The Premonition (1976)

          A bad movie that contains so many interesting things it almost becomes a good movie, The Premonition tells the strange story of a psychotic woman who teams up with her carnival-clown boyfriend to kidnap her biological daughter from the child’s adoptive parents. Oh, and the parents use paranormal means to find the missing child. The first half of the premise is emotional, the second half of the premise is bizarre, and the pieces don’t fit together at all. Worse, The Premonition unfolds like a horror movie, complete with bloody murders and disturbing comin’-at-ya moments. By most rational standards, The Premonition is a mess, too touchy-feely for the shock-cinema crowd, and too gruesome for conventional audiences. Yet it’s exactly that peculiar mixture of elements that makes the picture arresting. Calling The Premonition a noble failure might require giving the filmmakers way too much credit, but the film occupies an odd middle ground between arthouse pretentiousness and grindhouse sensationalism.
          It also helps that The Premonition features the unusual character actor Richard Lynch. Whereas he usually played tough-talking villains, Lynch gets to add surprising flourishes, including a touch of interpretive dance, to his portrayal of an unhinged carny. Like other aspects of The Premonition, his performance isn’t good so much as it’s peculiar. As with the movie itself, the less the performance “works,” the more watchable it becomes. The broad strokes of the plot are as follows. Andrea (Ellen Barber) seems weirdly preoccupied with a young girl named Janie (Danielle Brisebois), so she asks her boyfriend, Jude (Lynch), for help abducting the girl from Professor Miles Bennett (Edward Bell) and his wife, Sheri (Sharon Farrell). Turns out Andrea recently left a mental institution, and the Bennetts became Janie’s guardians when the government deemed Andrea an unfit mother. After the abduction, Miles seeks help from his colleague, Dr. Jeena Kingsly (Chitra Neogy), an expert on precognition, telepathy, and the like. Never mind that police detective Mark Denver (Jeff Corey) is on the case.

          Director Robert Allen Schnitzer tries to create dreamlike images on the cheap, so some scenes have the desired ethereal feel while others seem grungy because of focus problems and shoddy lighting. The sum effect, however, is suitably disorienting. Even lapses in story logic help create an eerie vibe, because it’s difficult to understand why certain things happen, and the climax is outlandish in the extreme. The Premonition isn’t fun to watch, partially because the subject matter is grim, and partially because Farrell plays the same hysterical note again and again throughout her grating performance. Still, it’s inexplicably difficult to look away while this one’s unspooling.

The Premonition: FUNKY

Delta Fox (1979)

The distinctive character actor Richard Lynch didn't play many leading roles in his career, largely because the burn scars marking his face and body contributed to his typecasting as a villain. Given his memorably florid performance style in films ranging from the poignant Scarecrow (1973) to the silly The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and beyond, it's tempting to wonder what Lynch might have accomplished in parts with more dimensionality. Based on his work in the dreary exploitation flick Delta Fox, it seems fair to say that Lynch’s talents were not squandered in shallow roles. He plays a crook given a chance at both redemption and revenge if he helps the government capture a criminal overlord for tax evasion, so Delta Fox gives Lynch the opportunity to drive fast cars, engage in merciless brawls, hiss tough-guy dialogue, shoot big guns, and woo a sexy young woman. Unfortunately, Lynch is a dud as a leading man, posturing and preening his way through shootouts and verbal confrontations. Plus, with all due respect, it's creepy to watch the hulking actor get romantic with 18-years-younger leading lady Priscilla Barnes. In Lynch's defense, the movie surrounding him is so shoddy that no actor would have thrived in such surroundings. Written, produced, and directed by unapologetic hacks Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, Delta Fox is borderline incoherent, even though the opening scenes are smothered in explanatory onscreen text. Supporting characters drift in and out of the storyline, with bored-looking name actors including John Ireland, Richard Jaeckel, and Stuart Whitman phoning in colorless line readings. As for the basic plot, it’s a juvenile sex fantasy—after David “Delta” Fox (Lynch) escapes a double-cross, he kidnaps a pretty young landscaper named Karen (Barnes) for a hostage in order to avoid a police blockade. The two characters fall in love, even though he endangered her life and forced her to strip at gunpoint. Yet seeing as how the Sebastians try to pass off Los Angeles’ famous Bradbury Building as a New Orleans hotel, it’s not as if credibility was a priority here. Oh, and one more thing: Keener ears than mine would be able to confirm this, but I’m fairly sure the Sebastians stole a music cue from an old Ennio Morricone score for their main musical theme. Stay classy, Bev and Ferd!

