Stingray (1978)

          Lighthearted action/comedy silliness with amiable young heroes, colorful villains, a fast-moving storyline, and a smidgen of nasty violence, Stingray hits pleasure centers without actually engaging viewer’s brains. At 100 minutes, it’s a big long for a dopey romp, and none would ever mistake leading man Christopher Mitchum—son of Robert—for a fine actor. That said, Stingray may well contain the most enjoyable performance ever given by Sherry Jackson, a ’50s child star who grew up to become an alluring starlet in TV shows and B-movies of the ’60s and ’70s. (Fans of a certain age may recall her eye-popping appearance in a barely-there costume during a goofy episode of the original Star Trek series.) In Stingray, Jackson plays an all-business criminal with a psychotic streak, and she leans into the role so winningly that it’s a wonder her work here didn’t lead to better opportunities.

          The simple plot begins when crooks dump something into a Corvette Stingray on a used-car lot just before they’re arrested. Two young guys, Al (Mitchum) and Elmo (Les Lannom), buy the car soon afterward, unaware of the illicit cargo. Enter Abigail Bratowski (Jackson), the crooks’ ruthless boss, who first appears disguised as a nun even though she’s smoking and swearing up a storm. Myriad episodes of high-speed pursuit ensue, with interludes of bar fights and shootouts and the like. Through it all, Abigail is consistently fierce, knocking off bystanders and enemies while spewing lines of this sort: “Roscoe, hand me that clip of explosive shells!”

          Some sequences in Stingray are dull and others are dumb, because every so often the filmmakers forget the sort of picture they’re making and try to present something serious. Happily, they usually snap back to form before too long. And while no one in the cast besides Jackson really pops, everyone hits the right one-dimensional notes, as when portly Cliff Emmich, playing one of the villains, freaks out in a forest and shoots his gun at irksome mosquitoes. Better still, Mitchum and Lammon get to play a cartoonishly suspenseful scene together in the finale. Until then, it’s all about Jackson incarnating a sexy badass.

Stingray: FUNKY

Rio Lobo (1970)

          The last movie directed by the revered and versatile Howard Hawks, Rio Lobo would seem—if based solely on the genre, star, and title—to be a quasi-successor to Hawks’ wonderful 1959 adventure film Rio Bravo. Yet even though Rio Lobo is a Western with John Wayne in the lead role, Rio Lobo is no Rio Bravo. Whereas the 1959 film bursts with excitement, humor, and vivid characterization, the 1970 film is a turgid slog through random plot elements piled indifferently onto a heap. Everything in Rio Lobo feels half-hearted, from the flat cinematography to the mindless music to the stiff acting. The picture starts out as a Civil War-era heist story, with Confederate soldiers stealing gold from a Union train, but then the narrative shifts into a postwar justice saga, with now-retired Union officer Cord McNally (Wayne) chasing after the traitors who sold information about the train to the Confederacy.

          And since that premise, apparently, was deemed insufficient by the filmmakers in terms of plotting, the picture gets mired in various subplots about wronged women seeking vengeance against bad men. Furthermore, to justify the title, there’s another subplot, about the liberation of a small town from oppression by crooked varmints. There’s enough story in Rio Lobo for several different movies, and as a result, everything gets short shrift. The characters feel either clichéd or underdeveloped (sometimes both), the action scenes are confusing (since there are too many players on the filed), and the whole thing is directionless (in every sense of the word, with all due respect to Mr. Hawks).

          As usual, appraising Wayne’s “performance” is a pointless endeavor, since the veteran star simply drawls and struts through a rote demonstration of his familiar persona. Luckily, reliable character actors lend flavor to minor parts, with Jack Elam and David Huddleston providing humor and gravitas, respectively—but their work isn’t enough to compensate for the overall mediocrity. Unfortunately, much of Rio Lobo’s cast comprises young actors whose work here explains why they never achieved stardom. Fresh-faced studs Christopher Mitchum and Jorge Rivero aim for likability but instead come across as vapid, while beautiful starlets Susana Dosamantes, Sherry Lansing, and Jennifer O’Neill embarrass themselves with amateurish line deliveries.

