Every ’70s Book Review: Weirdumentary

          Welcome to what I believe is the first-ever book review on Every ’70s Movie, occasioned by the discovery of a volume dedicated to one of my fave ’70s-cinema subsets. Published last year by Feral House, Weirdumentary: Ancient Aliens, Fallacious Prophecies, and Mysterious Monsters from 1970s Documentaries is author Gary D. Rhodes’s affectionate survey of movies and TV shows centering pseudoscience, shameless projects that present speculation about sensationalistic topics as nonfiction or a close approximation thereof. Longtime readers of this blog may recall my fondness for shlockumentaries from Sunn Classics (and various other production companies) about the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and their ilk. Seemingly all of these projects are catalogued and critiqued in Weirdumentary, a heavily illustrated paperback with, appropriately enough, a big footprint (it’s nearly 8.5 by 11 inches and it sprawls past 300 pages). If you’ve ever longed for a directory explaining the difference between Beyond Belief (1976), World Beyond Death (1976), Journey into the Beyond (1977), and Beyond and Back (1978), then Weirdumentary deserves real estate on your bookshelf.

         A media professor, occasional filmmaker, and PhD, Rhodes fell in love with pseudoscience movies and TV shows as a kid in the ’70s, so Weirdumentary is partly a nostalgia trip, partly a semi-scholarly exercise, and partly a quest to reach the top of an obsessive-compulsive mountain. (It’s not lost on me that the same descriptors could be applied to Every ’70s Movie.) Weirdumentary comprises reviews of movies and TV shows that were, for the most part, dismissed upon their original release as slop pandering to the public’s Me Decade preoccupation with all things paranormal. Outliers such as Oscar winner The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) gained cultural legitimacy, but more typical of the fad is Aliens from Spaceship Earth (1977), an obscure doc hosted by Scottish singer Donovan. Hence the utility of Rhodes opining why viewers should skip Aliens from Spaceship Earth and check out Mysteries from Beyond Earth (1975) instead. The latter doc was hosted by William Shatner with characteristic vigor, and Shatner’s frequent costar Leonard Nimoy is well-represented in Weirdumentary because of several chapters about the 1976-1982 series In Search Of . . . One of the pleasures of Weirdumentary is discovering how many notable figures from that era hosted pseudoscience programs—not just usual suspects Rod Serling and Orson Welles, but also Robert Conrad, Samantha Eggar, Jack Palance, Omar Sharif, and more.

          Although the book’s scope is more impressive than its style, I’m empathetic to the challenges Rhodes faced while conceiving and researching this book. Firstly, because so many of the projects he covers were created half a century ago as quick cash grabs, tracking down participants and production records would have been a years-long endeavor rife with disappointment and frustration. Secondly, in the spirt of the author’s predilection for goofy puns, Rhodes faced a cross-Rhodes when deciding how to approach the text. Silly or sober? He chose the former, delivering breezy remarks full of asides, jokes, and what can generously be described as wordplay. Snark aside, this was a legitimate conundrum. Had Rhodes strived to create a rigorous film-history document, an academic approach might have clashed with the frivolous nature of his subject matter. Nonetheless, flippancy is a weak foundation for a tome of this size—the deep scholarship of Stephen R. Bissette’s excellent introduction is largely absent from the main text, and whenever Rhodes weaves in background about how a particular project got made, his lighthearted style benefits from the counterweight of solid data.

          At its worst, Weirdumentary is disposable comment-board banality. At its best, Weirdumentary is a blissed-out viewing journal created by a superfan, with enthusiasm compensating for a lack of heft (and for frequent lapses into juvenile prose). Either way, it’s an undemanding book, better suited to occasional perusal than a straight-through read—which might be just the ticket for a casual fan of this only-in-the-’70s genre. Whatever its shortcomings, I’m glad Weirdumentary exists, and I’m hard-pressed to argue the point that its subject matter deserved weightier treatment. 

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas In July (1979)

          Beginning in the mid-1960s, Rankin-Bass Productions generated so many animated holiday specials—including the beloved stop-motion classics Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer (1964), Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970), and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)—that it’s unsurprising the company developed a feature-length crossover project involving its most popular characters and targeted for theatrical release. Alas, ambition was not accompanied by inspiration, so Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July suffers from an overabundance of weak ideas. In lieu of a solid core, the movie introduces an endless parade of characters and concepts, making it difficult for viewers to know (or care) what the movie is actually about. And because the Rankin-Bass style was already antiquated when the first holiday special was released (once upon a time, the kitsch was charming), this exhausting movie probably struck 1979 audiences as an unwelcome transmission from a bygone era. Viewed from a modern perspective, this thing also anticipates the Marvel Cinematic Universe inasmuch as one of the featured characters, Jack Frost, was introduced in a Rankin-Bass special released the same year as this feature. There’s a sense of Rankin-Bass forcing new brands onto the consumer, much as how Marvel movies always feature come-ons for future Marvel movies.

          Here’s a quick gloss on the plot. An ancient wizard called Winterbolt wakes from a long sleep to discover Santa has replaced him as lord of the North Pole. Winterbolt contrives a plan to undercut Santa’s power (which emanates from his goodness) by tricking Santa’s pal Rudolph into doing something evil. Somehow this leads to Rudolph (and Frosty the Snowman) joining a circus, ostensibly in Florida. Through Winterbolt’s machinations, Rudolph takes the blame when the circus’s bankroll gets stolen, leading to Rudolph falling from grace and (don’t ask why) Frosty and his entire family melting. Enter Jack Frost, Santa, and a magic whale (again, don’t ask why), all of whom save the day. Somehow, there’s room in the mix for the circus owner, voiced by Ethel Merman, to belt a few interminable songs. (Also featured are the golden throats of Red Buttons, Mickey Rooney, and Shelley Winters.)

          Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July is a tough watch because viewers get bludgeoned with recaps of origin stories, lengthy introductions to new characters, myriad subplots, and way too many songs. Whereas the best Rankin-Bass specials rocket through purposeful storylines, Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July slogs through one inconsequential event after another. Oddly, the only scenes that really hold interest involve villains. The design aesthetic for Winterbolt and his world is fantastic, something out of a snowy nightmare—his sled is pulled by a quartet of blue snakes!—and the great Paul Frees voices the character with authority. Yet the most interesting character here is Scratcher, an embittered reindeer with a grudge against Rudolph, who is vocally coded as a bitchy queen and voiced by Alan Sues to evoke Paul Lynde’s signature whine. In some parallel dimension, Scratcher got his own Rankin-Bass special and it was divine. In this dimension, Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July lasted just one week in a single theater before finding its way to television, where it fizzled again.  

