Hex (1973)

          On paper, this one sounds like a sure winner—a supernatural thriller set on the American prairie in the early 20th century, with motorcyclists and witches fighting against each other. Oh, and the cast includes Gary Busey, Keith Carradine, Scott Glenn, Dan Haggerty, and stunning model/actress Cristina Raines. On film, however, Hex is a perplexing misfire, neither pedestrian enough to work as a run-of-the-mill genre piece nor weird enough to qualify as so-bad-it’s-good cult fare. The movie is amateurish and muddled and slow, with an offbeat premise and a few somewhat exciting scenes. At its worst, Hex becomes utterly silly (especially when cornpone music kicks into gear on the soundtrack) and that’s not exactly the vibe one looks for in a supernatural thriller.

          The picture opens at a remote farm occupied by beautiful sisters Acacia (Hilarie Thompson) and Oriole (Raines), who seem like Old West eccentrics. They drift into a nearby frontier town, where they see a traveling motorcycle gang led by Whizzer (Keith Carradine), who claims to be an ex-World War I flyer, interacting with the locals. After the sisters leave town, Whizzer and his pals get into a hassle with a redneck named Brother Billy (Haggerty), so the bikers flee the town and discover the farm, taking the sisters hostage at gunpoint. Soon Whizzer falls into a romantic triangle, because even though he’s involved with fellow biker China (Doria Cook), he finds Oriole irresistible. Meanwhile, Acacia takes a liking to soft-spoken mechanic Golly (Mike Combs). But when biker Giblets (Busey) tries to rape Acacia, Oriole uses magic that she learned from her Native American father to get revenge. The movie them spirals into the hippy-dippy-’70s equivalent of a slasher flick, with members of the biker gang esuffering gruesome deaths until the final showdown between Oriole and Whizzer.

          Very little of this stuff makes sense, either in terms of basic logic or recognizable human behavior, and choppy editing exacerbates the myriad script problems. (For instance, what’s with all the material featuring the very white Robert Walker Jr. as some sort of ethnic/spiritual martial artist?) The actors playing bikers give spirited performances, but Raines’ lifeless work drains the picture of vitality, and it’s odd whenever the movie drifts into comic terrain. (Someone insults a woman by yelling, “Up yer skeeter with a red-hot mosqueeter!”) On the plus side, Raines gets to wear a creepy bear costume during the climax, and that’s something one doesn’t get to see every day. FYI, Hex is sometimes marketed on video under the titles Charms and The Shrieking.

Hex: LAME

Whiffs (1975)

          The military-themed comedy Whiffs must have seemed promising at the conceptual stage, because the premise is outrageous—a schmuck GI spends years working as a test subject for the Army’s chemical-weapons program, gets discharged because the Army made him too sick to remain a viable test subject, can’t find steady work in the civilian world, and uses his knowledge of chemical weapons to mount a crime spree. A brilliant writer could have taken this material to wicked places, but the skill level of TV-trained scribe Malcolm Marmorstein falls well short of brilliance. His script introduces clever situations without exploiting their full potential, relies upon one-note characterizations, and simply isn’t funny enough. To be fair, Whiffs is infinitely more palatable than S*P*Y*S (1974), another project starring Elliot Gould to which Marmorstein made screenplay contributions. Yet the highest praise one can offer is that Whiffs is pleasant to watch except when it lapses into repetitive silliness, which happens often.

          The picture’s unlikely protagonist is Dudley Frapper (Gould), who enjoys getting bombarded with gases by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, led by straight-laced Colonel Lockyer (Eddie Albert). The implied joke that Dudley is an Army-sanctioned drug enthusiast is among the many pieces of low-hanging fruit that Marmorstein fails to harvest. After his discharge, Dudley fails at several entry-level jobs, succumbs to self-pity, and heads to a bar where he reconnects with Chops Mulligan (Harry Guardino), a career criminal who endured chemical experiments alongside Dudley in order to secure an early parole. Chops picks a fight with the bartender, and Dudley sedates Chops’ opponent with a tube of laughing gas. Chops steals the money in the bar’s cash register, then proposes committing more crimes while using gas to immobilize people.

          It takes the movie far too long to reach this point, and the subplot of Dudley’s romance with a pretty Army nurse played by Jennifer O’Neill doesn’t add much beyond eye candy—and a drab running joke about Dudley’s virility. Meanwhile, the subplot involving Godfrey Cambridge as an opportunistic crop-duster pilot is exceedingly goofy. Gould contributes half-hearted work, and Guardino makes a valiant effort despite being ill-suited for his comic role. The same can be said for director Ted Post, a reliable hand for action pictures and melodramas but not a comedic director by any stretch of the imagination.

