Baxter! (1973)

          Something of a Catcher in the Rye for the grade-school set, this peculiar Anglo-American production begins as the lighthearted story of a precocious Californian exploring a new life in the UK, then steadily darkens until becoming the harrowing character study of a young man losing his grip on reality. Among the film’s many admirable elements are a host of sensitive performances, a witty script by Reginald Rose, and a willingness to follow the subject matter into grim terrain. For those who are okay with offbeat tonal shifts, Baxter! will seem insightful, serious, and touching. For others, the movie will seem confused and depressing. Yet nearly any viewer could find at least one thing to like here, whether it’s Geoffrey Unsworth’s stately photography, Patricia Neal’s sharp work as a speech therapist, or young Scott Jacoby’s impressive performance in the leading role.

          When the picture begins, bitter and self-absorbed divorcée Mrs. Baxter (Lynn Carlin) relocates to England with her son, Roger (Jacoby). He’s charming and imaginative and smart, but he has a glaring speech impediment because he replaces every “R” with “W.” As a result, he can’t even say his own name without embarrassment. Nonetheless, Roger strikes up friendships with kids at his new school, and also with Chris Bentley (Britt Ekland), a beautiful young woman who lives upstairs in the same apartment building. Eventually, Chris invites Roger on getaways with her French boyfriend (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and they become surrogate parents for the boy while Mrs. Baxter preoccupies herself with dating, hobbies, self-pity, and excessive drinking. Also central to Roger’s life is Dr. Roberta Clemm (Neal), who recognizes that Roger’s difficulty with speaking is symptomatic of deeper problems. As the movie progresses, Mrs. Baxter’s parenting becomes abusive, pushing her son deeper into the hiding place of his troubled mind.

          It’s always painful to watch stories about parents damaging their children, and Baxter! employs the familiar balm of a heroic adult endeavoring to rescue an endangered youth. From a structural perspective, there’s nothing new about this picture. Furthermore, the movie’s flow has a herky-jerky quality, with some scenes skewing way too gloomy while others are so frivolous as to be silly. (Try to avoid cringing when Cassel, Ekland, and Jacoby sing a musical number together.) However, the best stuff in Baxter! is quite respectable, and the way the film spins from giddy to sober to terrifying almost works. If nothing else, the filmmakers deserve ample credit for presenting a fully dimensional juvenile character. Even when the narrative bumps, the sense that we’re seeing the world through the protagonist’s unique prism never wavers.

Baxter!: FUNKY

High Velocity (1976)

          If you’re willing to overlook a pointless story and sludgy pacing, you might be able to enjoy some of the surface pleasures in High Velocity, an action thriller shot in the Philippines. Leading man Ben Gazzara and costar Paul Winfield strike up decent male-bonding chemistry during their scenes together as mercenaries on a dangerous mission, and Kennan Wynn conjures a passable degree of intensity playing the obnoxious American businessman whom the missionaries strive to rescue from a jungle hideout. Also contributing more than the movie deserves is composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose incredibly prolific output (he scored five other pictures the same year, including Logan’s Run and The Omen) rarely diminished the quality of his work. Among the major players who fail to impress, Britt Ekland adds nothing to a small role as the wife of Wynn’s character, and director Remi Kramer—well, this was his first and last feature film, so that tells you what you need to know about the caliber of the storytelling. Nonetheless, High Velocity contains an adequate number of action scenes, so every so often the movie rises from its stupor to deliver a fleeting thrill.

          Set in some unnamed corner of the Far East, the picture begins by introducing Andersen (Wynn), a blustery executive who treats his local help terribly and isn’t much kinder to his beautiful trophy wife (Ekland). Militia types kidnap Andersen, so the wife hires Vietnam veteran Baumgartner (Gazzara) to plan a rescue operation. He, in turn, solicits the assistance of former comrade-in-arms Watson (Winfield). Various double-crosses ensue, as does a long trek into remote terrain. Sadly, much of the picture comprises dull scenes of the mercenaries staking out the guerilla’s camp. More lively are bits featuring Andersen in captivity, because his kidnappers force the Ugly American to confront the effects of his company’s imperialism. Excepting the friendship between the two mercenaries, nothing in this picture pings emotionally, and the narrative valleys outnumber the peaks. There’s also the little matter of how the plot doesn’t end up making all that much sense once everything is resolved. Yet somehow the combination of skilled actors in three leading roles and a steady stream of zesty cues from Goldsmith keeps High Velocity borderline watchable.

