The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) & The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) & Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

          Around the same time that Alfred Hitchcock’s career began to wane, potential successors for his “Master of Suspense” title emerged in Hollywood and abroad. In America, director Brian De Palma laced several films with overt homages to Hitchcock. Overseas, Italian director Dario Argento won a fleeting sort of international fame with his first three pictures, all of which have unmistakably Hitchcockian elements.

          Argento’s debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, benefits not only from the self-assurance of a youthful talent eager to strut his stuff but also from extraordinary collaborators. Having proven himself as a screenwriter on pictures including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Argento secured the services of composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Their unnerving music and stately photography elevate the contrivances of the script Argento adapted from a 1949 novel by Fredrick Brown. The film opens with a bravura visual flourish—while living in Rome, American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) happens upon an attack inside an all-white art gallery, so he watches from behind the gallery’s glass façade as a beautiful woman struggles to survive a stabbing. Luckily, he’s able to call for help. Afterward, police detective Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) confiscates Dalmas’ passport and forces the writer to remain in Italy until the investigation concludes. Dalmas then starts an investigation of his own, even as the killer attacks others who get too close to the truth.

          Despite myriad lapses in credibility and logic, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage moves along fairly well. Unfortunately, so many scenes feature the brutalization of women that Argento left himself vulnerable to charges of misogyny, just as De Palma did with his Hitchcockian shockers. That said, most of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is vivid. Expertly staged jump scares complement unpleasant scenes including a horrific razor-blade attack.  Salerno’s world-weary portrayal, while clichéd, is fun to watch, though Musante is far less impressive. In his defense, he’s burdened with some wretched dialogue (“What’s happening to me? This damn thing’s becoming an obsession!”). All in all, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an impressive first effort, its rough edges attributable to inexperience and its highlights indicative of promise.

          Argento’s follow-up, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, is made with just as much confidence but slightly less panache. Morricone returns, but the movie suffers for Storaro’s absence, because the imagery in Argento’s second film is pedestrian instead of painterly. Also miring The Cat o’ Nine Tails in mediocrity are distasteful themes of child endangerment, homophobia, and incest. Once again, Argento uses the device of a witness who becomes an amateur sleuth. This time, blind typesetter Franco Arnò (Karl Malden) overhears a suspicious conversation and then makes a connection when he learns about a murder that happened near where the conversation took place. Franco enlists the help of newspaperman Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus), and they search for the killer’s identity. Things get convoluted fast, because the plot involves, among other things, cutting-edge genetic research and the use of a whip as a metaphor. Still, the plotting of The Cat o’ Nine Tails is no more ridiculous than that of the typical Hitchcock picture, except perhaps for the sheer number of McGuffins pulling the story down blind alleys.

          Logic is even more of a problem in Argento’s sophomore effort than it was in his debut, since the police in The Cat o’ Nine Tails seem both ineffective and weirdly tolerant of amateur detectives. Like Musante in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Franciscus cuts a handsome figure but offers little else to the proceedings, though Malden’s avuncular charm makes all of his scenes watchable. Argento’s apparent desire to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock gets a bit tiresome, as during a long scene involving poisoned milk, but Morricone saves the day with his offbeat score, all eerie wails and spidery syncopation. Furthermore, Argento comes through with a fun chase at the end as well as a colorful final death. So even though The Cat o’ Nine Tails doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it’s the most entertaining installment of Argento’s so-called “Animal Trilogy.”

