The Adventures of Frontier Fremont (1975)

          A year after they scored a box-office hit with The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, star Dan Haggerty and the same behind-the-scenes team reconvened for The Adventures of Frontier Fremont, which rehashes elements from the previous film. Once again, the story concerns a man who ventures into the wilderness of the American West circa the mid-1800s, and once again, the narrative focuses on the main character’s special relationships with animals. As always, Haggerty seems as if he was born for playing this type of role, not only because he cuts a formidable figure with his bulky frame and glorious mane of golden hair, but because he began his film career as an animal handler. Few actors look as comfortable interacting with frontier critters as Haggerty did. Where Frontier Fremont differs from Grizzly Adams is that it’s closer to being a proper movie. Grizzly Adams didn’t feature synchronized dialogue, so the piece was awkwardly smothered with folksy voiceover. In Frontier Fremont, viewers actually get to hear Haggerty and his fellow cast members speak. The presentation of conventional scenes makes Frontier Fremont flow more smoothly than its predecessor, even though the filmmakers can’t help but include folksy voiceover here and there.

         To call the movie’s story slight would require exaggeration. Jacob Fremont (Haggerty) departs civilization because living in the wilderness promises new experiences. On his way to the frontier, he meets a grumpy mountain man (Denver Pyle), who subsequently becomes a minor recurring character and also provides the aforementioned narration. Jacob’s odyssey follows a predictable course. He loses his supplies in an accident, so he must learn to live off the land. He befriends various animals, including a bear cub and a wolf cub, thus becoming a surrogate parent to furry foundlings. He clashes with hunters who encroach upon terrain that Jacob becomes determined to protect. Over time, Jacob evolves from an adventurer to a woodland messiah, inspiring awed reactions from white men and Native Americans alike.

          All of this is cloying hogwash, of course. Pyle’s character says things like “Holy jumpin’ squirrel fish!” and “Well, I’ll be kicked and dragged through a bucket of lard!” Haggerty and Pyle sing a cutesy song during a cabin-building montage. Adorable baby animals frolic. Panoramic shots capture magnificent scenery. It’s the same formula that made the Grizzly Adams movie a hit, and it’s the same formula that permeated the ensuing Grizzly Adams TV series (again starring Haggerty), which ran from early 1977 to late 1978. If you like ogling nature and don’t mind cornpone sentimentality, all of this stuff works for you. If not, none of it does.

The Adventures of Frontier Fremont: FUNKY

Memory of Us (1974)

          The quintessential figure of a woman who has everything and yet has nothing, Betty (Ellen Geer) is a housewife with a successful husband, Brad (Jon Cypher), healthy kids, and a spacious home. Alas, Betty knows that Brad has a mistress, which makes Betty feel so unmoored that she rents a hotel room in which she can privately explore hobbies, such as photography. It’s Betty’s way of starting a new life without destroying her old one. Meanwhile, voicever reveals what’s going through Betty’s mind, such as questions she wishes she could ask her husband: “Why can’t we look at each other anymore? Why can’t we be tender? Do you tell as many lies to me as I do to you?” All of this should indicate the overly earnest vibe of Memory of Us, a low-budget character study starring and written by Ellen Geer, daughter of familiar movie/TV actor Will Geer. Although Memory of Us speaks to issues that were important in the mid-’70s zeitgeist, such as shifting family dynamics during the time of the sexual revolution and the women’s movement, the movie is so plainspoken and unambitious that it feels like a slight telefilm rather than a theatrical feature.

          One problem is that while Ellen Geer is unquestionably a serious actress, she lacks magnetism. Another problem is the aforementioned voiceover, which functions as a narrative crutch—rather than providing insights that viewers wouldn’t be able to glean from dramatic context, the voiceover affirms things viewers already know, thereby giving the whole enterprise a plodding quality. Only two elements of the storyline have any real inventiveness. The business of renting a hotel room as a private getaway lends metaphorical interest, and a sequence in which Betty hires a hitchhiker to pose as her lover suggests dangerous possibilities. Predictably, however, those possibilities never lead to anything. And that’s the biggest problem with this well-meaning but wholly forgettable movie—the storyline is forever on the verge of going somewhere powerful, but it always pumps the brakes before things get heavy. To paraphrase the title of another women’s picture released the same year, Memory of Us might as well have been titled Betty Is Thinking of Not Living Here Anymore.