High Velocity: FUNKY

The Ultimate Thrill (1974)

          There’s a great pulp idea at the heart of The Ultimate Thrill, although the potential of the idea is almost completely neutralized by bad writing, one-dimensional acting, and tedious skiing scenes. Patient B-movie fans might enjoy trudging through the boring bits in order to reach the sensationalistic high points, but even those viewers are sure to be underwhelmed. Suffice to say, the title of this picture promises much more than the movie actually delivers, even though the title refers to the kick that the story’s villain gets out of killing people. And that’s where the great pulp idea comes into play—the villain, a super-wealthy businessman, uses his beautiful wife to lure unsuspecting young men to his ski chalet, and then he hunts them down and murders them, using the pretense of being an aggrieved husband as his justification. Chances are the story would have worked in an erotic-thriller sort of way had the filmmakers added in one more element—the bad guy getting a psychosexual charge by actually watching young men sleep with his wife. However, The Ultimate Thrill is so ineptly written and directed that expecting the film to provide a fully rendered narrative concept is unreasonable. At most, this picture offers a kinky premise, some attractive shots of snow-covered mountains, and a few surprisingly nasty instances of violence.

          Set in the posh resort town of Vale, Colorado, The Ultimate Thrill concerns Roland (Eric Braeden), a powerful and wealthy stud with a porn moustache and a private helicopter. Roland’s long-suffering wife is blonde hottie Michele (Britt Ekland). In the first act of the movie, Roland abandons Michele long enough for wannabe seducer Tom (Michael Blodgett) to make the scene. Then Roland returns and boots Tom from his house, telling the young man to flee on skis. Roland follows in his helicopter, leading to the gory but silly scene of Tom skiing off a cliff—and smashing face-first into the passenger-side window of the helicopter, leaving a mess of blood and viscera in his wake. Roland finishes Tom off in somewhat spectacular fashion. The remainder of the movie concerns Michele’s entanglement with a writer, Joe (Barry Brown), and the inevitable showdown between Joe and Roland. At one point, a hang-glider becomes involved. Directed by the prolific Emmy winner Robert Butler, who spent most of his journeyman career in episodic TV, The Ultimate Thrill is competent in terms of visuals, but anemic from the perspective of character and story. The dialogue is trite, many scenes feel padded, and the performances are robotic. Worse, the picture includes the ugly cliché of a female character submitting to rape because she interprets the assault as an act of misguided passion. Yuck.

The Ultimate Thrill: FUNKY

Asylum (1972)

          One in a series of anthology horror films generated by UK company Amicus Productions, Asylum boasts a solid pedigree: The picture was written by Robert Bloch, of Psycho fame, and directed by Hammer Films veteran Roy Ward Baker. The picture also has a solid cast, with Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Barry Morse, Barbara Parkins, Robert Powell, and the elegant Charlotte Rampling. Like most similar Amicus movies—and, for that matter, like most anthology pictures in general—it’s wildly uneven. On the plus side, the framing story is stronger than usual, and the overall presentation is terrific, thanks to glossy cinematography and solid production values. On the minus side, two of the stories are deeply silly, even by the standards of tongue-in-cheek UK horror. Asylum has its minor pleasures, but it’s not to be taken the least bit seriously.

         In the framing story, earnest young psychiatrist Dr. Martin (Powell) shows up to interview for a job at a mental institution. While speaking with his would-be superior, Dr. Rutherford (Magee), Martin is given a challenge—he must identify which of the asylum’s patients is a former doctor, driven insane by dealing with the institution’s lunatics. If Dr. Martin identifies the right patient, he gets the job. Each visit with a patient occasions a flashback vignette with a gruesome twist ending. In “Frozen Fear,” Ruth (Parkins) describes being attached by dismembered body parts that move of their own volition. In “The Weird Tailor,” Bruno (Morse) recalls how a mystery man (Cushing) hired him to construct a magical suit of clothes. In “Lucy Comes to Stay,” Barbara (Rampling) explains that she was framed for murder by Lucy (Ekland), who may or may not be imaginary. And in “Mannikins of Horror,” Dr. Byron (Lom) reveals his hobby of creating tiny robots bearing lifelike faces modeled after his acquaintances.

          The bits with the homicidal body parts and the violent robots (you knew they’d get bloodthirsty, didn’t you?) are unavoidably goofy, even though all of the actors give gung-ho performances. Conversely, “Lucy Comes to Stay” is fairly credible, but Ekland and Rampling provide more glamour than talent, so “Lucy Comes to Stay” gets tedious after a while. Still, Amicus had this sort of thing down to a science, and cramming five stories into 88 minutes ensures a relatively brisk pace. Further, Bloch provides more than enough cheap thrills, and Baker casts the whole cartoonish enterprise in a warm glow thanks to his dignified pictorial style. So, while Asylum may not be particularly frightening, at least it’s bloody and colorful and energetic.

Asylum: FUNKY

The Wicker Man (1973)

          Easily one of the best horror movies of the ’70s, if only because its literary texture and offbeat subject matter differentiate it from more conventional shockers, The Wicker Man is a disturbing story about the murderous aspects of religion. Set on a remote island off the Scottish coast, the picture begins as a standard mystery, because a mainland policeman follows up on reports of a missing young girl. Then The Wicker Man escalates into something perverse. On first viewing, the picture seems completely bizarre, but after prolonged exposure the classicism of the film’s structure becomes more evident. This is horror cinema of the most elegant sort, in which an emotionally relatable protagonist encounters a situation beyond his understanding. The Wicker Man also contains some of the most disquieting images of the ’70s, so even though it doesn’t generate many jolts—the filmmakers’ methodology is far too subtle for that—The Wicker Man leaves an indelible impression. However, it’s no surprise that the film’s content was far too weird for mainstream acceptance during The Wicker Man’s original release; shown as a B-movie in England and the US, the picture eventually gained critical acclaim and cult-classic status. Even today, it remains something of an obscurity.