Delta Fox: LAME

The Baron (1977)

          Nominally a blaxploitation flick—albeit one that was released well after the blaxploitation craze had peaked—The Baron is really more of a character study about a movie-industry hustler. It’s not the most sophisticated picture, and the story lags during the middle, but there’s just enough credibility, novelty, and seediness to make The Baron somewhat interesting. Calvin Lockhart, a Bahamaian actor whose crisp speaking style and rigid bearing create an aristocratic comportment, stars as Jason, a headstrong actor/director/producer trying to assemble financing for his latest project. (We’re shown a snippet of the in-progress movie, which stars Jason as the swaggering multimillionaire adventurer “Baron Wolfgang von Trips.”) When Jason’s primary financier announces that a studio wants to buy the underlying literary property—but also wants to replace Jason as actor, producer, and director—Jason is crushed. Later, when the backer dies in an accident, Jason realizes that he’s responsible for money the backer borrowed from a gangster named Joey (Richard Lynch).

          Desperate for cash, Jason initially reaches out to a drug dealer nicknamed “The Cokeman” (Charles McGregor), and then he consents to becoming a live-in gigolo for an aging society dame played by old-Hollywood star Joan Blondell. Suffice to say, Jason’s moves don’t sit well with his girlfriend, Caroline (Marlene Clark), who struggles to understand why he can’t let go of his cinematic dreams and simply live a normal life.

          The Baron suffers from logy pacing, a problem exacerbated by sleepy music (jazz great Gil Scott-Heron contributed to the score). Additionally, Lockhart is so straight-laced that he’s not the right guy to play a fast-talking schemer descending into an abyss of humiliation and lies. That said, Lynch makes a terrific bad guy, oozing oily charm as he insinuates himself into Jason’s life, and Blondell hints at the pathos of a lonely woman who must purchase companionship. Yet the most interesting aspect of the story is actually the one that gets the least attention. As in the earlier B-movie Hollywood Man (1976), the notion of a filmmaker getting bankrolled by the Mob creates all sorts of interesting possibilities. Yet The Baron’s cowriter and director, Philip Fenty, explores virtually none of them. Nonetheless, The Baron pulls things together for its final act, thanks to a memorable last confrontation between Jason and Joey and an offbeat chase scene.

The Baron: FUNKY

Open Season (1974)

          Presenting horrific behavior in a matter-of-fact style, Open Season is unusual among the myriad ’70s movies about the corrosive effects of violence. Whereas many ’70s films engaging this subject matter use vigilantism as a prism for exploring morality, Open Season takes a decidedly nihilistic approach. The principal characters are three average Americans who spend their annual camping trips hunting human beings for sport. Some brisk but pointed dialogue late in the movie explains why: The friends became addicted to killing people while serving in Vietnam. Pretty heavy for a European exploitation movie that caters to the international audience by featuring several American actors. Sleekly filmed by UK director Peter Collinson (helmer of 1969’s The Italian Job), this slow-burn thriller stars Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law, and Richard Lynch as the hunters.

          Their characters are introduced effectively at a backyard barbecue, the apex of suburban normalcy, before they kiss their wives and children goodbye and depart for their annual getaway. Upon reaching the boondocks, the dudes drink heavily and zero in on a young couple traveling the same roads. Nancy (Cornelia Sharpe) is a sexy blonde, and her companion, Martin (Alberto de Mendoza), is a clean-cut dweeb whom the hunters correctly guess is having an extramarital affair with Nancy. The hunters pretend to be cops in order to pull over the couple’s car, and then the hunters abduct the couple, transporting their hostages to a lakeside cabin miles from civilization. The hunters toy with the couple, forcing Martin to do housework while cleverly manipulating Nancy into believing she can seduce her way out of trouble. After the men have their fun with Nancy, the real gamesmanship begins—the hunters release Martin and Nancy into the wild with a 30-minute head start, and then the hunters gather high-powered rifles and begin their pursuit. 

