Nightmare Honeymoon (1974)

          My tolerance for mindless thrillers about unlucky people who stumble onto trouble in the boonies is relatively high, especially if the thrillers are executed with any modicum of restraint and style. It’s all about the vibe, baby. That said, far too many of these movies devolve into exploitive sleaze by employing rape as a major story element, and that’s when my tolerance gets tested. Hence my ambivalence toward Nightmare Honeymoon, which is a fairly slick production given its humble budget and lack of major star power: On the one hand, the flick is straightforward B-movie trash about good people falling into a spiral of danger and intrigue, but on the other hand, it’s the same old song about villains committing sexual violence against a pretty girl. Nightmare Honeymoon is far from the worst picture of its type, and in fact the filmmakers evince a measure of sensitivity while depicting the psychological effects of rape on not only the victim but also her husband. Still, another path would have been preferable.

          The plot, no surprise, is simple. David (Dack Rambo) and Jill (Rebecca Dianna Smith) leave their wedding reception and head for New Orleans, where they have hotel reservations. They stop by a lake for a quick swim, then accidentally observe bad guy Lee (John Beck) committing a murder. Lee knocks David unconscious and rapes Jill, but the newlyweds escape. Thereafter, David becomes obsessed with getting revenge.

          Notwithstanding brief appearances by the great character actors Pat Hingle and David Huddleston, Nightmare Honeymoon features only journeymen players, but they acquit themselves well. Rambo injects some malice into his usually bland screen persona, Smith does a fair job of expressing anguish, and Beck swings for the fences playing a horny psychopath. Never the nimblest or subtlest of actors, he’s weirdly compelling as he bulges his eyes from between his sweaty forehead and his thicket of a moustache. As for the plot, it works until it doesn’t. The setup is effective, the assault scene is handled discreetly, and the second act, depicting how the newlyweds wrestle with their new reality, has real humanity. Better still, things move along at a good pace once David begins searching for Lee. Yet Nightmare Honeymoon gets awkward in its final stretch, an operatic showdown with more than a little bit of Cape Fear (1962) in its DNA. The climax is tense and violent, but believability is an early casualty.

Nightmare Honeymoon: FUNKY

The Amazing Transplant (1970)

Cursory research into the background and perception of this low-budget sex picture reveals some debate about whether it was the first film to feature a penis transplant as a plot device, but I’m sure readers will understand my lack of passion for investigating the matter further. In fact, if I could have back the time I wasted aiming my eyeballs at The Amazing Transplant, I’d surely be grateful. For while there’s a certain crass novelty to the subject matter, The Amazing Transplant is only peripherally about the medical procedure to which its title refers. Most of the picture comprises unpleasant scenes of a psycho named Arthur (Joao Fernandez) scoring private time with ladies, freaking out when he sees their earrings, and then killing the women during sex. Meanwhile, a detective named Bill (Larry Hunter) tries to find Arthur after he goes missing, only to discover the trail of bodies Arthur has left behind. Eventually, Bill learns that Arthur demanded a doctor graft another man’s penis onto Arthur’s body. The new organ brought with it homicidal intent, so The Amazing Transplant is basically a grindhouse derivation of the 1920 French novel Les Mains d’Orlac, which has been adapted for the screen several times. Yet the lack of originality is the least of this awful movie’s sins. The acting is horrible, the lighting is garish, the sound was badly cobbled together in post-production, and the sex scenes are boring, exploitive, and grimy. Suffice to say nothing resembling a scare appears onscreen, and if you find The Amazing Transplant the least bit titillating, then please keep your distance.

The Amazing Transplant: SQUARE

Pufnstuf (1970)

          Producers Sid and Marty Krofft have spent decades denying that their Day-Glo children’s-fantasy shows of the ’60s and ’70s were influenced by the drug culture of the era, but let’s get real. Some of the images in Pufnstuf, a theatrical feature made to capitalize on the fleeting popularity of the Kroffts’ 1969-1970 series H.R. Pufnstuf, seem like flashes from an acid trip. Not only does the main villain, Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes), dress like a crazy-quilt version of a circus clown, but she makes bizarre transformations. In one scene, she becomes a hippy-dippy dancer named Betsy Boogaloo, her fringe jacket flailing as she gives a hyperactive dance lesson juiced by undercranked camerawork. In another scene, she becomes a flower, so her normal-sized face protrudes from a ring of giant petals while she shoos away a nettlesome bee that means to pollinate her mouth. And what is one to make of the character “Stupid Bat,” an aeronautically challenged purple rodent who bashes into walls until declaring, “I’m beginning to like this”? How can anyone argue this stuff doesn’t celebrate the joy of altered states?

          Pufnstuf tells a condensed version of the same tale featured in the 17 episodes of H.R. Pufnstuf. Young misfit Jimmy (Jack Wild) wanders into a forest one day, singing about loneliness until his flute comes to life and declares that it’s named Freddy. (Or, as Wild says in his cloying lisp, “Fweddy.”) The boy and the flute discover a magic boat and sail off to adventure, but Witchiepoo flies overhead on her motorized “Vroom Broom” and transforms the boat into a monster. Jimmy and Freddy escape to Living Island. Among the island’s residents is a yellow dragon with a giant head, H.R. Pufnstuf. He and his allies combat Witchiepoo’s various schemes to kidnap Freddy, so the plot shamelessly echoes that of The Wizard of Oz (1939).

