L.A. 2017 (1971)

          While the 1971 telefilm Duel was the first standalone feature-length project that Steven Spielberg made as a professional, he directed two other pieces with commensurate running times the same year, namely the first weekly episode of the long-running detective series Columbo and this installment of a series called The Name of the Game. Given how central science fiction subsequently became in Spielberg’s work, L.A. 2017 is of particular interest. Additionally, L.A. 2017 plays like standalone piece because its only narrative connection to The Name of the Game is protagonist Glenn Howard (Gene Barry), who time-travels away from the series’ modern-day milieu for the duration of this adventure.

          While driving through smoggy canyons in Los Angeles, socially conscious magazine publisher Glenn succumbs to noxious fumes and crashes his car. Emergency personnel wearing gas masks and protective suits extract Glenn from his vehicle and drive him to a sprawling underground campus. Through interactions with psychiatrist/policeman Cameron (Severn Darden) and high-powered politician Bigelow (Barry Sullivan), Glenn learns that he’s in the Los Angeles of the future, and that civilization has been driven underground by environmental degradation. Per the talky script by Philip Wylie, what ensues has more exposition than excitement. In this grim future, America functions as a corporation with totalitarian control over citizens. People exchange math equations instead of jokes, much of the population is sterile, and everyone is under constant surveillance. Given Glenn’s unique status as a man out of time, Bigelow asks him to become a propogandist for the government, but he rebels—with the assistance of Sandrelle (Sharon Farrell), an attractive woman assigned to be Glenn’s consort.

          Watching L.A. 2017, it’s possible to discern why the piece, in tandem with Spielberg’s other 1971 work, helped raise his profile—the director does a lot with a little. Frenetic movement and tight angles make scenes in underground tunnels feel appropriately claustrophobic, and Spielberg guides actors portraying villains to underplay, which adds to the general air of menace. Moreover, the piece’s biggest shortcomings (flat scripting, meager budget) originated above the young director’s pay grade. While nowhere near as revelatory as Duel, this piece demonstrates that even in his earliest efforts, Spielberg had a formidable skillset. No wonder he graduated to theatrical features after a relatively short run as a Universal Television worker bee.

L.A. 2017: FUNKY

Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979)

          The first of two ripped-from-the-headlines dramatizations about the Jonestown massacre that occurred in November 1978, when Peoples Temple leader Rev. Jim Jones compelled nearly 1,000 followers to commit suicide by drinking poison, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is low-budget sleze presenting the most lurid aspects of the Jonestown incident clumsily and without context. Even co-writer/director René Cardona Jr.’s efforts to fictionalize the story are laughable—Guyana: Cult of the Damned features “Rev. James Johnson” and his followers at “Johnsontown.” Cardona neglects to develop interesting supporting characters, and he presents Johnson (Stuart Whitman) as a one-note psychopath. So, if you’re looking for a somewhat responsible examination of the history behind the massacre, seek out the 1980 TV miniseries Guyana Tragedy: The True Story of Jim Jones (1980), which features a spectacular leading performance by Powers Boothe. That film isn’t perfect, either, but it’s a world away from this exploitive treatment.

          Still, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is quasi-watchable within its lowbrow parameters. Cardona’s movie constructs a simplified narrative that transports Johnson and his followers from America to French Guyana within the movie’s first 10 minutes; as a result, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is essentially a thriller illustrating how a crusading U.S. Congressman tried and failed to save people from Johnson’s planned apocalypse. The Congressman in the movie, “Lee O’Brien”—played by Gene Barry—is a fictionalized version of real-life San Francisco politician Leo Ryan, who was killed in Guyana by Jones’ operatives.

          Cardona’s movie features lurid depictions of Johnson sermonizing to his people and occasionally supervising their torture; this lopsided depiction accentuates the horrors of what really happened in Guyana without exploring the more troubling nuances of why so many people fell under a self-proclaimed messiah’s spell. Nonetheless, it’s impossible not to generate tension when presenting a story filled with so much danger, and once things turn deadly in the jungle, Guyana: Cult of the Damned becomes darkly exciting. Using an eerie synthesizer score to pull together handheld, jittery shots of ghastly things like mothers force-feeding poison to their babies, Cardona’s climax captures the scope of a modern-day holocaust. As for Whitman’s fire-breathing performance, the actor is effective when simulating the demonic aspects of the real man’s charisma, but that’s the only note he plays.

Guyana: Cult of the Damned: FUNKY

Suzanne (1973)

          The popular arts of the late ’60s and early ’70s were filled with hippy-dippy freakouts made by plugged-in youths who perceived themselves as explorers charting the outer edges of human consciousness, often aided by mind-altering party favors. And that’s about the only way to contextualize the impenetrable drama Suzanne. Jared Martin plays an insufferably self-important movie director whose newest project has something to do with Christ mythology, and he finds inspiration when he meets a moon-eyed blonde named Suzanne (Sondra Locke). Inexplicably drawn to her pompous new suitor, Suzanne dumps artist Leo (Paul Sand), a fragile soul who’s clearly one angst-ridden episode away from a nervous breakdown. The main thread of the movie concerns the director’s preparations to impale Suzanne with real nails so his crucifixion scene has the desired impact, but the movie also follows Leo’s descent into madness, and the hapless efforts of an Establishment newspaper columnist (Gene Barry) to investigate what sorta vibes the counterculture kids are groovin’ to these days.
          If any of these particulars make Suzanne sound interesting, be warned that the “story” is presented in weird, disassociated vignettes punctuated by arty montages of things like people in clown makeup dancing around in trippy fisheye-lens shots. By the time this movie was released in 1973, more interesting filmmakers had been doing this sort of thing for several years, so Suzanne was already a relic with its narrative opacity and obnoxiously collegiate dialogue. (Sample Suzanne chatter: “You are beauty. I need to stay away from you. It’s not anything you did, it’s just I don’t know what I do with what you are.”) The movie gets points for seeing its pretentious premise all the way through to the gruesome conclusion, and Suzanne also provides a load of interesting Hollywood footnotes: It was inspired by the Leonard Cohen song “Suzanne,” which appears several times on the soundtrack; Shaft creator Ernest Tidyman was a script consultant (even though the script ain’t too tidy, man); Performance editor Frank Mazzola assembled the montages; and the cast includes Richard Dreyfuss and future Wayne’s World director Penelope Spheeris.
          In case you’re wondering how a movie this strange gets made, Suzanne writer-director Michael Barry’s dad is actor Gene Barry, who played TV’s Bat Masterson in the ’50s; Papa Berry executive-produced (read: financed) the flick in addition to costarring.

Suzanne: LAME