          The best sequences of Open Season depict savagery casually. The hunters use good manners while humiliating Martin and shackling Nancy so she can’t escape. Worse, they treat their whole adventure like a regular hunting trip, downing beers and trading jokes even as they prepare for sadistic homicide. The filmmakers wisely eschew musical scoring during many scenes, letting the creepy onscreen events manufacture mood without adornment. When music does kick in, however, some of the misguided attempts at replicating hillbilly melodies are distracting. The acting is uneven, though Fonda, Law, and Lynch simulate camaraderie well. (FYI, William Holden makes a mark in a very small supporting role.) Best of all is the film’s final half-hour, during which a remote island becomes a killing ground. Once the characters in Open Season throw off their pretenses, the savage heart of this nasty little movie beats loudly.

Open Season: GROOVY

God Told Me To (1976)

          Quite possibly the strangest movie that Larry Cohen ever made—which is saying a lot, seeing as how Cohen’s filmography includes the 1974 killer-baby epic It’s Alive—this offbeat horror/sci-fi hybrid starts out like a lurid crime story, then evolves into something very different. Set in New York City, the picture begins when a crazed shooter named Harold (Sammy Williams) takes a perch on a water tower and then shoots more than a dozen strangers walking on the streets far below. Among police officers responding to the incident is Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco), who climbs onto the water tower and tries to reason with the killer. When Peter asks why Harold started shooting, Harold says, “God told me to,” then jumps to his death. Peter is traumatized by the incident, partially because he’s a devout Catholic, and his aguish deepens when several other people go on killing sprees, all claiming that “God told me to.” (One of the murderers is played by future Taxi star Andy Kaufman.)

          Eventually, Peter’s investigation broadens to include inquiries into his own past, because Peter is an orphan who knows nothing about his biological parents. Concurrently, Peter angers higher-ups in the NYPD by going public with the “God told me to” angle; this revelation leads to riots among warring religious forces. Even after Peter gets suspended, he continues his investigation in an unofficial capacity, and he learns that “God,” in this particular case, might be a single messianic individual who compels followers to kill. Yet just when it seems writer-producer-director Cohen is headed down the road of exposing a Manson-type cult leader, God Told Me To takes a left turn into trippy territory. Peter meets “God,” an asexual vagrant who glows so brightly that his features can’t be discerned the first time he’s shown.

          This meeting leads Peter to find Elizabeth Mullin (Silva Sidney), who may or may not be “God’s” mother. Now living in a senior home, she recalls a horrific incident from the past, when she was taken aboard an alien spaceship and artificially inseminated. She gave up the resulting child, who grew up to be “God,” otherwise known as super-powered alien/human hermaphrodite Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch). Yes, hermaphrodite. To hammer this particular point home, Cohen provides a loving closeup of Bernard’s matched sex organs, which protrude from the side of his torso.

          None of this makes much sense, but it’s a fun ride, after a fashion, because it’s wild to see how far Cohen goes down the rabbit hole of his own imagination. What other film includes an alien abduction, a crazed sniper, an immaculate conception, an obsessed Catholic, a religious controversy, and a sex mutant? Plus, even if the deranged God Told Me To doesn’t “work” in any conventional fashion, the bizarre movie has vibe to spare thanks to a fantastically ominous musical score by Frank Cordell. Legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann scored Cohen’s previous film (the aforementioned It’s Alive), but Hermann died before working on Gold Told Me To. Cohen clearly guided Cordell toward mimicry, and, in fact, Cohen dedicated the picture to Herrmann. Emulating Herrmann’s propulsive musical style was a genius move, because Cordell’s dark and dense score lends Cohen’s phantasmagorical narrative a degree of macabre grandeur.

God Told Me To: FREAKY

Stunts (1977)