          Sprinkled throughout the picture are weird tropes and vignettes. Rock singer “Mama” Cass Elliot, of the Mamas and the Papas, plays one of Witchiepoo’s fellow sorcerers, Witch Hazel. Elliot’s first shot is a fat joke of sorts, not exactly the kindest way to present the plus-sized thrush; her face obscured by brightly colored makeup, Elliot is shown gorging herself while reclining in a giant bathtub filled with fruit. Things get even more crass later. When Boss Witch (Martha Raye) makes her entrance, she’s accompanied by a giant rat with a German accent and an SS uniform. Nazi jokes? In a kidde flick?

          Pufnstuf has the same bargain-basement production values as the series from which it was derived, with cheap-looking costumes and two-dimensional sets. Any novelty of encountering these familiar items in an unfamiliar context wears off quickly. Moreover, the moralistic and simple-minded storytelling is tiresome, and so is Wild’s gee-whiz performance. Even Hayes tests viewers’ patience with her constant cackling and screaming, though none could ever question her commitment to the role. In lieu of actual quality, the strange stuff makes the biggest impression. All the random vocal references to old-time movie stars, like the West Wind—as in the actual breeze—mimicking John Wayne’s macho drawl. All those shots of a gopher popping up through the floor while carrying a bag of smoke. And those colors, eye-popping primaries and robust secondaries blending into a rainbow of visual stimulation. On the surface, Pufnstuf is a forgettable fantasy adventure. Underneath, it’s a gonzo exercise in hallucinogenic escapism.

Pufnstuf: FREAKY

Black Force (1975)

My favorite moment in the awful blaxploitation/martial-arts flick Black Force, sometimes known as Force Four (see the above poster), occurs right at the beginning. After an obnoxious disclaimer stating that all the martial-arts action in the film is real, the picture transforms into an interminable exhibition while the members of the titular fighting squad demonstrate their skills one at a time, leaping and punching across the floor of a dojo without opponents or even props, save their weapons. Hence this wondrous line of dialogue: “Hey, bro, lemme see you work those sais.” As opposed to, say, getting on with the story—but then again, once the story finally does commence, it’s a matter of being careful what you wished for, because, incredibly, the stupidity factor rises. Led by Jason (Owen Watson), the badass quartet is a band of mercenaries, or something of that sort, and they’re hired to recover a piece of stolen artwork. Their investigation and accompanying scuffles with bad guys lead them into the criminal underworld, where they confront various thugs interested in the stolen item. Clumsy editing, rotten post-production sound work, and terrible acting combine to make Black Force as confusing as it is uninteresting. Sure, there are some happening funk/soul grooves on the soundtrack, and the down-and-dirty production values mesh with the grimy inner-city locations at which much of the action takes place, but the movie is padded beyond belief, not just with undeservedly lengthy fight scenes but also with a pointlessly long musical performance during a party scene. 

Black Force: LAME

Green Eyes (1977)

          War leaves many victims in its wake, not just the soldiers and civilians directly affected by combat. In the case of the Vietnam War, sexual liaisons between American troops and indigenous women led to the birth of thousands upon thousands of children, many of whom were abandoned by their fathers and thereby consigned to lives of loneliness and poverty. The humanistic made-for-TV drama Green Eyes offers a poignant look at this cycle.

         Paul Winfield, in a touching performance, plays a U.S. Army veteran who returns to Vietnam in order to search for the son he left behind. Upon arrival, however, the soldier discovers that war orphans have become a major national problem, that the survival rate among such children is poor, and that because of economic and political strife lingering in Vietnam, the best chance for some children is adoption by foreigners. Based on a story by Eugene Logan and written with considerable sensitivity by Hollywood veteran David Seltzer, Green Eyes is the cinematic equivalent of encountering a social problem, looking up to the heavens in anguish, and asking, “What can I do?” Yet while bleeding-heart liberalism of the noblest energizes this project, the filmmakers don’t let their editorializing impede the telling of a good story.

          At the beginning of the picture, African-American Lloyd Dubeck (Winfield) returns home with a heavy heart and a limp, having escaped Vietnam with injuries but cognizant that he impregnated the Vietnamese woman with whom he once cohabited. Lloyd has difficulty settling back into civilian life, and his conscience gnaws at him, so he arranges transport back to Southeast Asia, even though the war has not yet ended. Returning to safe zones occupied by American advisors and their colleagues in South Vietnam’s armed forces, Lloyd begins a quest to find his lost lover. Aiding him is Margaret Sheen (Rita Tushingham), an English social worker who operates a bustling orphanage. Lloyd also has a number of encounters with Trung (Lemi), a wide-eyed street urchin who exploits the naïveté of foreigners while using various scams to survive. All of Lloyd’s experiences educate him about the plight of children whose parents are, for all intents and purposes, the war itself.

          Director John Erman does a more than serviceable job of delivering the narrative, utilizing the film’s locations in the Philippines to create a strong sense of verisimilitude. Scenes in slums are particularly evocative. Given the picture’s downbeat storyline, the filmmakers wisely modulate tone by including flashes of humor and playfulness. Better still, moments designed to tug at viewers’ heartstrings have impact without being needlessly maudlin. Driving the whole piece, of course, is Winfield’s warm persona. His pain at witnessing deprivation feels credible, and his joy during the rare moments when his character is able to have a positive impact is contagious.

