Every ’70s Book Review: Weirdumentary

          Welcome to what I believe is the first-ever book review on Every ’70s Movie, occasioned by the discovery of a volume dedicated to one of my fave ’70s-cinema subsets. Published last year by Feral House, Weirdumentary: Ancient Aliens, Fallacious Prophecies, and Mysterious Monsters from 1970s Documentaries is author Gary D. Rhodes’s affectionate survey of movies and TV shows centering pseudoscience, shameless projects that present speculation about sensationalistic topics as nonfiction or a close approximation thereof.

          Longtime readers of this blog may recall my fondness for shlockumentaries from Sunn Classics (and various other production companies) about the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and their ilk. Seemingly all of these projects are catalogued and critiqued in Weirdumentary, a heavily illustrated paperback with, appropriately enough, a big footprint (it’s nearly 8.5 by 11 inches and it sprawls past 300 pages). If you’ve ever longed for a directory explaining the difference between Beyond Belief (1976), World Beyond Death (1976), Journey into the Beyond (1977), and Beyond and Back (1978), then Weirdumentary deserves real estate on your bookshelf.

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

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

          At its worst, Weirdumentary is disposable comment-board banality. At its best, Weirdumentary is a blissed-out viewing journal created by a superfan, with enthusiasm compensating for a lack of heft (and for frequent lapses into juvenile prose). Either way, it’s an undemanding book, better suited to occasional perusal than a straight-through read—which might be just the ticket for a casual fan of this only-in-the-’70s genre. Whatever its shortcomings, I’m glad Weirdumentary exists, and it will be a useful guide for future Every ’70s Movie explorations of the psuedoscience realm.

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas In July (1979)

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

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

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

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July: FUNKY

Richard (1972)

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

Richard: LAME

Up Your Teddy Bear (1970)

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

Up Your Teddy Bear: FREAKY

Fairplay (1971)

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

Fairplay: LAME

The Noah (1975)

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

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

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

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

The Noah: GROOVY

Robert Duvall, 1931-2026 & 10 Million Views

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

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

New Podcast Interview

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

Walk the Walk (1970)

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

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

Walk the Walk: FUNKY

The P.O.W.

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

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

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

The P.O.W.: FUNKY