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July: FUNKY

Richard (1972)

          America’s 37th president was an easy target for satire, hence a slew of comedy films released in the run-up to the 1972 election—if the goal of these films was to discourage voters from re-electing Richard M. Nixon, then Another Nice Mess (1972), Hail (1972), Millhouse: A White Comedy (1971), and this film botched the job. Arguably the least interesting of a bad batch (Another Nice Mess is dumber but livelier), Richard lacks a comedic premise beyond the notion of craven political advisors investing years in getting Nixon ready for prime time. The movie begins with the newly elected president relaxing one evening in the White House residence, his voiceover indicating that he’s thinking back on the path that lead to his presidency. Cue a series of flashbacks depicting Nixon’s early years like scenes from a wholesome old-timey movie, as if to indicate that “Tricky Dick” began life with good intentions. Then Nixon falls in with a trio of advisors who suggest he needs a new face, triggering a brief sequence during which a mad scientist (John Carradine) reconstructs Nixon’s visage, only to be shocked when the result is the puffy-cheeked scowl we all know so well. (In the old-timey scenes, Nixon is played by Dan Resin; in later scenes, he’s played by an impersonator who performed under the name “Richard M. Dixon”; and in several lengthy sequences, archival footage of the real Nixon is featured.)
          Richard is wildly uneven—about one-third of the scenes are unvarnished recitations of familiar events, and the rest are farcical riffs. (Is there a musical number? Yes, there’s a musical number.) Most of the farcial stuff falls flat, as when Mickey Rooney plays a guardian angel sent by God (!) to help Nixon fulfill his destiny. The closest Richard gets to wit is the stretch during which Nixon’s advisors strap him into a version of the Clockwork Orange medical harness (the one with the metal clamps holding the patient’s eyes open), then condition him to gag whenever he evokes the “old” Nixon as a means of warming up his persona. So what’s the takeaway here? That politicians are inauthentic? That Nixon sold his soul? That political operatives will do anything to get their candidates elected? Even though it only runs about 80 minutes (the version watched for this review was 76 minutes, but multiple online sources list the length as 83), Richard is a tedious journey into the obvious and the unfunny.

Richard: LAME

Up Your Teddy Bear (1970)

          If one scene encapsulates the pervy strangeness of Up Your Teddy Bear, it may be the dream sequence during which an adult man wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit performs what can only be described as an awkward heavy-petting dance with an attractive woman who gradually lifts her miniskirt to reveal . . . something. From the acting and the sound effects, the impression is created that either she’s wearing a wood apparatus between her legs or her nether regions are made of wood. Whether this is meant to be funny, titillating, or both is as unknowable as the truth of what’s lurking beneath that miniskirt. And so it goes throughout Up Your Teddy Bear, a mishmash of sleazy erotica, unfunny comedy, and weird nonsense. Up Your Teddy Bear is written incoherently, shot artlessly, and edited as if strips of film were thrown into the air and then spliced together in the pattern they formed upon falling to the floor.
          Written and directed by a fellow named Don Joslyn, the movie is about Clyde King (Wally Cox), a dorky toy-store employee who spends his downtime stalking beautiful women even though he never touches them. Clyde’s other hobby of hand-carving finger puppets catches the attention of “Mother” (Julie Newmar), the wealthy boss of a toy company. She tries to hire Clyde so she can mass-produce his puppets, but he declines, so “Mother” tasks her second-in-command, Lyle “Skippy” Burns (Victor Buono), with closing the deal. Although Lyle hires a series of prostitutes to seduce Clyde into signing a contract, the scheme never pays off, so a frustrated Lyle decides to murder Clyde. It’s hard to imagine anyone pulling off a story that mixes children’s toys, sex, and violence, but this plot could have provided a workable framework for supporting risqué gags. Making that happen, however, would have required skills Joslyn lacks.
          Every scene with Clyde has a major cringe factor because of the way he follows women, his eyes fixated on their backsides and breasts, but Up Your Teddy Bear tries to portray him as an innocent dope in the Jerry Lewis mode. None of his behavior makes sense—in one scene, he showers wearing a suit and tie, and in another, he breaks into a bizarre dance. The less said about Clyde’s offbeat vocalizing—imagine a bird’s death cries combined with off-key Mongolian throat singing—the better. Cox, best known for voicing Underdog, tries valiantly to play a likable boob, but the script thwarts him at every turn. Cox also voices the movie’s sporadic narration track, which fails to give the discombobulated footage any sense of momentum or purpose.
          Scenes with Lyle venture into the grotesque. Joslyn seemingly revels in accentuating Buono’s obesity, and closeups of the actor often forefront an embarrassing combover, flop sweat, and a pallid complexion—whether Joslyn displays Buono in a Little League uniform, a scuba suit, or streetwalker drag, he seems determined to exploit the actor’s humiliation. Getting back to that streetwalker scene, the film implies that Lyle is molested by a group of johns triggered to amorous delirium by the vision of an enormously heavy man with a mustache and garish whore makeup. In myriad other movies and TV shows, Buono’s campy overacting was delightful; here, his mincing and mugging just seems desperate and sad.
          Newmar, who appears in perhaps a quarter of the film’s running time, mostly barks orders at Buono and looks fantastic, whether fully dressed, sporting a bikini, or wearing lingerie. If she gave a coherent performance on set, it didn’t survive the editing process. Starlets who appear as prostitutes drift in and out of the movie interchangeably, though Joslyn devotes an inordinate amount of screen time to Angelique Pettyjohn’s wholly gratuitous nude scenes. Presumably the skin factor, the presence of two actors from the ’60s Batman series, and the involvement of Quincy Jones (who contributed some original music) explains why this misbegotten picture enjoyed several afterlives. Following its initial run, the movie was reissued under the titles Hot Mother, Mother, and Seduction of a Nerd; at some point it was also known as The Toy Grabbers. Mercifully, Joslyn never made another movie.

Up Your Teddy Bear: FREAKY

Fairplay (1971)

Fairplay is an adequately produced but otherwise inept frontier comedy featuring a number of vaguely familiar actors with marginal credits in mainstream film and television. Given the popularity of farces set in the Wild West circa the late ’60s, from Cat Ballou on the big screen to F Troop on the small screen, making something like this on the cheap was not an unreasonable proposition. Alas, Texas-based indie director James A. Sullivan and his collaborators lacked comedy chops, originality, and storytelling acumen, so Fairplay is flat, meandering, and unfunny. That said, it’s also coherent and harmless, which is to say it lives a few layers above the bottom of the ’70s-cinema barrel. The big man in the tiny God-fearing town of Justin is Jova Purvis (Robert Middleton), and he’s in perpetual conflict with grandfatherly crook F.O. McGill (Paul Ford), boss of the neighboring town Fairplay—really just a run-down hotel filled with hired guns who plunder Justin for F.O.’s benefit. One day, F.O.’s naïve great-nephew Teddy (Phillip Alford) arrives in Fairplay, unaware of his relative’s criminality, then falls for Jova’s daughter Pearlie (Barbara Hancock). Yet despite occupying much of the film’s screen time, the subplot is secondary to the machinations of retailer Skinner Bindleshaft (Paul Glaser), who contrives a scheme to sell a fake Gatling gun to whichever town leader offers the highest price. Beyond the usual “comedic” gunfights (which involve characters shooting everywhere except at their opponents), Fairplay finds most of its anemic humor in contrived character flourishes, such as the lineage of hired gun Bela Running Eagle (Norris Domingue), who talks about how the Hungarian side of his personality balances the Paiute Indian side—and, yes, those gags are just as laborious as they sound. Presumably Sullivan and his collaborators envisioned an hour and a half of lighthearted entertainment. They got the lighthearted part right.

