The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972)

          Appraised solely for its political bona fides, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is impeccable, conveying activist priest Father Daniel Berrigan’s poetic record of his involvement with the illegal destruction of Vietnam-era draft records. Every frame of the picture exudes righteous indignation, and the movie was released at a moment when every voice raised against an unjust war mattered. Seen today, it’s a bit of a slog even though it contains fine work by several terrific actors, especially the great Ed Flanders, who stars as Berrigan. The problem with The Trial of the Catonsville Nine today is that it unfolds as a scattershot expression of rage against the machine—specifically, the American military-industrial complex. Amid glorious speeches are heavy-handed inserts depicting battlefield atrocities and campus protests. It’s all meaningful, but it’s also monotonous and repetitive.

          In 1968, Berrigan and eight other activists snatched hundreds of draft records from an office in Maryland, dragged them to a parking lot, and immolated the records using homemade napalm. The activists remained in place awaiting arrest, hoping their ensuing trial would help draw attention to the antiwar movement. The trial resulted in convictions for all involved, though Berrigan fled, remaining a fugitive until 1970, at which point he was incarcerated for two years. The film opens with a brief dramatization of the crime, then shifts to a stylized courtroom set. Although Berrrigan’s original play was written in verse, the movie employs an alternate script by Saul Levitt, which transposes Berrigan’s text into dramatic scenes. In its best moments, the film has the tension of a proper courtroom drama, alternating heated ethical debates with brazen procedural maneuvers. In its driest moments, the movie becomes a hectoring leftist sermon that portrays the U.S. government as a corrupt empire.

          What redeems the viewing experience, beyond the beauty and passion of Berrigan’s language, is the acting. Flanders conveyed compassion and vulnerability with special grace, so he’s perfect in the leading role. Richard Jordan and Donald Moffat, also deeply humanistic actors, excel as two of Berrigan’s co-conspirators, and William Schallert displays unexpected colors as the trial’s sympathetic judge—what a pleasure to see him in a part this dimensional. It’s also worth noting the behind-the-camera participation of two important figures. Actor Gregory Peck, who does not appear in the film, financed and produced The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, while cinematographer Haskell Wexler, always eager to help an underdog cause, shot the picture.

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine: FUNKY

Promises in the Dark (1979)

          The sole directorial effort by movie producer Jerome Hellman, whose small but impressive list of productions includes Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978), this pedestrian drama explores the topic of a teenager dying from cancer and the emotional impact her disease has on family members and physicians. Setting aside that there’s absolutely no reason why this should have been a theatrical feature, seeing as how TV movies of the same vintage handled this sort of material quite well, the movie is absurdly overlong at 118 minutes, suggesting that Hellman couldn’t bear to leave unused a single frame that he had shot. Yet the problems with the movie run even deeper than issues of editing: Loring Mandel’s script is so unfocused that for most of the picture’s running time, it’s hard to tell whether the young patient or her principal doctor is the main character. The movie is redeemed by sensitive performances and thoughtful dialogue, and of course the subject matter has innate grit. Nonetheless, Promises is a Dark is a slog when it should have been a quick and steady descent into the profound terrain of existentialism.

          The movie’s nominal star is Marsha Mason, quite good as physician Alexandra Kendall. While treating high school student Elizabeth “Buffy” Koenig (Kathleen Beller) for a broken leg, Dr. Kendall determines the bone shouldn’t have broken under the given circumstances. Tests conducted with radiologist Dr. Jim Sandman (Michael Brandon) reveal cancer. This understandably rocks Buffy’s emotional world and that of her parents, strong mother Fran (Susan Clark) and weak father Bud (Ned Beatty). What ensues is an ordinary melodrama during which Dr. Kendall wrestles with how much to tell Buffy about the grim prognosis, and during which all parties experience levels of denial about the inevitable conclusion of Buffy’s sad saga.

          Doe-eyed starlet Beller gives a fairly muscular performance, though of course playing a character with a disease is every actor’s dream, and supporting actors Beatty, Brandon, Clark, and Donald Moffat make strong contributions in underwritten roles. Mason believably alternates between brittle and vulnerable. Alas, there’s only so much the performers can do in the absence of clear-headed direction. Hellman’s storytelling is so tentative that during a scene of Buffy and her boyfriend discussing the transmutation of the soul after death, the soft-rock bummer “Dust in the Wind” plays on the soundtrack. Subtle! It’s impossible to genuinely dislike a well-meaning fumble like Promises in the Dark. At the same time, however, it’s tough to get excited about a story that doesn't truly find its way until the last scene.