Green Eyes: GROOVY

Tom (1973)

Although he remained mired in low-budget sleaze throughout the active years of his directorial career, give Greydon Clark some credit for trying to say something about important topics with his first picture, Tom, which was later reissued as The Bad Bunch. A clumsy attempt at dramatizing how racially charged violence spirals out of control after a chance encounter plants the seeds for conflict, Tom concerns earnest Vietnam veteran Jim (played by Clark himself), who innocently travels to Watts with the intention of delivering a letter on behalf of a fallen comrade. This journey brings Jim into the proximity of Tom (Tom Johnigarn), a radicalized dude who prefers the African name he gave himself, “Makimba.”  Hateful of all whites, Tom/Makimba tells Jim to get the hell out of Watts, and then he gathers his gang to pummel Jim for good measure. Only the intervention of racist cop Lt. Stans (Aldo Ray) saves Jim’s life. Thereafter, the movie runs along two parallel tracks. In one, Jim navigates his love life, trying to choose between easy lay Bobbi (Bambi Allen) and nice girl Nancy (Jacqueline Cole). This stuff is alternately sleazy and stultifying, with the Bobbi scenes featuring lots of gratuitous nudity and the Nancy scenes featuring lots of gratuitous montages. On the other track, Tom/Makimba gets into trouble with cops and criminals, improbably blaming Jim for all of his problems. All of this stuff eventually leads toward a histrionic climax, but not before Clark burns up screen time with nonsense including a topless pool party and a Greek Orthodox wedding. Even though Tom runs only 82 minutes, it somehow manages to seem directionless and overlong. 

Tom: LAME

Bloodline (1979)

          Audrey Hepburn was so selective in the final years of her screen career, often letting years lapse between projects, that it’s disappointing most of her latter-day output is rotten. She returned from a long hiatus to play Maid Marian in Richard Lester’s wonderfully melancholy adventure/romance Robin and Marian (1976), and it was downhill from there, beginning with this overstuffed potboiler adapted from one of Sidney Sheldon’s lowest-common-denominator novels. As always, Hepburn comes across well, her natural elegance and poise allowing her to rise above even the silliest scenes, but Bloodline does nothing to embellish her well-deserved reputation as one of the most magical performers ever to step in front of a movie camera.

          The story’s hackneyed inciting incident is the death of a pharmaceutical tycoon named Sam Roffe, which pits his only child, Elizabeth Roffe (Hepburn), against myriad cousins who want to sell the family’s massive international operation for some quick cash. Naturally, each of the cousins is some gradation of Eurotrash, plagued by adulterous entanglements, crushing debts, impending scandals, or all of the above. Just as naturally, Elizabeth is the only saint in the family, so not only does she block attempts to liquidate the company—the better to honor her beloved father’s wishes—but she becomes an active participant in the investigation of her father’s death. Oh, and during all of this, she falls in love with an executive at the family company, chain-smoking smoothie Rhys Williams (Ben Gazzara at his most intolerably smug). Yet that’s not quite enough material for Sheldon’s voracious narrative appetite, so Bloodline also follows myriad subplots relating to the cousins. Ivo (Omar Sharif) tries to keep his wife and three children separate from his mistress and his other three children. Alec (James Mason) digs himself into a deep hole with gambling losses, even as his beautiful younger wife, Vivian (Michelle Phillips), whores herself out to placate creditors. And so on. All the while, intrepid European cop Max (Gert Fröbe, the Artist Forever Known as Goldfinger) pieces clues together with the help of a supercomputer—as in, during many of his scenes, Max chats with the computer, which responds in a mechanized voice.

          Anyway, let’s see, what are we forgetting from this recitation of the film’s major elements? Oh, right—the subplot about the bald psycho killing women in snuff films.

          Yeah, Bloodline is that sort of picture, a semi-serious but simple-minded piece of escapism that periodically and ventures into the realm of exploitation cinema, resulting in dissonance. Picture a Ross Hunter movie suddenly morphing into a William Castle production, and you get the idea. To be clear, director Terence Young does his usual slick work within scenes, but the task of reconciling all of Bloodline’s incompatible elements would have defeated any filmmaker. Still, it’s impossible to completely dismiss Bloodline for a number of reasons, Hepburn’s presence being the most important of those. Furthermore, the cast is rich with talent, and Ennio Morricone’s score is characteristically adventurous, at one point going full-bore into a Giorgio Moroder-type disco groove. There’s always something colorful happening in Bloodline, good taste and logic be damned.

Bloodline: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Big Brawl

          Like many American moviegoers of a certain age, I first encountered Jackie Chan in The Cannonball Run (1981), which featured the Hong Kong actor in a minor comedic role. Yet Chan actually made his first big play for U.S. notoriety the previous year, starring in the partially comedic martial-arts picture The Big Brawl for director Robert Clouse, who made Enter the Dragon (1973). After The Big Brawl and The Cannonball Run failed to create excitement around Chan, he returned to making films in Asia until finally conquering the U.S. in the late ’90s. Watching The Big Brawl now, it’s easy to see what 1980 audiences missed—and why they missed it. Clouse has a ham-fisted touch for comedy that undercuts Chan’s meticulously rehearsed illusion of effortlessness, and the marketing materials accentuated violence. Viewers expecting straight-up chop-socky savagery must have been disappointed by all the silliness on display. That said, The Big Brawl is a mildly entertaining adventure that makes sense within the context of Chan’s subsequent career: This flick represents an early attempt at finding the synthesis between fighting and funny bits that distinguishes Chan’s most successful films.

          Opening in Depression-era Chicago, The Big Brawl—which is occasionally known as Battle Creek Brawl—concerns Jerry (Chan), an ambitious young man who dates a nice white girl, Nancy (Kristine DeBell), and works part-time in his immigrant father’s Chinese restaurant. Against his father’s wishes, Jerry trains in martial arts with his uncle, Herbert (Mako). After making enemies of a big-time gangster, Dominici (José Ferrer), Jerry is coerced into entering a huge citywide brawl in Battle Creek, Texas, where dozens of combatants box and wrestle until the last man standing wins a cash prize.