          Loosely based on a novel by David Pinner called Ritual, the picture was written by the clever Anthony Schaffer (best known for his play and screenplay Sleuth) and directed by impressive first-timer Robin Hardy. At the opening of the story, uptight policeman Sgt. Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) files by seaplane to remote Summerisle, where he’s greeted with suspicion. Howie had received a note stating that a young girl was missing, but the locals all claim no knowledge of the girl, with the local schoolteacher, Miss Rose (Diane Cilento), enigmatically claiming the girl doesn’t exist anymore. Meanwhile, Howie witnesses all sorts of odd behavior among the islanders, including nude outdoor rituals and the open display of such gruesome wares as a jar of foreskins at the drugstore. All of this tests Howie’s character, because he’s a devout Christian. In one of the film’s signature scenes, sexy barmaid Willow (Britt Ekland) does an intense nude dance in the hotel room next to Howie’s while singing a mesmerizing song, and the scene is intercut with Howie’s sweaty reactions as he responds to—but resists—her supernatural siren call. Eventually, Howie learns that the islanders are pagans who believe in regeneration and sacrifice, but revealing anything more of the plot would diminish the experience.

          Hardy and Shaffer fill The Wicker Man with evocative glimpses into the strange world of ancient religious practices, so the picture features elaborate costumes, hypnotic music, and masks in the form of animal heads. Tension is generated by watching Howie’s sanity challenged when he sees inexplicable visions, and by the question of whether an outsider can survive in an environment where human life has a different value than it possesses in the modern world. Complementing a supporting cast filled with colorful eccentrics, the movie features horror veteran Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, the leader of the island’s pagan sect; even when wearing outlandish wigs (and, in one scene, full drag!), Lee gives one of his career-best performances. Ekland is powerfully erotic, and Woodward’s intense portrayal of a man who wears Christianity like a shield against the mysteries of the world is forceful and haunting. Best of all is the movie’s unforgettable ending.

The Wicker Man: RIGHT ON

Get Carter (1971)

          Years before Charles Bronson went on a rampage in Death Wish (1974), Michael Caine turned vengeance into an art form with his chilling performance in Get Carter. Playing a cold-blooded London gangster investigating the mysterious death of his brother, Caine is like a deadly automaton in this picture, using intimidation, murder, sex, and torture to uncover the truth. Based on a novel by Ted Lewis and written and directed by British journeyman Mike Hodges (who covered similar terrain in the ’90s movie Croupier), Get Carter is a quietly stylish affair, with atmospheric long-lens shots and sharp editing creating a vivid milieu of seedy criminality.
          Much of the picture takes place in the industrial town of Newcastle, and Hodges revels in finding the grimiest locations possible, literally surrounding his morally bankrupt characters with filth and urban decay. Better still, the metaphors implied by the visuals are allowed to percolate below the surface, so Get Carter can be watched as an action picture or, for viewers looking for more, something deeper.
          The movie is way too long and also way too slow getting started, but the second hour is relentless—some of the violence contained therein is genuinely shocking. Again demonstrating the picture’s commitment to disquieting mood over vulgar obviousness is the fact that Hodges mostly eschews gore; the creepiest images in the picture are often Caine’s haunted eyes as he obliterates an opponent. Adding to the film’s insidious potency is a thread of reckless carnality: At one point, Caine has phone sex with a gangland moll (Britt Ekland) while glaring at the horny middle-aged landlady who’s eavesdropping. So in addition to being an avenger, Caine’s character functions as an observer gauging the moral fiber of everyone he encounters, and they all fail the test miserably. 
         Caine is compelling throughout, whether icily delivering lines like “Do you wanna be dead, Albert?” or racing around with frothing-at-the-mouth rage. Like the movie itself, he’s merciless. Not coincidentally, he also delivers a master class in understated performance style, proving that if an actor has the right vibe churning behind his eyes, little more need be done to get the appropriate message across. (Caine recaptured the same vicious intensity for several subsequent pictures, notably the 2009 pensioner-on-a-rampage flick Harry Brown.) Thanks to the effective convergence of the right actor, the right director, and the right material, Get Carter is so consistently cynical that it makes a bleak sort of a statement even though it’s a straight-up revenge flick, elevating pulp to moments of poetry.
         Proving how difficult it was to get things to converge perfectly, however, two remakes of Get Carter came and went with little notice: Bernie Casey starred in a blaxploitation riff called Hit Man (1972), and Sylvester Stallone headlined the flop retread Get Carter (2000), featuring Caine in a supporting role.

Get Carter: GROOVY