in a remote country estate sometime in the 19th century, the film follows two sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), as they care for their dying sister Agnes (Harriet Andersson) with the help of a God-fearing maid, Anna (Kari Sylwan). The sure knowledge that Agnes will die after a long period of suffering compels the other women to search their souls, and none likes what she finds. Despite having already suffered a terrible loss, the death of a child, Anna endures the least torture, because she has God for comfort, but even she experiences shattering emotional pain. Karin approaches madness thanks to the unhappy dynamics of her marriage to Fredrik (Georg Arlin), and Karin’s story culminates with a ghastly scene of Karin mutilating herself while an appalled Fredrik watches. Maria, haunted by memories of her dead mother (played in flashbacks by Ullmann), withstands the cruelty of her lover, David (Erland Josephson), because he’s the one who bombards Maria with withering criticisms of her aging facial features as well as her “laziness, indifference, boredom.”

          Bergman observes all of this anguish with a mixture of chilly distance and disquieting intimacy. Sometimes he trains the camera so closely on a face that every microscopic nuance of emotion is visible, and sometimes he composes stylized tableaux that are rich with visual metaphors. Bergman’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, won an Oscar for his work on this movie, and his images—laden with the color red, motifs of clocks, and other loaded signifiers—are exquisite whenever mise en scène takes the fore and unobtrusive whenever performance is the focal point. Not every effect that Bergman renders here is perfect. The dialogue often addresses complex emotional states too perfectly, leaving the way that real humans speak behind; the nonstop onslaught of misery becomes distractingly oppressive; and some of the more art-designed elements border on the pretentious. If anyone has license to venture too far into these areas, however, it is Bergman, who proves again with this film that he is, was, and probably always will be the cinema’s boldest and most incisive psychological clinician.

Cries and Whispers: GROOVY

Slumber Party ’57 (1976)

The first few years of Debra Winger's screen career included some grim chapters, such as her three-episode stint as teen superheroine Wonder Girl during the 1976-1977 debut season of the campy TV show Wonder Woman. However, strutting around in a barely-there costume alongside Lynda Carter actually represented a change for the better given Winger's previous gig as one of the leads in Slumber Party ’57, a leering sex comedy about ostensibly wholesome 1950s high-school girls swapping stories of how they lost their virginity. The young ladies' anecdotes are depicted in extended flashbacks, and each flashback plays like a watered-down version of a "Penthouse Letters" anecdote—despite being told from a female perspective, the flashbacks are merely excuses for topless shots and male-fantasy scenarios. We’re talking nubile beauties who are desperate for sex, a horny farmgirl who initiates a lesbian encounter in a barn, a sexy starlet willing to trade sex for fame, and so on. The low point of the movie happens early in the running time, when the high-school girls congregate at a posh mansion in Beverly Hills and dive into the pool, yanking each other's bras off so they can swim nude except for their panties while underwater cameraman document every passing nipple. Adding to the mindless quality of the picture is the presence of assorted ’50s-culture clichés; for instance, the flashback featuring Winger's character includes a showdown between a biker gang and a letterman. At least the soundtrack for this exploitive movie is filled with peppy 1950s music, although one suspects that most musicians would be embarrassed to discover their tunes were used to enliven a low-budget nudie picture.

Slumber Party ’57: LAME

Acapulco Gold (1976)

          A lighthearted crime drama about drug smuggling that takes place in Mexico, Hawaii, and the waters in between, Acapulco Gold is contrived, episodic, and silly, with more than a few moments that defy logic. In short, it’s a bad movie, and no subsequent praise should dispel that impression. However, there’s a certain easygoing energy to the piece thanks to spunky performances and to flourishes that, in a different cinematic context, would be referred to as “whimsical.” While viewers seeking a movie that’s credible or substantial should look elsewhere, those up for 105 minutes of bargain-basement escapism will find Acapulco Gold periodically diverting.

          The singularly atrocious Marjoe Gortner stars as Ralph, an insurance salesman who gets into a hassle while vacationing in Mexico. A nun asks him to hold a piñata, and then cops descend on Ralph because the piñata is full of drugs. He’s imprisoned for holding someone else’s stash, and no one believes he’s innocent. While behind bars, Ralph meets a drunken American sailor named Carl (Robert Lansing), and they become friends. Later, when a wealthy criminal named Morgan (John Harkins) hires Carl to sail Morgan’s boat from Mexico to Hawaii, Carl springs Ralph from jail and hires Ralph as his first mate. Concurrently, several federal agents from the mainland converge on Hawaii because of word about a big impending drug deal. Throw in a beautiful young woman named Sally (Randi Oakes), currently enmeshed with Morgan but open to Ralph’s advances, and you’ve got the set-up for an adventure of sorts.

          Part of what makes Acapulco Gold a hoot to watch is that many scenes transpire without anything actually happening. A good one-tenth of the movie comprises aimless vignettes in which Gortner’s and Lansing’s characters simply hang out in bars or on the deck of Morgan’s boat. Lansing is surprisingly engaging in these scenes, all cynicism and sarcasm, whereas Gortner contributes only his signature vapidity. Among the supporting players, Ed Nelson gives a fun turn as a swaggering D.E.A. agent, Harkins lends snobbish corpulence, and Oakes provides sun-kissed eye candy. There’s also a long helicopter flight past scenic locations in Hawaii, an explosion, and a runaway golf cart. It’s all quite random, but every so often, something colorful happens.

Acapulco Gold: FUNKY

Death Game (1977)

Allegedly based upon real events, this low-rent thriller is part of a cinematic continuum, spanning Play Misty for Me (1971) to Fatal Attraction (1987) and beyond, about the consequences of extramarital affairs with psychotic women. In Death Game, Bay Area businessman George (Seymour Cassel) is home alone one night while his wife and children are away, and answers the doorbell to find two attractive hippie chicks, Agatha (Sondra Locke) and Donna (Colleen Camp), looking helpless and lost. They claim they mistook George’s house for one with a similar address where a party is happening, so he lets the girls inside to use his phone. After some small talk that’s laden with sexual tension, the ladies strip naked and invite George into a threesome. He pays dearly for his dalliance, because the next morning, the girls commence destroying his property and threatening to charge with him rape. Agatha and Donna eventually bludgeon George and bind him. Later still, the odyssey descends into madness and murder. Death Game (sometimes known as The Seducers) could have been a salacious little thriller, but postproduction tinkering diminished whatever virtues director Peter S. Trayor’s raw footage possessed. The film is padded with irritating musical passages, including a headache-inducing opening-credits sequence set to a cloying song about daddy issues, and the nadir of the picture is a long interlude during which music plays over a shot of an overturned ketchup bottle. Seriously. Furthermore, all of Cassel’s dialogue was dubbed by another actor, which exacerbates the flick’s disjointed quality. Worse, the many long scenes of Agatha and Donna rampaging through George’s house are repetitive and shrill. The girls cry, dance, freak out, scream, and smash things, giving the impression that Camp and Locke were encouraged to improvise without much guidance. There’s a certain innate suspense to the premise, and the threesome scene is hot in a sleazy sort of way. Nonetheless, Death Game is choppy, meandering, and unpleasant, wrapping up with a pointless final scene that seems like a parody of ’70s-cinema bummer endings.

Death Game: LAME