Whiffs: FUNKY

The Ski Bum (1971)

          Flat, ponderous, and shapeless, this snow-capped drama depicts the travails of a dude who makes his living doing easy jobs for crass rich people in an idyllic resort town, yet somehow feels affronted and pained, as if The Man is oppressing him. At their worst, hippie-era character studies presented ridiculous juxtapositions of attitude and context, and The Ski Bum is a prime example. The rebels in Easy Rider (1969) walked it like they talked it, living off the grid while chasing the counterculture dream. Conversely, The Ski Bum’s protagonist, Johnny (Zalman King), is a petulant little asshole who expects the world to give him everything while retaining the right to whine about his circumstances. In one of the film’s myriad annoying tropes, Johnny often responds to simple questions with dull-eyed confusion and the barked response, “What?” Apparently, even the simple act of making conversation is too much of a personal-space invasion when this self-involved dweeb gets his knickers in a twist. Whatever.

          The picture tracks Johnny as he navigates a sexual relationship with Samantha (Charlotte Rampling), the hostess at a ski resort owned by loudmouth businessman Burt Stone (Joseph Mell). Samantha gets Johnny a job teaching Burt and his family to ski, and Burt’s wife and 13-year-old daughter both make passes at Johnny. Even Burt takes a shine to the ski instructor, despite the fact that he’s temperamental and unreliable, so Burt enlists Johnny to run quasi-legal errands. Johnny also hangs out with stoner pals and scores dope from local dealers. The movie wanders from one drab episode to the next, depicting Johnny’s existential malaise without providing any credible explanation for why he’s so upset.
          Leading man King, who later found his niche as a producer of softcore films, delivers a forgettable non-performance, and Rampling barely registers beyond her usual quality of stoic beauty. Interestingly, the picture was shot by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who gives the piece more visual elegance than it deserves, and famed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne cameos during a druggy party scene. Even more interestingly, New Zealand-born director Bruce D. Clark made this picture while still attending UCLA’s film school, so the end credits report that The Ski Bum comprised Clark’s thesis. Full disclosure: Although the original version of this film runs an epic 136 minutes, I watched the 95-minute cut, so the extended footage may contain virtues absent from the sludge that I encountered.

The Ski Bum: LAME

The Wizard of Gore (1970)

Low-budget sensationalist Herschell Gordon Lewis unleashed more cheaply rendered cinematic bloodshed with The Wizard of Gore, a dreary and unpleasant thriller that borrows liberally from House of Wax (1953), which was itself derived from previous films and stories. Per the formula set by those earlier projects, The Wizard of Gore concerns a showman who gets away with killing people onstage until suspicious audience members threaten to upset his evil schemes. Specifically, Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager) does a regular theater show, inviting women onstage and murdering them in horrible ways before magically restoring them to perfect health. Days later, however, the women die of the wounds that Montag inflicted upon them, so his magic merely delays the fatal effects. Even setting aside the supernatural aspect of the premise, the question of why audiences tolerate what appear to be genuine onstage killings remains unanswered, despite Lewis’ feeble lip service to the idea that Americans crave spectacle. (Hiding behind social commentary is a favorite tack when filmmakers seek to imbue schlock with legitimacy.) The splatter in The Wizard of Gore is too silly-looking to be terrifying, as when Lewis substitutes an obvious mannequin for a scene of driving a spike through a woman’s skull, but it’s possible to be repulsed by the intentions if not the results. Even with the film’s kitsch elements—flimsy production values, stilted dialogue, wooden acting—it’s the usual ugliness of treating the brutalization of women as entertainment. Yes, leading lady Judy Cler is attractive; yes, the tone-deaf transitions between lighthearted scenes and “spooky” bits are unintentionally funny; and, yes, Sager’s leading performance is stunningly awful. So what? For anyone who cares about such things, The Wizard of Gore was remade in 2007, and Crispin Glover essayed the Montag role in that version.

The Wizard of Gore: LAME

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)

          If nothing else, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots has an impressive pedigree: Based on Tennessee Williams’ play The Seven Descents of Myrtle, the picture was written by Gore Vidal and directed by Sidney Lumet. (The on-camera talent is not quite as luminous, since James Coburn shares the screen with Robert Hooks and a hopelessly miscast Lynn Redgrave.) Pretentions, seedy, and talky, the film seems more like an over-the-top recitation of tropes from previous Williams plays than a serious drama. The metaphors are obvious (the characters occupy a decaying mansion while awaiting a flood), the sexual material is lurid (incest, impotence, miscegenation, prostitution), and the rhapsodic speeches about the good old days of the antebellum South feel trite. While everyone involved works at a high level of skill, the only moment that feels fresh is the scene spoofing TV game shows, which is somewhat peripheral to the overall storyline. In sum, Last of the Mobile Hotshots is a straight shot of Williams’ boozy and hateful debauchery, with a pinch of Vidal’s signature bitchiness for extra spice.