          Incidentally, Memory of Us was the second Ellen Geer-scripted feature issued by small-time distributor Cinema Financial in 1974—the family film Silence, with Will Geer in the leading role, came out a month earlier. To date, these are the only two films Ellen Geer has written.

Memory of Us: FUNKY

Delirium (1979)

Is Delirium a conspiracy thriller disguished as a slasher flick? Or is it a provocative story about PTSD and vigilante justice rendered inert by clumsy execution? Or is it just a hot mess resulting from filmmakers jamming as many genre-movie signifiers as possible into one production? The answer to each of these questions is “yes,” but Delirium is less than the sum of its parts. An amateurish low-budget endeavor filmed in St. Louis, Delirium toggles between craven exploitation-flick sleaze and laughable attempts at thematic heaviosity. It’s possible to follow what’s happening, and the picture rarely wants for narrative events, so it’s not unwatchable. However there’s no good reason for most viewers to endure the movie’s 85 minutes—those eager to find hidden pulp-fiction gems should try digging elsewhere. Nonetheless, here are the details for bold souls who can’t be dissuaded. After a young woman is impaled in her apartment, stalwart policeman Larry (Terry TenBroek) questions the victim’s pretty roommate, Susan (Debi Chaney), for clues about the killer’s identity. Concurrently, the film tracks the killer, Charlie (Nick Panouzis), as his rampage continues. Viewers learn that Charlie is an unhinged Vietnam vet associated with a cabal that kills criminals who get off on technicalities. Realizing that Charlie has gone rogue by murdering innocents, the conspriators try to neutralize him before he leads cops to their lair. In competent hands, some of this material might have worked (see 1983’s The Star Chamber), but everything about Delirium is rushed and sloppy, from the anemic acting to the ridiculous use of St. Louis as stand-in for Vietnam during flashbacks. Worse, the presence of grindhouse extremes—unpleasnant scenes of women getting slaughtered—makes the movie’s nods to postwar anguish feel like crass add-ons.

Delirium: LAME

The Astrologer (1975)

          It’s time to leave the real world behind and venture into the alternate universe created by a gentleman named Craig Denney, whose single contribution to the history of cinema is a mesmerizingly terrible paranormal parable called The Astrologer, of which he was both director and star. In this movie, Denney—perhaps best described as George Hamilton’s doughy little brother—plays a man whose adventures captivate the entire world, and whose mystical abilities far surpass those of normal people. Yes, The Astrologer is a cinematic ego trip of spectacular proportions. Denney’s moviemaking suggests the desperate groping of a film student who thinks he’s a once-in-a-lifetime genius even though he has trouble grasping fundamentals. Yet what really distinguishes The Astrologer is the insane ambition of the narrative, credited to screenwriter Dorothy June Pidgeon. (Like Denney, she never did anything else in the picture business.) Despite running less than 90 minutes, The Astrologer packs enough plot for a David Lean epic.
          This movie goes terribly wrong right from the start, after which problems metastasize at a staggering pace. Running through some high points should give a sense of The Astrologer’s deep weirdness. In a prologue, we meet the title character as a youth picking pockets in Long Beach, California, until he’s jailed for vandalizing police cars. (Establishing the movie’s nonsensical pattern, no reason is ever given for why he committed the crime.) Cut to a few years later, when grown-up Craig (Denney) has become as a bogus psychic. He gives a Zodiacal reading to a woman named Darrien (Darrien Earle), during which he pronounces “Libra” as lie-bra, not lee-bra. (Apparently referencing a dictionary was beyond Denney’s powers.) Craig shacks up with Darrien, but she leaves because he can’t generate steady income, so, naturally, Craig befriends an oil executive who wants to get into the diamond-smuggling business. Cut to Craig in a Kenyan prison after getting caught smuggling. Random violence ensues—such as a shooting punctuated by cartoon blood dripping down the screen—before viewers get treated to a snake-attack sequence set to thundering classical music by Gustav Holst.
         Next comes a vignette of someone drowning in quicksand, followed by a lengthy sequence of Craig working on a sailing vessel to the accompaniment of the Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon.” (As in nearly the whole eight-minute song.) Craig lands in the tropics, where he arranges to sell diamonds to Dietrich (Joe Kaye). Who’s Dietrich, you ask? He’s the corrupt cop who abused Craig in Kenya, obviously. Stop asking silly questions! (Important sidenote: Kaye’s performance is endearingly terrible, especially when he describes a nettlesome female character by saying, “Basically she’s just another guttersnipe—I’ll deal with her accordingly.”) Enriched with $2 million from the diamond sale, Craig returns to California and makes a film titled The Astrologer starring himself. It’s at this point Denney’s movie enters metatextual-freakout territory. The film-within-a-film is a huge success, turning Craig into both a media mogul and a celebrity spiritualist, so he simultaneously produces TV shows and helps the U.S. military by making psychic predictions. In his spare time, Craig tracks down his old girlfriend Darrien, which triggers florid melodrama straight out of a daytime soap.
          Appraised conventionally, The Astrologer is such an amateurish endeavor that it doesn’t merit a moment’s thought. Viewed through the proper psychotronic prism, however, The Astrologer is ceaselessly delightful. The acting is wooden. The writing is clueless. The directing is even more so. The production values are hilariously cheap. And in scene after scene, storytelling choices are totally confounding. During a trippy sex-club vignette, the camera repeatedly cuts to a shot of a urinal. During a crucial conversation sequence, the soundtrack omits dialogue in favor of a bombastic Procul Harum song. And in a final grace note, the credits announce that The Astrologer was filmed in—wait for it—Astravision. Perhaps that’s as good a word as any for how disoriented you’ll feel after absorbing the singular experience that is The Astrologer.

