A Woman for All Men (1975)

A Woman for All Men boasts adequate production values and a few familiar faces, so it’s more palatable than the usual sexploitation trash. Yet the plotting is mindless, and the erotic content comprises topless shots of leading lady Judith Brown. She’s an attractive woman, but not so uniquely beguiling as to energize a plot driven by her character’s ability to drive men wild with desire. These remarks are not meant to denigrate Ms. Brown, but rather to say that it’s hard to figure how the makers of A Woman for All Men envisioned this picture satisfying the target audience for this sort of thing. As a mystery/suspense narrative, this flick doesn’t offer anything beyond the average TV show of the same period, and as a sexual thrill ride, it’s tame. Most of the action takes place at a beach house owned by construction magnate Walter (Keenan Wynn). His adult sons, self-involved jerks Steve (Andrew Robinson) and Paul (Peter Hooten), are rattled when Walter comes home one day with a decades-younger wife, Karen (Brown). What ensues is unsurprising. Sex-crazed Karen gets bored with Walter and seduces Steve. Then circumstances suggest that Walter has died. Karen and Steve conspire to seize as much of Walter’s estate as possible. Obstacles blocking those goals include Walter’s loyal housekeeper, Sarah (Lois Hall), and a cop (Alex Rocco) investigating Walter’s disappearance. There are worse movies of this type, but finding things to praise about A Woman for All Men is challenging. Among other problems, all the performances are forgettable—even watching the colorful Wynn play a blustery old lech only goes so far—so the beach house emerges as the only memorable character.

A Woman for All Men: LAME

Charley Varrick (1973)

          B-movie director Don Siegel was on a serious hot streak in the ’70s, capping his previously erratic career with a run of wonderfully entertaining dramas and thrillers, notably the four ’70s movies he made with actor Clint Eastwood. Charley Varrick was Siegel’s first movie after he and Eastwood scored with Dirty Harry (1971), and the picture proved the director’s appeal wasn’t predicated solely on his access to the former Man With No Name. A tight little crime thriller with a sense of playful humor (even though it contains plenty of vicious violence), Charley Varrick stars the inimitable Walter Matthau as a pilot-turned-crook who inadvertently steals over $750,000 from the Mob, then tries to wriggle free of the ensuing hit that’s ordered on him. Based on a novel by John Reese, the picture stacks one clever twist upon another, so even though the plot’s a bit overstuffed—the picture runs 111 minutes, and it could have lost a supporting character or two without any diminishment in quality—Charley Varrick moves along at a zippy pace.
          Set in the Southwest, the movie begins when Charley (Matthau) and his accomplices rob a small-town bank. The crime goes badly, resulting in several deaths, so a police manhunt begins. But that’s not the real trouble. It turns out the bank was a dead drop for laundered Mafia money, which means Charley pilfered from the wrong people, and, alas, giving the money back and apologizing won’t satisfy the aggrieved parties. Crooked banker Boyle (John Vernon) enlists brutal but silver-tongued enforcer Molly (Joe Don Baker) to track down and kill the thieves. Since Charley did a stretch in prison and knows his way around the underworld, much of the picture comprises fascinating scenes of Charley planting seeds for his ultimate escape plan while constantly remaining a step ahead of his relentless pursuers. Along the way, Charley expertly handles a hot-tempered accomplice (Andrew Robinson), a duplicitous counterfeiter (Sheree North), an opportunistic secretary (Felicia Farr), and other shifty characters.
         Because Matthau was always so good at making devious characters seem likable, it’s great fun to watch him incarnate a calculating son of a bitch who’s perfectly willing to throw accomplices in the line of fire if that’s what it takes to survive. Plus, because the story establishes that the people chasing Charley are completely reprehensible, our sympathies always lie with the “hero,” even though he’s a liar and thief. Siegel gets a lot of visual mileage out of such dilapidated locations as junkyards and trailer parks, sketching a netherworld of career criminals who hide their illegal enterprises behind borderline legitimate businesses—a crappy photo studio on a second-floor walkup in an apartment building, a crop-dusting concern in the middle of nowhere, and so on. Better still, Siegel hits the perfect everyone’s-expendable tone for this sort of thing, using low angles and quick cuts and the nerve-rattling rhythms of Lalo Schifrin’s score to amplify the danger in every corner of this seedy little universe. The acting is uniformly colorful, with Farr and North, among others, contributing seen-it-all stoicism while Baker and Vernon incarnate gleefully sociopathic attitudes. Flying above it all—sometimes literally, since he pilots a biplane during the thrilling finale—is Matthau, caustic and unimpressed even during the most frightening of circumstances.

Charley Varrick: GROOVY

Dirty Harry (1971) & Magnum Force (1973) & The Enforcer (1976)

          In the years following the Supreme Court’s landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision, which laid out the rights of persons arrested by police, an outcry rose from crime victims and others incensed by what they perceived as kid-gloves treatment given to accused criminals post-Miranda. Hollywood responded with films including Dirty Harry, a powerful action movie about a vigilante cop who personifies the “shoot first, ask questions later” ethos. Pacifists hate the very idea of this franchise, maligning Dirty Harry’s violent exploits as fascist pornography, but despite the diminishing sophistication of later entries in the series, the first movie (and to a lesser degree the second) are as thought-provoking as they are exciting. Segueing gracefully from his triumphs in a string of European-made Westerns, ascendant star Clint Eastwood is unforgettable as San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan, because his mixture of seething anger and swaggering confidence perfectly illustrates the film’s concept of an archaic gunslinger adrift in morally ambiguous modern times.
          Eastwood’s mentor, B-movie specialist Don Siegel, directs the first film, Dirty Harry, with his signature efficiency, briskly and brutally dramatizing Callahan’s pursuit of the “Scorpio Killer” (Andrew Robinson) as well as the policeman’s clashes with bosses including a politically opportunistic mayor (John Vernon). The legendary “Do I feel lucky?” scene is a perfect introduction to Callahan’s perverse attitude, and Eastwood and Siegel really soar in the climax of the film, when they reveal how little separates Callahan and the killer, ethically speaking; though the fine line between cops and crooks later became a cinematic cliché, it was edgy stuff in 1971. So whether it’s regarded as a social statement or just a crackerjack thriller, Dirty Harry hits its target.
          The first sequel, Magnum Force, features a clever script by John Milius, with Callahan facing off against a cadre of trigger-happy beat cops who make him seem tame by comparison. Milius’ right-wing militarism sets a provocative tone for the movie, forcing viewers to identify the lesser of two evils in a charged battle between anarchistic forces. Hal Holbrook makes a great foil for Eastwood, his chatty exasperation countering the star’s tight-lipped stoicism, and fun supporting players including Tim Matheson, Mitchell Ryan, and David Soul add macho nuances to the guns-a-blazin’ thrills. (Watch for Three’s Company starlet Suzanne Somers in a salacious bit part.)
          The last of the ’70s Dirty Harry flicks, The Enforcer, gets into gimmicky terrain by pairing Callahan with his worst nightmare, a female partner, but the producers wisely cast brash everywoman Tyne Daly (later of Cagney & Lacey fame) as the partner; since she’s not Callahan’s “type,” it’s believable that even with his Neanderthal worldview, he develops grudging respect for her once she holds her own in a series of chases and shootouts. The movie makes terrific use of Alcatraz as a location for the finale, but a bland villain and an undercooked plot make the film a comedown. After The Enforcer, Eastwood wisely took a break from the Dirty Harry character, returning several years later for a pair of uninspired ’80s sequels.

Dirty Harry: RIGHT ON

Magnum Force: GROOVY

The Enforcer: GROOVY