          After sloppy drunk Jeb Thornton (Coburn) gets ejected from a bar in New Orleans, he staggers to a nearby TV studio, where folks are lined up to get inside. Jeb watches a taping of a redneck game show, and when the host asks for volunteers to marry onstage, total stranger Myrtle Kane (Redgrave) grabs Jeb and drags him before the cameras as her betrothed. Soon enough, the two are newlyweds, trekking back to Jeb’s family estate with the carload of appliances they won on the TV show. Upon arriving at the estate—a wreck of a place covered in filth from the last devastating flood—Myrtle meets Jeb’s half-brother, an African-American laborer nicknamed Chicken (Hooks). Turns out Jeb married Myrtle in order to produce an heir, thereby absconding with Chicken’s inheritance—but Jeb didn’t account for his own dire health issues.

          None of this is remotely believable, no matter how many scenes feature monologues about wild dreams of glory and wealth. Adding to the artificiality of the piece are dreamlike flashbacks and a recurring trope in which Lumet changes the lighting to blood-red while Jeb lurks in a wheelchair and contemplates his situation.

          Yet Last of the Mobile Hot Shots is periodically interesting. Coburn fares best here, since he has a full arsenal of actor’s gimmicks at his disposal—in addition to an accent, he gets to play several maladies at once while giving monologues about betrayal and pride. He’s quite arresting, even if his character is nothing more than a flight of fancy. Hooks is fairly strong as well, playing a character who’s equal parts opportunist and sadist. Redgrave is the weak link, because she murders dialogue by speaking in high-pitched, high-speed volleys, and her character seems insane instead of eccentric. Worst of all, the picture appears to be a misguided attempt at dark comedy, especially during the ridiculous finale. Oh, and for no discernible reason except perhaps for the general tawdriness of the themes, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots carried an X-rating during its original release.

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots: FUNKY

Psychic Killer (1975)

          Now matter how keen low-budget ’70s producers were on the notion of making thrillers about people using astral projection to commit murder, this weak film and the following year’s even worse The Astral Factor reveal the basic problem with creating suspense around astral projection—there’s nothing innately suspenseful about watching a dude sit in a chair while his projected image flits about elsewhere. That said, Psychic Killer straddles the fence between watchable escapist silliness and tiresome junk. Although the picture definitely falls into dull ruts at regular intervals, there’s just enough clarity and pace and sleaze to merit a casual viewing for those who enjoy vintage supernatural-horror cinema. Hell, the movie even boasts a tangible connection to an earlier era of fantasy flicks, because leading lady Julie Adams—still an elegant beauty at the time this picture was made—gained immortality two decades prior by starring in The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

          Psychic Killer stars Jim Hutton (Timothy’s father) as Arnold Masters, an everyman convicted for a murder he did not commit. While in jail, he meets a strange fellow named Emilio (Stack Pierce), who claims to have the ability to mentally project his image. Emilio dies soon afterward, bequeathing to Arnold a magical talisman that facilitates astral projection. So when Arnold is unexpectedly exonerated and released, Arnold uses his newfound ability to menace the people he blames for his imprisonment. Some of the resulting kill scenes are colorful, as when Arnold’s spirit possess a showerhead and boils an evil nurse to death with hot water. (Maybe try exiting the shower?) Other kill scenes are campy, notably the bit during which Arnold compels a crane to drop a giant rock onto a heartless businessman. Eventually, the trail of bodies leads to Arnold, so intrepid policeman Jeff Morgan (Paul Burke) investigates, enlisting Arnold’s prison psychiatrist, Dr. Laura Scott (Adams), for help.

          Cowriter/director Ray Danton and his collaborators have difficulty maintaining a consistent tone, so the movie wobbles between jokes and jolts, with neither element achieving much power, and things take a turn for the goofy near the end. However, the picture is made with a fair amount of professionalism behind and in front of the camera, and the storyline has an appealing meat-and-potatoes simplicity. Too bad composer William Kraft couldn’t sustain the Jerry Goldsmith-style grandiosity of his opening-credits theme music all the way through the film’s score.

Psychic Killer: FUNKY

The Night That Panicked America (1975)

          Clever, exciting, and suspenseful, The Night That Panicked America tells a quasi-fictionalized version of the events surrounding Orson Welles’ notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds. Broadcast when radio was America’s primary form of home entertainment, Welles’ show was so immersive and persuasive that thousands upon thousands of listeners believed invaders from Mars had actually landed on Earth and commenced a hellacious assault. This highly enjoyable made-for-TV movie was adapted from the play Invasion from Mars, which was written by Howard Koch, the author of the script for the Welles broadcast. Yet arguably the most important contributor to this project was the gifted novelist and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer, credited with writing the screen story and cowriting (with Anthony Wilson) the teleplay. A literate fantasist adept at injecting new life into familiar characters (Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, the crew of the starship Enterprise), Meyer was ideally suited for transforming a historical event into old-fashioned pulp fiction.