Fairplay: LAME

The Noah (1975)

          The counterculture era yielded numerous Biblical allegories and nuclear-apocalypse meditations, so The Noah—which combines these tropes—rose from its moment’s zeitgeist. Yet one-time feature director Daniel Bourla took such a bold approach that The Noah straddles the boundary separating conventional narrative from experimental storytelling. It’s not an easy watch. The Noah often feels rudderless because Bourla over-explains certain elements and under-explains others, making some sequences feel repetitive and others superfluous. Nonetheless, The Noah offers an arresting deviation from the norm—the same peculiarity that requires viewers to carefully parse what Bourla’s trying to say is the source of The Noah’s weird power.

          Elegantly shot in moody black and white, the picture begins with middle-aged soldier Noah (Robert Strauss) exiting a raft onto the shore of a tropical island. Discovering an abandoned Japanese encampment, he transforms the facility into a personal shelter and spends a period of days or weeks in lonely silence until a voice speaks to him. Noah begins conversing with an unseen figure whom viewers eventually realize is a figment of the soldier’s imagination. Noah explains to his new companion that they’re the last two survivors of a worldwide nuclear apocalypse. Eventually, Noah and the imaginary figure he names Friday (voiced by Geoffrey Holder) are joined by another imaginary figure, Friday Anne (voiced by Sally Kirkland), who manifests as Friday’s romantic companion. The gist is that Noah contrives people because solitude is driving him mad. Bourla, who cowrote the script with Avraham Heffner, dramatizes this premise episodically until the end of the movie, which is so poetic it elevates everything that preceded.

          Bourla’s nerviest choice, having only one actor onscreen for the film’s entire running time, tethers the audience’s experience of the movie to Noah’s mental state. Yet Bourla’s related decision to portray Friday through POV shots is iffy. Bourla understandably wanted to aim the camera at Strauss during scenes with the unseen Friday, and Strauss handles fourth-wall breaks well. Yet this method creates ambiguity as to whether Friday is imaginary or a supernatural manifestation; additionally, the combination of Holder’s Trinidadian accent and his character’s childlike speech pattern makes the characterization murky. Bourla’s storytelling is more assured during the second half of the picture, when Noah’s imagination creates a world beyond Friday and Friday Anne, although that’s when the movie really drags—The Noah is stronger when it’s stranger.

          Bourla reportedly shot the movie in Puerto Rico circa 1968 but wasn’t able to finance postproduction until the mid-’70s, by which time Strauss had died. Adding to the slow rollout, a legal dispute halted exhibition soon after the first showing, and The Noah went unseen for more than 20 years. Now readily available, it’s a minor but unique artifact from a crucial time in American film, exploring such areas as the relationship between the individual and society; the ineffability of friendship; the dynamic between civilian and military cultures; and, of course, the crisis sparked when nuclear weapons were introduced to the human experience. More admirable than enjoyable, The Noah is a noble venture that rewards patient viewers.

The Noah: GROOVY

Robert Duvall, 1931-2026 & 10 Million Views

          Another important figure from ’70s cinema has left the stage because the great Robert Duvall died on Feb. 15 at the age of 95. Despite hailing from San Diego, Duvall often rendered his best work playing rural characters, and I’m not alone in rating his performances as a faded country singer in Tender Mercies (1983) and a soulful cowboy in the miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989) as his career-best work. Still, Duvall was essential to the ’70s, not least because that’s the era during which he achieved above-the-title billing. Following his indelible debut as sensitive outsider Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Duvall worked prolifically in features and TV until George Lucas cast him in the lead of THX 1138 (1971), which used the reserved side of Duvall’s screen persona to good effect in the context of an Orwellian parable.
          Duvall’s credits across the ’70s are spottier than you might recall (he appeared in a lot of junk), but the highlights are staggering: mob lawyer Tom Hagen in two Godfather pictures, craven TV executive Frank Hackett in Network (1976), and, in a pair of 1979 releases, domineering dad “Bull” Meechum in The Great Santini and crazed air-cavalry commander Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. This handful of performances represents only a portion of the 23 pictures in which Duvall appeared between 1970 and 1979. (To see him shine in less familiar titles, check out his cold-blooded take on a neo-noir protagonist in 1973’s The Outfit, his droll portrayal of Sherlock Holmes sidekick Dr. John Watson in 1974’s The Seven Per-Cent Solution, or his darkly funny bad-guy characterization in 1975’s The Killer Elite.) Consistently imaginative, spontaneous, and unpredictable, Duvall invested a wild range of characters with fiery energy, frequently expressing more with a shrug or a wince than most actors could with a lengthy monologue. At his best, he was mesmerizing and moving in equal measure. RIP.

          In other news, several weeks ago Every ’70s Movie crossed another readership milestone by notching 10 million lifetime views. As I’ve said before, the time readers spend engaging with this blog is a gift for which I’m immeasurably grateful, and even though other projects often keep me away from Every ’70s Movie for extended periods, I always enjoy returning when my schedule allows. Because notching 10 million views is such a big accomplishment, I will probably refrain from updating readers about future milestones until (fingers crossed) lifetime readership reaches the top of another huge mountain. There’s plenty more to come in the future!

New Podcast Interview

          Once again, thanks to North Carolina-based critic and podcaster Adam Long, who graciously hosted me for another conversation about Every '70s Movie. Continuing his exploration of Me Decade pictures that were popular in their day but have since faded into varying degrees of obscurity, Adam tests my knowledge of films including Billy Jack and Willard. How much did I remember about those movies, and, more importantly, how accurate was my memory? Let's find out together! Check here to listen to my new episode of the Adam's Corner podcast.