          Powered by one-dimensional characterizations and predictable twists, the plot is forgettable. What makes The Big Brawl fun to watch, at least periodically, is Chan’s astounding physicality. In a lengthy roller-derby scene, he leaps and rolls like he’s made of rubber, using found objects and lightning-fast strikes to wipe out opponents. And during the brawl—which consumes a good 30 minutes of screen time—Chan runs the gamut from physical comedy to serious ass-kicking, even though the fight scenes all have a certain Hollywood falseness. Among the supporting cast, nobody excels beyond Chan and the always-dynamic Mako. However, the film has some great bursts of energy thanks to Lalo Schifrin’s memorable score. Laying Ennio Morricone-style whistles over a slinky jazz groove that would’ve made Henry Mancini proud, Schifrin locks into Chan’s playful frequency more than Clouse ever does.

The Big Brawl: FUNKY

1980 Week: Alligator

          A highly enjoyable creature feature that revels in its own derivative nature and that occasionally feels like a real movie instead of a drive-in schlockfest, Alligator was one of the three above-average monster flicks that John Sayles penned during his breakout period, when he alternated between gun-for-hire gigs and early directorial efforts. Like Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), this movie conveys a strong sense of self-awareness, often simultaneously perpetuating horror-cinema clichés and winking at them. If nothing else, Alligator is almost certainly the best movie that anyone could have made on the basis of a ridiculous urban myth. The myth in question involves the notion that baby alligators adopted as pets survive in sewers after being flushed away by owners who discard the animals, growing to gigantic size beneath city streets.

          Sayles’ fanciful script adds a sci-fi flourish to this premise, tracking the lifespan of a particular baby alligator who survives by consuming animal carcasses that are illegally dumped from a laboratory conducting experiments on how to genetically increase the size of animals. Thus, once the titular creature begins his inevitable rampage, he’s a 37-foot mutant with a nasty disposition and a super-tough hide. Borrowing more than a few tropes from Jaws (1975), Sayles contrives an opponent who at first glance seems ill-equipped for defeating a gigantic monster—disgraced and unlucky policeman David Madison (Robert Forster). Once the alligator begins eating people in Chicago, David investigates and actually sees the alligator, reporting the amazing discovery to his superiors and receiving only disbelief and ridicule in return. Undaunted, David seeks help from a scientific expert, just as Sheriff Brody does in Jaws, so he teams up with reptile researcher Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker). Adding a bit of pathos to the mix, it turns out Robin owned the monstrous alligator when she was a little girl, and she was helpless to stop her parents from flushing the critter down the shitter. And later, just like in Jaws, concerned officials hire a grizzled hunter, Colonel Brock (Henry Silva), to wipe out the monster.

          Yes, it’s all very by-the-numbers, and some of the FX shots used to convey the scale of the monster are questionable. But as directed by the capable editor-turned-filmmaker Lewis Teague, who previously collaborated with Sayles on the potent crime picture The Lady in Red (1979), Alligator hums along nicely, bouncing from enjoyably creepy sewer scenes in which the monster is barely seen to outrageous above-ground sequences featuring the giant gator chomping on people. Forster grounds the piece with an appealingly grumpy characterization, and Sayles ensures that gentle sight gags and verbal humor complement the bloodshed. An almost completely unrelated sequel, Alligator II: The Mutation, was released in 1991 to universal scorn.

Alligator: FUNKY

1980 Week: Bad Timing

          Equal parts intellectual, provocateur, and sensualist, British cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg built a singular filmography during the active years of his career. (As of this writing, he’s semi-retired.) Known for his downbeat themes, fragmented storytelling, and startling depictions of sexuality, Roeg made a number of films that divided audiences, with advocates praising his inventive artistry and detractors labeling him a pretentious voyeur. As in all things, the truth probably lies somewhere between those extremes. In any event, while Roeg’s most celebrated works include Performance (1970), which he codirected, and Don’t Look Now (1973), the deliberately unpleasant Bad Timing occupies an important place in his ouevre. A challenging narrative puzzle that builds steadily toward one of the creepiest sex scenes in the history of mainstream cinema, the picture is unapologetically obtuse and unrepentantly adult. Sometimes known by the extended title Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, the movie explores a dark place where carnality and madness intersect.

          Singer/actor Art Garfunkel stars as Alex Linden, an American professor living and working in Vienna. Alex is introduced at a hospital where beautiful young American Milena Flaherty (Theresa Russell) has been admitted for a possible suicide attempt involving drugs. Police Inspector Netusil (Harvey Keitel) interrogates Alex about Milena, deducing that they’re lovers and suspecting that Alex knows more about Milena’s circumstances than he’s willing to share. Roeg presents the storyline as a complicated mosaic, jumping between different periods of the Alex/Milena relationship in order to paint a portrait of a love affair gone wrong. In scenes depicting the couple’s early courtship, the uptight Alex finds Milena’s impulsiveness and volatility exciting. Later in their relationship, he becomes judgmental and possessive, resenting that she’s married to an older man named Stefan Vognic (Denholm Elliot) and screaming at her whenever he discovers she’s taken another lover. All of this culminates on the fateful night of Milena’s overdose, when Alex’s twisted devotion manifests in grotesque behavior.

