C.C. and Company (1970)

          So it’s the late ’60s and you’re Roger Smith, a former leading man now sidelined by various health problems but happily preoccupied with a new marriage to stage-and-screen sex kitten Ann-Margret. Your bride has entrusted you with the management of her career, and you already have a track record of producing (for instance, a coming-of-age feature with Jacqueline Bisset) and writing (including several episodes of the TV show on which you starred, 77 Sunset Strip). The next logical step is creating a vehicle for your titian-haired missus, right? Well, sort of. C.C. and Company is a showcase for Ann-Margret, to be sure, providing her with intense dramatic scenes and sexy peekaboo moments. But it’s a biker flick, and it’s also the first movie in which football star Joe Namath plays a leading role. So you’re Roger Smith, and your best plan for boosting your wife’s stardom is relegating her to a supporting role in the Joe Namath motorcycle picture that you’re writing and producing? Ours is not to judge, and it should be noted that as of this writing, Ann-Margret and Smith are still married after more than 40 years, so C.C. and Company must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

          And, indeed, though it’s awful in terms of dramatic credibility, C.C. and Company is enjoyable as a collection of glossy surfaces. The plot, no surprise, is pedestrian: Hog-riding outlaw C.C. Ryder (Namath) runs with a nasty gang until he falls for fashion writer Ann McCalley (Ann-Margret), but when C.C. tries to break from the gang for a new life with his lady, the gang’s leader, Moon (William Smith), kidnaps Ann to force a showdown. The movie’s visuals, courtesy of director Seymour Robbie and his team, are kicky and vivid—biker fights, fashion shows, romantic interludes, and so on. Namath’s couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude makes him watchable even though he can’t act, and Ann-Margret’s flamboyant vamping is a hoot. Naturally, her beauty is spotlighted at every opportunity, since Roger Smith knew what he was selling. Adding the X-factor that makes C.C. and Company a full-on guilty pleasure is biker-movie regular William Smith (no relation to the producer-director), as the villainous Moon. With his enormous biceps, handlebar moustache, and wicked line deliveries, he’s a great comic-book baddie, ably abetted by supporting thugs including fellow B-movie stalwart Sid Haig.

C.C. and Company: FUNKY

Norwood (1970)

          After achieving success on the pop charts, velvet-voiced Arkansas native Glen Campbell displayed a comfortable onscreen presence in the John Wayne movie True Grit (1969), so it was inevitable that some enterprising producer would test Campbell’s viability as a leading man. (Hey, it worked for Elvis, so why not?) In Norwood, Campbell plays upbeat war veteran Norwood Pratt, a good ol’ boy from Texas who bums around the country with his acoustic guitar, crooning innocuous tunes and spewing redneck patois (“Think I’ll mosey on over to the roller rink, see if I can’t pick up a little heifer lookin’ for a ride home”).

          Upon returning from Vietnam to his tiny hometown of Ralph, Texas, Norwood works in a garage and endures sitcom-style quarrels with his sister (Leigh French) and her idiot husband (Dom DeLuise). Eager for escape, Norwood agrees to help a slick used-car salesman (Pat Hingle) transport cars to New York City. He also agrees to transport a sexy would-be performer (Carol Lynley), leading to arguments in which she calls him “peckerwood” and he calls her a “damn squirrel-headed dingbat.” Yeah, it’s like that.

          Eventually, Norwood discovers the cars he’s moving are stolen, so he dumps the vehicles and heads to New York anyway, where he gets laid with a spunky hippie (Tisha Sterling). Sated, he hops on a bus for the long trip back home. Along the way, he forms a bizarre surrogate family with Rita (Kim Darby), a redneck runaway bride; Edmund (Billy Curtis), a little person raised in the carny world; and a chicken. Yes, a chicken.

          To call Norwood inconsequential would be to overstate its value, but some scenes are so random they command attention, like the bit of costar Joe Namath tossing around a football with the dwarf in the backyard of a Southern estate. (Despite his prominence on the poster, former gridiron star Namath has a tiny role.) As for Campbell, he strikes a clean-cut figure with his helmet of shiny hair and his lantern-jawed good looks, but he’s more of a personality than an actor, so assessing his performance is pointless.

          Incredibly, this slight movie was adapted from a novel by True Grit author Charles Portis, though the vapid storyline of Norwood exists a universe apart from the unforgettable narrative of True Grit. Norwood is also notable, if that’s the right word, as one of the gentlest Vietnam-vet stories ever, since the easygoing Norwood seems as if he just came back from a country club instead of surviving a tour in Southeast Asia.

Norwood: FUNKY

The Last Rebel (1971)

          Cocky New York Jets quarterback “Broadway” Joe Namath was virtually assured a screen career thanks to his photogenic looks and widespread popularity. Like many other athletes-turned-actors, however, Namath wasn’t able to complement his charm with dramatic skill. He got by on bravado when he played a trash-talking biker in the colorful action flick C.C. and Company (1970), but wasn’t able to pull off the same trick in the misguided Western The Last Rebel. Lazily utilizing his offscreen persona to play a runaway Confederate soldier, he seems not only anachronistic but also way too upbeat given his character’s grim circumstances. (One gets the sense that being the real Joe Namath around this time was a nonstop party, which might explain his disinterest in acting like anyone other than Joe Namath.) It doesn’t help that the film’s story is thin and trite, or that the characterizations don’t make much sense.

          Confederate soldiers Matt (Jack Elam) and Hollis (Namath) escape from Union pursuers and free a black man, Duncan (Woody Strode), from a lynching. The three then form a criminal gang. Huh? Aren’t they all trying to avoid attention because they’re fugitives? The exploits of these roving dudes mostly comprise getting card sharp Hollis to a gaming table, whereupon Hollis wins a small fortune and refuses to divide the winnings to Matt’s satisfaction. This triggers a blood feud between the two men. Again, huh? As to why any of these things happen, your guess is as good as mine.

          The Last Rebel proceeds in a linear fashion, so it’s not a complete logistical quagmire, but so many events go unexplained that the movie starts to take on a surreal quality, with unmotivated actions piling atop one another. At its weirdest, the picture includes a seduction scene that rips off the famous dinner sequence in Tom Jones (1963), but in lieu of that film’s flirtatious editing, The Last Rebel simply intercuts shots of a smirking Namath with close-ups of two women molesting their food lasciviously. Compounding the peculiarity of the whole enterprise is the fact that it was shot in Italy (with no attempt to make the locations look American), and the fact that the horn-driven rock score was cut by members of the venerable band Deep Purple. Period authenticity was not a priority.

The Last Rebel: LAME