          It’s not a movie, man. It’s a vision. An astravision.

The Astrologer: FREAKY

Mon oncle Antoine (1971)

          Set in rural Quebec during the 1940s, Mon oncle Antoine is mostly the intimate character study of a teenager experiencing formative experiences over a Christmas holiday. Strongly evoking the work of François Truffaut (albeit without the master’s discipline or whimsy), Mon oncle Antoine explores several major themes simultaneously. Most effective is the coming-of-age material. Nearly as potent are scenes investigating the dynamics of a group that functions like a family. Least impactful, alas, are efforts at tethering this small story to a larger narrative about looming social change in French-speaking Canada. That said, one must admire the ambition of the piece, especially because the notion of world-class indigenous Canadian cinema barely existed at the time Mon oncle Antoine was made. (There’s a reason why this movie has for decades been prominent on lists of the best Canadian movies ever made.)

          The picture gets off to an odd start, because cryptic early scenes depict the bleak life of Jos Poulin (Lionel Villeneuve), a French-speaking laborer. Then the movie awkwardly shifts from Jos’s remote milieu to the streets of a tiny town, where middle-aged Antoine (Jean Duceppe) operates a general store that doubles as a community hub. Antoine also serves as the local undertaker. Eventually, the filmmakers settle into the viewpoint of Antoine’s nephew, Benoit (Jacques Gagnon), who works in the store alongside Antoine’s wife, Cécile (Olivette Thibault); another teenager, Carmen (Lyne Champagne); and an adult clerk, Fernand (played by the film’s director, Claude Jutra). Antoine drinks, delegates, and vacillates between ignoring and seducing his wife, who seems a bit too receptive to Fernand’s flirtations. Meanwhile, Benoit endures the disorienting phase of learning how to critically appraise grownups—and how to manage growing awareness of Carmen’s sexuality. The main narrative begins about halfway through the movie, when Antoine gets the call to collect a body from a home in the countryside. Benoit tags along, but the journey becomes a test that everyone involved fails.

          Notwithstanding a few moments of levity, Mon oncle Antoine is largely clinical and downbeat. Through Antoine’s eyes, we see how some lives fall into downward spirals, how other lives get stuck in empty routines, and how still more lives encompass only disappointment and regret. Left to the audience’s imagination, of course, is how Antoine might respond to these lessons. Co-written and directed by Jutra, a major pioneer in Canadian narrative film, Mon oncle Antoine boasts engrossing location work and persuasively naturalistic performances. Events feel authentic, as well, perhaps because the storyline was inspired by the youthful experiences of co-writer Clément Perron. Whether it’s accurate to call their film uniquely Canadian is best left to those born in the Great White North, but beyond dispute is the assertion that Mon oncle Antoine is thoroughly empathetic—perhaps to a fault. One can’t help but wonder how a more surgical edit of the same footage might have come across. 