          In fact, it’s quite shocking to look at the sprawl of bad performances in this movie and realize that such a venerable filmmaker was calling the shots. Clearly, the muse was not with Hawks while he assembled this picture. The pervasive blandness of Rio Lobo also drags down the normally excellent composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose score only catches fire during the big shootout at the end.

Rio Lobo: FUNKY

Bigfoot (1970)

          My vote for the weirdest of the myriad ’70s movies about Sasquatch, this no-budget oddity transforms everyone’s favorite Pacific Northwest man-beast into an old-fashioned movie monster in the King Kong mold. When the disjointed flick begins, fast-talking drifter Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine) drives through a forest with his idiot sidekick, Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum), while big-breasted blonde Joi (Joi Lansing) flies a small plane over the same area. Joi’s engine conks out, so she parachutes to safety. Arriving on the ground, she strips out of her flight suit into a mini-dress (!) and screams because Bigfoot has emerged from the woods to attack her. Then laconic biker Rick (Christopher Mitchum) rolls into the woods with his curvaceous girlfriend, Chris (Judy Jordan), who for no good reason is wearing a bikini (!). She stumbles onto a Bigfoot burial ground, and then screams because Bigfoot has emerged from the woods to attack her, too. Because, of course, smooth-skinned white chicks make Bigfoot’s blood boil.

          Rick seeks help, but only Jasper (remember him?) believes his story; Jasper offers aid because he plans to capture a Bigfoot for freak-show exhibition. Meanwhile, Peggy—still wearing her swimsuit and, of course, sporting perfect hair and makeup—wakes up tied to a tree beside Joi, who also has perfect hair and makeup. They’re being watched by three Bigfoot creatures (portrayed by actors in ridiculous monkey suits), so Joi and Peggy scream some more. Then Jasper, Elmer, and Rick trek through the woods, bickering all the way, until they reach the Bigfoot lair. Before long, more people get tied to stakes, more people scream, and Rick’s gang of hog-riding biker buddies arrives for a big brawl with a bunch of Bigfoot creatures. Oh, and it turns out the monsters who’ve been guarding the women are the hairy brides/sisters/whatever of the real Bigfoot, a giant ape-like dude.

          Bigfoot is a truly awful movie, combining a doofus storyline with shoddy production values and terrible acting, but it’s arresting in a fever-dream sort of way. Carradine’s supposed to be a formidable big-game hunter, but he’s an arthritic, emaciated senior dressed in a suit and tie. Christopher Mitchum, the son of screen legend Robert Mitchum, is supposed to be a tough-guy biker, but he’s a passive nebbish who politely refers to Carradine’s character as “Mr. Hawks.” Jordan and Lansing are so outrageously curvy—and so nonsensically underdressed—that their scenes feel as if they were guest-directed by Russ Meyer. The movie toggles back and forth between second-unit location shots showing actors full-figure from a distance and cheesy soundstage footage with the principal cast in close-up, so it’s like the flick drifts in and out of reality. Bigfoot creatures get more screen time here than in virtually any other ‘70s Sasquatch movie, which is not a good thing—prolonged exposure highlights the bad costumes. And we haven’t even talked about the upbeat honky-tonk music that plays during suspense scenes, or the incongruous surf-music cue that appears whenever the bikers are shown driving. Oh, and at one point, a lady Bigfoot wrestles a bear.