          Four Flies on Grey Velvet lacks the elegance of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the pulpy energy of The Cat o’ Nine Tails. Worse, Four Flies on Grey Velvet tacks in a grotesque direction by fetishizing violence with close-ups of foreign objects penetrating skin. It’s as if Argento, upon reaching maturity as a storyteller, suddenly forgot the lessons about understatement he’d learned from Hitchcock’s work. Anyway, Four Flies on Grey Velvet gets underway when rock-music drummer Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) confronts a man he perceives as a stalker, then accidentally kills the man while another person photographs the incident. Blackmail ensues, so Roberto half-heartedly investigates with the assistance of artist friends and a PI. Meanwhile, Roberto navigates romances with two women. Four Flies on Grey Velvet is one of those befuddling thrillers in which the protagonist seems fearful of mortal danger in one scene, then seems untroubled in the next. Further muddying the viewing experience are brief attempts at comedy, such as a scene featuring Italian-cinema funnyman Bud Spencer. It’s hard to reconcile the lighthearted stuff with scenes of slow-motion mutilation, especially since the plot deteriorates into endless explanations of far-fetched motives sprinkled with cut-rate psychobabble.

          After making Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento took a break from the rough stuff and made an outright comedy, which flopped. Thereafter, he doubled down on gore and weirdness with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977). Exit the would-be Master of Suspense, enter the Master of Horror. While none of Argento’s early thrillers remotely approaches the quality of Hitchcock’s best work, all three are creepy and imaginative, with moments that would have made the master proud.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage: GROOVY

The Cat o’ Nine Tails: GROOVY

Four Flies on Grey Velvet: FUNKY

The Streets of San Francisco (1972)

          A solidly made cop show that ran for five seasons and is perhaps best remembered as the vehicle that delivered Michael Douglas to stardom, The Streets of San Francisco made the most of the locations referenced in its title. Rather than living entirely on backlots, familiar Los Angeles locations, and soundstages, as was true for many generic police programs of the ’70s, The Streets of San Francisco used the glorious views and loping hills of the Bay Area as supporting characters. Watching veteran Detective Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and passionate young Inspector Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) confront crises and probe mysteries every week, it was believable that San Francisco was the home to an endless array of interesting stories.

          That being said, the tale told in the pilot movie is weak. One problem, of course, is that the movie sprawls across an hour and 40 minutes, stretching the routine premise of the show well past the breaking point. Another problem is that producers put way too much focus on guest star Robert Wagner, who plays a lawyer with connections to a murdered woman. Whereas strong pilots situate viewers in the worlds of the leading characters who will drive the ensuing series, The Streets of San Francisco pilot shoves Stone and Keller to the background. (In subsequent episodes that boasted vivid central narratives, this trope worked more effectively than it does here.)

          The pilot begins with the death of a young woman named Holly Berry (Kim Darby). Stone and Keller find a peculiar clue on her body—a laminated business card bearing the name of lawyer David Farr (Wagner). The storyline then trudges along two parallel tracks. In present-day scenes, the cops try to piece together a picture of Holly’s life. In flashbacks, viewers learn about Holly’s affair with David, which is fraught with issues because she’s a hippie living on the fringe and he’s a member of high society with a reputation to protect. Based on a novel by Carolyn Weston, the pilot storyline is really more of a melodrama than a proper mystery. Uninspired work by the so-so supporting cast reflects the tepid nature of the material; beyond Darby and Wagner, the pilot features Tom Bosley, Mako, and John Rubenstein. Throwing the whole thing in a weird new direction is the climax, which switches the tone from police procedural to supernatural thriller.

          Happily, things got better on The Streets of San Francisco once it went to series. Motifs that seemed incidental in the pilot, like Malden’s way of imbuing his seen-it-all character with dogged optimism, grew as the series developed. Concurrently, Douglas found his footing by creating a persona befitting the spectacular head of hair that he sported throughout his run on the series; by the time Douglas left the show, just prior to its final year, he had become an Oscar-winning producer and he was well on his way to becoming a movie star. No surprise that his replacement, Richard Hatch, wasn’t able to keep the Streets of San Francisco going, though Hatch later found cult fame as the star of the original Battlestar Galactica series.