Mon oncle Antoine: GROOVY

Smile, Jenny, You're Dead (1974)

 

          Offering a thoughtful spin on the TV-detective genre, Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead is a reboot of sorts, serving as the second pilot attempt for a series starring small-screen veteran David Janssen as sensitive private eye Harry Orwell. (A few months after this telefilm was broadcast, hourlong series Harry O began its two-year run.) What distinguishes Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead from other TV mystery fare of the same era is a focus on emotions and psychology, rather than action and plot twists. The effort to render a serious crime drama for grown-up viewers is bolstered by imaginative cinematography and moody scoring. Alas, the acting is not universally outstanding, and the suspense quotient is low, an unavoidable repercussion of avoiding the standard whodunnit route. Nonetheless, the movie is in many ways refreshingly humane.

          Harry (Janssen) is a cop on disability following an on-the-job shooting, so he picks up extra cash working as a private investigator. Living alone on a Southern California beach, he’s forever toiling on a boat that seems years away from seaworthiness, and his most perverse characteristic—by Los Angeles standards, anyway—is that he doesn’t drive. Another quirk? No gun. When a friend’s adult daughter gets harassed by a stalker, Harry takes the job of protecting her. She’s Jenny (Andrea Marcovicci), a model trying to divorce an overbearing man while taking comfort in the arms of a much older lover; Harry also finds himself attracted to her. Things get dangerous once Jenny’s stalker decides the men in Jenny’s life are better off dead.

          Writer Howard Rodman provides nuanced characterizations and slick dialogue, while director Jerry Thorpe periodically uses offbeat camera positions to give the movie an idiosyncratic quality. Accordingly, there are compensations in place of the thrills one might normally expect to encounter in such a piece. Janssen excels in the lead role, channeling his signature grumpiness into something complicated, so he’s at once appealing and harsh. Marcovicci does not leave a lasting impression, but Clu Gulager and Tim McIntire lend twitchy specificity to supporting roles, and Jodie Foster contributes her impressive poise to a small role as a youth separated from her mother. As for Jenny’s twisted tormentor, he’s portrayed by future softcore producer Zalman King, and his onscreen behavior is weirdly fascinating because he manages to simultaneously overact and underact.

Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead: FUNKY

The Girl in the Empty Grave (1977) & Deadly Game (1977)

The notion of playing a resort town’s top lawman must have lodged in Andy Griffith’s imagination after starring in the respectable made-for-TV thriller Winter Kill (1974), which was designed as a pilot but failed to produce a series. Griffith headlined no fewer than three reworkings of the basic concept, beginning with Adams of Eagle Lake (1975), an hourlong show that lasted only two episodes. Then came The Girl in the Empty Grave and Deadly Game, wannabe-pilot telefilms about Sheriff Abel Marsh that aired in late 1977. Both were written by Lane Slate, who also created Adams of Eagle Lake. (The full backstory is even more convoluted. Slate introduced Marsh, as portrayed by James Garner, in the 1972 theatrical feature They Only Kill Their Masters, which begat the 1973 made-for-TV sequel Isn't It Shocking?, with Alan Alda as new version of the character named Daniel Barnes. The Griffith projects followed.)

It’s remarkable how consistently the strengths and weaknesses of Slate’s approach simultaneously enrich and flatten The Girl in the Empty Grave and Deadly Game. Slate has fun surrounding Griffith’s intrepid peacekeeper with idiosyncratic townies, some of whom appear in both movies, such as the earnest deputy played by James Cromwell. Slate’s pithy dialogue is at worst vacuously entertaining and at best genuinely delightful, so the details garnishing these films are tasty—especially because the discursive nature of Slate’s scripting suits Griffith’s avuncular performance style. Alas, the movie’s central mysteries are trifling, and Slate has a turgid way of resolving narratives.

In both pieces, Griffith plays Abel Marsh, the unflappable sheriff of Jasper Lake, a stand-in for the real Southern California city of Big Bear Lake, where these movies were filmed. The Girl in the Empty Grave, as the title suggests, kicks off when Abel spots a young woman driving through town and recognizes her as the victim of a fatal car crash that occurred some time back. Deadly Game begins with a U.S. Army truck crashing outside Jasper Lake and thereby exposing the whole town to the dangerous chemical agent the truck was transporting. In both movies, determined and intuitive Abel won’t rest until he finds out what’s really happening—and then, inevitably, whodunnit. Even though both stories drag and meander, there’s almost always something of passing interest happening, whether it’s Griffith solving some logical puzzle or an offbeat supporting character lending comic relief.

