The Great Masquerade (1974)

           Drag comedies have a long history in Hollywood, so it’s not as if low-budget farce The Great Masquerade was daring for its time—even though it eschews the homophobia that plagues most vintage movies about men dressing as women. Instead of getting doomed to cinematic oblivion by controversy, The Great Masquerade likely failed to get attention because of cheap production values, inconsistent acting, and sloppy direction. The script’s quality is roughly equivalent to that of some random sketch on a ’70s variety show, so if the material had found its way to producers with better resources and a director with a stronger feel for comedy, the picture could have been an amiable trifle. As is, The Great Masquerade—also known as The AC/DC Caper and Murder on the Emerald Seas—is a gentle comedy buried inside an exploitation flick.

          The silly premise is that for three years running, contestants in a Florida beauty pageant have become victims of unsolved murders, so the police recruit a male officer to pose as a contestant in the latest event, set to happen on a cruise ship. The main suspects are the pageant’s lascivious promoter and a pair of stereotypical Italian gangsters. The setup is mostly just a springboard for gags, the majority of which are duds. Concurrently, the wrongheaded impulse to feature salacious content leads to vignettes that resemble softcore porn. In the most egregious sequence, a little person persuades a pretty blonde to model for body art, but when the model falls asleep while the little person is painting her breasts, he starts licking. That sends her screaming into a hallway while still naked, at which point she’s chased by a psycho dressed as a clown. This kind of stuff doesn’t sit comfortably with scenes of lighthearted banter between the main characters.

          Robert Perault’s work in the lead role helps make The Great Masquerade palatable. He’s amateurish, handsome, likeable, and he strives for a frothy tone. Meanwhile, supporting players including John DeSanti, Frank Logan, and Lee Sandman try for broad-comedy caricatures—they’re as clumsy as Perault, but they put in the effort. Regarding more familiar players, it’s novel to see Roberts Blossom play a verbose sophisticate instead of his usual creeps and crooks, but good luck figuring out why The Great Masquerade has cameos from Johnny Weissmuller and Henny Youngman. Behind the camera, the most noteworthy figure is director and cowriter Alan Ormsby, who wrote and directed the seedy horror flick Deranged (1974), which stars Blossom as an Ed Gein type; wrote My Bodyguard (1980); and cowrote Cat People (1982) and The Substitute (1996).
 
The Great Masquerade: FUNKY

The Gamblers (1970)

          The public’s zeal for smooth-criminal movies was on the wane by the time The Gamblers passed through cinemas in early 1970. Yet diminishing enthusiasm for a genre is hardly the only reason the movie failed to make an impression. Although respectably made from a technical point of view, the cast is underwhelming and the script is underdeveloped. Don Gordon, a fine character actor who presumably got this gig after being featured prominently in Bullitt (1968), plays a card shark who learns that con men are planning to fleece a European investor during a river cruise through the area then known as Yugoslavia. Setting aside the usual crime-movie challenge of getting audiences to care about craven people who prey on innocents, The Gamblers suffers because its central scheme is simultaneously too opaque (how did the card shark learn about the con men?) and too obvious (the ending requires viewers to accept that our intrepid protagonist can’t detect duplicity and that the real villains are masterminds).

          Rooney (Gordon), accompanied by goofy henchman Goldy (Stuart Margolin), works his way into the orbit of Broadfoot (Kenneth Griffith) and Cozzier (Pierre Olaf), who have their own goofy henchman, Koboyashi (Richard Ng). Upon discovering that Rooney is a slick card player, Broadfoot and Cozzier enlist him to help rip off Del Isolla (Massimo Serato), who is in possession of a bank note for $250,000. During the cruise, Rooney also meets attractive blonde Candance (Suzy Kendall), so he uses her as a lure to get Del’s attention. None of this is particularly interesting to watch, but the filmmakers try at various times to emulate the styles of similar movies. Add in some jaunty theme music, a few scenes of Kendall in barely-there swimsuits, plus weak attempts at comedic banter, and the result is a simulacrum of light entertainment. 
          Even devoted fans of the smooth-criminal genre will have difficulty getting excited about The Gamblers. It’s not a chase picture or a heist movie, so the adrenaline level is low. Meaning no disrespect to the former Yugoslavia, the locations don’t have the flair of England, France, or the Mediterranean, the customary settings for ’60s flicks of this ilk. And the star power just isn’t there. Kendall provides the requisite sun-kissed loveliness, but Gordon has such a menacing quality that he can’t muster the charm required to put something like this over. Margolin is both miscast and saddled with demeaning moments including a ridiculous dance scene, and—no surprise, given the cultural climate of the time—Ng’s characterization is problematic. 

The Gamblers: FUNKY

Honky Tonk Nights (1978)

Apparently Honky Tonk Nights represents an attempt by a group of pornographers to make a legit flick for the drive-in circuit, which goes a long way toward explaining the abysmal acting, ghastly filmmaking, and plentiful female nudity. There’s a plot of sorts buried amid the smut and the aimless filler scenes, but coherence and purpose are not the watchwords here. Honky Tonk Nights follows several threads connected to a country-music bar, and the festivities begin when singer Dolly Pop (Serena) gets cranky after being shorted one too many times on her performance fees at the establishment, which is operated by Georgia (Georgina Spelvin). Soon Dolly’s bandmates recruit a replacement singer, absurdly buxom Belle Barnette (Carol Doda), but Belle gets heckled during her fist gig by drunks who expect her to strip onstage. Meanwhile, another young woman vaguely connected to the main plot endures romantic travails with an unfaithful boyfriend trying to make a living as a daredevil auto racer, and country star Bill Garvey (played by real-life musical luminary Ramblin’ Jack Elliott) appears just in time to provide career opportunities for busty striver Belle. All of the events just described comprise perhaps one-third of the movie’s scant 70 minutes—the remainder of the deeply boring flick showcases brawls, hang-out scenes, and, of course, needlessly prolonged sex scenes. As for the country tunes that fill nearly every moment of the soundtrack, it should come as no surprise that they’re wholly unimpressive, arguably notwithstanding Elliott’s sloppy live rendition of the enduring religious song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

Honky Tonk Nights: LAME

8 Million Views!

Hey there, groovy people! Once again, it’s my privilege to say thanks for your continued interest and loyalty because Every ’70s Movie has crossed yet another readership milestone that would have seemed unimaginable to me when I started this project fourteen (!!!) years ago. As I’ve stated in several previous messages, the difficulty of tracking down as-yet-unseen titles has slowed the pace of posting, but I’ve got a line on a tranche of interesting obscurities that I hope to check out over the holidays, and sometime in the new year I may post another of my periodic lists of titles I can’t track down, in the hopes that some intrepid readers have access to them. Meantime, here’s wishing everyone in the Every ’70s Movie universe a groovy holiday season and a far-out new year. Until next time, thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on!