A Woman for All Men (1975)

A Woman for All Men boasts adequate production values and a few familiar faces, so it’s more palatable than the usual sexploitation trash. Yet the plotting is mindless, and the erotic content comprises topless shots of leading lady Judith Brown. She’s an attractive woman, but not so uniquely beguiling as to energize a plot driven by her character’s ability to drive men wild with desire. These remarks are not meant to denigrate Ms. Brown, but rather to say that it’s hard to figure how the makers of A Woman for All Men envisioned this picture satisfying the target audience for this sort of thing. As a mystery/suspense narrative, this flick doesn’t offer anything beyond the average TV show of the same period, and as a sexual thrill ride, it’s tame. Most of the action takes place at a beach house owned by construction magnate Walter (Keenan Wynn). His adult sons, self-involved jerks Steve (Andrew Robinson) and Paul (Peter Hooten), are rattled when Walter comes home one day with a decades-younger wife, Karen (Brown). What ensues is unsurprising. Sex-crazed Karen gets bored with Walter and seduces Steve. Then circumstances suggest that Walter has died. Karen and Steve conspire to seize as much of Walter’s estate as possible. Obstacles blocking those goals include Walter’s loyal housekeeper, Sarah (Lois Hall), and a cop (Alex Rocco) investigating Walter’s disappearance. There are worse movies of this type, but finding things to praise about A Woman for All Men is challenging. Among other problems, all the performances are forgettable—even watching the colorful Wynn play a blustery old lech only goes so far—so the beach house emerges as the only memorable character.

A Woman for All Men: LAME

Sunburst (1975)

Even by the low standards of evil-redneck flicks, Sunburst is atrocious. Dull, terribly acted, and tonally schizophrenic, the picture is more than halfway over before anything of significance happens, and even the introduction of an actual plot is insufficient to generate interest. The picture begins on a college campus, where wholesome coed Jenny (Kathy Baumann) hooks up with sensitive stud Robert (Peter Hooten). The couple travels to the mountains to visit a pal, Michael, who quit school for a simpler life in the wilderness. And that, more or less, is the first 40 minutes of the movie, which comprises one uneventful scene after another, interspersed with montages set to fruity ballads. (And let’s not forget the pointless sequence featuring ’30s crooner Rudy Vallee as a shopkeeper whom the young lovers encounter.) Eventually, while Jenny and Robert take a romantic skinny-dip in a mountaintop lake, they’re spotted by a pair of mouth-breathers (played by James Keach and David Pritchard) who speak to Jenny and Robert and strongly imply threats of sexual violence. Demonstrating spectacular stupidity, the heroes head to Michael’s seemingly abandoned cabin, rather than fleeing to someplace safe, and spend the night screwing. Sure enough, the rednecks show up with knives to beat the crap out of Robert and rape Jenny. The next morning, Michael (played by a very young Robert Englund) finally appears. The future Freddy Krueger must summon a straight face for insipid speeches like this one, appraising Jenny’s post-assault mood: “She’s doing the right thing. She’s putting it together for herself without words. She’s just into herself.” Yeesh. Onetime Miss Ohio Baumann is sexy but vapid, Hooten’s spacey look makes him seem detached, and Keach and Pritchard deliver cartoonish performances. (Sample Keach dialogue: “I suggest that you go right over there in those bushes and wizzle your lizard!”) Whether in its original form or its ’80s video incarnation (bearing the alternate title Slashed Dreams), this flick is to be avoided at all costs.

Sunburst: SQUARE

The Inglorious Bastards (1978)

          Best known as the flick from which Quentin Tarantino borrowed the title for his 2009 World War II epic Inglorious Basterds, this Italian production is an enjoyably overstuffed riff on The Dirty Dozen (1967) and assorted other World War II men-on-a-mission flicks. Starring a pair of American B-movie stalwarts, Fred Williamson and Bo Svenson, The Inglorious Bastards borrows the basic plot device from The Dirty Dozen—soldiers incarcerated for various crimes end up redeeming themselves when thrust back into combat—then adds on narrative bits and bobbles from countless other flicks, resulting in an absurd plot that hurtles from one violent incident to the next.

          The story begins when M.P.s holding the convicts are killed in a Nazi air raid, freeing the “heroes” to roam the European countryside in search of freedom. Then, after assorted convenient plot twists, the protagonists take the place of a team of highly trained commandoes for a dangerous covert mission. Along the way, a series of colorful adventures ensues, most of which are pleasant diversions even if they’re not particularly believable. At the movie’s silliest moment, several of the convicts cozy up to a gaggle of German beauties who are splashing around in a country stream, only to have the nude women pick up machine guns and blast away at the Yanks when the frauleins realize their new friends aren’t from the fatherland.

          There’s absolutely nothing in The Inglorious Bastards that fans of World War II flicks haven’t seen before, from the comic-relief enlisted man who carries a secret stash of contraband goods to the tension between Williamson’s character and the racist G.I. played by Peter Hooten; furthermore, the acting is unremarkable, especially since a fair amount of the dialogue was dubbed sloppily. Nonetheless, The Inglorious Bastards is entertaining in a stupidly macho sort of way, thanks to the over-the-top plotting, some genuinely harrowing stunt work, and zesty ingredients like Williamson’s amusing swagger. (Providing the requisite ’70s kitsch factor, actor Michael Pergolani, who plays the comic-relief enlisted man, wears anachronistic shoulder-length hair and a ginormous ’70s moustache—why not?) There’s a reason this flick lodged itself into the brain of a young Quentin Tarantino, and the reason seems to be that The Inglorious Bastards is an eager-to-please sampler platter of escapist war-picture thrills.