While they’re largely interchangeable as far as quality goes, Deadly Game is incrementally more satisfying to watch than The Girl in the Empty Grave because one gets the sense that Slate, Griffith, and their collaborators were starting to figure out what worked and what didn’t for this would-be franchise. Deadly Game also benefits from the presence of the regal Dan O’Herlihy in the main guest-starring role, whereas The Girl in the Empty Grave features a host of rank-and-file character players. Naturally, both movies thrive on the novelty of Griffith channeling Andy Taylor while investigating cold-blooded felonies instead of no-harm-done misdemeanors. And perhaps that’s why these resort-town projects never captured the public’s imagination. Both telefilms are sufficiently gentle to seem like cousins to The Andy Griffith Show, but they integrate mature-audience elements that don’t square with The Andy Griffith Show’s vision of unthreatening Anytown U.S.A.

The Girl in the Empty Grave: FUNKY

Deadly Game: FUNKY

The Road to Salina (1970)

          This sultry European melodrama/thriller exists somewhere between classic film noir and the psychosexual explorations of Nicolas Roeg and David Lynch. Like classic film noir, The Road to Salina concerns an everyman who drifts into trouble because of an irresistible woman. And like many deliberately perverse movies perpetrated by Roeg and Lynch, The Road to Salina plays wicked games with chronology and morality. Also adding to the film’s allure is an offbeat cast and a potent musical score. In fact, the score has undoubtedly led many curious viewers to this picture, because Quentin Tarantino repurposed some music from The Road to Salina for Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). Yet unlike grungier offerings to which QT often leads his acolytes, The Road to Salina has a somewhat elegant quality even though the subject matter is sordid.

          Per the noir playbook, the movie opens in media res, with a young man fleeing a remote location while a middle-aged woman screams for him to stay. The young man makes his way to a police station, reveals to the authorities (but not the audience) that something awful has happened, then reluctantly agrees to head back where it all went down. The remainder of the movie comprises the young man’s return trip, intercut with flashbacks while he explains past events to a cop. Via the flashbacks, we learn that Jonas (Robert Walker Jr.), an American drifting through Mexico, happened upon a gas station operated by Mara (Rita Hayworth). Mara mistook Jonas for her long-missing son. Upon determining that his hostess seemed harmlessly delusional, Jonas decided to indulge her fantasy for a few days. Then a neighbor named Warren (Ed Begley) showed up and he, too, mistook Jonas for Mara’s missing son. Things got really weird when Mara’s sexy daughter, Billie (Mimsy Farmer), became the third person to believe Jonas was someone else. This juncture shifts the movie into Roeg/Lynch territory, because Jonas learns that Billie was unusually intimate with her brother. It should come as no surprise to hint that Jonas’ strange erotic idyll eventually takes some dark turns.

          Given the twisted interpersonal dynamics of The Road to Salina, it’s a wonder the movie never becomes confusing. Director/co-writer George Lautner keeps the plotting as simple as possible, allowing viewers to marinate in bizarre moments—and to gradually unravel the film’s many mysteries. This streamlined narrative approach gives Lautner room for extended carnal vignettes, which Farmer and Walker perform without inhibition. Both actors essay familiar types well; Farmer’s dangerous impetuousness strikes believable sparks against Walker’s dopey recklessness. Meanwhile, the impact of watching faded screen icon Hayworth in a poignant role compensates for the shortcomings of her passable performance—the sense of a woman failing to reconcile comforting fantasies with intolerable reality is palpable. The Road to Salina is not for every taste, to be sure. The pacing can be leisurely, the plot requires suspension of disbelief, and the ending doesn’t quite achieve the impact it should. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to admire here in terms of boldness, heat, and style, so it’s heartening that the film eventually found a second life after briefly passing through American theaters back in the day.

The Road to Salina: GROOVY

5.5 Million Views!

What it is, people of the Interwebs! Touching base with a quick update on the blog’s continued growth, because the number of lifetime views received by Every ’70s Movie recently topped 5.5 million. Each of these milestones represents a far broader reach than I imagined when I started this project more than a decade (!) ago, so I remain immeasurably grateful to all of the readers who have supported this adventure, whether that’s someone who has been here since the beginning or someone who only recently discovered the blog. As for the ongoing life of this project, occasional posts continue whenever I’m able to point my retinas at something relevant that I hadn’t seen before. Concurrently, I post every day to the blog’s Instagram feed, so follow @every70smovie and share the feed with anyone who might dig the content. The Instagram feed features one movie per day in alphabetical order, accompanied by a link to the appropriate review. That’s what I’ve got for today, so until next time, keep on keepin’ on!

Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978)

          If not for its posh production values and the pedigree of its director, the cutesy romance Slow Dancing in the Big City would come across like a mildly diverting but altogether forgettable TV movie. The narrative is slight in the extreme, blending an unpersuasive love story with melodramatic subplots, and if the filmmakers imagined they were rendering some sort of intoxicating modern-day fairy tale, they fell short of that goal. Nonetheless, Paul Sorvino’s affable leading performance goes a long way toward making the picture watchable, because he’s wonderfully cast as a rough-hewn but kindhearted New York City columnist sorta-kinda modeled after the inimitable Jimmy Breslin. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that playing the same character in a more consequential story, such as a political drama or better still a whimsical comedy, could have provided a star-making moment for Sorvino. Instead, Slow Dancing in the Big City flopped in theaters just a month after a better film costarring Sorvino, Bloodbrothers, suffered a similar fate. Thereafter, it was back to the character-actor grind.
          Lou Friedlander (Sorvino) enjoys a pleasant life as a minor New York celebrity thanks to his column featuring stories of everyday city people, but he’s bored in his casual relationship with a dowdy waitress. When he meets a dancer named Sarah (Anne Ditchburn), Lou becomes infatuated. Meanwhile, Lou writes stories about Marty (Hector Mercado), a preteen Latino who may be a musical prodigy but lives in a rough ghetto. Lou dumps the waitress so he can woo the years-younger Sarah, who subsequently experiences a serious medical crisis. And so it goes from there. Filmed in slick but uninspired fashion by John G. Avildsen, notching his first movie since winning an Oscar for Rocky (1976), Slow Dancing in the Big City has intermittent credibility. Since Ditchburn was a professional dancer, she’s impressive whenever she’s moving, less so whenever she’s acting. Yet Sorvino fits comfortably into his role, infusing an uncomplicated character with sweetness and warmth while avoiding mawkishness. The main problem, of course, is that it’s impossible to believe Sarah returns Lou’s affections, so the romantic stuff—which is the heart of the movie—rings false. Lesser problems include dreary pacing and a failure to flesh out supporting characters.

Slow Dancing in the Big City: FUNKY

Sunnyside (1979)

          The bankable surname of of this obscure melodrama’s leading actor explains why he got above-the-title billing in his first movie, and the fact that you’ve probably never seen Joey Travolta in anything else explains why Sunnyside did not provide a career springboard. Yes, Sunnyside features a performance by John Travolta’s older brother—and, yes, he’s nearly as amateurish as you might imagine. The fact that his work is not outright embarrassing provides one reason why Sunnyside can’t be dismissed completely. This is the sort of bad movie that’s always just a few steps away from respectability. Some major elements are abysmal, particularly the storytelling, while others are just fine, such as the extensive location shooting in New York City. Additionally, several supporting performances are solid, with actors including Talisa Balsam and Chris Mulkey notching minor credits in the early days of their long careers. So even though it’s tempting to turn “the movie starring John Travolta’s brother” into a punchline, Sunnyside doesn’t invite scorn so much as it invites indifference. Having said that, was it really a great idea to feature Joey Travolta dancing in the first scene, thereby revealing yet another thing his famous sibling does better than Joey?
      Easygoing meathead Nick (Travolta) leads a street gang called the Nightcrawlers. After one too many humiliating run-ins with the carnies who operate an amusement park in Nick’s impoverished neighborhood, Nick allies with Reaper (Andrew Rubin), leader of a vicious gang called the Warlocks, to scare the carnies into better behavior. The plan backfires because the carnies beat the crap out of the Nightcrawlers—and because the Warlocks kill one of the carnies. Appalled by the Warlocks’ escalation, Nick musters his troops for a turf war. The movie also incorporates two love stories plus a subplot about Nick’s older brother, Denny (John Lansing), whom Nick hopes will steer clear of gang activities. Guess how that goes. Buried somewhere in this sloppy narrative is a trite but effective parable about the different ways people respond to the indignities of poverty, and it’s possible to see flashes of higher thematic aspirations amid the schlocky fight scenes and turgid romantic interludes. Two vignettes capture the extremes of Sunnyside. In one, Nick whines to his girlfriend (“I need you very much, but I gotta do what I gotta do”) before they make out to the accompaniment of bland disco balladry. Ugh. In the other vignette, the Warlocks commit shocking violence against the weakest of the Nightcrawlers to make a memorable statement. These extremes illustrate how Sunnyside toggles between two identities—a doomed star vehicle and a nasty inner-city potboiler.

