Ants (1977)

Delivering exactly what the title promises, the made-for-TV thriller Ants is basically acceptable given the expectations one might reasonably have for such a project. Yes, the special effects are minimal and the storyline is pedestrian, but Ants features decent production values, a cast comprising several familiar faces, and plenty of scenes in which people are killed by insects with poisonous bites. In fact, had the producers seen fit to boost the gore and nudity quotients (which is to say, had either of those things been included at all), Ants probably could have earned as a theatrical release. The movie is dim-witted, like most creature features, but it’s not much worse than many similar films made in the same era with bigger budgets. The story is shaped roughly like that of a disaster movie. The lives of several underdeveloped characters converge at a lakeside resort, and construction around the resort upsets a colony of mutant ants bearing poisonous venom. Then, after the customary first 40 minutes in which Our Hero tries to persuade people that ants are the culprits behind several nasty incidents, a number of characters get trapped in a hotel with marauding insects while emergency personnel try to rescue them. Nothing original or surprising slips into Ants, except perhaps for the silly climax during which (spoiler alert!) Our Hero coaches fellow survivors to meditate and breathe through tubes while killer ants crawl on their skin. The mind reels. Although stolid he-man Robert Foxworth and perky blonde Lynda Day George are the film’s real stars, the most noteworthy cast member is Suzanne Somers, appearing at the height of her Three’s Company-era pulchritude and wearing skimpy outfits during most of her scenes. Chaste as they are, the various shots of Somers being mauled by ants while dressed in nothing but a bed sheet have a certain naughty appeal. It’s also interesting (and/or depressing) to see such virile players as Bernie Casey, Brian Dennehy, and Hollywood legend Myrna Loy trying to class up their scenes. Like the movie’s titular creatures, the pleasures that Ants offers to viewers are so small they nearly escape notice. Nonetheless, there’s goofy fun to be had here.

Ants: FUNKY

A Real American Hero (1978)

          The colorful crime-fighting career of real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser had already inspired three installments of the Walking Tall film series before this unrelated take on Pusser’s life was made for the small screen, and in fact a second small-screen spin on Pusser, the TV series Walking Tall, was to follow in 1981. Plus, to make things even more complicated, the Pusser role was originated by Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall (1973) and then played by Bo Svenson in every other ’70s/’80s iteration except for this TV movie, which stars Brian Dennehy. Anyway, although Dennehy is by far the best actor associated with the various Pusser projects—his talents so greatly dwarf those of Baker and Svenson that any comparison between the players is ridiculous—A Real American Hero is as generic as its title. The picture starts out in standard Walking Tall fashion, with Pusser reacting to a drunk-driving tragedy by taking his signature wooden club into a bar that sells moonshine and trashing the joint. Then, as the picture grinds through familiar chapters of Pusser’s life—frustration at the way the legal system protects criminals, followed by imaginative use of arcane laws to beat the crooks at their own game—A Real American Hero becomes monotonous.
          Dennehy is formidable during action scenes, whether he’s intimidating suspects or pummeling opponents, but the filmmakers provide such limp material during non-action scenes that vignettes of Pusser’s home life are boring. It doesn’t help that the picture’s main villain, Danny Boy Mitchell (Ken Howard), is an unimaginative stand-in for the various organized-crime forces that preyed upon the real Pusser’s beloved McNairy County. Danny Boy is a cocky thug with a seemingly endless supply of henchmen and lawyers, but he never seems like a legitimate threat to Pusser because he’s not connected to a larger criminal enterprise. Weirdly, the makers of A Real American Hero entered Pusser’s story after the death of his wife—an alleged murder that drove the man to step up his anti-crime crusade—so there’s a sizable subplot involving Pusser’s friendship with a former hooker, Carrie Todd (Sheree North). This generates several scenes in which Pusser stands up for Carrie’s right to re-enter polite society, a story thread that seems unnecessarily off-topic for a brief movie that runs about 90 minutes. (There’s also some blah comic-relief material with Forrest Tucker as Pusser’s pa.) Still, Dennehy’s innate charisma and the utterly believable way he incarnates righteous indignation snaps A Real American Hero back into focus whenever Dennehy gets his teeth into a meaty scene, and the final shoot-out is exciting.