The Streets of San Francisco: FUNKY

Patton (1970)

          Despite being bold, provocative, and smart, Patton should not have curried favor during its original release, since the movie arrived at the height of America’s misguided war in Vietnam. Surely, there couldn’t have been a worse time to release a feature-length tribute to one of World War II’s most famous American generals. Yet Patton is much more complicated than any hagiography, and the movie’s greatest strengths are undeniable. The script is insightful and witty, the direction and production values are impressive, and leading man George C. Scott’s performance ranks among the highest achievements in screen acting. The movie is imperfect, of course, suffering such flaws as an excessively long running time, but the audacity with which the filmmakers engage themes of hubris, militarism, and patriotism are still startling 40 years after the movie was made.

          Notwithstanding a riveting prologue (more on that in a minute), the movie begins in North Africa, when General George S. Patton Jr. (Scott) is first recruited to battle Germany’s “Desert Fox,” tank-division commander Erwin Rommel (Karl Michael Volger). As the movie progresses, Patton is moved from Africa to the European theater, his battlefield victories overshadowed by his outrageous behavior. Gaudy and vainglorious, Patton openly cites his belief in reincarnation, describing himself as the latest form of a soldier who has existed during the great wars of previous centuries; although Patton bolsters his claims with brilliant strategizing, his otherworldly pomposity spooks subordinates and unsettles superiors.

          Worse, Patton behaves abominably when confronted with GIs he regards as cowards or shirkers. In one of the picture’s unforgettable moments, Patton loses his cool upon meeting an enlisted man hospitalized for shell-shock, a condition whose existence Patton denies—Patton violently slaps the GI and seems ready to shoot the young man until Patton is subdued by aides. Thanks to such transgressions, Patton never consistently occupies the forefront of the Allied command, so the movie tracks his humiliating slide from active duty to elder-statesmen status.

          Although Patton has a large cast of characters and a sprawling number of locations, it’s not precisely a war epic—rather, it’s an intimate character study that plays across a massive stage during wartime. So, while costar Karl Malden is a steady presence as Patton’s staunchest Army ally, General Omar Bradley, other actors in the movie serve as mirrors reflecting facets of Scott’s performance. Scott justifies this approach with a thunderous star turn. His Patton is funny, inspiring, intimidating, maddening, pathetic, strange, and a dozen other things, whether he’s melodically quoting ancient poetry or impotently shooting a pistol at a fighter plane during a strafing run.

          Director Franklin J. Schaffner does a remarkable job of keeping the story forceful and clear, often through the use of elegantly gliding camerawork; screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North provide brilliant dialogue and evocative vignettes; and composer Jerry Goldsmith’s clever score uses echoed horn figures to accentuate the idea of Patton as a figure from myth let loose on the modern world.

          Yet the film’s most indelible moment is also its simplest, the mesmerizing two-minute monologue that starts the movie with shocking directness. Stepping in front of a gigantic American flag, an ornately uniformed Patton barks out a hard-driving, vulgar speech about American can-do spirit, featuring a line that epitomizes the character’s philosophy: “No bastard every won a war by dying for his country—he won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” FYI, Scott returned to his Oscar-winning role years later for an underwhelming TV miniseries, The Last Days of Patton (1986), though few consider that project a true sequel to the 1970 movie.

Patton: RIGHT ON

Meteor (1979)

          The disaster genre was fading by the time this star-studded flick arrived in late 1979, but it’s not as if Meteor ever stood a chance of success. Possibly the lowest-energy disaster movie ever made, this silly picture comprises bored-looking actors lounging around a high-tech command center while they wait for something bad to happen. Considering that the storyline envisions a giant asteroid thundering toward Earth, it’s amazing how casual everyone behaves. Even during the second half of the movie, after thousands of people have died, characters idly pass their time by chatting over chess games and flirting over salads.

          Sean Connery stars as Paul Bradley, a protagonist pulled straight off the disaster-movie assembly line: He’s a reluctant savior whose expertise concerns an outer-space missile installation the U.S. government hopes to use against the approaching meteor. Paul is assumed into service by government official Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden), and they quarrel about strategy with the inevitable hard-ass military man, General Adlon (Martin Landau). Adlon is among the most idiotic characters in the history of the disaster genre, because he spends most of the movie bitching about the danger of leaving America undefended even though the alternative is planetary obliteration.