          The movie cuts deftly between the scene at a CBS radio studio in New York City and various places around the country where people listen to the broadcast. In the studio scenes, Paul Shenar plays Welles like a demonically possessed orchestra conductor, determined to see his complex vision realized no matter the obstacles. One of the best creative choices made by the team behind The Night That Panicked America was eschewing psychoanalysis of Welles—simply presenting his determination implies plenty. The studio scenes are realistic and vivid, celebrating the gifts of voice actors and the resourcefulness of technicians. (The sound-effect subplot involving a bathroom is quite droll.)

          As for the pandemonium scenes, they’re more pedestrian but still quite effective. Borrowing a page from the disaster-movie playbook, the filmmakers present people who are either caught up in personal troubles or stupidly oblivious, with their reactions to impending doom revealing their personalities. The most compelling thread involves Hank Muldoon (Vic Morrow), a beleaguered family man contemplating leaving his wife, Ann (Eileen Brennan), and their children. When the Welles broadcast convinces the Muldoons the end is near, Hank takes extreme measures leading to a harrowing climax. (One can’t help but wonder whether Frank Darabont saw this telefilm, as the conclusion of the Muldoon supblot anticipates a key scene in Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation The Mist.)

          Directed by the reliable Joseph Sargent and featuring solid supporting actors—Tom Bosley, Michael Constantine, Cliff De Young, Will Geer, John Ritter—The Night That Panicked America may include a high quotient of artistic license, but isn’t using every possible means to put on a good show very much in the spirit of the Welles broadcast?

The Night That Panicked America: GROOVY

Rod Stewart & Faces & Keith Richards (1977)

          Classic-rock nerds love nothing more than charting the intricate histories of important bands, and in fact British music journalist Pete Frame found notoriety by creating elaborate hand-drawn outlines called “family trees” that are now considered both collectibles and reference material. Need to know who played bass in Rainbow while Ronnie James Dio was the front man? Pete Frame’s “family tree” for Deep Purple, the group of which Rainbow is a splinter, can answer your question. Consider the preceding a roundabout way of explaining why the minor British concert movie Rod Stewart & Faces & Keith Richards is of passing interest, even though the performance captured within the movie is mediocre, with excellent musicians delivering merely adequate work against a tacky backdrop of potted plants. Sometimes marketed as Rod Stewart & Faces—The Final Concert, the movie does indeed depict an ending of sorts, but that's where the whole business of “family trees” enters the discussion.

          In 1969, several members of British Invasion group Small Faces formed a spinoff band called Faces, recruiting singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood from the Jeff Beck Group. Yet Stewart had already begun his solo career, so the seeds of Faces’ destruction were planted. Membership realigned during the band’s short run, so by the time this concert was filmed—capping the 1974 tour that marked Stewart’s swan song before going solo full-time—the version of Faces onstage was not the same one that emerged in 1969. The addition of guest guitarist Keith Richards during several numbers makes things even more confusing, because Rod Stewart & Faces & Keith Richards plays like a Rod Stewart concert with noteworthy supporting musicians.
          Therefore, the only real significance of the piece stems from the fact that Stewart didn’t play with Faces drummer Kenney Jones (who later spent years in The Who) and Wood (who subsequently joined Richards in the Rolling Stones) until a short reunion set in 2015. Again, it’s the whole “family tree” thing. For music geeks, these milestones are endlessly fascinating. For others, not so much.

          The same is true of the movie itself. Stewart is in fine voice, though his stage antics are lazy and silly. He spends a fair amount of time with his back to the audience, shimmying in his bright yellow pants to display his posterior, and when he closes the show with solo hits “Maggie May” and “You Wear It Well,” he mostly guides the audience through sing-alongs. Stewart also indulges his lifelong passion for Sam Cooke by covering  “Having a Party,” “Twisting the Night Away,” and “You Send Me.” (During one of these numbers, Stewart instructs the string section—yes, Faces hired a string section—to vamp on the chorus for what seems like an endless period of time.) In the film’s most exciting sequences, Faces coalesce into a tight blues/rock combo, grinding through “I’d Rather Go Blind,” “I Used to love Her,” “Sweet Little Rock and Roller,” and the like with aplomb. But does any of it feel essential? Not even close.

Rod Stewart & Faces & Keith Richards: FUNKY

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

          The American counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s was not wholly unique, because people around the world spent those turbulent years questioning authority, often at great personal risk. The dense and provocative Italian film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion reflects this fraught sociopolitical environment, because the picture employs tropes from the satire, melodrama, mystery, and thriller genres to examine the abuse of power by individuals and institutions. Specifically, the movie tells the fictional story of a high-ranking police detective who commits a murder, succumbs to guilt, and leaves a trail of incriminating clues—only to discover that his political position renders him all but invulnerable to prosecution, no matter how heinous his crime. The wicked plot also illustrates how corrupt officials use unsolved crimes as tools for making politically undesirable people disappear. There’s an element of deliberate absurdity to the storytelling, and yet there’s also a sobering element of truth.