A Real American Hero: FUNKY

The Jericho Mile (1979)

          Michael Mann didn’t just introduce himself to viewers with his first feature-length directing job. He dazzled them. Arresting, emotional, and smart from its first frame to its last, this made-for-TV drama delivers an unusual story with meticulous realism, showcasing Mann’s signature tropes of a hip visual style, deeply felt character work, and ingeniously integrated music. The picture also demonstrates why Mann is virtually peerless in his depiction of the criminal mind, because he doesn’t portray crooks as monsters—rather, he portrays them as self-aware professionals ruled by strict codes.

          Set inside a maximum-security prison, The Jericho Mile revolves around Larry Murphy (Peter Strauss), a lifer who obsessively runs “fast miles” every day in the prison courtyard. Isolated from all but a few fellow inmates, Larry lives inside himself; the exhilaration of athletic challenge give his existence meaning and structure. One afternoon, humanistic prison shrink Dr. Bill Janowski (Geoffrey Lewis) clocks Murphy and realizes how fast the man is moving, so he confers with Warden Earl Gulliver (Billy Green Bush). An innovative penologist, Gulliver realizes that nurturing Murphy’s talent might inspire other inmates to break the cycle of jailhouse profiteering and post-incarceration recidivism. Gulliver invites a nationally ranked running coach, Jerry Beloit (Ed Lauter), to observe and possibly train Murphy. After staging a race between Murphy and several professional runners, Beloit declares that Murphy has Olympic potential. Yet that’s only the surface of the story. Unfolding concurrent with Murphy’s surprising odyssey is a grim drama involving powerful inmate Dr. D (Brian Dennehy), who runs a jailhouse drug ring and gets into a hassle with Murphy, which inadvertently sparks a prison-wide racial conflict.

          Laced into all of this is a potent revelation of Murphy’s layers. We don’t learn about the nature of his original crime until we’ve already become invested in his journey, so Murphy emerges as a profoundly sympathetic character—we’re able to root for him with full awareness of what he’s done, and full awareness of his capacity for future violence. Presenting Murphy without apologies might, in fact, be the greatest accomplishment of this fine film, so it’s no surprise that Strauss took home an Emmy for his dimensional performance, or that Mann and co-writer Patrick J. Nolan shared an Emmy for the picture’s outstanding teleplay. Yet on many levels, The Jericho Mile is most impressive as a compendium of all the skills Mann had developed thus far as a writer-producer on episodic TV shows, and that he would continue to embellish in his extraordinary feature career. He uses editing and music to create vivacious rhythms; he shoots real locations and sets equally well to conjure an engrossing sense of place; and he guides actors toward naturalistic performances.

          Character players including Bush, Lauter, Lewis, and Roger E. Mosley do some of their career-best work here, imbuing their roles with lively individuality. Dennehy, still very early in his screen career, is animalistic and frightening, and Strauss achieves several moving moments by channeling a volatile combination of compassion and rage. (Strauss totally nails Mann’s trademark device of having criminals speak without contractions to avoid misunderstanding, so he seethes when delivering such lines as, “Man, I am into nothing! That is how I do my time!”) Plus, as he so often does, Mann pulls the whole movie together with an ingenious musical flourish, turning a Latin-ized version of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” into Murphy’s searing theme song.

The Jericho Mile: RIGHT ON

Semi-Tough (1977)

          Had the people making this comedy been more judicious about picking their satirical targets, Semi-Tough might have become a semi-classic, because the actors and behind-the-scenes players were all at the height of their considerable powers. Unfortunately, the movie is a muddle because of indecision about whether to focus on the seedy side of pro football or the über-’70s trend of “est” training.