Walk the Walk (1970)

          Walk the Walk is unusual—it seems improbable there is another grungy movie about a middle-aged Black seminarian forming an intense psychosexual bond with the blowsy white prostitute who feeds his heroin habit. Alas, Walk the Walk bears little resemblance to serious cinematic portrayals of addiction, such as Dusty and Sweets McGee and The Panic in Needle Park, both of which were released in 1971. Bizarrely conceived and cheaply produced, Walk the Walk feels like an exploitation flick even though, in its most interesting moments, the picture endeavors to tell a resonant story about characters trapped in soul-crushing spirals. Walk the Walk is too sloppy to qualify as serious cinema, and too thoughtful to get dismissed as trash. It‘s either schlock with the soul of a real movie, or vice versa.

          Bernie Hamilton, a few years before achieving prominence with a regular gig as a police captain on Starsky & Hutch, stars as Mike, who inherited heroin addiction from his mother and now seeks salvation through religious training. When his usual dealer gets busted, Mike connects with Judy (Honor Lawrence), an aging hooker who sells dope as a side hustle. Immediately taken by Mike’s intelligence and sensitivity, she tries and fails to seduce him, then promises that someday he’ll need to pay for a fix with romance. Had writer-director Jac Zacha found a producer willing to develop this material into a grim character study, Walk the Walk could have become something offbeat and touching. Instead, Zacha hooked up with Kroger Babb, who produced a few social-problem exploitation flicks in the ‘50s; the script Zacha cowrote with Babb pairs the Mike-Judy storyline with silliness involving a Satanic cult, the cartoonishly swishy leader of which recently changed his name from “Big Daddy” to “The Unholy One.”
           Accordingly, viewers intrigued by the Mike-Judy dynamic must slog through a whole lot of nonsense. In one sequence, Judy officiates a hippie wedding (after Judy asks, “Dost thou take this broad to be thy wife,” the groom replies, “I can dig it”). In another sequence, Mike gets chased through a desert by two cultists, leading to a shot of Mike inadvertently ripping the female cultist’s shirt off as she falls from a high hill. (Presumably Babb was eager to juice the picture with nudity, however fleeting.) Adding to the movie's fever-dream quality is a score comprising shapeless acid-rock grooves (as opposed to a proper score that matches the flow of the storyline). And because this is a random ‘70s oddity, the ending is an ambiguous freakout. It’s hard to know whether the makers of Walk the Walk cynically attempted to weave counterculture signifiers into their movie, whether they couldn’t tell bad ideas from good ones, or both.

Walk the Walk: FUNKY

The P.O.W.

          A microbudget antiwar picture that received a limited release, The P.O.W. is presented as a nonfiction portrait of Howie Kaufman, a Vietnam veteran navigating a return to civilian society after a war wound left him paralyzed below the waist. In fact, Howie is an actor, and so are the filmmakers who follow him around. In fact, everyone who crosses paths with Howie onscreen is performing, with the cast comprising non-actors improvising based on prompts from director Philip Dossick. Given that the meandering picture doesn’t really go anywhere, it’s unclear why Dossick chose the mockumentary route, except perhaps to allow for the intrusion of crew members and film equipment into the frame, thereby facilitating loose production. Arguably, a more purposeful application of this style would have used verité technique to sell a narrative that might otherwise feel bogus, or to pull viewers deep into a world most people don’t usually see. Still, contemplating how The P.O.W. might have been more stylistically or thematically grounded serves little purpose because this modest film is what it is.

          At its best, The P.O.W. dramatizes the challenges of its protagonist’s transition. As played by Howard Jahre, Howie Kaufman is a remarkably sane and together dude, given how massively his life was disrupted—viewers learn that Howie worked in sales before getting drafted, and now he’s faced with the difficulty of resuming a career that usually requires constant travel. In one of the picture’s strongest scenes, an executive says he can’t hire Howie because he might have difficulty reaching file-cabinet drawers from a seated position. Equally interesting are vignettes during which friends push Howie to get his life back on track, as if that complicated task can be accomplished at will; in one sharp exchange, Howie tells civilians they can’t comprehend emotions felt during combat. Too often, however, The P.O.W. gets mired in dull hangout scenes, as when Howie plays word games while on a date. Furthermore, cutaways of Dossick reviewing footage in a cutting room add little.

          Still, the movie has good intentions, and the timing of its release is noteworthy—in 1973, the war was still raging, despite Nixon’s pledges s to wind down the conflict, and pacifistic Americans were still figuring out how to hate the war but not the warriors. (For context, The P.O.W. arrived five years before mainstream Hollywood’s first major exploration of this subject matter, Coming Home.) While this may seem like a patronizing way of complimenting the film, there’s a reason Dossick never directed another picture, instead focusing on a writing career that has yielded numerous books and one produced teleplay—despite its abundant compassion, The P.O.W. lacks dramatic energy.

The P.O.W.: FUNKY  

Night of the Witches (1970)

          Some of the most bizarre viewing experiences I’ve had for this blog involve sanitized versions of exploitation movies—every so often, the only copy I can find of a grindhouse relic is an edit prepared for home video or television. For example, cursory research suggests that in its fullest form, Night of the Witches abounds with ladies cavorting topless, but the version I watched draws the line at bikinis and periodically makes such abrupt transitions that it’s clear something salacious was excised. Based on what remains of the picture, I’m confident that unaltered prints of Night of the Witches are nearly as bewildering as their neutered counterparts. A queasy mix of comedy, horror, and smut, the movie toggles between three storylines that eventually converge, with a surprising number of interpretive-dance interludes along the way. If you’re hungry for an inept no-budget freakout centering an astrology cult, then Night of the Witches is the movie for you.
          The picture begins with fake preacher Ezra (Keith Larsen) conning a young couple on a beach—he persuades the young man to go fishing, talks the young woman into sex, and steals their car. It should be mentioned that Ezra speaks only English and the couple speaks only Spanish, so good luck identifying how his BS surmounts a language barrier. In other words, abandon all hope of logic, ye who enter Night of the Witches. Presumably Larsen, who also cowrote and directed the picture—he’s pseudonymously credited as “Keith Erik Burt”—imagined this piece as some kind of sexy farce, but instead it’s a sleazy mess.
          Anyway, while Erza is conning his way across the countryside, a businessman hires boat captain Frank (Ron Taft) for passage to an island populated by witches because the businessman’s partner disappeared there. Need it be mentioned that Frank’s actual job is selling real estate for skeevy entrepreneur Gruper (John Jones), who somehow owns a chain of islands? Or that Gruper hangs out in his office wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, with go-go dancers grinding nearby? Naturally, Frank keeps a pair of go-go dancers on his boat, as well. Getting back to the “story,” after the businessman meets his partner’s fate, Frank becomes romantically involved with perky blonde witch Athena (Randy Stafford). At some point the preacher arrives and tries to scam the witches out of cash. None of this makes any sense, as if that matters.
          A lanky workaday actor with a John Phillip Law vibe, Larsen has no idea what he’s doing behind the camera, so the movie bounces between tones as it lumbers from one incoherent scene to the next. That said, Night of the Witches has a bit of so-bad-it’s-good novelty, especially during those interpretive-dance scenes; Larsen fills the screen with women in cheap costumes performing stiff choreography to the accompaniment of hippie-era rock music. (Don’t get your hopes up for awesome needle drops, though; the tunes have a grubby sort of flair, but they’re bespoke and generic.) It’s impossible to admire Night of the Witches, but at the same time it’s hard to completely dislike a psychotronic flick featuring this line: “Now do you see why we couldn’t invite you to the levitation?”