          Gian Maria Volonté plays the film’s unnamed protagonist, whom viewers first encounter without context. He’s shown arriving for a tryst with his freespirited lover, Augusta (Florinda Bolkan), who enjoys gruesome role-playing. In the course of “pretending” to murder Augusta, which turns her on, the protagonist slashes her throat. Then he methodically tidies the crime scene, calls the police to report the murder, and leaves. That’s when cowriter/director Elio Petri reveals the protagonist’s professional identity: He was recently promoted from the top job in his city’s homicide squad to the top job in the police department’s political division. Despite having left homicide work behind, the protagonist inserts himself into the investigation of Augusta’s murder, ostensibly to steer his colleagues away from evidence that might incriminate him. Yet as the protagonist’s psyche unravels, he changes course and begins placing physical evidence; during one bizarre scene, he confronts a stranger on the street and confesses to Augusta’s murder, forcing the stranger to study the protagonist’s face so the stranger can give police a vivid description.

          Petri intercuts this sort of material with flashbacks of the protagonist’s relationship with Augusta, whom, we’re lead to believe, sealed her fate by making fun of the police. Petri also features recurring scenes of the protagonist speaking with his superior officers, who distribute and wield political power like soulless monsters. The film’s ideological stance is never in doubt, especially with villainous characters delivering such lines as, “Repression is civilization!” Yet the picture never feels one-sided, since the protagonist is all but driven mad once he realizes how immoral his government has become; for half the film’s running time, the character advocates the abuse of power, and for the other half, he seeks real justice.

          Despite enjoying almost universal acclaim—the picture won an Oscar as Best Foreign Film--Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion can be challenging to watch. The plot is crystal-clear, executed with Hitchcockian crispness, but the flashbacks with Augusta are repetitive, the politically charged dialogue exchanges are strident, and the film is generally overlong. It’s also hard to get emotionally invested given the sociopathic nature of the protagonist. Nonetheless, the synthesis between the film’s politics and its premise is nearly perfect, and the outrageous final scenes make a powerful statement about the determination of those in power to preserve the status quo.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion: GROOVY

The Chicken Chronicles (1977)

          The teen-sex romp The Chicken Chronicles is a pleasant surprise for many reasons. First, it’s almost entirely bereft of sleaze—don’t look for nude scenes here—which means that director Frank Simon and his collaborators exhibited great restraint given the exploitive norm of the teen-sex genre. Second, the movie stars the much-maligned Steve Guttenberg, appearing in his first significant movie role, and he gives a charming performance. Third, the script by Paul Diamond, who adapted his novel of the same name, treats female characters with intelligence and respect, which is even more of a rarity in the teen-sex genre than restraint. Yes, The Chicken Chronicles has the usual tropes of cheap pranks played against school officials, nostalgia for a lost era, a wild party, and a young man questing for carnal bliss. Yet in this context, the tropes are enjoyable and organic instead of contrived and trite.
           To be clear, The Chicken Chronicles pales next to, say, American Graffiti (1973). Accepted on its own humble terms, however, The Chicken Chronicles is endearing and fun.

          Set in Beverly Hills circa 1969, the story revolves around senior David Kessler (Guttenberg), a wealthy jock with girl trouble and a rebellious attitude. The rebelliousness manifests as friction with uptight vice principal Mr. Nastase (Ed Lauter), and the girl trouble stems from all the obstacles that David’s beautiful girlfriend, Margaret (Lisa Reeves), puts in the way of consummating their relationship. As the movie progresses, David becomes more and more frustrated because of Margaret, so he acts out in ways that threaten his graduation—no small problem, with the shadow of the Vietnam draft looming over him. Other elements of David’s life include the misadventures of his dorky younger brother, an unexpected relationship with a girl who is wrongly perceived as the school slut, and David’s shenanigans at a fast-food joint owned by the cheerfully vulgar Max Ober (Phil Silvers).

          While none of this material cuts very deep, the specifics of David’s life feel authentic and complete—everything from the upper-crust mom who wires her house with intercoms to the Hawaiian buddy who weeps after flushing his pot stash during a moment of panic. Better still, the way the major female characters develop over the course of the story makes David’s growth believable. (The plot even has some genuinely serious elements, though sexual yearning and tomfoolery occupy center stage.) More than anything, The Chicken Chronicles reminds viewers that movies about adolescence need not be adolescent.