          The picture starts out like gangbusters, introducing unlikely roommates Billy Clyde Puckett (Burt Reynolds), Marvin Tiller (Kris Kristofferson), and Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh). Billy Clyde and Marvin are the star players for a Southern football team, which is owned by Barbara Jane’s wacky daddy, Big Ed Bookman (Robert Preston). Sharing space platonically because they’ve been friends since childhood, Billy Clyde, Marvin, and Barbara Jane are funny, hip, and neurotic, serious about sports but irreverent about everything else. As the story progresses, Marvin and Barbara Jane become a couple, which causes Billy Clyde to realize he’s in love with Barbara Jane.

          The movie also introduces wild characters like an oily PR man (Richard Masur), a psychotic lineman (Brian Dennehy), and a blissed-out Russian field-goal kicker (Ron Silver). On and off the field, the football stuff is great, with debauched parties, philosophical locker-room interviews, and tense practice sessions. However, the movie gets sidetracked when Marvin falls under the spell of Friedrick Bismark (Bert Convy), the smoothie behind “B.E.A.T. therapy,” a campy spin on “est.”

          In real life, Erhard Seminars Training (‘est”) was a therapeutically dubious fad in which patrons paid exorbitant fees to sit in hotel conference rooms for marathon character-building sessions without bathroom breaks. “B.E.A.T.” takes the extremes of “est” even further; Bismark labels all his followers assholes and spews empty psychobabble (“There aren’t any answers because there aren’t any questions”). Convy, a ’70s-TV stalwart best known for hosting game shows, is actually very good in Semi-Tough, revealing the savvy slickster behind the spiritual-guru façade. Like the football material, the “B.E.A.T.” stuff is great, but it belongs in its own movie. Complicating matters even further, the romantic triangle between the protagonists never really connects, since Marvin transforms into such a B.E.A.T.-addicted space case that he’s easily outmatched by down-to-earth Billy Clyde.

          That said, Clayburgh, Kristofferson, and Reynolds are wonderful, as is Preston; the scene in which Preston and Reynolds scamper around Big Ed’s office on their hands and knees because Big Ed is experimenting with “crawling therapy” is terrific. In fact, there’s so much to like in Semi-Tough that it’s dismaying to report how widely the film’s director, the sometimes-great comedy specialist Michael Ritchie, misses his mark. Still, viewers willing to treat the picture like a sampler platter will be amply rewarded: It may not be a proper cinematic meal, but it’s certainly the equivalent to a bunch of tasty snacks.

Semi-Tough: FUNKY

“10” (1979)

          It’s not difficult to identify some of the reasons why writer-director Blake Edwards’ sex comedy “10” struck a nerve during its highly successful initial release. The story of a middle-aged man who can’t stand the fact that young swingers are having wild sex while he’s stuck in a frosty monogamous relationship, the picture spoke to a whole generation of squares who felt like they were missing out on the erotic perks of the counterculture.

          And then there was the Bo factor. Although she had appeared in a couple of minor films previously, sun-kissed starlet Bo Derek made a huge splash with “10,” instantly becoming one of the most iconic sex symbols of the ’70s. The key image, featured in ads and posters everywhere, depicts the actress jogging along a beach in long-lensed soft focus, her cornrow-braided hair bouncing around her apple-cheeked face, and the rest of her, well, just plain bouncing. Epitomizing a certain fantasy ideal of California sexiness, she was the perfect object for the fixation of dirty old men circa 1979, and her casting is a major part of why the movie works as well as it does—which, it must be said, is not all that well.

          The problem isn’t so much the story, standard wayward-male stuff about Hollywood songwriter George Webber (Dudley Moore) skipping out on his lady to chase after a dream girl; the problem is Edwards’ execution. Instead of focusing on his forte of intricate physical comedy, Edwards tries to make a statement on American manhood that’s about as deep as a Playboy editorial, and nothing drags comedy down like shallow social commentary. Thus, the slapstick bits are often very funny—as when Moore tries to walk across a beach toward Derek but keeps hopping up and down like a dolt because the sand is too hot for his delicate tootsies—but the talking bits are tedious.