          Bad Timing is powerful in fits and starts, even though long stretches are dull because they comprise awful people yelling at each other. Worse, the detective angle never quite works, and Keitel’s performance is artificial and mannered, whereas everyone else strives for naturalism. Garfunkel channels something grim and savage with his understated performance, so whenever Garfunkel’s character lets his unsavory side show, the effect is bracing. Russell, who subsequently married Roeg and starred in several more films for him, attacks scenes vigorously and lacks inhibition, which helps smooth over the bumpier aspects of her performance. Bad Timing is not as effective as it could and should have been, because the chilly aesthetic created by Roeg and writer Yale Udoff keeps viewers a safe distance away from the psychological brutality occurring onscreen. Every so often, however, the movie lands a body blow and leaves a nasty mark.

Bad Timing: FUNKY

1980 Week: Borderline

          An action-movie star who prioritized quantity over quality, Charles Bronson made a lot of forgettable movies in his epic career, with the caliber of his projects suffering a precipitous drop in the 1980s as the combination of Bronson’s advancing age and his declining box-office appeal took a toll. Borderline captures the star in transition, because while the horrors of endless Death Wish sequels were still a couple of years in his future, it’s obvious the best material was no longer coming Bronson’s way. Cowritten and directed by Jerrold Freedman, who spent most of his career banging out generic TV movies, Borderline depicts the battle between U.S. Border Patrol Officer Maynard (Bronson) and resourceful human trafficker Hotchkiss (Ed Harris). As the well-financed Hotchkiss gets bolder and more ruthless with each illegal border crossing, Maynard becomes more determined to capture the “coyote,” especially after Hotchkiss murders one of Maynard’s deputies. And that’s basically the whole story.

          Attempts at injecting the people in the movie with genuine characterization are feeble at best: Hotchkiss is a Vietnam vet, Maynard has a drinking problem, and so on. Similarly, Freedman’s supporting characters are feeble. Fresh-faced Border Patrol deputy Fante (Bruno Kirby) drifts in and out of the story without ever making much impact, and the callous businessmen backing Hotchkiss’ operation—rancher Carl Richards (Bert Remsen) and corporate executive Henry Lydell (Michael Lerner)—display slightly less than one dimension each. A glimmer of hope for narrative substance emerges during a sequence in which Maynard travels undercover as a Mexican to Tijuana along with migrant worker Elena Morales (Karmin Murcelo), whose child was killed in the same shootout that left the deputy dead, but like so many other threads in Borderline, Freedman doesn’t take this material anywhere satisfactory or surprising.

          Nonetheless, the subject matter is inherently interesting, the southern California locations suit the story well, and vivid actors pass through the movie. Beyond those mentioned, the cast also includes Norman Alden, John Ashton, Wilford Brimley, and Kenneth McMillan. Plus, since Bronson is strangely absent from many scenes—he’s either offscreen or simply bored—Harris steals the movie without trying. Borderline is sorta/kinda his movie debut, seeing as how he’d played minor roles on television prior to Borderline, as well as a tiny part in Coma (1978). He makes a hell of an impression, personifying Hotchkiss as a believably cold-blooded automaton since the sketchy script precludes the option of forming a proper characterization.

Borderline: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Earthling

          A staple on cable TV in the early ’80s and also one of the final statements of actor William Holden’s long and venerable career, the US/Australia coproduction The Earthling is a strange movie that feels like a conventional one. Slickly directed by Peter Collinson and boasting gorgeous location photography of Australian forests and mountains, The Earthling has such a literary quality that it seems as if it was extrapolated from a short story, although the narrative was written directly for the screen. Holden plays a dying man who returns to the Australian wilderness where he was raised so his life can end where it began. His plan hits a bump when he witnesses a car crash that leaves a 10-year-old boy orphaned. Instead of escorting the child back to civilization, Holden’s character yells at the frightened youth and tells him to fend for himself, until finally agreeing to become the boy’s guardian. Holden’s character then drags the kid along as he ventures deeper into a remote forest.

          Some movies about inspirational relationships between old and young characters concern the teaching of life lessons. The Earthling has some of that stuff in its DNA, but it’s also about the teaching of death lessons. Had the filmmakers done a better job of defining their characters, the movie could have become a timeless meditation on using compassion to overcome the impermanence of human existence. Instead, The Earthling is something like a rough draft of that hypothetically fascinating movie.

          The picture is murky right from the start. Patrick Foley (Holden) arrives in a small Australian town, where he briefly reconnects with a childhood friend named Christian (Alwyn Kurtis). This simple scene should have allowed the filmmakers to answer basic questions, such as why Patrick has an American accent and why he left home. Instead, the scene is a prickly argument about how Patrick doesn’t appreciate the people who love him, culminating with Christian’s accusation that Patrick’s plan to die alone is characteristically selfish. Like so many other things in The Earthling, this crucial scene kinda works and kinda doesn’t. The main thrust is clear, inasmuch as it’s impossible to misunderstand how the filmmakers want viewers to perceive the main character, and yet the details are so fuzzy that it’s hard to genuinely believe what’s happening.

          And so it goes throughout The Earthling. Patrick and the orphan, Shawn (Ricky Schroder), bond simply because the story needs them to bond, not because the filmmakers present evidence of real human connection. It doesn't help that tow-headed Schroder is the quintessential Hollywood kid actor, exuding innocence as he cries glycerin tears. Still, the wreckage wrought by Holden’s years of offscreen hard living lend gravitas and poignancy to his characterization, meaning that he’s in a different—and superior—movie than the one occupied by his costar.