Bigfoot: FREAKY

The Last Hard Men (1976)

          An enjoyable but forgettable Western thriller, The Last Hard Men combines a string of macho clichés. Circa the early 1900s, cold-blooded criminal Provo (James Coburn) is part of a prison labor crew until he stages a violent escape, enlisting several fellow convicts to form an outlaw gang. (Fans of cheesy TV will notice Larry Wilcox, later of CHiPs fame, as the youngest member of Provo’s gang.) Although Provo claims he wants to rob banks, his real motivation is hunting down the man who sent him to jail, square-jawed peacemaker Sam Burgade (Charlton Heston). Now a retired widower, Burgade is happily occupied with getting his beautiful daughter, Susan (Barbara Hershey), married off to her affectionate beau, Hal (Christopher Mitchum). Yet when Burgade learns about Provo’s escape and subsequent crime spree, he races to intercept the train on which Provo’s gang was spotted. Unfortunately, Provo arranged the train sighting as a decoy so he could kidnap Susan and draw Burgade out to the wilderness for a showdown. There’s a smidgen more to the story than this synopsis suggests, but The Last Hard Men is essentially a macho duel preceded by foreplay.
          Director Andrew V. McLaglen demonstrates his usual sure hand for this sort of material, keeping things moving at a steady pace and ensuring that the nastiest violence leaves a mark. However, at one point he awkwardly tries to channel Sam Peckinpah—late in the movie, as a means of provoking Burgade, Provo gives his thugs permission to rape Susan, and McLaglen stages the ensuing pursuit/assault in lurid slow-motion. Artsy flourishes don’t gel with McLaglen’s meat-and-potatoes style, so the scene feels weirdly dissonant and perverse. As for the movie’s acting, Coburn is genuinely frightening when his character gets crazed with bloodlust, but Heston is on autopilot. It doesn’t help that many of Heston’s scenes are designed to showcase supporting player Mitchum (son of Robert), whom various producers spent several years trying to transform into a star despite his lack of charisma. Hershey adds welcome toughness to an underwritten role, demonstrating how quickly she was outgrowing the ingénue style of her early-’70s performances.

The Last Hard Men: FUNKY

Big Jake (1971)

          Apparently aware that his days were numbered, cowboy-cinema legend John Wayne spent the early ’70s looking for a Western that might serve as his swan song in the genre. He ultimately hit the target with The Cowboys (1972) and The Shootist (1976), yet even the also-rans during this period are interesting, partially because Wayne’s stock Western performance was oiled to perfection by this point, and partially because you can feel him writing rough drafts of his Final Statement. So, while Big Jake is not a particularly distinguished picture—it lacks the poetic impact of The Cowboys and the crowd-pleasing closure of The Shootist—it delivers an enjoyable mixture of action, drama, and humor, laced with sly nods to Wayne’s advancing age.

          He plays Jacob McCandles, a wealthy rancher with an intimidating reputation that borders on myth, given the fact that most people assume he’s dead. In fact, he’s merely been wandering the wilderness in the years since he fell out with his wife, Martha (Maureen O’Hara), who raised their brood in his absence. When varmints led by ruthless John Fain (Richard Boone) attack the McCandles ranch and kidnap Jacob’s grandson, demanding a $1 million ransom, Martha asks Jake to rescue the boy and wipe out the crooks. He sets out on the mission accompanied by two sons he barely knows, James (Patrick Wayne) and Michael (Christopher Mitchum), plus a long-in-the-tooth Indian pal, Sam (Bruce Cabot). The posse has a few colorful adventures on the road, mostly to do with people trying to steal the ransom money, before their final showdown with the kidnappers.

          Written by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink, the creators of the Dirty Harry character, Big Jake is bloodier and meaner than the usual Wayne fare, so the climax has real tension, although the edginess makes the requisite comic-relief bits feel out of place. And though Boone is entertaining as an amiable psychopath, he and the Duke (plus O’Hara) are the only formidable performers in the picture; Patrick Wayne, the star’s son, and Mitchum, whose dad is movie tough guy Robert Mitchum, are flyweights. As for Wayne, he’s no more an actor here than usual—his strength was inhabiting a larger-than-life persona, rather than incarnating actual characters—but he delivers the macho goods, strutting ridiculously as he shrugs off bullet wounds and other injuries in the name of doin’ what a man’s gotta do. Big Jake is hokum, to be sure, but it’s a step along the path that Wayne followed to his final reckoning with Westerns.

Big Jake: FUNKY