Sunnyside: FUNKY

Treasure Island (1972)

          As is true of most films with which Orson Welles was associated, this European adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 adventure novel boasts a behind-the-scenes saga that’s more interesting than the film itself. As for the movie, it’s a mostly adequate treatment of Stevenson’s tale, albeit one hampered by bland direction, forgettable supporting performances, sluggish pacing, and wretched dubbing. Yet even with these massive shortcomings, Treasure Island is not unpleasant to watch. The story is full of exotic locations, larger-than-life characters, plentiful violence, and tantalizing mysteries. In 18th-century England, young Jim Hawkins (Kim Burfield) helps his mother run a pub. One day, a crude old sailor named Billy Bones (Lionel Stander) shows up with grand talk of nautical adventures and grave warnings about a nefarious man with one leg. Before dying, Billy gives Jim a treasure map, so Jim signs on with local officials for a sea voyage to seek the treasure. Among the crew hired for the trek is a rascal named Long John Silver (Welles), who just happens to have only one leg. Inevitably, Silver leads a mutiny because he wants to steal the treasure for himself. And so it goes from there. Stevenson’s narrative holds up as well here as it does in myriad other screen adaptations, so there’s no disputing the innate allure of the material.
         Nonetheless, while watching this version of Treasure Island, one constantly feels the impact of behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Welles tried for years to mount the film as writer, director, and star, but by the time the financing came together, Welles had botched so many projects that he was unemployable as a filmmaker. Despite this disappointment, he remained involved as the project’s top-billed actor, and his long-shelved screenplay was used as the basis for the heavily rewritten final script—note the pseudonym “O.W. Jeeves” in the credits. The project’s money people assembled passable production values but skimped on casting, so the movie’s energy drains whenever Welles is offscreen. Worse, the energy often drains even when Welles is onscreen, because while dubbing his lines during post-production, Welles provided line readings so garbled and quiet that his dialogue is frequently incomprehensible. Sadly, Treasure Island provides yet another reminder that few people surpassed the former boy wonder in the fine art of self-destructive behavior. As a result, one can’t help but imagine what a full-blooded Welles interpretation of Silver might have been like—just as one can’t help but imagine how much more vibrant the picture would have been with Welles in the director’s chair.

Treasure Island: FUNKY

Assault on the Wayne (1971)

          Mostly of interest for Leonard Nimoy fans curious to see how the beloved actor handles one of his rare leading-man roles, Assault on the Wayne is a brisk made-for-TV thriller that crams a respectable amount of plot into its fleeting runtime of 74 minutes. Nimoy plays uptight Cdr. Phil Kettenring, the skipper of a nuclear submarine carrying material related to an experimental program testing the ability of subs to launch counter-strikes against ICBMs. Naturally, bad guys conspire to steal the valuable material, so the fun is seeing how the villains try to engineer a high-seas heist. In classic potboiler fashion, every featured member of the vessel’s passenger list has a corrupt agenda and/or a melodramatic backstory. For example, one of Ketternring’s trusted sidekicks is an aging sailor (Keenan Wynn) whose struggles with booze have kept him from rising in rank. Kettenring also tussles with a subordinate officer (Dewey Martin) who once overstepped his role by trying to referee Kettenring’s marital troubles. Is it even necessary to mention that most of the folks aboard the sub worry about the skipper’s wellness because he’s on the mend from a bad medical episode? You see, he’s got troubles, man, so the last thing he needs is attempted larceny while his boat is underwater.

          To some degree, describing Assault on the Wayne in such flip terms is fair because the picture was made in the days when networks cranked out disposable telefilms for undemanding audiences—such was the nature of the marketplace during the heyday of three-network domination. Yet Assault on the Wayne, while hardly imaginative or lush or stylish, boasts a measure of professionalism. The script, by small-screen vet Jackson Gillis, delivers perfunctory elements of characterization and plot with slick efficiency, so what Assault on the Wayne lacks in depth, it makes up for in propulsion. Additionally, the combination of decent production values and a proficient cast yields a palatable experience. (Beyond Nimoy and Wynn, the picture also features Joseph Cotten, William Windom, Malachi Throne, and a pre-moustache Sam Elliott.) As for the main attraction, Nimoy’s just fine here—expressing everything from anguish to desperation to rage, he reaffirms that he was a nimble performer capable of doing many things credibly.