The Earthling: FUNKY

1980 Week: Hangar 18

          Only the brave or the brazen dared to make UFO movies in the immediate aftermath of Steven Spielberg’s monumental Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which realized nearly all the potential of the genre in spectacular fashion. Undaunted, the happy hacks at Sunn Classic Pictures forged ahead with their own entry into the flying-saucer genre, Hangar 18, perhaps emboldened by their success in the paranormal realm with such “documentaries” as Beyond and Back (1978) and The Bermuda Triangle (1979). Anyway, Hangar 18, which shamelessly borrows plot elements from Peter Hyams’ larky sci-fi adventure Capricorn One (1978), begins in space, where the crew of a space-shuttle mission witnesses a UFO striking a satellite. Returning to earth, the astronauts (played by Gary Collins and James Hampton) seek an explanation for what happened but get a run-around from officials, even as their boss (Darren McGavin) receives the true story. Turns out the UFO crash-landed on earth and was recovered by the U.S. military, then hidden in a secret hangar in the Southwest. (Shades of Roswell, New Mexico.) McGavin’s character is tasked with examining the spaceship.

          Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a presidential aide (Robert Vaughn) conspires to keep the whole mess secret until the impending election because—how convenient!—the president recently scolded his opponent for suggesting that UFOs might be real. Making the story even sillier is an action/adventure subplot about the astronauts trying to find the secret hangar, and a very Star Trek-ish thread about McGavin and his team entering the spaceship, discovering quasi-humanoid bodies inside, and trying to decode the alien language they discover on the ship’s computers. Had any of this been put across persuasively, Hangar 18 could have built up a tremendous head of steam, but the filmmaking and storytelling exist on the level of a bad TV movie, with each scene feeling more outlandish than the preceding all the way to the anticlimactic ending. Yet even with its goofy storyline and C-lister cast (apologies to Messers. McGavin and Vaughn), Hangar 18 represents a sort of pinnacle moment for Sunn Classics, combining myriad layers of speculative-fiction bullshit—ancient astronauts, government conspiracies, and so on—into one cartoonish pseudoscience extravaganza. Call it a close encounter of the tepid kind.

Hangar 18: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Shining

          Perhaps even more interesting than The Shining itself is the enormous culture of debate, scholarship, and theorizing that has emerged around the film. At the most extreme edge of this peripheral realm is the insane 2012 documentary Room 237, during which various fans explain their bizarre readings of the movie while director Rodney Ascher employs clips from The Shining, as well as other archival material, as “evidence” supporting the readings. In the most memorable sequence, a Kubrick obsessive says The Shining contains Kubrick’s admission that he helped NASA fake the 1969 moon landing.

          Drifting back to Earth, another fascinating byproduct of The Shining is the conflict between Kubrick and Stephen King that even Kubrick’s death could not conclude. King, who wrote the popular horror novel upon which the film is based, famously denounced Kubrick’s movie because of liberties the director took with King’s storyline. For context, it’s important to note remarks that Kubrick made during his lifetime to the effect that only bad novels merit cinematic adaptation, because they can be improved upon. Hell hath no fury like an author scorned, or, for that matter, an auteur.

          Why is The Shining the object of so much fascination? Devotees of the movie would attribute its longevity to pure cinematic power—beyond mere scares, the film contains provocative allegories and unnerving ambiguities. The Shining also contains one of Jack Nicholson’s most iconic performances, complete with the famous moment when he hacks through a doorway with an axe, then pokes his head through the resulting hole and hisses, “Here’s Johnny!” Yet The Shining probably lasts simply because it’s so many things to so many people, hence the varied interpretations found in Room 237. The Shining is a horror movie, to be sure, complete with gory murders and unexpected jolts, to say nothing of ominous atmosphere that lasts from beginning to end. Moreover, The Shining is a character study, an exercise in paranoia, a fantasy with supernatural elements, and a tragedy. So even though it’s excessive and frustrating and weird, it’s almost completely unique. Employing King’s novel as a springboard, Kubrick—who cowrote the script with Diane Johnson—embarked on a demented flight of fancy.

          As has been endlessly reported in articles and books and documentaries, Kubrick utilized painstaking production techniques, building a gigantic set, shooting innumerable takes, and attenuating production over a reported 500 days. The parallels between this Bataan Death March approach to filmmaking and the storyline are inescapable, because The Shining follows author Jack Torrance (Nicholson) as he and his family occupy the remote Overlook Hotel as winter caretakers while Jack tries to write a novel. Some combination of Jack’s mental problems and unknown forces occupying the hotel transform Jack from a family man into a maniac. Caught in the path of his rampage are his timid wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their psychically gifted son, Danny (Danny Lloyd). Things don’t go well for anyone.

          Kubrick shoots the hell out of his remarkable set, creating mesmerizing images with gimmicks including Steadicam photography, while the eerie score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind accentuates the oddity of it all. By the time the film concludes with an epic nighttime chase through an outdoor maze blanketed in snow, Kubrick has generated such a potent quality of claustrophobia and fear that The Shining is more than just spooky—it’s upsetting. 

The Shining: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Mirror Crack’d

          The Agatha Christie vogue that began with Murder on the Orient Express (1974) fizzled quickly, but not before several big-budget mediocrities were unleashed on the public. Of these lesser Christie adaptations, the British-made The Mirror Crack’d is interesting because it doubles as a catty story about Hollywood, complete with performances by several iconic American actors. The Mirror Crack’d doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, ranging from an inconsistent tone to the way the main detective is sidelined throughout most of the action. Viewed as glossy camp, however, The Mirror Crack’d offers minor distractions. Set in England during the 1950s, the story revolves around a group of Hollywood professionals visiting Great Britain for a movie shoot. Christie’s matronly detective Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury) happens upon the shoot at the same time a series of murders begins, so, naturally, it falls to Marple and her intrepid nephew, Inspector Craddox (Edward Fox), to identify the killer. In classic Christie fashion, the investigation reveals years of secrets and lies, all of which Marple explains in a lengthy final scene.