          Scenes of George arguing sexual politics with his Broadway-star girlfriend, Samantha (Julie Andrews), are pretentious and, now, quite dated. Even worse are the conversations between George and Jenny (Derek), who comes across not as a real character but as Edwards’ judgmental idea of an airheaded free spirit. To be fair, Edwards is just as harsh in depicting George, but that raises another question—if we’re not rooting for George to have a sexual adventure or rooting for Jenny to steer clear of a horndog, whose story are we following? Given that the picture meanders through a needlessly long running time, and given that the takeaway is a trite love-conquers-lust message, it seems Edwards never quite answered that question.

          Still, there are things to enjoy, and not just the ogling shots of Derek (which, in the context of the movie, seem appropriate instead of gratuitous). Robert Webber is funny and touching as George’s (gay) lyricist, working through his own difficulties with a decades-younger love interest; Dee Wallace is affecting as a lonely woman whose near-miss romantic encounter with George reaffirms her self-loathing; and Brian Dennehy dishes out 100-proof wisdom as a beach-resort bartender. A handful of comedy pros show up for enjoyable bit parts, with Max Showalter standing out as a reverend who wants George to hear the little romantic ditty he’s composed.

          These strong elements underline the frustrating thing about “10”—in many ways, Edwards was at the top of his game when he made the picture, but his grasping attempts at “significance” merely reveal the limits of his talent for cultural observation.

“10”: FUNKY

Foul Play (1978)

          Easily the best-fitting star vehicle that Goldie Hawn made in the ’70s, comic thriller Foul Play is also the first movie that Chevy Chase made after bailing on Saturday Night Live to pursue a big-screen career. The actors’ enjoyable chemistry and the breezily entertaining machinations of writer-director Colin Higgins’ deeply silly script helped make Foul Play one of 1978’s biggest hits. A lighthearted riff on the Alfred Hitchcock formula featuring an innocent character who gets embroiled in a conspiracy, the picture is lavishly produced but so insubstantial that it sometimes threatens to float away. Yet for those who set their expectations appropriately, it’s a tasty serving of empty calories.

          Hawn stars as a San Francisco librarian who stumbles upon plans for an assassination attempt, and Chase plays a smart-aleck police detective who slowly discovers the scheme based on sketchy evidence she brings to his attention. The two fall in love, naturally, to the tune of Barry Manilow’s bombastic theme song “Ready to Take a Chance Again”—which is to say that Foul Play is a loving throwback to old-school Hollywood romance. And while Higgins falls short in terms of visual style, evincing no special gift for camerawork in his directorial debut, he compensates with a imaginative and playful storyline. After all, he earned the opportunity to helm this project after scoring as the screenwriter of Harold and Maude (1971) and Silver Streak (1976), the latter of which provided something like a template for Foul Play.

          From the smoothly handled opening scene to various comic setpieces, some of which land more effectively than others, Higgins serves his script well with brisk pacing and the good sense to keep his actors from playing the material too broadly, notwithstanding some over-the-top villainy toward the end. Unsurprisingly, special care was taken to ensure delightful leading performances. Hawn achieves a winning transition by playing a grown-up intellectual instead of the airhead stereotype that made her famous, and Chase is uncharacteristically warm even though his signature cockiness bubbles beneath the surface. Key supporting player Dudley Moore nearly steals the movie as a diminutive lothario who keeps crossing paths with Hawn, and the long scene in which he unveils his tricked-out bachelor pad is a great example of a comedian humiliating himself for the sake of a joke. Burgess Meredith is lively as Hawn’s eccentric landlord, and ace character players including Billy Barty, Don Calfa, and Brian Dennehy pop up in smaller roles.

          Though it gets a bit windy at 116 minutes (the climax in particular gets draggy), Foul Play is both a respectable homage to classic Hollywood piffles a fine maiden voyage for a promising screen duo. Alas, Chase and Hawn only did one more movie together, the intermittently wonderful Neil Simon romp Seems Like Old Times (1980), which is reviewed here.

Foul Play: GROOVY