Night of the Witches: FREAKY

Every '70s Movie Is Fifteen Years Old!

As in life, birthdays start to blur after a while, but because so much of what exists in the digital space is ephemeral, it seems significant to note that Every ’70s Movie has been humming along for fifteen years since its launch on October 14, 2010. While the era of daily posting is long gone, there’s still plenty of life in this endeavor, and I’m looking forward to the end of this calendar year, when getting two big projects off my desk will allow for a bit of overdue ’70s immersion. Occasions such as this blog’s latest milestone remind me that as much joy as I get from exploring Me Decade cinema and reporting about what I find, this project would be meaningless if there wasn’t an audience for these reviews. To readers who’ve been with the blog for years, to those who joined the party more recently, and to anyone visiting this page for the first time, thank you. Happy birthday to all of us! More reviews are coming, albeit at the unpredictable pace that’s become the norm at Every ’70s Movie, and in the meantime, keep on keepin’ on!

Unrelated, I would be remiss if I didn’t note the recent passing of the remarkable Diane Keaton, one of the leading lights of ’70s cinema; whether she was sparkling in Woody Allen comedies or startling in tough dramas such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar, to say nothing of her important work in the Godfather series, Keaton was a gifted interpreter of the human experience, a fashion icon, and a singularly interesting personality. RIP.

Checkmate (1973)

Yet another instance of pornographers sneaking into the mainstream via softcore, Checkmate—also known as Pepper and Pepper: Agent OOX—is a dunderheaded riff on James Bond, replacing the suave stud of the 007 franchise with a statuesque blonde. Wiseass operative Pepper Burns (Diana Wilson) gets called into service when villain Madame Chang (An Tsan Hu) announces her plan to seize control of a secret nuclear-armed satellite controlled by four different countries; if the countries don’t pay Chang $1 billion each, she’ll nuke their biggest cities. So far, so good. Yet once Checkmate establishes its premise, the movie tumbles into repetitive stupidity. Chang’s gimmick is using seductresses to coax representatives of the four countries into undressing so Chang can steal keys the reps carry on their persons—but seeing as how she murders the reps immediately afterward, why not just kill them right away and skip the sexcapades? Pepper does virtually nothing for the movie’s first hour, meaning she hangs around and receives reports until engaging in a dull foot chase through Central Park. Eventually Pepper’s big moment arrives—screwing the American representative (a coupling shown at interminable length) in order to sorta-kinda-but-not-really gain the upper hand on Chang. Although Checkmate is thoroughly awful, not only because of its idiotic script but because of the cheap visuals, there’s a certain playfulness on display. For example, when the Russian rep sees his seductress nude, he exclaims, “Holy mother of Stalin!” It’s not wit, but it’s something. Leading lady Wilson, previously a Playboy model under the name Reagan Wilson, has a bit of swagger, so she might have become an enjoyable B-movie regular if she’d made other films. Then again, appearing in something this tacky could stifle anyone’s enthusiasm for filmmaking.

Checkmate: LAME

Nationtime—Gary (1973)

        Some documentaries are such useful historical artifacts that quibbling about their artistic or technical shortcomings misses the point. Such is the case with Nationtime—Gary, a record of the first National Black Political Convention, which took place in Gary, Indiana, circa March 1972. Organized at a fraught moment when the Black Power movement, the Civil Rights movement, and resistance to Nixonian conservatism saw African-Americans gain ground culturally, economically, and politically, the convention pursued a noble goal of unifying various factions of Black activism. The effort was not successful, and apparently the follow-up event (held two years later in Arkansas) exacerbated problems. Nonetheless, the attempt was important, and therefore we’re lucky that Black documentarian William Greaves filmed the proceedings and edited his reportage down to feature length. Unsurprisingly, Greaves’s work was considered too provocative for wide release in 1973, so only a heavily truncated version was available for decades. In 2020, the full 80-minute doc was digitally restored.

          As journalism, Nationtime—Gary is undisciplined. The picture distills the three-day convention into a (more or less) chronological highlight reel, and some of the editorial choices are perplexing. Letting Jesse Jackson’s centerpiece speech run for a full 20 minutes doesn’t leave much room for other speakers to expound. Clipping performances short (including Isaac Hayes’s rendition of “Theme from Shaft”) seems arbitrary. And the presentation of a key debate is murky—we see moderator Amiri Baraka trying to get a platform adopted, which sparks friction between delegations from Michigan and New York, but Greaves neglects to convey the substance of the platform, so the quarrel is bewildering. Luckily, the convention’s core messages permeate Jackson’s speech, during which he explores such topics as the need for proportionate representation by Blacks within the Democratic Party. Making a different sort of impression is Dick Gregory’s edgy standup routine, and Nationtime—Gary features a handful of effectively wordless moments, for example an onstage appearance by Coretta Scott King.
          Some sequences feel almost impressionistic because of the way Greaves juxtaposes footage from inside the convention hall with (poorly recorded) audio of Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier reciting poetry and/or explaining what’s happening onscreen. Based on the number of shots marred by iffy lighting and shaky focus, it’s apparent this film was made with a meager budget. However, because Nationtime—Gary is inherently a subversive political statement, perhaps a slick presentation would have undercut the endeavor. In sum, Greaves reached for more than he could grasp—as did the organizers of the convention—but he still managed to capture a lot. FYI, when the documentary was restored, its title was confusingly abbreviated in marketing materials to Nationtime even though the full original title appears onscreen.

Nationtime—Gary: GROOVY

Robert Redford, 1936-2025

          Even though he’s inextricably linked to the 1970s—the period during which he was, almost inarguably, Hollywood’s biggest star—Robert Redford’s cultural impact spans decades. His ascension from promising romantic lead to white-hot movie star, a process that began with small parts in the late ’50s and culminated with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1968), describes a singular career path. Never satisfied with coasting on his gleaming Californian beauty, Redford simultaneously developed formidable acting chops and learned the mysterious art of romancing movie cameras, so once he found his first perfect role in the Sundance Kid, he already had an irresistible combination of natural gifts and nurtured skills. It appears Redford recognized early that a huge component of successful movie acting is participation in the storytelling process; while he was unquestionably conscious of his best angles and the moments that supported his iconoclastic persona, he was usually a responsible steward of narrative priorities.