          The murder-mystery stuff is fine, if a bit perfunctory, so what really connects is the showbiz satire. Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor play aging screen queens who trade nasty barbs, while Tony Curtis plays the sleazy agent/husband of Novak’s character and Rock Hudson plays the director/husband of Taylor’s character. Naturally, there’s a mistress in the mix, as well. Made without any pretense to sophistication, the film is enlivened by bitchery. Looking in a mirror, Taylor’s character coos, “Bags, bags, go away, come back again on Doris Day.” Another gem: “I could eat a can of Kodak and puke a better movie.” You get the idea. Lansbury is great fun whenever she’s onscreen, and in retrospect her performance seems like an audition for the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). Yet for much of the movie, she’s absent, with Fox doing the heavy investigative lifting. As for the big names, Curtis, Hudson, and Taylor are cartoonish but appealing, while Novak is embarrassingly bad.

The Mirror Crack’d: FUNKY

1980 Week: Serial

          Perhaps more than any other American movie released in 1980, Serial makes an appropriate cinematic headstone for the ’70s, meaning the spiritual ethos of that wild decade rather than the chronological decade itself. Set in California’s Marin County, that affluent enclave long maligned as a nesting place for privileged white folks with a weakness for cultural fads, Serial concerns a character who’s sick to death of people talking about feelings and self-realization and social issues, because what he really craves is the Eisenhower-era ideal of a secure career and a stable home. This dude dug getting his rocks off during the anything-goes ’70s, and he’s hip enough to grasp why his daughter joins a cult and why his best friend becomes a swinger, but when consciousness-raising compels his wife to seek meaning outside the home, enough is enough. Like the disappointed boomers whom Lawrence Kasdan depicted so sharply thee years later in The Big Chill (1983), the nominal hero of Serial is a man for whom the ’70s left a bittersweet aftertaste.

          Based on a novel by Cyra McFadden, Serial has more in the way of concepts and themes than it does in the way of narrative clarity. Although the picture ostensibly tracks the adventures of businessman Harvey Holroyd (Martin Mull), it’s really more of an ensemble piece. Similarly, although the picture fares best when it cruises along with verbal satire, director Bill Persky and his collaborators unwisely attempt laugh-out-loud farce at many points, such as the hellzapoppin climax. That stuff falls flat more often than not, and the chaos it creates adds to the sense that Serial is an unwieldy mess. After all, the movie involves gay romantic drama, a motorcycle gang, myriad sexual affairs, a suicide, and many other things. Will the real Serial stand up? And for that matter, does the title, which was extrapolated from the source material, really make sense given how the story evolved during the transition from one medium to another? Oh, well.

          Its discombobulated nature aside, Serial contains some wonderful stuff. Mull slays with his signature deadpan delivery, and his rendering of the line “I’m going to love-bomb the shit out of them” is priceless. The name of the movie’s cult, the Church of Oriental Christian Harmony, is a fabulous one-liner. Costar Sally Kellerman’s remark, “I want to talk about how I’m having trouble talking about it,” captures the ridiculous extremes of the Me Decade, as does the bit when Tuesday Weld, as the wife of Mull’s character, castigates Harvey for daring to criticize their daughter in front of friends: “Do you know what you’ve done to her peer-group dynamics?” Mention should also be made of Tom Smothers’ droll supporting performance as a hippy-dippy clergyman, as well as Bill Macy’s fine work portraying the hero’s confused pal. Alas, there’s a lot of stuff in Serial that is the opposite of wonderful. Christopher Lee is horribly miscast, and the portrayal of gay characters is grossly dehumanizing. Whether the good outweighs the bad is a highly subjective matter.

Serial: FUNKY

1980 Week: Middle Age Crazy

          During one of the many dream sequences that permeate Middle Age Crazy, successful but unhappy builder Bobby Lee Burnett (Bruce Dern) imagines that he’s on trial for the way he lives his life. “I find you guilty,” the dream judge declares, “of preventing your family from exercising their God-given right to tell you a bunch of shit you don’t want to hear.” That vignette illustrates everything that’s wrong—and right—about Middle Age Crazy. At a baseline level, the movie says something truthful about the way men of a certain era felt trapped after achieving the American dream. It’s the old “things you own end up owning you” conundrum. And yet the scene also illustrates that in order to solve his problems, all Bobby Lee needs to do is get the fuck over himself.

          Although technically released during the first year after the Me Decade concluded, Middle Age Crazy is infused with the absurd narcissism of the entitled suburban white male circa the late ’70s. Barraged by sociocultural messaging about self-actualization, Bobby Lee represents faceless millions who couldn’t tell the difference between having it all and having enough—which is why it’s tough to care about Bobby Lee’s journey. He’s so self-centered that he can’t appreciate what he has. Making matters worse, the film’s narrative problems are compounded by execution issues. Director John Trent has a clumsy touch for dramaturgy and pacing, so he presents the content of Carl Kleinschmitt’s bland script without any special spin. For most of its running time, the picture just sits there like a run-of-the-mill TV movie. While Middle Age Crazy would be disappointing under any circumstances, it’s especially irritating because the picture was one of two projects that helped derail the career momentum Dern gained with his Oscar nomination for Coming Home (1978).

