1980 Week: Resurrection

          Ellen Burstyn’s crowning achievement in movies might be her multidimensional star turn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), though strong arguments could be made for her fearless work in The Exorcist (1973) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Obscured by these famous movies is the offbeat gem Resurrection, in which Burstyn not only incarnates the complex facets of a fully rounded individual, but in which she explores realms beyond normal human understanding. As its title suggests, Resurrection is about a woman who dies for a brief time before returning to life, and upon returning from “the other side,” she gains supernatural healing powers. As Burstyn articulated in her autobiography, she’s been on a lifelong spiritual journey, so in some ways, Resurrection might be her ultimate role. It’s a problematic film that some viewers will find too incredible, and even fans of the picture are likely to quibble about plot points. Nonetheless, most of what happens onscreen in Resurrection is memorable and strange and touching.

          Burstyn, who received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for the picture, stars as Edna, an everywoman who experiences a terrible car accident. Her husband dies in the crash, but Edna rouses despite being legally dead for a period of time. Upon discovering her brush with morality has gifted her with special abilities, Edna gradually detaches from her old life and becomes a faith healer. She also falls in love with Cal (Sam Shepard), a deeply religious man whose beliefs allow him to accept the “miracle” of Edna’s supernatural power. Yet a schism grows in their relationship because Edna refuses to acknowledge God as the author of her destiny, which puts Edna on the road to the film’s powerful final act.

          Written by the imaginative Lewis John Carlino and directed by the reliable Daniel Petrie, Resurrection has a bit of a TV-movie feel, but the smallness of the presentation is perfect for the subject matter. By eschewing grandeur, Petrie keeps the focus on the turbulence that paranormal phenomena causes in Edna’s life and the lives of those around her. Seeing Edna do incredible things sparks revelatory reactions, with desperate people seeing Edna as the deliverance they crave, small-minded people seeing her as a personification of everything that frightens them, and spiritual people seeing Edna as proof that forces beyond man guide the universe. Through it all, Edna experiences a litany of surprising emotional changes, some of which are more believable than others, but the stark contrast the filmmakers draw between the person Edna was before her transformation and the person she is at the end of the story makes a powerful statement about human potential.

         Burstyn commits wholeheartedly to even the most outlandish scenes, thereby grounding the picture in simple emotional truth. The fine supporting cast, which also includes Roberts Blossom, Jeffrey DeMunn, Richard Farnsworth, Eva Le Gallienne (who received on Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), and Lois Smith, helps weave a canvas of rural authenticity, with Shepard’s fire-and-brimstone ire providing a sharp counterpoint to Edna’s embrace of the mysterious. Resurrection is far from perfect, but it’s filled with ambiguities that provide fodder for fascinating conversations.

Resurrection: GROOVY

Sybil (1976)

          Nearly 20 years after winning on Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1967), in which she played a woman with three different personalities, Joanne Woodward switched from patient to therapist for the acclaimed telefilm Sybil. Telling the fictionalized story of a young woman with 16 different personalities, the picture was a breakthrough project for Sally Field, who plays the title role. Continuing the artistic maturation she’d begun with serious telefilms including Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring (1971), former sitcom actress Field proved she was capable of heavy lifting, dramatically speaking, earning an Emmy for her efforts. (Just three years later, she added on Oscar to her mantle, thanks to 1979’s Norma Rae.)

          This behind-the-scenes data is useful for contextualizing Sybil, which is excellent on many levels but very much a performance showcase. Originally broadcast over two nights, the unexpurgated version of the picture runs a whopping 187 minutes. And while it’s easy to see where fat could have been trimmed, the project’s integrity is beyond question. Not only is Sybil consistently earnest, humane, and intelligent, but it’s also made with the level of craftsmanship one would normally expect from a theatrical feature. Director Daniel Petrie employs extraordinarily long takes, correctly assuming that his leading actors’ remarkable work will sustain interest, and he shoots even the simplest locations with a rich sense of atmosphere. Additionally, Petrie and his collaborators made a strong choice by filming many scenes with horror-movie aesthetics, since the title character regards her multiple personalities—and the traumas of the past—like demons that are tormenting her. The overall experience of Sybil is immersive and powerful, if perhaps a bit too voluptuous.