          An argument could be made that Redford’s glorious ’70s run actually begins with Butch Cassidy, which has a forward-looking style, and continues with the bleak character study Downhill Racer (1969). Concurrently, his ’70s run has missteps, including the unmemorable buddy picture Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970) and the relatively vapid star vehicle The Electric Horseman (1979). But given the spectacular peaks of Redford’s ’70s run, a few false notes are of little consequence. The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson (both 1972). The Sting and The Way We Were (both 1973). The Great Waldo Pepper and Three Days of the Condor (both 1975). And then Redford’s first unassailable masterpiece, as actor and (uncredited) producer—All the President’s Men (1976). Redford willed the picture into existence, suggesting that Woodward and Bernstein transform their Watergate reporting into a book, and Redford assembled the stellar team that crafted one of the finest films in Hollywood history.

          Rare is the box-office champion without naysayers. Redford was no exception. His notorious tardiness was perceived by many as a power move. Like most major stars, he sparked frustration and outright despair by flirting with projects only to step away at the final moment before committing. He chewed up his share of directors and writers, and his treatment of Oscar-winning scribe William Goldman was particularly shabby—after Goldman wrote three films for Redford, including Butch Cassidy, the actor steamrolled his friend on All the President’s Men, even surreptitiously hiring additional writers, then spent decades downplaying Goldman’s contributions. (Weep not for Goldman, who got a second Oscar for his troubles.) Redford’s relationship with one of his most frequent collaborators, director Sydney Pollack, was fraught to the extreme of periodic estrangement. By all reports, Redford was deliberately confounding and intimidating—he followed his impulses and left some emotional wreckage in his wake.

          Conversely, stories of his empathy for fellow performers are countless, from his ingenious weaponizing of Mary Tyler Moore’s previously hidden dark side to his careful protection of a juvenile Scarlett Johansson in one of her first major roles. And his decades-long commitment to elevating Native American voices continued through to the end of his life; Redford’s last onscreen role was a cameo in the Native-themed series Dark Winds, which he helped produce.

          By any measure, Redford's best work is extraordinary. Beyond the titles mentioned, he notched occasional acting triumphs in the 1980s and beyond. The Natural (1984). The Last Castle (2001). All Is Lost (2013). A pair of lovely victory-lap chamber pieces, Our Souls at Night (2017) and The Old Man & the Gun (2018). Spanning the same period, of course, was Redford’s acclaimed directorial career, which achieved a spectacular launch with Ordinary People (1980), the project that netted Redford’s only competitive Oscar, for Best Director. (Amazingly, he received only one acting nomination, for The Sting—it remains a blight on the Academy that he was overlooked for All Is Lost.) And then there’s the other reason acting became a side hustle for Redford after the ’70s, his involvement in such nonprofit activities as the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute. A case could be made that Sundance is the man’s true cinematic legacy because it’s provided a launching pad for decades of new filmmakers.

          It’s customary in appreciations of this sort to mention a personal connection if one exists. My interaction with Redford was brief but memorable (for me, not him). Circa the late ’90s, Redford was shooting The Horse Whisperer in the coverage area of a periodical for which I wrote, so I participated in an intimate press conference lasting about 20 minutes. By random circumstance, I was the only reporter at the event who specialized in film, so I asked most of the questions. Afterward, the movie’s publicist shared Redford’s remarks upon leaving the event—words to the effect of “that guy knew his stuff.” I don’t get the impression Redford issued compliments lightly. I should add another nuance to fill out the picture—while I’m not especially prone to feeling starstruck, I have never in my life experienced personal charisma as powerful as the aura that Redford exuded during my brief time in his presence. I thought I understood magnetism before sitting a few feet away from Redford, but I had no idea.

          The arts generally, the cinema specifically, and our national conversation—especially concerning the dignity of indigenous persons—was enriched for decades by Redford’s work. His influence will outlive him, as will the virility of the performances he gave and the sensitivity of the stories he told. We should all aspire to a fraction of that significance.

9 Million Views & Project Updates

Hey there, groovy people! Once again, it’s my happy duty to report that Every ’70s Movie has achieved another milestone, notching nine million views since launch. In a world of clickbait and purchased traffic and sponsored influencers, it’s gratifying to know these views were earned the old-fashioned way, through fans of the subject matter gravitating to this blog, returning for more, and spreading the word. Thank you! Now for the project-update portion of this quick post. At the beginning of 2025, I envisioned picking up the pace of blog posts, but then outside projects began to consume a lot of bandwith. As I write these words, I’m deep in preproduction on a short film intended for the festival circuit, the first one I’ve made in quite a few years. Concurrently, I’m wrapping up an intensive book project—the second edition of my 2001 book Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel. When I first wrote my study of the screenplays by blacklisted Oscar winner Trumbo (Roman Holiday, Spartacus, etc.), I was in my journalism phase, so the book became the equivalent of a lengthy magazine article. This time around, I’m doing copious amounts of archival research across multiple states, which is endlessly rewarding but also seriously time-consuming. I’m excited to share this work when it publishes next year on the 25th (!) anniversary of the first edition. Meanwhile, I’ll dip back into the blog whenever I can because more and more ’70s movies previously out of circulation are appearing on the fringes of the marketplace, allowing me to fill longstanding gaps in the obsessive compendium that is Every ’70s Movie. As always, thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on! 

Swim Team (1979)

Several tropes of late-’70s youth cinema converge in Swim Team, a poorly made comedy about Southern Californian high-school kids navigating personal challenges while pursuing aquatic glory. Among other things, Swim Team is an anemic riff on the formula from The Bad News Bears (1979), a timid sex farce showcasing a parade of sun-kissed blondes (naturally, there’s a van tricked out as a bachelor pad on wheels), and a dimwitted celebration of inveterate partyers (two of the leading actors appeared in the preceding year’s bacchanalian hit Animal House). Writer, producer, and director James Polakof squanders nearly all of these elements, generating a movie that feels much longer than its scant running time of 85 minutes. Scenes of kids defying grownup authority figures are too few in number, and the film’s PG rating ensures that leering shots of attractive people in swimsuits never tip into sleaze. In other words, Swim Team is an underdog farce without teeth, and a T&A flick without skin. To the degree the picture has a story, it’s about the Whalers, a team with a long losing streak, partially because the on-again/off-again romance of star athletes Danny (James Daughton) and Erin (Jenny Neumann) makes the team’s roster unstable. For no discernible reason, overweight rich kid Bear (Stephen Furst) is on the team, though he spends most of his time carousing, drinking, and lounging. Things turn around when motivated new coach Johnny (Richard Young) enters the picture, and then a romantic triangle emerges between Johnny, Erin, and Danny. Will the star swimmers get over their drama in time to help the Whalers win a big match? Yawn. Polakof front-loads the movie with a lot of Furst to exploit the actor’s Animal House notoriety, but Furst doesn’t have the charisma to pull off direct-to-camera bits meant to frame Swim Team with irreverent flair. Similarly, jokes about topics ranging from a horny older woman to a little boy urinating in a pool to surly rival coach “Mr. Ouch” are inert at best, insultingly stupid at worst.