          Gonzo director Richard Rush has opined that during the long gestation periods of his film projects, disreputable producers frequently copied his ideas and created lesser versions that diminished his box-office potential. Watching Stunts, which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Rush’s demented drama The Stunt Man (1980), it’s tempting to give Rush’s complaint credence. Like The Stunt Man, Stunts depicts an out-of-control film shoot on which a maniacal director’s quest for spectacle endangers the lives of stunt performers. Yet the similarities mostly end there, since The Stunt Man is as deep as Stunts is shallow. Stretching credibility way past the breaking point, Stunts implies that authorities would allow production to continue after not one but three on-set deaths, and that authorities would be content letting macho stuntmen investigate the mortalities. Just because Stunts is silly, however, doesn’t mean the movie lacks entertainment value. The various stunt scenes, including falls from tremendous heights and tricky automotive gags, are staged and filmed well, with hack director Mark L. Lester employing a range of stylish camera angles and maximizing tension through the use of brisk editing. Furthermore, the production values are slightly more than adequate, and it’s always fun to see behind-the-scenes footage showcasing what movie sets looked like back in the day.
          Atop all that, Stunts shamelessly panders to audience expectations with such clichéd characters as the lone-wolf stud, the nosy reporter, the obnoxious director, and the tweaked special-effects guy. Incarnating these one-dimensional roles is a fun ensemble cast comprising offbeat men and sexy women. Robert Forster, at his most endearingly indifferent, stars as a heroic stunt man investigating the death of his brother. Portraying his fellow daredevils are Joanna Cassidy (Blade Runner), Bruce Glover (Diamonds Are Forever), and Richard Lynch (The Sword and the Sorcerer), among others. Meanwhile, petite blonde Candice Rialson and sultry brunette Fiona Lewis play the women romancing Forster’s character, while veteran character actor Malachi Throne appears as the overbearing director. Alas, none of these actors is given a single original moment to play—beyond the trite elements already mentioned, Stunts features a starlet sleeping her way to the top and a scene of macho dudes honoring a pact by pulling a paralyzed pal off life support. Nonetheless, the movie’s colorful milieu, impressive stunts, and zippy pace make for 90 minutes of pleasant viewing.

Stunts: FUNKY

Scarecrow (1973)

          Given its casting, pedigree, and subject matter, Scarecrow sounds like an automatic addition to the Mount Olympus of ’70s cinema. It’s a downbeat road movie about two vagabonds ineptly pursuing small dreams, the vagabonds are played by Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, the film was directed by adventurous humanist Jerry Schatzberg, and the cinematography is by the extraordinary Vilmos Zsigmond. Yet while the movie has a lovely intimacy, it doesn’t linger in the memory anywhere near as much as it should. That said, Scarecrow is near-essential viewing for fans of this period in American cinema simply because it exudes integrity and contains strong but obscure performances by two of the best actors America has ever produced. Although Hackman and Pacino each did better work in other films (because other films gave them better raw material from which to craft performances), it’s still a tremendous pleasure to watch these remarkable men amplify and complement each other’s talents.

          Hackman plays Max, a volatile ex-con traveling like a hobo from California to Pennsylvania, where he plans to open a car wash. (Whether Max actually has the financial or managerial wherewithal to realize his dream is one of the film’s many richly ambiguous elements.) Max becomes traveling companions with Lionel Delbuchi (Pacino), a former sailor who approaches life with boyish exuberance; barely more than a simpleton, Lionel believes there’s almost no problem a good joke can’t solve. One of the inherent shortcomings of George Michael White’s script is that the Max/Lionel friendship always feels a bit contrived; their bond is more narratively convenient than purely organic. Nonetheless, Hackman and Pacino lend as much credibility to the relationship as possible, even when the characters behave in predictable ways—Lionel rarely steps outside his man-child persona, and Max keeps getting into stupid brawls even though he seems, in other respects, like a mature human being with real self-awareness. The film also suffers from the inherently episodic nature of most road movies.

          Therefore, it’s almost all about the acting. Hackman is explosive and haunted and tender all at once, demonstrating his unique gift for incarnating emotionally conflicted men, and Pacino—though a bit over the top, thanks to a set of indulgent physical tics—creates many resonant moments. Supporting players Eileen Brennan, Richard Lynch, and Ann Wedgeworth lend strong atmosphere as well, though their characters border on being clichéd movie-hick grotesques. Former photographer Schatzberg and master cinematographer Zsigmond capture all of these lively performances in artful frames that showcase grungy locations and meticulous production design, so the physicality of the movie feels real even when the dramaturgy slips into artificiality.