The Chicken Chronicles: GROOVY

Mean Johnny Barrows (1976)

Yet another dud from the Fred Williamson assembly line, this somewhat nonsensical thriller features Williamson, who also produced and directed, as a Vietnam vet who drifts in and out of homelessness and jail before reluctantly accepting a gig as a hit man for the mob. One can sense that Williamson meant to make a statement about America’s failure to find useful work for its returning warriors, and there’s also an element of race, because a prologue depicts the title character getting hassled by a white commanding officer. Yet Williamson’s storytelling is so clumsy that huge pieces of the narrative seem as if they’re missing, and thematic points are delivered by vague implication instead of actual literary devices. It’s also distracting to see Roddy McDowall hilariously miscast as an Italian mobster, and to see Elliot Gould play a cameo as some kind of hyper-articulate street poet. Williamson obviously called in some favors, but the effort was wasted. Anyway, the bulk of the film concerns the relationship between ex-GI Johnny Barrows (Williamson) and mobster Mario Racconi (Stuart Whitman). When Johnny arrives at Mario’s restaurant one night looking for a free meal, Mario recognizes Johnny as a former football star and somehow knows everything about Johnny’s military service. So when Mario’s family becomes embroiled in a mob war, Mario persuades Johnny to kill for Mario’s family. Left unanswered is the question of why Mario doesn’t already have competent gunmen in his employ, and why Mario expends so much energy recruiting Johnny. No matter. Mean Johnny Barrows unfolds in a series of sludgy vignettes, most of which are boring and trite. Gould’s one scene is amusing, and R.G. Armstrong lends his signature flair to the role of a scumbag auto-shop owner, but too much of the film comprises Williamson posturing his way through macho behaviors that never coalesce into a believable character.

Mean Johnny Barrows: LAME

Pot! Parents! Police! (1972)

Something of a ‘70s equivalent to the infamous anti-drug film Reefer Madness (1936), this deeply uncool melodrama tracks the exploits of a teenager whose life spirals into chaos because—gasp!—he smokes the demon weed. Yes, at the very historical moment when many suburban parents were trying pot in order to understand what their kids were doing, writer/director/star Phillip Pine thought it was a good idea to reiterate the old paranoid concept that puffing a joint leads automatically to crime and hard drugs. Oh, and he also decided to pillory hippies as irresponsible predators seeking to lure teenagers into debauchery and self-destruction. On some level, one must commend Pine for his commitment to his values, but, man, saying he was behind the times is like saying that Nixon had trust issues—understatement fails to convey the breadth of Pine’s cluelessness. The film’s weak plot follows Johnny (Robert Mantell), the confused and withdrawn son of traveling businessman Earl (Pine) and perpetually complaining housewife Beth (Madelyn Keen). Johnny spends a lot of time on his own, meets hippies who give him liquor and weed, and runs into a hassle with an obnoxious cop who wants to use Johnny in order to capture the hippies. Meanwhile, manly-man Earl tries to set his kid straight by talking about fishing and power tools. With its cheap production values and tinny music, Pot! Parents! Police! feels like the shoddiest Afterschool Special ever made. Oh, and make what you will of the following: This film somehow managed to earn two theatrical releases, and during the first of these it bore the nonsensical title The Cat Ate the Parakeet. Sounds like a title someone might come up with after amokin’ a j, man!

Pot! Parents! Police!: LAME

The Pyx (1973)

          A Canadian-made thriller with elements of character drama, police procedure, and supernatural horror, The Pyx is noteworthy for the presence of American actress Karen Black in the leading role. In addition to contributing poignant and subtle work to many scenes, she sings a few wispy songs on the soundtrack. Although it would be pleasant to report that the movie is a quality piece deserving of Black’s commitment, The Pyx is a rudderless and sluggish, with Christopher Plummer’s half-hearted performance in the underwritten co-leading role of a hard-driving police detective draining much of the energy that Black’s portrayal generates. Furthermore, because of the story’s structure, the stars never have scenes together. By the time The Pyx climaxes with a grim showdown involving Satan worship, the picture has devolved into utter mediocrity. That said, how many movies have been made about Montreal devil cults? The picture opens with the death of Black’s character—she falls or is pushed from a balcony atop a high-rise building and splats on the pavement far below. Two detectives, Jim Henderson (Plummer) and his French-Canadian partner Pierre Paquette (Donald Pilon), lead the ensuing investigation. The movie cuts back and forth between cop scenes and extended flashbacks depicting the final days of Elizabeth Lucy (Black), a heroin-addicted prostitute who ran with a dangerous crowd.