Swim Team: LAME

Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976)

          Offering a slight twist on the disaster-flick formula, bland telefilm Smash-Up on Interstate 5 begins with the titular catastrophe—a 39-vehicle accident in Southern California—then rolls back to the clock 48 hours. This structure sidesteps the fact that a car accident, by its nature, precludes conventional narrative tension. After all, it’s impossible to anticipate a freak occurrence, whereas if an ocean liner is sinking, a skyscraper is burning, or an earthquake and its aftershocks are happening, characters have time to contemplate impending doom. Smash-Up at Interstate 5 makes a reasonable effort to contrive drama between the setup and payoff, and to create empathy for a spectrum of characters played by a typically hodgepodge TV-movie cast.
          The nominal protagonist is California Highway Patrol Sergeant Sam (Robert Conrad), an adrenaline junkie whose girlfriend, nurse Laureen (Donna Mills), worries she can’t build a life with such a reckless man. Laureen’s sister, Barbara (Sian Barbara Allen), is married to another cop, Jimmy (Tommy Lee Jones), and they’re expecting a child. You get the idea—per the template for this sort of thing, Smash-Up invents lots of ticking-clock plotlines to give the accident as much impact as possible. Other threads include an elderly couple (Buddy Ebsen and Harriet Nelson) dealing with terminal illness, a middle-aged woman (Vera Miles) swept off her feet by a younger man (David Groh), and a small-time crook (Scott Jacoby) taken hostage by a robber on a killing spree. It’s all quite pedestrian, of course, but the ensemble approach ensures that whenever a scene starts to drag, the film is just a cut away from something livelier.
          Directed by small-screen workhorse John Llewelyn Moxley, Smash-Up on Interstate 5 delivers the requisite mixture of romance, pathos, schmaltz, and tragedy. As with most such telefilms, whether any particular scene commands the viewer’s interest depends largely on the viewer’s enjoyment of particular actors—Conrad does his stoic bit, Ebsen provides folksy warmth, Miles lends a touch of elegance, and so forth. (Points to Herb Edelman for his brief but pungent appearance as a swinger.) Alas, the element the movie handles least effectively is the big accident—despite giving a solid blast of crashes and explosions and stunts, the movie rushes through the aftermath too quickly, denying viewers the carnage they’ve been promised for more than 90 minutes.
 
Smash-Up on Interstate 5: FUNKY

Not a Pretty Picture (1976)

          Before launching her long career as a director of mainstream comedies and dramas for both film and television with the 1983 teen romance Valley Girl, Martha Coolidge mixed documentary and fiction techniques for her feature debut Not a Pretty Picture, a cinematic meditation on Coolidge’s experience as a victim of sexual assault. (Long available only on the fringes of the marketplace, the film received a posh Criterion release in 2024.) This is bracing work with enduring relevance—one of the movie’s first conversations involves women saying “me too” while sharing their stories. In some ways, Not a Pretty Picture provides even more fulsome discourse on sexual assault than is present in today’s comparatively enlightened climate, simply because the actor tasked with portraying the rapist offers a perspective on male sexual impulses that would get a man cancelled today. His honesty reflects the ethos of the project.
          Not a Pretty Picture is divided almost equally between dramatic re-creations of Coolidge’s high-school years and behind-the-scenes footage of Coolidge rehearsing her actors. The most ingenious aspect of the film’s structure is that the actual assault is never shown. Additionally, the moments immediately preceding and following the assault are presented only as rehearsal footage, rather than staged scenes. Coolidge has said she wanted the ability to interrupt the assault sequence so she could rap with her actors about their feelings. Michele Manenti, who plays 16-year-old Martha, was also raped in high school, so her ability to compartmentalize her emotions while acting is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist but was in real life a longtime friend of Manenti’s, talks about how the male adolescent’s drive for conquest (combined with the pervasive fallacy that all women secretly desire forceful sex) renders the male adolescent blind to moral implications when things get heated.
         Not a Pretty Picture doesn’t achieve everything it attempts. The staged scenes are credible but stilted, and the inexperience of the performers is apparent when they read scripted dialogue (less so when they improvise). Coolidge appears onscreen throughout the rehearsal scenes, so it’s both distracting and fascinating to guess at her thought process while events unfold—she mostly lets the film speak for her, though powerful exchanges about agency and guilt happen between Coolidge and Manenti. The movie also doesn’t have much of an ending—hardly a design flaw, since Not a Pretty Picture was engineered to spark conversations, but the lack of resolution is awkward. Viewed critically, the movie comes across as a rough draft for some more polished effort that never materialized. Viewed empathetically, it’s a deeply personal statement in which a filmmaker uses her chosen medium to explore a traumatic experience.

Not a Pretty Picture: GROOVY

8.5 Million Views!

Hey there, groovy people! I remain humbled and thrilled that even as Every ’70s Movie moves inexorably toward its 15th birthday (coming your way this October), new and longtime readers alike continue to enjoy this content. For those who’ve been here a while, you know where this is going: the blog just crossed another wild milestone because the lifetime-view tally is now more than 8.5 million. This sustained enthusiasm is all the encouragement I need to keep going with the project. Happily, the set of titles I mentioned in the last post of this nature has not yet been fully tapped, so my plan is to continue posting at least one or two new reviews every month, with brief flurries of more frequent posting whenever I get the bandwidth to watch and write up newly unearthed obscurities. Meantime, if any of you out there in the wilds of the Weird Wide Web have access to something not yet represented on the blog, don’t be shy about sharing! (Earlier this year I named the elusive titles that are highest on my to-see list.) Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Until next time, thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on!

