Baker’s Hawk (1976)

          A family-friendly Western that delivers exactly what it promises, and not an iota more, Baker’s Hawk is cut from the same cloth as the 1977-1983 TV series Little House on the Prairie—it’s a wholesome homily, with all the negatives and positives that description implies. Based on a novel by Jack M. Bickham, the picture follows a teenaged farmboy named Billy (Lee H. Montgomery) as he learns about friendship, intolerance, mortality, and vigilantism. Schematic in the extreme, the narrative runs along two tracks. In the overarching storyline, Billy watches his small community succumb to mob rule as citizens form a “vigilance committee” and try to force principled individuals including Billy’s father, Dan (Clint Walter), to take up arms against unwanted outsiders. In the main subplot, Billy finds a weak young hawk left in the nest by its mother, and then nurses the hawk to full strength with the help of a kindly hermit, Mr. McGraw (Burl Ives). Inevitably, these story elements intersect because Billy’s sensitivity to outsiders makes him a target for bullies, which parallels the way his father’s resistance to vigilantism alienates him from small-minded neighbors. Baker’s Hawk is so full of Meaningful Life Lessons that flashing numbers should appear onscreen each time a new teachable moment occurs.

          Yet Baker’s Hawk isn’t quite as dry and trite as the preceding synopsis might suggest. The focus on animals means that every so often, the movie is elevated by something real—a shot of a hawk soaring through the sky, a vignette of a deer fawn frolicking in the woods. Additionally, the cast is sufficiently colorful to make all but the most sentimental scenes palatable. Montgomery, who played a number of kid roles in movies and TV shows throughout the ’70s, favors wide-eyed wonder over misty-eyed mawkishness, so he mostly steers clear of typical kid-actor excess. Walker, the towering he-man best known for the 1955-1963 Western series Cheyenne, renders a characterization best described as John Wayne Lite, and his dramatic limitations work well for the role of a simple man facing complex problems. Ives does what he can with the picture’s most clichéd character, his honeyed voice and seeming comfort with animals lending a smidgen of gravitas. The filmmakers would have been prudent to give leading lady Diane Baker, who plays Billy’s mother, a bit more screen time, just as they would have been prudent to give Partridge Family kid Danny Bonaduce, who plays a bully, a bit less. At least the hawk, who undoubtedly gives the film’s best performance, never disappoints.

Baker’s Hawk: FUNKY

Hugo the Hippo (1975)

          Partially because of the usual attrition one experiences during life, and partially because my family moved a large number of times while I was younger, I no longer possess many artifacts from my childhood. Yet for a good three decades, I inexplicably retained a paperback tie-in book for the 1975 animated musical Hugo the Hippo—even though I have no recollection of seeing the movie during its original release. More likely than not, I held onto the book for the colorful illustrations. In any event, the book finally drifted out of my life a few years ago, but the normal business of this blog led me to track down Hugo the Hippo itself. And while I can’t describe the experience of watching the movie as one of tarnishing a beloved memory, I worry for the sanity of my younger self if seeing Hugo the Hippo was something I deemed worthy of commemorating. One can only hope the book was a gift from some misguided relative.

          Originally made in Hungary, but later dubbed into English and festooned with an American song score, Hugo the Hippo is easily among the weirdest children’s films of the ’70s, which is saying a lot. The movie is alternately cloying, disturbing, dull, offensive, psychedelic, saccharine, and tragic. Not many pictures contain gentle ballads sung by Marie Osmond as well as shockingly racist portrayals of black people, but Hugo the Hippo does.

          Set in Tanzania, the bizarre picture begins when sharks invade the port of Zanzibar, frightening away the porters who work waist-deep in the water every day and forcing the Sultan of Zanzibar to seek a remedy. The Sultan orders the importation of a dozen hippos, which presumably can drive the sharks away. Entrusted with the task is the Sultan’s green-faced Minister of Finance, sadistic schemer Aban-Khan. He leads a hunting party into the jungle, and they successfully acquire animals including little Hugo, the adorable son of the King of the Hippos. Released into the harbor, the hippos defeat the sharks but are subsequently abandoned and slaughtered, turning Hugo into an orphan. Desperate to survive, Hugo escapes to a farming community and eats crops until he’s arrested and put on trial (!), becoming the center of a conflict between the goodhearted children of Tanzania and the nature-hating adults.

          Yes, Hugo the Hippo is yet another ’70s movie riding the environmental-crusade bandwagon.

          Nearly every scene in Hugo the Hippo is so peculiar as to seem like part of a drug-induced hallucination, which means that a complete inventory of the picture’s oddities would take too long. A few highlights shall suffice. In one sequence, Hugo and his best pal, a little boy named Jorma, have a food-themed dream that culminates with Hugo and Jorma evading corn cannons and pumpkin samurai by riding a giant butterfly toward a planet made of cauliflower. Seriously. Elsewhere, Jorma and other children serenade Hugo with these promises: “If you go to jail, we’ll get parole for you; if you go below, we’ll save your soul for you.” FYI, this ditty about venturing into hell to rescue a hippo is sung by Marie’s little brother, Jimmy Osmond. Unbelievably, it gets worse. The voice of Aban-Khan is provided by game-show staple Paul Lynde, the bitchiest queen of the ’70s, so every line the villain speaks sounds like an example of gay camp.