Scarecrow: GROOVY

Deathsport (1978)

The saving grace of Roger Corman’s cheapo productions is usually a sense of humor, and the importance of jokes to low-budget crap is obvious when watching the Corman turkey Deathsport, which is monotonously grim. A sci-fi thriller set in the same sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland seen in a gazillion other movies—gladiator contests organized by an authoritarian regime, radioactive mutants, and so on—Deathsport is so close to self-parody that it would have been easy to tip the thing into full-on satire. Instead, Deathsport is played straight, even though it’s filled with cartoonish costumes, over-the-top violence, and ridiculous dialogue. (In the finale, the hero announces, “Now we will have our duel,” and the villain replies, “I agree.”) David Carradine, seemingly unaware that he’s appearing in a piece of shit, lays on the gravitas to portray Kaz, a quasi-mystical warrior who roams the wasteland protecting common folk from overlords. He gets captured by bad guys who force Kaz and other warriors, including Deneer (Claudia Jennings), to participate in “Deathsport,” an open-field battle between warriors on foot and soldiers on motorcycles. During the game, Kaz and Deneer mount a rebellion/escape because they need to rescue a little girl from mutants. All of this is set to a chintzy synthesizer score that sounds as if it’s being played by a keyboardist whose day job is pounding away at a roller-rink pipe organ. Co-written and co-directed by Nicholas Niciphor (Corman and Allan Arkush also helped direct the picture), Deathsport is dull, grungy, and unpleasant, featuring not one but two scenes of nude women getting tortured in an electroshock chamber. Still, B-movie fans may enjoy the absurdly somber performances of Carradine and main villain Richard Lynch (a genre-flick favorite memorable for his badly scarred face). Furthermore, leading lady Jennings, a former Playboy model, is easy on the eyes whether dressed or (as if often the case here) not.

Deathsport: LAME

The Happy Hooker (1975) & The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977)

          Dutch-born madam Xaviera Hollander became a minor celebrity in 1971, when she published a raunchy memoir titled The Happy Hooker at the apex of the sexual revolution, so a film adaptation was inevitable. And perhaps just as inevitably, the movie version of The Happy Hooker is a slapdash affair stitching together several silly episodes from Hollander’s adventures without any artistry or purpose. Indifferently directed by TV journeyman Nicholas Sgarro, the picture suffers from cheap production values, atrocious music, and a complete absence of sexiness—for a movie with the word happy in the title (not to mention the other word), it’s actually pretty miserable to watch.

          Screenwriter William Richert, who later wrote and directed the wonderfully weird Winter Kills (1979), contributes a few palatable dialogue exchanges, but his efforts can’t elevate the tacky source material or surmount the producers’ low intentions. Lynn Redgrave, a long way from her Oscar-nominated role as an overweight naif in Georgy Girl (1966), tries valiantly to invest her leading performance as Hollander with liberated-woman dignity, but even she can’t do get a rise out of the flaccid script.

          About the only novelty value of this dreary film is the presence of familiar character actors in small roles: Risky Business dad Nicholas Pryor plays Hollander’s first American boyfriend; ghoulish B-movie villain Richard Lynch plays a creepy cop; Smuckers pitchman Mason Adams and future Ghost costar Vincent Schiavelli play johns; and Newhart regular Tom Poston appears in the movie’s only amusing-ish scene, as a corporate exec who gets off watching a half-dressed Hollander deliver a ribald version of the daily stock report.

          Redgrave wisely steered clear of the movie’s two diminishing-returns sequels, the first of which, The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, features actress/singer Joey Heatherton in the lead role. The story, such as it is, depicts Xaviera getting summoned before a Congressional committee as part of a morals inquiry and then getting recruited to serve as a Mata Hari for the CIA. Heatherton is a knockout, but her idea of sexiness is cooing and pouting, resulting in a flaccid Marilyn Monroe routine, and she’s surrounded by a truly random assortment of supporting players: Billy Barty, George Hamilton, Larry Storch, Ray Walston, and even Harold Sakata, the hulking Hawaiian who played “Odd Job” in Goldfinger.

          The movie is car-crash awful from start to finish, though it’s weirdly arresting to watch flamboyant comic Rip Taylor playing a fashion photographer who complains when he starts to see, horror of all horrors, a female model’s nether regions: “I don’t want to see any privates!” Well, not hers, anyway. Less amusing are embarrassing scenes like the vignette of Walston acting out a sex fantasy by dressing as Superman for a tryst with a bimbo prostitute. FYI, a final picture, The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood, with B-movie veteran Martine Beswick as Hollander, was released in 1980 and is therefore (thankfully) outside the purview of this survey.

The Happy Hooker: LAME

The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington: SQUARE