          The cop scenes are rudimentary, with Plummer essaying a tight-lipped tough guy who seems to get off on beating suspects even as he withholds his emotions from his long-suffering girlfriend. Yawn. The investigation itself is just as plodding, because none of the informants and/or suspects makes a real impression. Happily, the flashbacks bear more fruit. Not only do these scenes culminate in a creepy ritual, which adds much-needed visual flair, but Black does a fair job of conveying her character’s angst, confusion, and self-loathing. In one effectively overwrought scene, for instance, Elizabeth tries to comfort a drug-addicted friend while foolishly claiming that she can control her own addiction. The notion, presumably, was to demonstrate why Elizabeth’s psychological wounds made her susceptible to victimization by Satanists. In any event, the true thematic focus of the picture remains as murky as the storyline itself, even though The Pyx features a handful of colorful and emotional peaks.

The Pyx: FUNKY

The One Man Jury (1978)

          Judged by normal standards, the violent cops-and-criminals flick The One Man Jury is thoroughly pedestrian, yet another saga about policemen who perceive the Miranda ruling as an inhibition on their ability to use any means necessary while apprehending bad guys. Judged by the standards of the schlock that leading man Jack Palance spent most of the ’70s making, often in Europe, The One Man Jury fares much better. Instead of being incoherent junk with bad dubbing and heavy exploitation elements, The One Man Jury is an American production with a clear storyline and passable supporting performances. And while Palance sleepwalks through much of his performance, as was his wont in low-budget productions, he at least gets to participate in a fully rendered action climax complete with colorful locations, double-crosses, shootouts, and twists. If nothing else, The One Man Jury seems very much like a real movie for the last 30 minutes of its running time.

          Set in LA, the picture concerns Detective Jim Wade (Palance), a tough guy who still beats suspects and violates their Constitutional rights, even though post-Miranda laws mean that many of his arrests are voided by the courts. When a psycho starts murdering women, Wade becomes obsessed with catching the guy, so he makes a deal with gangster Mike Abatino (Joe Spinell), In exchange for giving Wade the name of the killer, who is associated with Abatino’s gang, Wade agrees to leave Abatino’s criminal operations alone. Half the movie explores the circumstances leading to the deal, and half the movie explores the consequences. Structurally, this is solid stuff, even though writer-director Charles Martin wanders into narrative cul-de-sacs. For instance, the whole business of Wade’s romantic involvement with a much-younger records officer, Wendy (Pamela Shoop), feels bogus from start to finish. Still, Spinell and actors including Andy Romano make fun hoodlums, and B-movie starlet Angel Tompkins gives the movie a shot of attitude with her brief role as a glamorous gambler. The main takeaway is that there’s a terrific concept buried inside The One Man Jury. In fact, the movie is something of a precursor to the much slicker Michael Douglas picture The Star Chamber (1983), in which a cabal of judges hires killers to take out crooks who get off on technicalities.

The One Man Jury: FUNKY

Forced Entry (1975)

Had this picture been written, performed, or filmed with even a modicum of sophistication, it could easily have become a disturbing thriller contrasting the everyday life of a killer with that of an unlucky individual doomed to cross the killer’s path. Unfortunately, the execution of Forced Entry adheres to the grindhouse playbook, with cheap-looking images of amateurish performances stitched together by way of jumpy editing and married to screechy music and sound effects. Instead of being creepy and provocative, the picture is mostly sluggish and unpleasant. For the first hour or so, Forced Entry cross-cuts scenes featuring deranged rapist/murderer Carl (Ron Max) with scenes of frustrated housewife Nancy (Tanya Roberts). Carl works as a mechanic, but in his spare time he picks up women, drags them to remote locations, and defiles them. Because the movie also includes scenes of Carl doing his work conscientiously and being kind to his elderly neighbor, the gist is that he’s got issues with pretty young women. Meanwhile, Nancy feels ignored by her husband even though she enjoys raising their children in a luxurious suburban home. The characters intersect when Nancy brings her car into Carl’s garage for service. Soon afterward, he breaks into her house (hence the title) and torments Nancy. As to what happens next, the film’s alternate title, The Last Victim, should offer more than a hint. One can almost feel a credible film trying to emerge from beneath Forced Entry’s sensationalistic surface, but the storytelling is too clumsy to take seriously, especially with the vapid Roberts—who later joined the cast of Charlie’s Angels during the show’s last season—providing the film’s emotional center. Interesting footnote: Because Forced Entry was unofficially adapted from a 1973 X-rated movie of the same name, it’s among the few examples of mainstream Hollywood borrowing story material from the porn industry.

Forced Entry: LAME

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975)

          Some subgenres of exploitation cinema border on the unconscionable, such as the rape-victim-seeks-revenge movies that hide misogyny behind feminist rhetoric, and some dive wholeheartedly into the abyss of pure depravity. Really, isn’t it almost sufficient to cite the names of two such genres, “Nazispoitlation” and “slavesploitation”? As lawyer Joseph N. Welch once said to red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” Clearly, were that inquiry posed to David S. Friedman, who produced the infamous Nazispoitation epic Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS under the pseudonym “Herman Traeger,” Friedman’s answer would be damning. Just as Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is the apex of tastelessness, it’s the apex of shamelessness, because it’s a noxious blend of sotftcore porn, Third Reich iconography, and torture fetishism. The mere fact that Friedman positions Nazis as psychotic villains does not excuse the picture’s grotesque nature, and neither does the fact that the movie is weirdly entertaining because of its campy excess. Vile is vile, no matter the particulars. 