Promises in the Dark: FUNKY

The Terminal Man (1974)

          The innate cinematic potential of the late Michael Crichton’s novels, from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park and beyond, stemmed from the author’s style of blending provocative scientific concepts with potboiler storytelling, essentially delivering highbrow content in lowbrow wrapping. That being the case, it’s interesting to check out The Terminal Man, one of the few Crichton adaptations more suited to the art-house than the cineplex; writer-director Mike Hodges’ movie is a cerebral meditation rather than a visceral thriller. Though admirable, the approach simply doesn’t work, because while The Terminal Man has all of the requisite ethics-and-morality philosophizing that distinguishes the best Crichton stories, it lacks any excitement whatsoever, dragging along at a sluggish pace before transitioning to a violent but pretentiously orchestrated finale.

          It certainly doesn’t help that the central narrative hook is obscure. Harry Benson (George Segal) has a cerebral abnormality that causes him to periodically lapse into violent seizures, so medical geniuses including Dr. Ellis (Richard Dysart) and Dr. McPherson (Donald Moffat) invent a risky solution: With Harry’s consent, they implant electrodes in his brain, powered by an atomic battery in his chest, to override the seizures when they manifest. Crichton’s fanciful subject matter is that of high-tech alternatives to lobotomies, and there’s undoubtedly a bracing suspense story to be made from this source material. Unfortunately, Hodges bypasses thrills in favor of chilly Kubrickian observation, resulting in a flat wash of antiseptic surfaces and soft-spoken interactions.

          The movie goes wrong immediately, because Harry is already preparing for surgery when the story begins; we neither see him suffer the brain injury that led to his condition nor see him experience one of his murderous rages. As a result, we have no real sense of the hardship he’s trying to overcome. Then, just before the surgery, Harry’s girlfriend (Jill Clayburgh) brings him a disguise with which he plans to escape postoperative police custody. This murky plot ploint makes the whole story confusing: Does Harry plan to embrace the cure, or not? And if not, why is he going through with the surgery? Harry’s flirtations with sympathetic Dr. Janet Ross (Joan Hackett) further muddy the waters, because we can’t tell if his affections like with the doctor or his girlfriend.

          Worst of all, the first hour of the movie unfolds like a medical documentary, with barely any dramatic conflict in evidence. And then, once Harry escapes and (predictably) experiences rages because the surgery didn’t work, the movie becomes a trite killer-on-the-loose story delivered in ridiculously genteel style, via touches like a slow-mo stabbing montage set to melancholy Bach music. The Terminal Man has interesting ideas and thoughtful performances, but Hodges doesn’t even come close to approximating Crichton’s usual balance of intellectualism and escapism. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Terminal Man: FUNKY

Showdown (1973)

By the time Showdown was released, the traditional Western had been all but replaced on American movie screens by revisionist Westerns filled with dark characterizations and grimy location photography. So it’s jarring to watch this utterly traditional film featuring two utterly traditional stars (Rock Hudson and Dean Martin), because the picture feels as if it could have been made in the ’60s or even the ’50s. Accepting as a given that the movie is hopelessly out of step for its era, Showdown is harmless enough—an earnest story about two lifelong friends who end up on opposite sides of the law. Hudson plays an Old West sheriff who makes a small but honest living with his spitfire wife (Susan Clark), and Martin plays his long-lost pal, a ne’er-do-well who has fallen in with a gang of thieves. When Martin’s crew robs a train in Hudson’s territory, Hudson has to hunt his old friend. Martin is torn between his desire for freedom and his reluctance to shoot a pal, and the situation gets complicated when Martin’s ex-partner (Donald Moffat) decides he wants revenge, meaning Martin now has two gunslingers after him. Notwithstanding a series of illuminating flashbacks showing the main characters bonding prior to current events (an admirable attempt at deepening characterization), there’s nothing in Showdown that Western fans haven’t seen a hundred times before. The dialogue is decent and the various open-desert shootouts and high-desert chases are okay, though it’s distracting that the film employs antiquated rear-projection techniques. Hudson is a solid presence, especially since the stoicism of cowboy characters suits his limited range, and Martin is charming even if he’s a bit long in the tooth for this sort of thing. Showdown is too innocuous to dislike, but it’s not a cause for much excitement.

Showdown: FUNKY