          The movie begins in New York, where Sybil Dorsett (Field) is a graduate student and part-time schoolteacher prone to inexplicable behavior: She suffers blackouts during which she acts like someone other than herself. As the frequency and severity of her episodes increase, Sybil injures herself and lands in a hospital, where she encounters kindly psychologist Dr. Cornelia Wilbur (Woodward). Thus begins an 11-year journey during which Dr. Wilbur catalogs Sybil’s personalities—some of which appear only fleetingly, and some of which overtake her consciousness for long periods of time—and during which Dr. Wilbur tries to discover the reasons why Sybil’s psyche initially fragmented.

          The film’s therapy scenes are compelling, with Field providing the fireworks while Woodward counters with compassion and rationality. Concurrently, scenes of Sybil trying to live a “normal” life are poignant. The most incendiary material appears in the flashbacks to Sybil’s horrific youth, when she was mistreated and mutilated by her mentally ill mother. Many other films and TV projects have gone down similar roads in the years before and since Sybil. Nonetheless, the novelistic length of the project allows screenwriter Stewart Stern—working from a nonfiction book by Flora Rhela Schreiber—to explore myriad nuances of Sybil’s condition and treatment. Further, the more-is-more approach pays off handsomely during the climax. Filled with feelings and insights and truths, some beautiful and some ugly, Sybil is a unique film that transcends its small-screen origins.

          Hollywood unwisely tried dipping into the same well 20 years later, when CBS broadcast an 89-minute remake of Sybil starring Tammy Blanchard (as Sybil) and Jessica Lange (as Dr. Wilbur. The 2007 version was met with indifference.

Sybil: GROOVY

The Gun and the Pulpit (1974)

          Normally, the presence of actor Marjoe Gortner in a ’70s movie guarantees a bad time, because in his prime Gortner offered a toxic combination of smugness and vapidity. Accordingly, one reason why it’s so fascinating to watch the documentary Marjoe (1972), which explores the actor’s pre-Hollywood career as a flamboyant evangelist, is the opportunity to learn how the man gained such an oversized ego. Given this context, it’s tempting to surmise that Gortner is watchable in this made-for-TV Western because it represented his first opportunity to play a leading role. Whereas in subsequent projects he struts across the screen with the arrogance of a Hollywood veteran, in The Gun and the Pulpit Gortner puts forth the kind of unassuming effort one might expect from an eager newcomer. And even though he’s still quite weak as an actor, the underlying material is solid enough to survive an iffy leading performance. In fact, it’s easy to imagine how this piece might have been elevated by the presence of, say, James Garner, since The Gun and the Pulpit echoes the wiseass vibe of Garner’s old Maverick series. Even without a grade-A star, The Gun and the Pulpit goes down smoothly. The plot is brisk and pithy, there’s a pleasing mixture of drama and jokes, and the supporting cast is filled with reliable professionals. Plus, since it’s only 74 minutes long, The Gun and the Pulpit never has time to wear out its welcome.

          Gortner stars as Ernie Parsons, a silver-tongued crook who escapes a lynch mob and stumbles across a dead preacher. Helping himself to the man’s clothes and letters of introduction, Ernie rides into the small town where the preacher was expected, only to discover that the place is held under the thumb of tycoon Mr. Ross (David Huddleston). Yet Ernie couldn’t care less about danger, because he falls into lust with Sally Underwood (Pamela Sue Martin), the 18-year-old daughter of a citizen whom Mr. Ross’ thugs shot in the back. Quickly earning the respect of the locals by winning a shootout with two of Mr. Ross’ men—Ernie explains that he’s picked up his six-shooter skills during a lifetime of preaching in frontier towns—Ernie becomes the town’s new favorite son, though a showdown with Mr. Ross becomes inevitable. The setup works well, especially since screenwriter William Bowers (working from a novel by Jack Ehrlich) has a deft touch with one-liners. Additionally, director Daniel Petrie does a good job of weaving together different performance styles into an overall lighthearted tone. Supporting players include stalwarts Jeff Corey, Geoffrey Lewis, Estelle Parsons, and Slim Pickens. Meanwhile, Huddleston provides his signature urbane villainy, and Martin lends considerable sex appeal. All in all, The Gun and the Pulpit is a hearty helping of hokum.