Mister Deathman (1977)

Among the many criticisms fairly directed at Mister Deathman, a modestly budgeted thriller filmed in South Africa, one cannot fault leading man David Broadnax for timidity: the first-time actor wrote the story for his sole appearance as a 007-esque secret agent. Presumably Broadnax hoped Mister Deathman would initiate a franchise, but instead the movie barely got a release in the ’70s before landing in the cultural graveyard of bottom-shelf ‘80s home video. (A sure sign the folks responsible for marketing Mister Deathman doubted its financial prospects is the outrageous use of Pam Grier’s image on the poster, despite the fact that neither she nor anyone who resembles her appears in the flick.) Mister Deathman is confusing, dumb, pointless, and repetitive, all of which could be said about many of the 007 pictures it emulates—but at least those movies are also fun, sexy, and spectacular. Broadnax plays Geoffrey Graves, an ex-spy hired by aerospace executives who are being blackmailed for $50 million. A mysterious villain (never shown onscreen) kidnapped the scientist who designed the executives’ planned space shuttle and now threatens to sell the scientist’s secrets to competitors. Clues regarding this yawn-inducing scheme lead Graves to South Africa, where he battles various underlings including Liz (Stella Stevens, unsubtly coded as a lesbian for no particular reason). Most of the picture comprises scenes of Graves escaping from ridiculous traps with ease. In one bit, he discovers his car was sabotaged before encountering any danger; in another, he’s chained to a rocky shore at low tide and left alone so he can free himself. Mister Deathman has a few gadgets, ladies, and underground hideaways, but it can’t manage sight gags or verbal zingers. Only the climax, featuring a grounded jet versus an army of trucks, has any kind of wow factor. Given that you’ve never heard of Broadnax (he appeared in only one more movie), it should come as no surprise to learn that even though he’s athletic and self-assured, he’s quite forgettable.

Mister Deathman: LAME

The Kid from Not-So-Big (1978)

          A harmless but unimpressive attempt at mimicking Disney’s family-friendly formula, The Kid from Not-So-Big is somewhat akin to Disney’s silly Apple Dumpling Gang movies—like those pictures, Not-So-Big is a gentle Western comedy involving frontier swindlers, goofy gunslingers, and saintly children. Deepening the Disney alignment, there’s even a tangential connection to theme parks. Six Flags briefly partnered in a production company that generated only two 1978 projects—Barnaby and Me, a koala-themed comedy that was broadcast on Australian television, and Not-So-Big, which probably reached its broadest audience through a Warner Bros. video release in the ‘80s. Given its close adherence to Disney’s style, Not-So-Big would have benefitted from some Mouse House overkill: name actors, posh production values, a zippy mixture of broad farce with cornpone plotting. Although Not-So-Big looks great thanks to the efforts of future A-list cinematographer Dean Cundey, the picture suffers from bland leading performances and script that goes slack in the middle.

          In the whimsically named town of Not-So-Big, precocious preteen Jenny (Jennifer McAllister) does most of the heavy lifting for a tiny newspaper owned by her grandfather, Hank (Don Keefer). When con man Sylvester Quick (Robert Viharo) blows into Not-So-Big with hype about making everyone rich by selling property to big-city investors, Jenny calls BS. First Sylvester torches the newspaper’s office, resulting in Hank’s death. Then Sylvester hires gunman Slowhand (Paul Tulley) to kill Jenny. Per the norm of such stories, Slowhand’s conscience gets in the way, as does his affection for Not-So-Big’s newly installed schoolteacher, Corinne (Veronica Cartwright). If you’ve ever seen a children’s movie, you can figure out how things go from there.

          The first stretch of the movie is fine, setting up a by-the-numbers plot and stock characters in an innocuous manner, and the final act has the requisite mixture of dopey physical comedy and sappy emotional payoffs. Alas, the second act is quite dull and repetitive because the script by Desmond Nakano (who later found a groove writing heavy dramas) grinds through uninteresting subplots. Exacerbating the vanilla storytelling are performances that range from adequate to less so. It’s a kick to see Cartwright playing a girl-next-door type, but McAllister is likeable without actually being charismatic and Viharo is overbearing without actually being menacing. It’s never a good sign when scowling trash-cinema stalwart George “Buck” Flower, playing one of his patented rural schemers, is the liveliest performer onscreen. 
 
The Kid from Not-So-Big: FUNKY

Milestones (1975)

           A filmmaker deeply committed to expressing his far-left political ideology onscreen, Robert Kramer directed the awkward but impassioned Ice (1970), then codirected this sprawling hybrid of documentary and fiction—although Kramer participated in many other projects, Ice and Milestones are probably his most enduring statements. Codirected by John Douglas, Milestones explores the lives of myriad characters connected to Vietnam War-era counterculture. Most of the people who appear onscreen are hippies who’ve dropped out of mainstream society to live in communes and/or radicals who’ve had legal trouble stemming from activism. The picture also features perspectives from the preceding generation, courtesy of parents vexed by the choices of their adult children. Had a more disciplined filmmaker tackled exactly this material—picture an Altmanesque epic—it could have become the definitive cinematic record of its time. Alas, Milestones is a minor historical artifact that many viewers will find boring and pointless.
           Instead of using narration, onscreen text, or at the very least crisp introductory vignettes, the filmmakers spew a largely formless collage of conversations and moments, forcing viewers to intuit much key information through context. As the picture churns through multiple “storylines,” a term that’s only somewhat applicable here, viewers watch folks hang out, share experiences, and talk (endlessly) about their feelings. All of this stems from the queasy mixture of documentary and fiction. Some elements feel like real life caught on camera—particularly the pieces depicting a woman preparing for natural childbirth. Other elements are obviously staged, including two crime scenes. Viewers can make reasonable assumptions about when characters are presenting scripted (or at least prompted) dialogue, as opposed to speaking extemporaneously, because moments featuring “acting” are painfully amateurish.
           Still, a general theme emerges from the sprawl—what do antiwar radicals do once the focus of their activism disappears? Do they return to their families? Do they get jobs? Or do they try to live their counterculture ideals permanently? As one character suggests, “a revolution [is] not just a series of incidents but a whole life.” Unfortunately for all but the most sympathetic viewers, Milestones buries this worthy concept inside a series of drab scenes that span more than three hours. That’s a lot of time to spend watching grungy 16mm footage of hippies strolling naked through the woods, engaging in low-key rap sessions (plus the occasional argument), and so on.
           Excepting the aforementioned crime scenes (plus the climactic sequence of natural childbirth that unfolds in full view of the camera), the most engaging bits are conversations during which characters either speak directly to the movie’s theme or inadvertently capture their historical moment with Me Decade psychobabble. In a particularly absurd moment, self-involved Jimmy, identified as a onetime zoology professor who ditched academia for activism, expresses what a heavy trip it might be to participate in raising his preadolescent son: “I’m his father, and I have a very special kind of relationship. I mean, I dig other kids too, but I can’t brush away my feelings. I mean, maybe it’s just part of me that I have to get on top of.” As if parental obligations are some old-fashioned hangup.
           Kramer and Douglas had to do their own thing, but in retrospect they might have been wise to ditch the fiction elements and focus on capturing life among left-leaning young adults at a confusing time. Whenever the filmmakers try to get overt, they stumble badly, as with a silly dream sequence or the laughable cut from dialogue about a character with fragile emotions to a shot of that character dropping a piece of pottery that shatters.

Milestones: FUNKY