          Set entirely at a remote Nazi prison camp during World War II, the picture tracks the adventures of the camp’s sadistic commandant, Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne). A twisted medical researcher in the vein of real-life Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele, Ilsa treats the people in her custody like lab rats and/or sex toys. In her laboratory, she burns, dismembers, freezes, mutilates, and whips people to test their levels of endurance. In her private cabin, she forces male prisoners to service her, and she inevitably castrates her lovers afterward as punishment for failing to fully satisfy her cravings.

          The main threads of the slender plot include the following: 1) Ilsa meets an American prisoner with remarkable sexual stamina, which gives the inmates a means of distraction for mounting an escape attempt; 2) Ilsa brutalizes a female prisoner whom she cannot intimidate, thus making a formidable and mortal enemy; and 3) Ilsa curries favor with a visiting superior officer by first torturing and killing an inmate as a form of dinner theater, and then by granting the officer’s wish for a golden shower. Scenes of prisoners conspiring to break free are brisk and perfunctory, because Friedman, director Don Edmonds, and writer Jonah Royston are much more concerned with stringing together images of sex and violence.

          How nasty is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS? Well, the bit during which Ilsa drops maggots into a nude victim’s open wound, then smothers the wound with gangrenous pus to transform the victim into a new Typhoid Mary, comes to mind. And how sleazy is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS? Leading lady Thorne, a tough-looking Amazon with enormous breasts, does myriad sex scenes and striptease bits, and nearly every female in the cast ends up fully naked, usually while being raped or tortured, if not both. Does it matter that the acting is bad and that the production values are patently artificial? Of course not.

          The Canadian-made Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS did so well internationally that Thorne played variations on the character in three sequels (1976's Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks and the 1977 releases Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia and Wanda, the Wicked Warden), some of which shared the original movie’s X-rating, and some of which were coproduced by American companies. Those eager to learn more about Ilsa’s distasteful exploits are duly informed.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS: FREAKY

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (1974)

          Thanks to its mixture of gorgeous images of the American West and heartwarming themes, watching The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams is a bit like living inside a John Denver song for 93 minutes, which is to say that the movie conveys a deeply attractive vision of frontier life without the burden of realism. Like the transcendent mountains in Denver’s songs, the wilderness of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams is a place where Indians and wild animals are simply friends whom the protagonist has not yet met, where every day is a new opportunity for wholesome adventures in picturesque valleys, and where any sort of hardship can be resolved in the space of a montage set to gentle music. This sort of wish-fulfillment storytelling may be silly, but The Life of Times of Grizzly Adams meshed with the back-to-nature idealism of the early ’70s. Produced for a reported $140,ooo, the independent feature grossed a remarkable $65 million and spawned a TV series with the same star, Dan Haggerty, which ran for two seasons.

         Based upon the adventures of real-life figure James Adams, who lived in the California wilderness during the 19th century and demonstrated a remarkable facility for taming animals, including grizzly bears, the movie was produced by Sunn Classic Pictures, a company primarily known for its “pseudoscience” documentaries about the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and the like. True to form, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams shamelessly blends fact and fiction. In this telling, Adams (Haggerty) flees civilization when he’s accused of a crime he did not commit, which never happened to the real Adams. The movie then presents episodes depicting Adams’ assimilation into the mountain-man lifestyle. He rescues a bear cub and names the cub Benjamin Franklin. He rescues a wounded Crow warrior, Nakoma (Don Shanks), who teaches Adams survival techniques. Adams endures a raft ride down whitewater rapids, escapes close encounters with black bears and mountain lions, and so on. At various intervals, the story stops dead for cutesy vignettes depicting animal behavior, such as the amusing sequence of a raccoon trying to navigate a branch hanging over a river. The whole piece is presented with wall-to-wall narration delivered in folksy style by Bill Woodson, who also provides the speaking voice that emanates from Haggerty’s mouth during the film’s few dialogue scenes.

          In terms of credibility and weight, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams is quite shoddy, basically the low-budget equivalent of a Disney nature film. Nonetheless, the Utah locations are spectacularly beautiful, and Haggerty cuts a believable figure with his massive frame, flowing blond hair, and bushy beard. The filmmakers also cleverly frame the piece with scenes about Adams’ feelings toward the daughter he left behind when he ventured into the mountains, giving The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams the illusion of being a properly structured narrative.

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams: FUNKY