The Gun and the Pulpit: FUNKY

Moon of the Wolf (1972)

          For about three-quarters of its brief running time, the TV movie Moon of the Wolf unfolds like a bland but professionally made murder mystery, combining smooth performances with a fair amount of Southern-fried atmosphere, befitting the setting of a small island community in Louisiana. During the last quarter of the picture, however, Moon of the Wolf remembers that it’s actually a monster movie, and the quality of the piece drops precipitously, thanks to hackneyed situations and substandard makeup. So, while it’s accurate to say that Moon of the Wolf is a bust as a creature feature, the movie works fine as an undemanding thriller that simply happens to contain a very silly conclusion involving a rampaging lycanthrope. David Janssen, all disdainful crankiness, plays a small-town sheriff investigating a series of brutal killings, which the unsophisticated locals blame on wild dogs. Over the course of his investigation, the sheriff uncovers tawdry secrets about a wealthy landowner (Bradford Dillman) and his beautiful sister (Barbara Rush); the sheriff also digs into the lives of a physician (John Beradino) and a tempestuous redneck (Geoffrey Lewis).

          As directed by Daniel Petrie, a reliable professional with an enormous résumé that includes such respected projects as the award-winning telefilm Sybil (1976), Moon of the Wolf is crafted with more care than the forgettable material deserves (although the monster stuff at the end seems half-hearted). Petrie gets especially good work out of Rush, an elegant beauty who has primarily worked in B-movies and small-screen fare; playing the wayward daughter of a moneyed clan, she invests her part with dignity and poignancy. (Never underestimate an actor who refuses to accept the limitations of the movie in which she’s been cast.) Dillman has some fine small moments as well, playing an aristocrat who’s mortified to have his privacy invaded by circumstance, and nobody does bug-eyed rural rage quite like the versatile Lewis. If all of this praise seems excessive for an obscure TV movie about werewolves, rest assured the goal here is not to suggest that Moon of the Wolf is by any measure a good movie; it’s not. But in the realm of schlocky ’70s horror, thoughtful storytelling is a rarity to be praised when found, even if that’s not the element one actually wants from schlocky ’70s horror. Still, better some decent performances than a bunch of mindless gore, right? Right? On second thought, don’t answer that one.

Moon of the Wolf: FUNKY

Buster and Billie (1974)

          For most of its running time, the 1940s-set Buster and Billie feels like a melodramatic teen romance in which a popular high-school boy learns to see beneath the surface of the school slut, forming an unlikely bond that helps both characters mature. But then the picture turns tragic—as in out-of-nowhere, way-over-the-top tragic—and Buster and Billie becomes a weird sort of Southern Gothic horror show. The movie is a bumpy ride in the extreme, though not without its virtues. When the picture begins, Buster (Jan-Michael Vincent) is the school smart-ass in a small Texas town, pulling pranks like driving his truck in front of the schoolbus and temporarily blinding the driver in a cloud of dust. Cocky and handsome, Buster is the ringleader for a gaggle of cool kids and misfits that includes an albino (played by Robert Englund!) who dyes his hair black. Although Buster dates a pretty classmate (Pamela Sue Martin) and laments that she won’t put out, his buddies satiate their sexual cravings by traveling to the boonies for gang-bangs with Billie (Joan Goodfellow), the self-loathing daughter of poor rednecks. Eventually, Buster decides to see what the fuss concerning Billie is all about. His curiosity leads to courtship. And then tragedy arrives, without much logical justification or narrative foreshadowing, throwing the story wildly off-course—the finale has power, but it feels like something from a different movie.
          Amid the strange plot twists and unexpected darkness, there are moments of insight and sensitivity, though both lead performances teeter on the fine line between gentle understatement and utter lifelessness. Goodfellow and Vincent offer tremendous physical commitment to their roles, with Vincent playing a full-frontal scene and Goodfellow enduring humiliating vignettes in which her character is sexually abused. Their emotional commitment, however, is a bit more difficult to appraise. Part of the blame must surely fall on journeyman director Daniel Petrie, who can’t sustain a consistent tone in this movie; it’s therefore unsurprising neither Goodfellow nor Vincent can form coherent characterizations. Still, for all its flaws, Buster and Billie is strangely watchable, the tension between its unfulfilled promise and its weird narrative zigzagging creating a queasy sort of cinematic vitality.

Buster and Billie: FUNKY