          The story also features Cold War-era hogwash about persuading the Russian government to use the missiles on their outer-space installation, so Bradley’s Soviet counterpart, Dr. Dubov (Brian Keith), travels to the U.S. with his assistant/translator, Tatiana (Natalie Wood). Keith’s gruff vibe enlivens the movie, but Meteor is so drab the filmmakers forget to advance the predictable Connery-Wood romance beyond a few friendly conversations.

          Even with Poseidon Adventure director Ronald Neame helming, Meteor drags along through one uneventful scene after another before the corpse-strewn climax, in which a small meteor hits the command center, forcing the heroes to make a daring escape attempt through an underwater subway tunnel. Enervated in the extreme, Meteor wastes a great cast (which also includes Richard Dysart, Henry Fonda, and Trevor Howard), and since the movie came out two years after Star Wars, its inert special effects feel positively archaic.

Meteor: LAME

Wild Rovers (1971)

          Even though he enjoyed a long and lucrative career directing light comedies, it’s a shame Blake Edwards made only one proper Western, because Wild Rovers reveals the writer-director’s unexpectedly lyrical approach to the cowboy genre. Starring the unlikely but compatible duo of William Holden and Ryan O’Neal, the gorgeous-looking movie tracks the adventures of a pair of cowpokes whose foolhardy decision to rob a bank triggers a series of deadly events.

          Presented as an old-school epic, complete with a musical overture and an intermission, the film moseys along at a deliberate pace, but it’s never boring; the locations and photography are intoxicating, the action is exciting, and the performances keep everything lively. Moreover, Edwards’ inventive screenplay presents a rich mixture of familiar Western tropes and witty flourishes; the best original elements include novel characterizations and sharp dialogue.

          Holden plays Ross Bodine, a veteran cowboy who’s ready to settle down even though he doesn’t have a financial stake, and O’Neal plays Frank Post, a young man still naïve enough to believe he can shape his own destiny. When Ross casually mentions one day that the only cowboys with money are those who rob banks, Frank gets his teeth into the notion and eventually talks Ross into performing a heist. The movie takes its time getting to this point, creating a persuasive sense of camaraderie between the protagonists before things get sticky, and the robbery sequence is offbeat.

          Instead of busting into a bank at daytime, the men casually intimidate the bank owner at his home during evening hours, holding his wife and daughter at gunpoint while forcing him to head to the bank and unload the vault. Charged with overseeing the hostages, Frank bonds with a puppy and protects the banker’s family from a mountain lion rather than doing anything menacing. Narrative choices like these make Ross and Frank compelling characters—we see how easily they buy into the romantic fantasy of a victimless crime, and feel their anguish when they realize how badly they miscalculated.

          Holden adds an unusual color to his standard world-weary persona, accentuating amiability over cynicism, and O’Neal gives a performance that’s as naturalistic as anything he’s ever done. Eschewing the usual rouge’s gallery of overly familiar onscreen varmints, Edwards surrounds his leads with carefully chosen supporting players—including Joe Don Baker, Moses Gunn, Karl Malden, James Olson, and Tom Skerritt—all of whom make valuable contributions. Framing the actors’ work are spectacular widescreen images created by veteran cinematographer Philip Lathrop, a regular Edwards collaborator; his crisp photography of a sequence in which Ross breaks a wild bronco in a snowy field is particularly outstanding, making the sequence a joyous celebration of the cowboy lifestyle. Even the film’s music is noteworthy, with the great Jerry Goldsmith subtly expressing everything from jubilance to heartbreak.

          The unhurried pace of Wild Rovers ensures the picture isn’t for everyone, but the film’s unexpected emotional complexities reward patient viewers with a tough, elegant statement about masculine identity. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Wild Rovers: RIGHT ON