          Dern earned his first shot at top billing in the early ’70s, headlining a number of interesting but unsuccessful projects, as well as a few outright turkeys, Coming Home gave Dern another chance. Middle Age Crazy and the perverse psychodrama Tattoo (1981) tanked, so Dern was thereafter relegated to supporting roles in expensive pictures and starring roles in low-budget indies. That said, Middle Age Crazy demonstrates why Dern was never destined for sustained leading-man status. Even when playing innocuous scenes, he’s got a strange twinkle in his eyes—and whenever his character gets angry, he’s frighteningly intense. Dern’s gifts include his bone-deep commitment and his myriad idiosyncrasies, so it’s a waste to put him in something as mundane as Middle Age Crazy, which was based upon, of all things, a song by Jerry lee Lewis.

          It doesn’t help that the actors surrounding Dern aren’t in his league. Ann-Margret makes a valiant stab at the thankless role of Bobby Lee’s crass wife, and the rest of the actors in this Canada/US coproduction are competent but forgettable. As for the story—yawn. Bobby Lee buys a fast car, sleeps with a younger woman (a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, no less), and tells an obnoxious client to take a hike. All of this plays out like an anemic version of Blake Edwards’ sexy hit 10 (1979), though the vibe is actually more grim character study than robust sex comedy.

Middle Age Crazy: FUNKY

1980 Week: Any Which Way You Can

The box-office success of Every Which Way But Loose (1978) all but ensured that audiences hadn’t seen the last of Clint Eastwood playing Philo, a trucker with an orangutan for a pet and a side career as a bare-knuckle fighter. Whereas Every Which Way But Loose is an awful movie that can be explained away by assuming that Eastwood wanted a break from playing tight-lipped avengers, Any Which Way You Can is inexcusable crap. Rehashing the narrative elements of the previous film and sprawling across an absurd 118-minute running time, Any Which Way You Can is punishingly stupid. The die is cast during the opening-credits scene, a dull montage of a pickup truck driving while Eastwood and Ray Charles croon a ghastly country song titled “Beer’s to You” on the soundtrack. Then comes the insipid storyline. After being dumped by country singer Lynn (Sondra Locke) in the previous film, Philo retires from fighting, but gangsters offer him $25,000 to tussle with Jack (William Smith), a brawler with a reputation for beating his opponents to death. Meanwhile, Philo has misadventures with his drinking buddy Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville’s foul-mouthed mother (Ruth Gordon). Everything unfolds predictably. Friends ask Philo not to fight, and then criminals blackmail him into participating. At regular intervals, the movie stops dead for musical performances (by Locke, Glen Campbell, and others), as well as scenes of Clyde defecating in police cars and sharing a hotel room with a frisky lady orangutan. At one point, Clyde cavorts to the accompaniment of a song called “Orangutan Hall of Fame.” By the time Any Which Way You Can reaches its nadir—cross-dressing bikers, a 20-minute fistfight, homophobic dialogue—the idiocy has become intolerable. Although Eastwood wasn’t done scratching his comedy itch (please give the 1989 clunker Pink Cadillac a wide berth), at least Any Which Way You Can ended the actor’s orangutan era.

Any Which Way You Can: LAME

1980 Week: The Idolmaker

          Based on the real-life experiences of Bob Marcucci, the rock-music impresario who led Frankie Avalon and Fabian to teen-idol fame in the 1950s, this heavily fictionalized drama is forever on the cusp of becoming as formulaic and trite as the average made-for-TV biopic. Happily, the innate skills of the participants elevate the material just enough to keep The Idolmaker interesting, and the way the protagonist comes across as a hard-driving prick neutralizes any accusations that the piece is mere hagiography. Another reason The Idolmaker merits attention is that it marked the big-screen debuts for several notables: In addition to being the first feature directed by Taylor Hackford, who broke big two years later with An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), this movie introduced actors Peter Gallagher and Joe Pantoliano.

          Primarily set in New York City, The Idolmaker follows the adventures of Vincent Vacari (Ray Sharkey), an ambitious songwriter who realizes that his ethnic look and receding hairline will prevent him from becoming a star. Channeling his energies into talent management, Vincent discovers swaggering sax player Tomaso DeLorusso (Paul Land), then gradually transforms the young man into a heartthrob with the stage name “Tommy Dee.” Success follows, as do problems. Tommy’s ego grows out of control, and he dallies with underage groupies. Meanwhile, Vincent develops a love/hate relationship with Brenda Roberts (Tovah Feldshuh), editor of a teen-idol fan magazine—instead of collaborating with Brenda, Vincent competes with her. Like so many people in show business, Vincent suffers from a mixture of insecurity and vanity, because he can’t reconcile his behind-the-scenes success with his desire to perform onstage. Eventually, Vincent grooms a new foundling, Guido (Peter Gallagher), into Caesare, using a hype campaign to create the impression that Caesare is a star before he’s performed in public. The mind games that Vincent plays with Guido/Caesare push tensions in Vincent’s life to a breaking point.

          Featuring original songs penned by Brill Building stalwart Jeff Barry, The Idolmaker has authenticity to spare. Hackford shoots concert scenes well, and he shapes performances meticulously. The movie’s a bit too squeaky-clean, giving drug use and illicit sex the arm’s-length treatment, and the script (credited to Edward Di Lorenzo) falls into predictable rhythms. Gallagher’s performance is a problem, as well. Attacking scenes way too vigorously, he shows his lack of experience. However, this is Sharkey’s movie from top to bottom. Reaching a career pinnacle that earned him a Golden Globe, Sharkey incarnates a very specific kind of fast-talking hustler, while also showing aspects of sensitivity and wounded pride that make the songwriting aspect of the character believable.

The Idolmaker: GROOVY