          And as syrupy-sweet as some of the songs performed by the Osmonds and by Burl Ives are, the underscore is dark, giving parts of Hugo the Hippo the texture of a surreal horror movie. How horrific? Let’s try the montage of sharks eating everyone in the harbor or the sequence in which Aban-Khan systematically murders Hugo’s entire family. And then there’s the racist content—think monkeys performing a Harlem Globetrotters-style routine (completely with whistling), or Jorma enjoying his favorite breakfast cereal, “Jungle Pops.” On every single level except artistic execution—thanks to a gorgeous color palette and relatively ornate line work—this movie is about as wrong as the ’70s gets, so I’m glad that time has erased the reasons why Hugo the Hippo first entered my young life.

Hugo the Hippo: FREAKY

The McMasters (1970)

Despite earning cinematic immortality with his moving performance as a victim of prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Brock Peters didn’t get many opportunities to play leading movie roles. The middling race-relations Western The McMasters is an exception, because even though avuncular thespian Burl Ives has top billing, this is Peters’ movie from start to finish. Set in a small Deep South town just after the Civil War, the picture dramatizes the explosive consequences of a free black man trying to live quietly as a property owner in a heavily racist white community. Benjie (Peters) returns from service in the Union army and reconnects with Neal McMasters (Ives), the white rancher who raised Benjie and regards him as a son. Recognizing that he’s getting older and has no other heirs, Neal gives Benjie his last name and half-ownership of his ranch. This development doesn’t sit well with nasty rednecks including Kolby (Jack Palance), a former Confederate officer, and Russel (L.Q. Jones), a local troublemaker. The racists ensure that Benjie and Neal can’t hire white workers for their ranch. However, Benjie befriends a band of Indians led by White Feather (David Carradine), and the Indians agree to help with chores. White Feather also “gives” his sister, Robin (Nancy Kwan), to Benjie as a concubine. Predictably, Benjie and Robin fall in love, and just as predictably, Robin is raped during a siege on the ranch. All of this leads up to a bloody showdown, though the climax of The McMasters is neither as decisive nor or simplistic as one might expect. And while it would be inaccurate to describe The McMasters as a surprising film, the story has just enough emotional texture to make a casual viewing worthwhile. The acting is generally solid, although Ives delivers rote work and Peters comes on a bit theatrically at times, while Western-cinema veterans including Jones, Palance, and R.G. Armstrong provide standard-issue varmint flavor. The miscast Kwan is appealing, and as for Carradine, his performance as an Indian is a stretch, since his line deliveries sound suspiciously modern, but his unique persona adds vitality. (The actor’s father, John Carradine, shows up for a small role as an idealistic preacher.) One of the only features directed by prolific TV helmer Alf Kjellin, The McMasters is never less than competent in terms of technical execution, and it’s never less than serious about its subject matter.

The McMasters: FUNKY

The Bermuda Depths (1978)

          Best known for their beloved stop-motion holiday specials, such as 1964’s Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Rankin/Bass Productions also ventured into darker fantasy terrain with projects like this bizarre TV movie, which is a queasy hybrid of a creature feature and a romantic fairy tale. To its credit, The Bermuda Depths hooks viewers quickly with atmosphere and mystery, but the more the story comes into focus, the more batshit crazy it becomes. Furthermore, the picture features terrible leading performances and a weirdly saccharine music score that includes lots of harpsichord—not exactly the instrument that comes to mind when one thinks of the Caribbean, where the story is set. Oh, and is it worth mentioning that the creature in this feature is a giant killer turtle the size of Godzilla? Yeah, that’s right: a giant killer turtle.

          When the story begins, a haunted young man named Magnus (Leigh McCloskey) returns to his childhood home of Bermuda, where his scientist father died under mysterious circumstances. Lying on the beach one day, Magnus spots a beautiful woman swimming far off the shore, so he heads out and dives under the waves when she does, but then nearly drowns because he can’t stay underwater as long as she can. The mystery lady, whose name we later learn is Jenny (Connie Sellecca), rescues Magnus and instantly bewitches him, partly because he vaguely remembers meeting someone very much like Jenny when he was a child.

          After Jenny takes off (as mystery women in weird movies are wont to do), Magnus hooks up with another childhood friend, Eric (Carl Weathers), who is working on an ambitious project as part of his marine-biology master’s thesis. Eric and avuncular old fish expert Dr. Paulis (Burl Ives) are trying to ascertain whether a monstrous turtle lives off the coast of the island, an inquiry that’s related in a convoluted way to the work of Magnus’ late father. And, because the movie apparently doesn’t have enough hokum yet, Dr. Paulis’ native housekeeper, Delia (Ruth Attaway), theorizes that Jenny is a magical siren who lives in the waters off Bermuda, cursing men to aquatic deaths. Eventually, all of this comes together in a sequence of high-seas adventure involving Magnus and Eric hunting down the giant turtle while Jenny begs Magnus to have mercy on the creature—even though, Magnus learns, the turtle ate his daddy.

          Obviously, none of this makes any sense, even though the story unfolds in such a simplistic fashion that viewers are never so much confused by the narrative as befuddled by its existence. Still, The Bermuda Depths offers pleasant distractions above and beyond the whacked-out plotting. The special effects, mostly achieved with such crude miniature work that the turtle scenes feel like outtakes from Land of the Lost, are hilarious. Ives is his usual florid self (“Yes, he was eaten!”), and Weathers strives valiantly to retain his dignity. Better still, former model Sellecca is beguilingly pretty in her first screen role, her pale eyes suggesting the blue-green of tropical waters—and though not much praise can be given to her actual performance, she’s a master thespian compared to McCloskey, who alternates between blank stares and unconvincing intensity. If you dive into The Bermuda Depths, by the way, stick with the movie all the way to the overstuffed ending, because the visual homage to Herman Melville must be seen to be believed. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Bermuda Depths: FREAKY