Assault on the Wayne: FUNKY

Deliver Us from Evil (1975)

          The last of three well-intentioned but hopelessly amateurish melodramas that writer/producer/director Horace Jackson made about the African-American experience, Deliver Us from Evil (later reissued as Joey) crams a hell of a lot of story into 96 minutes. Very broadly, the picture concerns the fateful intersection of a tormented man, a disabled child, a socially conscious grade-school recreation director, and a gang of drug-dealing thugs. There’s also a subplot about a young woman who appears in stage shows that dramatize troubles bedeviling her community, plus another subplot about a white cop struggling to understand systemic racism. Even a filmmaker of sublime storytelling ability would have difficulty balancing this many disparate elements. Jackson, despite his obvious desire to edify audiences, is not a filmmaker of sublime storytelling ability. Quite the opposite. Deliver Us from Evil sloppily connects badly constructed scenes, so not only is it difficult to track the narrative, it’s hard to take any single moment seriously because the writing, directing, and acting are substandard.

          After Chris (Renny Roker) is released from a mental institution, he encounters awful racists everywhere, so he’s understandably edgy. One day while driving, he spots a woman named Mindy (Marie O’Henry), who is stranded with car trouble, so he offers her a ride. Yet because Chris drives like a maniac, Mindy demands to leave his car. Upon doing so, she slaps Chris, so he chases her to a house where she visits wheelchair-bound Little Joe (Danny Martin), one of the students at the school where she works. Subsequently, Chris befriends Little Joe and starts dating a friend of Mindy’s. Meanwhile, a local street gang begins selling drugs at Mindy’s school, so she stands up to them, causing gang members beat Mindy and Little Joe. You get the idea. In trying to address a laundry list of social issues, Jackson creates an experience that’s confusing, grim, and preachy. (In one scene, Little Joe demonstrates his newfound ability to recite the Lord’s Prayer.)

          By the time Deliver Us from Evil climaxes with a nonsensical act of violence and a direct-to-camera speech about the futility of black-on-black violence, Jackson has fully succumbed to his worst inclinations, sacrificing narrative cohesion for ungainly rhetoric. It’s a pity, because while Jackson had many worthwhile things to say, he never found effective ways of saying them.

Deliver Us from Evil: FUNKY

Madron (1970)

          Definitive production information on this one is hard to come by, but it appears Madron is an American/Israeli coproduction noteworthy as the first movie to use Israel as a stand-in for the Wild West. And if that doesn’t seem like a particularly significant historical distinction, it’s fitting because nothing about Madron is particularly distinctive. The movie eventually resolves into a palatable opposites-attract love story set against a frontier-vengeance backdrop, but very little of what happens onscreen feels authentic or new, and the filmmaking is perfunctory at best. Viewers who are already susceptible to Richard Boone’s offbeat charm or to Leslie Caron’s delicate beauty will naturally find Madron more enjoyable than viewers immune to the stars’ personas, but even some fans of these actors may find the picture slow going because most scenes feature these mismatched performers struggling to conjure the illusion of romantic attraction.
          As for the picture’s story, there isn’t much. Somewhere in the frontier, Sister Mary (Caron) survives a raid by Apaches and wanders aimlessly until crossing paths with drifter Madron (Boone), who has unfinished business with the very band of Apaches who attacked Sister Mary’s wagon train. Madron says he’ll escort Sister Mary to safety. Every so often, there’s a gunfight or some other violent scene, but mostly Madron and Sister Mary follow the trite routine of a refined female character endeavoring to sand the edges off a thuggish male character. Naturally, love blooms once Madron reveals his sensitive side. About halfway through its running time, Madron shifts from bland TV-style banter to rougher stuff, including a gruesome torture scene. Raising the intensity makes Madron more exciting, but the sleazier elements clash with the comparatively gentle early scenes. The performances are very much on brand, Boone opting for brutal and funny, Caron for mannered and spunky. They both hit the right notes, but they don’t always seem like they’re playing the same tune.

Madron: FUNKY