The Inglorious Bastards: FUNKY

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977) & The Incredible Hulk (1977) & Dr. Strange (1978) & Captain America (1979) & Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979)

          Years before Marvel Comics became a Hollywood powerhouse, the venerable publisher licensed its characters for a string of low-budget TV productions, beginning with hokey “limited animation” cartoons in the ’60s and continuing with several live-action TV movies in the ’70s. First came The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Nicholas Hammond (the oldest Von Trapp boy from the classic 1965 movie The Sound of Music) as Peter Parker, a graduate student with twin interests in photography and science. As in the comics, he gains arachnid abilities after getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Various pointless changes from the source material are less glaring than the excruciating background music and the bargain-basement FX that accompany numbingly dull “action” scenes. The main gimmick involves superimposing shots of Spidey crawling onto images of buildings, even though neither the lighting nor the movements match. Scenes of Hammond and/or his stuntman on real sets are no better, because the action choreography is lifeless and the bright colors of the costume look awful in realistic settings.
          In terms of acting, Hammond is so dorky and polite that he seems like a department-store clothing mannequin come to life. Character actors including Thayer David and David White give stock performances, while appealing leading lady Lisa Eilbacher barely gets any screen time. The actual story involves Spidey battling a criminal who uses mind-control on unsuspecting victims, so there's a faint whiff of satire related to ’70s cults, though the filmmakers lack the will or the wit to maximize that element. This tepid take on Spidey also has a certain camp factor, but unlike, say, the ’60s Batman series with Adam West, The Amazing Spider-Man contains only humor of the unintentional variety. A mercifully short-lived series followed the broadcast of this pilot movie, but it's hard to find anyone who feels genuine nostalgia for Hammond’s enervated wall-crawling.
          Far more impressive was The Incredible Hulk, for which writer-producer Kenneth Johnson turned the story of scientist Bruce Banner (renamed “David” Banner for the series) into the saga of a tormented fugitive. In the initial telefilm, Banner (Bill Bixby) obsessively researches why adrenaline gives some people extraordinary strength in times of crisis, because his wife died when he couldn’t extract her from a burning car after an accident. Lighting onto a possibility, Banner recklessly exposes himself to an overdose of gamma radiation, causing him to transform into a big green dude (bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno) whenever he gets stressed. Johnson plays the material straight, and Bixby’s sincerity grounds the goofy premise, so when the storyline turns tragic, it’s possible to buy into the melancholy emotions of the piece, especially with Joe Hammel’s plaintive piano theme “The Lonely Man” reverberating on the soundtrack. 
          Also elevating The Incredible Hulk is the work of costar Susan Sullivan, who plays Banner’s colleague and love interest; she and Bixby generate viable chemistry that suggests as much mutual respect as it does latent passion. Notwithstanding the kicky first transformation scene, which involves lightning and rain plus a great use of camera angles and sound effects to jack up the suspense, the classic moment in The Incredible Hulk involves Banner warning a relentless tabloid reporter (Jack Colvin) to keep his distance: “Don’t make me angry, Mr. McGee. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Five seasons of anguished hulking ensued, as did three reunion movies, so the Bixby/Ferrigno franchise reigned as the only truly successful live-action Marvel adaptation until the late ’90s.
          A year after Hulk and Spidey hit the airwaves, Marvel’s resident mystic appeared in Dr. Strange, a bizarre telefilm notable for eerie synthesizer scoring by Paul Chihara. The plot of Dr. Strange is so thin that the best sequences are the extended dialogue-free montages set to Chihara’s otherworldly grooves. (Some of the huge, fluid cues that Chihara provides anticipate the creepy “blaster beam” effect that Jerry Goldsmith used so powerfully in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) While no match for the mind-bending images that artists including Frank Brunner, Steve Ditko, and Gene Colan created for vintage Dr. Strange comics, at least the aimless montages in the Dr. Strange telefilm come across like trippy music videos. Far out, man!
          Forgettable leading man Peter Hooten plays Stephen Strange, a medical doctor recruited to participate in an interdimensional war against ancient sorceress Morgan le Fay (Jessica Walter, rocking spectacular cleavage). A murky storyline, choppy editing, and unfinished-looking FX give the movie a fever-dream vibe. That’s why Dr. Strange is recommended exclusively for those who savor cinematic weirdness. Not only does this failed pilot have the disjointed feel of a midnight movie, but it also features an unintentionally hilarious line. At one point, an aging mystic (John Mills) dispatches his manservant to collect the title character by issuing the command: “Find Stephen Strange!” In this context, you will find Stephen to be quite strange indeed.
          Marvel’s last (and least) attempt at launching a ’70s live-action series was Captain America, an excitement-free modernization of the World War II-era superhero. Musclebound actor Reb Brown blankly plays Steve Rogers, who through convoluted circumstances becomes a superman fighting crime while he cruises around in a tricked-out van that contains his equally tricked-out motorcycle. Toward the climax of the movie, Brown finally dons an awful-looking costume, his motorcycle helmet ridiculously adorned with painted-on facsimiles of the decorative wings from Cap’s comic-book cowl. (That atrocious ensemble gets replaced in the final scenes by a second version that’s closer in design to the comic-book original.) Rather than a series, Captain America was followed by one additional TV movie, Captain America II: Death Too Soon. Despite that title, death couldn’t come soon enough for this misbegotten take on the beloved character. Suffice to say that the highlights of Captain America II are Christopher Lee's florid bad-guy acting and the debut of Cap’s latest silly gadget, a hang-glider.

The Amazing Spider-Man: LAME

The Incredible Hulk: GROOVY

Dr. Strange: FREAKY

Captain America: SQUARE
Captain America II: Death Too Soon: SQUARE